Dragons at Crumbling Castle Page 5

  Meanwhile, Hal and the rest of the tribe went mammoth hunting. Things were becoming harder. On the horizon, glimmering, was a long white line of cliffs. The ice was coming back and it was getting colder. And all sorts of wild creatures were roaming the plains and peering into the caves at night.

  When they came back, Hal sent one of his sons to fish the wheel out of the river. As they climbed the hill, Hal sniffed. ‘Smells like—’ He stopped. Dok would have to invent some more language, especially a word for what trees smelled like after they had been struck by lightning. ‘Smells sort of – um – hot, wouldn’t you say, Uggi?’

  A thin column of smoke was rising from the cave mouth. Dok came running by with a dry branch in his arms. His face was black and his eyebrows were singed.

  ‘It’ll revolutionize central heating!’ he cried.

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Hal. ‘Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. What now, I wonder?’

  ‘Come and see!’ cried Dok.

  The tribe filed into the cave. There in the middle of the floor was what looked like a very small volcano. Orange flames leaped up from it hungrily.

  ‘Well, what is it this time?’ said Hal.

  ‘It’s called fire. It’s quite simple to make. All you need is two dry pieces of wood, and then – there you are! Heat, light and something nice to look at, all in one go. Safe as houses.’

  ‘You invented me a house. It had a roof. It fell in. A particularly heavy piece of wood it was, as I recall.’

  But Hal let Dok bring the fire into the main cave, and they sat around it while they tucked into cold, raw mammoth.

  ‘Are you quite sure it’s safe? Won’t it escape?’ said Hal.

  ‘Actually, it’s hard enough to keep going,’ said Dok, putting another piece of wood on it. As he did so he dropped a piece of mammoth into the ashes. Slowly, it began to go brown. ‘I tried it out on the old sabre-tooth tiger up in the mountains while you were gone. Animals are scared of it, so if we put it in the mouth of the cave they’ll stay away. I say, what’s happened here?’ He picked up the piece of meat. It smelled good. ‘Hal,’ he said slowly, ‘would you like to help the cause of scientific progress? Here, try this.’

  Feeling a bit of a fool, Hal did. ‘Umph,’ he said. ‘Tasty.’ He looked around – there was bound to be some sort of catch in it somewhere.

  They dragged the rest of the mammoth into the cave. That evening they had fried mammoth, baked mammoth, mammoth chops, roast mammoth, mammoth steaks and grilled mammoth. Then, when there was nothing left but the bones, they sat around feeling as though they would burst.

  All except Dok. He sat there with his chin on his hands, frowning. They could see that he was inventing a new word.

  ‘Coo—’ he said.

  ‘Koo?’ suggested Hal. ‘Collar? Camp?’

  ‘Nonononono. No. coo-coo-cookery!’

  So cookery it became. They were so busy talking about it that they didn’t notice a spark float up and land on the heap of leaves that was Uggi’s bed. Until Uggi sat down on it. He was an old man, but he could move fast.

  ‘It bit me!’

  Whumph! The bed flared up, setting fire to all the others. They ran from the cave but the fire went with them, burning up the grass and trees. Suddenly the whole forest was alight.

  Hal and the others stood waist-deep in the river, watching the flames.

  ‘It was a good cave,’ he said. ‘The ground was nice and soft.’

  ‘Where’s Dok?’ said Uggi. ‘He left the cave, I know.’

  ‘Gone for good, I hope,’ said Hal.

  And poor old Dok, hiding in the reeds, heard him. Sadly he loaded up his canoe with the wheel, dry fire-sticks and one or two inventions he was working on. Then, his paddles making little rings in the dark water, he floated off down the great river. Soon the fire was nothing more than a red glow on the horizon.

  After the fire had burned up most of the hunting lands around their home, Hal’s tribe had to move on. Far away in the north the great ice glaciers were moving and it was beginning to snow.

  They plodded on down the Great River, dragging their few possessions behind them on crude sleds, because none of them could remember exactly what the wheel looked like. And when darkness fell they had to climb trees and shiver, because only Dok knew the secret of fire. And Dok was gone.

  They called out to him once or twice, but all that came back were echoes.

  ‘He must have gone down to the sea itself,’ said Hal, ‘and they say there are all kinds of monsters there.’

  And they all thought of poor Dok, all alone. He would have known what to do to catch wild animals in the snow, or to light a fire without wood.

  The tribe sat down under a ledge of rock, and the only sound was the chattering of two dozen pairs of teeth. There was nothing to make a fire with, even if they knew how.

  ‘Uggi?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘What’s this black rock?’ Hal held it out.

  ‘I don’t know. It’s called coal, I think. There’s lots of it around, but it’s absolutely useless. Bung it away.’

  Hal wrapped his furs around himself and watched the snow, wondering what Dok was doing at this moment.

  The next day dawned clear and frosty.

  And the wolf pack found them. They were prehistoric wolves, which was bad, and they were hungry, which was worse. Like Hal, they were looking for food. They sat around the rock ledge with their tongues hanging out.

  ‘Uggi, Wug, Dal, Ut and Rodney, come with me,’ said Hal wearily. ‘The rest of you, stay here.’ Picking up his club, he strode out to meet the wolves. The leader of the pack crouched down, ready to leap.

  And as it sprang at Hal, a stick whistled through the air and hit the wolf in the neck.

  ‘Having a bit of trouble?’ said Dok. In one hand he held a bent piece of wood, with a string stretched across it; in the other, a small stick with a stone point. ‘It’ll revolutionize hunting!’ he cried, as he shot another wolf. The rest ran for their lives.

  ‘Where did you come from?’ gasped Hal.

  ‘Oh, I’ve built myself a little place down by the river. Handy for the fishing, you know. With nets. They’ll revolutionize the industry. Makes a change from mammoth, and tiger, and all the rest, however you cook them. Like my coat? Wool. There’s these things called sheep, and if you chase them for long enough—’

  ‘Stop!’ said Hal. ‘Have you got a fire there?’

  ‘Several.’

  So they decided that Dok had learned his lesson, and allowed him back into the tribe. Soon, a few more houses grew up, and became a village and later a town, down by the big river.

  Dok sat alone in his house. He was growing old, but he was working on his greatest invention. Suddenly he sat up.

  ‘His-his-history!’ he cried. ‘I declare the Stone Age at an end. History will start from tomorrow!’

  And so it has been ever since.

  fn1In his view, there ought to be a law that chieftains never got thorns in their bottoms.

  THE BIG RACE

  Gas and electricity are tricky things. They leak. If you’ve ever stood by an electric light socket with the bulb out you can almost feel the electricity leaking out all over the room. It’s the same with gas, except it’s more likely to go bang.

  Now steam is a different matter. You can see steam and it does what it’s told; it’s like thin water and you can put it in pipes.

  Over a hundred years ago steam was all the rage. The Gritshire Steam Typewriter and Laundry Company had a big factory at East Slate and they turned out things driven by steam. There were the famous steam typewriters, steam clocks, steam boot cleaners and even steam toothbrushes. There were lights made by passing steam over red-hot coke – it works – and there was even talk of a steam-driven washing machine. Things were really steamed up.

  ‘Steam,’ said Sir Henry Toggitt, sticking his thