Dragons at Crumbling Castle Page 10

  Everyone stood around looking embarrassed. Then Tence’s guide, the small Chilistanian, leaned forward and cautiously pushed a lever.

  The plane left the ground.

  He sat down and bashed some switches.

  ‘How did he learn to fly an aeroplane?’ asked Bill.

  ‘Search me,’ said Tence. ‘When I first met him he was driving camels. He is clearly a man of many talents.’

  The plane looped the loop twice, dived under some telephone wires, climbed straight upwards and settled down flying more or less properly in the direction of Chilistan. The radio started to crackle frantic messages from the control tower, but their new pilot ignored them.

  Soon they were over the sea, while Mrs Glupp and Twist prepared lunch in the galley.

  It took several days to get to Chilistan, because they had to land several times to refuel – usually at little desert airstrips, where fuel was brought to the plane on camels. They also got lost for a while around Turkey.

  ‘I’ve just remembered something,’ said Tence, as the Himalayan mountains loomed up. ‘Chilistan hasn’t got an airport.’

  ‘That’s funny,’ said Bill. ‘We seem to be landing.’

  Chilistan is a very small country, mostly tropical jungle, stony desert and mountains. The capital city, Chilblaine, lies on the bank of the red river McPherson, named after the man who claimed to have discovered the country, and it was towards this that the plane was descending.

  Fishermen on the bank were amazed to see it drop out of the clouds, skim up the river, bounce onto the bank and come to rest in a thicket of baza-trees.

  The doors opened and a small black taxi shot out at great speed. Then the plane exploded.

  ‘Not a bad landing at all, that,’ said Tence to his guide. ‘I reckon we’re ahead of the Arbrovians now.’

  Mr Glupp braked as a small man in a blue suit dashed up to the taxi. Tence leaped out and shook hands with him, and there started a long conversation in Chilistanian, which sounded to Bill like a wet finger being dragged across a window.

  ‘It’s my old friend Godli, the prime minister,’ Tence explained to the others. ‘He says he’ll give us all the help we need.’

  ‘That’s pretty decent, considering we’ve just set fire to a splendid thicket of baza-trees,’ said Bill.

  ‘Yes, but he doesn’t like Arbrovians, because he had an Arbrovian camera that went wrong, as far as I can understand it,’ said Tence.

  ‘Where is Ben Drumlin?’ asked Mrs Glupp.

  Tence pointed.

  The mountain rose out of the jungle and carried on, higher and higher until it disappeared into the clouds.

  ‘Good heavens,’ she said, ‘and is that snow on top?’

  ‘Some do say it’s sherbet,’ said Tence sarcastically. ‘I don’t think we’ll have to go more than a third of the way up, though,’ he added. ‘The Abominable Snowmen are supposed to live in caves not too far above the jungle.’

  The rest of the day was spent buying warm clothes and hiring porters, and the tropical night had fallen suddenly, like a brick, when they went to bed at Chilblaine’s best hotel, La Grande Magnifique Ritz Splendide Carlton. Twist, the butler, had to sleep in the bath.

  Early next morning they piled into the taxi again, with Twist driving a lorry full of porters and provisions. A small crowd gathered to see them off, and a brass band played the Chilistan national anthem, ‘God Save Us All’.

  Then they started off through the forests around Ben Drumlin, the taxi nosing along tiny tracks between huge trees full of brightly coloured birds. Monkeys swung through the trees, and shrieked, and millions of insects hummed and clicked.

  Up and up the foothills of Ben Drumlin went the little convoy, until the lush forests gave way to pine trees and finally to rocks and stunted bushes.

  The road disappeared. There was nothing for it but to walk. Mr Glupp locked the door of his taxi and hid the key in his hat.

  ‘How much further before we find the Abominable Snowmen?’ asked Bill, lacing up his climbing boots.

  Tence struggled to get his knapsack on. ‘Another two or three thousand feet,’ he said. ‘That’s where I saw them. By Jove, doesn’t the air smell good up here!’

  ‘Smells like air to me,’ said Mr Glupp.

  ‘Onwards!’ cried Tence.

  They trudged on up the slopes of Ben Drumlin, singing songs. At last they came to a little mountain stream, that ran tinkling over the stones. Bill bent down to fill his water bottle and heard a whirring noise. There was a tiny water wheel in the stream, spinning at great speed.

  ‘And there’s something attached to it,’ said Tence. It was a small piece of parchment. On it were two lines written in Chilistanian, and Tence translated them:

  ‘It’s a joke,’ said Bill. ‘A very old one too.’

  ‘Extremely so, sir,’ said Twist the butler.

  ‘Hmm,’ said Tence, tapping the paper. ‘You know what this is, don’t you? It’s a Joke Wheel. There must be a Joke Monastery up here – and Joke Monks.’

  He explained: ‘You see, they think the world was created as a joke, so everyone should give thanks by having a good laugh. That’s why they tie jokes to water wheels. Every time the wheel goes round a joke goes up to heaven.’

  ‘What singular persons,’ said Bill. ‘You mean they spend all their time telling jokes?’

  ‘Yes. They even get up in the middle of the night to invent some more.’

  Someone tapped him on the shoulder. It was a small round man in a blue robe, with a bald head and a big grin. Slowly he took a custard pie from one of his voluminous sleeves.

  Tence ducked just in time. It hit Twist.

  It was a curious scene, halfway up the twenty-seventh largest mountain in the world. The monk stood there, laughing, while everyone else looked embarrassed, and Twist stood with custard dripping into his collar. Then there was a green flash, a popping noise, and the monk was gone.

  Twist blew his nose.

  ‘Well!’ said Bill. ‘What a strange man.’

  ‘That was one of them,’ said Tence. ‘I forgot to add that they can do magic as well.’

  For the rest of that day they wandered on up Ben Drumlin. They saw no more of the Joke Monks, as they hurried on past large stones and bushes, although, as the stars were coming out, they saw, high on a spur of rock, a large building.

  As they passed it they could hear a sing-song voice telling a joke in Chilistanian, and a burst of laughter as the monks saw the funny side.

  ‘An odd lot,’ said Bill, after they’d pitched camp and were sitting around the fire. ‘It can’t be much fun sitting up here all the time inventing jokes.’

  ‘They enjoy it,’ said Tence, lighting his pipe. ‘Do you know, they reckon that there are 7,777,777,777,777 jokes in the world, and when they’ve all been told, the world will come to an end, like switching off a light. There’ll be no more need for it, see.’

  There was silence while everyone sat around thinking, or just watching the last of the sunset. The moon rose, painting Ben Drumlin’s snowy cap bright silver. More stars came out.

  ‘Like a light, you say?’ asked Bill, after a while.

  ‘Yes. Or a burst balloon.’

  There was another thoughtful pause, and they all listened to the monks’ laughter floating down from the monastery.

  ‘I wonder how many there are left?’

  ‘Millions,’ said Tence reassuringly.

  ‘Eeeeeeeeeee!’ screamed Mrs Glupp, hurtling out of her tent. ‘There’s a hairy monster in my sleeping bag.’

  ‘A Snowman!’ screamed Tence. ‘Don’t panic!’

  Everyone did, trying to hide behind everyone else as the sleeping bag came bounding out of the tent, hopped high into the air and burst.

  The thing inside landed on Twist’s head. It sat there, blinking.

  ‘That doesn’t look Abominable to me,’ said Mrs Glupp. ‘It looks rather sweet.’

  It was about the size of a football, and the same shape,
with a white coat and a small bushy tail. Two button eyes peered out of the fur. Then it started to cry.

  Mrs Glupp lifted it down off Twist’s head and said something like, ‘Izzo fwitened by der nasty man, den? Dere, dere.’ Everyone wondered what she was on about, but the small Snowman seemed to understand.

  ‘It must be a baby one,’ said Tence.

  It coughed and went to sleep. Mrs Glupp made a bed for it out of Tence’s rucksack, much to his annoyance, then, wondering how the baby Snowman had come to be in their camp, the explorers crawled into their tents for the night.

  Bill dreamed that a Joke Monk was sitting in a bath of custard and telling the 7,777,777,777,777th joke which would bring about the end of the world.

  The monk carried on telling it, regardless of the attempts of Tence to stop him by throwing sleeping bags at him.

  BANG!

  Bill woke up. Everything had gone dark. Something was treading on his stomach. The world has ended, he thought.

  But no. The tent had just collapsed. Bill squirmed about underneath it and raised the flap. A scene of utter confusion met his eyes. Tence was running around waving a gun. Most of the tents had collapsed and everyone was shouting.

  It turned out that something large and furry had rushed into the camp and had run off with Twist, the butler. It was also now snowing.

  ‘It must have been a full-grown Snowman,’ said Tence. ‘Let’s get after it! Look at those footprints!’

  Bill looked. There in the snow were prints nearly a metre long, each with three toes.

  ‘Oo-er,’ he said. ‘Oh well, I suppose we’d better go.’

  The others relit the fire, and sat round it in a circle with their backs to it, on guard, as Tence and Bill, bundled up in thick clothes and carrying a gun apiece, set out up Ben Drumlin.

  The footprints scrambled round rocks, leaped over crevasses, sidled along narrow ledges and disappeared, round about lunch time, into a cave.

  Tence bent down and picked up Twist’s bowler hat. ‘He’s in there somewhere,’ he said sadly.

  ‘After you, then,’ said Bill, who was no fool.

  They sidled into the cave. Tence took a torch out of his pack, but all they saw by its light were icicles and damp walls.

  They tiptoed on, and there was no sound but their breathing.

  Suddenly Tence tapped Bill on the shoulder. At least, that’s what Bill thought, until he realized that Tence was in front of him. What he thought then can be represented by a little sum. He thought:

  Therefore the person who just tapped me on the shoulder is a—

  he screamed, and spun round. It was an Abominable Snowman, a large ball of fur nearly two metres high with the biggest feet Bill had ever seen. And there were other Snowmen behind it.

  The leading Snowman stepped forward and said something in a language made up of squeaks and grunts.

  ‘Pardon?’ said Bill.

  Furry hands gripped them firmly and pushed them along into a cave, lit by candles.

  Twist was sitting against one wall, drinking soup out of a bowl.

  ‘Good morning, sir,’ he said. ‘This is a bit of a liberty, isn’t it? They’ve taken me prisoner.’

  Tence and Bill stared around the cave. It was full of Abominable Snowmen.

  The leading Snowman stepped forward with a stick in its paw, and started to draw in the dust at Bill’s feet. It carefully drew a series of little pictures. The first showed a small Snowman running out of the cave. The second was a rough drawing of the explorers’ camp.

  Then there was a drawing of Twist and the small Snowman. The Snowman pointed at the picture and started waving his arms about.

  ‘I may be wrong,’ said Tence, ‘but I think he’s trying to say that they’re holding Twist hostage until the baby Snowman is brought back . . .’

  ‘Yes, but we didn’t kidnap him,’ said Bill. ‘He wandered into our camp.’

  The Snowman started to draw again. He made it clear that unless Bill went alone to fetch the little Snowman, Tence and Twist would be pushed down a cliff when the sun went down.

  ‘Oh,’ said Tence. ‘Well, that’s clear enough. Hurry back!’

  The Snowmen led Bill out of the cave and watched him hurry down the mountain. He skidded over glaciers, leaped over gaping crevasses, slid down great drifts of frozen snow, tumbled into icy caves and, finally, puffing and panting, and with blue and pink stars bursting inside his head, he staggered into the camp.

  Mrs Glupp was trying to feed the Snowman on a sort of porridge made out of crushed biscuits.

  Gasping for breath, Bill grabbed the little furry creature and rushed back up the slopes of Ben Drumlin. It made frightened squeaking noises, but clung to Bill’s knapsack as he climbed sheer cliffs holding on with nothing but two fingernails and a toe. Finally he reached the cave, just as the sun began to set.

  ‘Hold everything!’ he panted. ‘Here he is!’

  There was a great commotion and the baby was hurried away by some Snowwomen. It was the chieftain’s son, explained Tence.

  The chieftain trotted forward and shook Tence’s hand. He pointed at the camera.

  ‘Pictures!’ said Tence. ‘Of course.’

  During the next half-hour he took photographs of Abominable Snowmen standing in formal groups, Abominable Snowmen with their arms around Bill’s shoulder, Abominable Snowmen wearing Twist’s bowler hat, Abominable Snowmen standing on their heads, Abominable Snowmen jumping up and down and Abominable Snowmen looking serious.fn2

  They didn’t actually look very Abominable . . . But Tence seemed happy enough.

  ‘Just wait till I publish these,’ he said. ‘They’ll make me President of the Royal Zoological Society for this!’

  Then they all shook hands and set off back to their camp. Twist was thinking relieved thoughts, and Tence was thinking excited thoughts, and Bill was thinking, I wonder how long it will be before the Joke Monks tell the last joke?

  They can’t have done yet, anyway.

  fn1And just like a long scarf, there was that traily bit at the end that you always seemed to tread on.

  fn2In one photo, an Abominable Snowman is making devil’s horns behind Tence’s head with his big paws. This always seems to happen when photos are taken of groups of people.

  THE BLACKBURY MONSTER

  ‘Now what we’ve got to decide,’ said the Mayor of Blackbury importantly, ‘is how we are going to Put Blackbury on the Map.’ He took a sip from the glass of water on his desk and looked around at the councillors.

  It was another meeting of the Borough Council. Sunlight streamed through the windows of the old Victorian council hall, and outside the hands of the Town Hall clock pointed to ten minutes to three. They had been stuck in that position for ninety years.

  ‘Come on, now,’ said the mayor. ‘Do you realize there are people who’ve never heard of Blackbury? Not of our new heated baths or forward-looking waste-disposal scheme? Our town is so full of history it – er – it – well, it’s full of history. But most people don’t even know where it is.’

  The councillors stopped staring out of the windows and doodling on their blotters. At last Alderman Nigel Lamebucket said: ‘Well, now. Tunbridge has got its Wells, Bath has got its Buns, Windsor’s got its Castle, Brighton’s got its Pier, but what have we got?’

  Everyone shook their heads. Even the main roads didn’t go near Blackbury. Sometimes a party of vicars would come to see the odd Gothic pews in the cathedral, but apart from that, there was nothing in the town which really attracted tourists.

  No one famous had ever lived or died there. Henry VIII once said, ‘Where is Blackbury?’ and William Shakespeare might have written his plays there if he hadn’t taken a wrong turning and gone back to Stratford-upon-Avon instead, but for hundreds of years Blackbury had never really been in the news.

  ‘And it’s not right,’ said the mayor. ‘It’s not fair. Any suggestions?’

  ‘How about an arts festival?’ said someone.

  ‘It�
��s been done,’ said the mayor.

  ‘A carnival of flowers? A big concert? A horse show?’

  ‘Not interesting enough,’ said the mayor. ‘But I’ve got an idea. Supposing we had a monster, like Loch Ness? That would make the people come! And you know,’ he said, ‘there’s every possibility there’s a monster in the Sluggard. Well, I mean, we don’t know for sure that there’s not, do we?’

  The Sluggard was a rather large pond on the recreation ground in the town centre, full of weeds and mud. People in the park were rather surprised next day to see three mysterious humps bob up out of the middle of the pond for a little while before sinking again.

  The mayor summoned a special council meeting, and the councillors stood up and cheered him. ‘I got the park keeper to do it with three old tyres,’ he confessed. ‘Now, let’s see whether anyone says anything about it.’

  Next day someone found big webbed footprints near the Sluggard – made, said the mayor, with a pair of his son’s underwater flippers.

  ‘Here we are,’ said the mayor, opening his copy of the Gritshire Comet, ‘between the Women’s Institutes and a picture of me at the primary school prize-giving. “Amazing Sights on the Sluggard: Probe Monster, Council Told”. Hmm, not bad, not bad.’ He was sitting in his parlour, with his feet on the mantelpiece, and his mayoral shirtsleeves rolled up.

  Mr Patel, the town clerk, sat on the edge of the sofa with his bowler hat on his knees. ‘I’m not sure I like this, Mayor,’ he said weakly. ‘It’s dishonest. It’s defrauding the public. You know the monster is only three old rubber tyres and a pair of frogman’s flippers.’

  The mayor looked out of the window. He could see the Sluggard, the weedy pond on the recreation ground. There were at least nine people standing around it.

  ‘Yes, it is dishonest,’ he admitted. ‘But it’s given people something to talk about. And, more important, people are coming to Blackbury.’

  And that was true. Ever since the park keeper had first swum round the pond towing the old tyres behind him, people had been arriving in Blackbury. The Temperance Hotel and the town’s four pubs were crowded. Mrs Amrit Ghosh, down at the old tea rooms, had invented a dish called ‘Blackbury Surprise et la Monster Stew’. The mayor’s plan to make Blackbury a tourist centre was working.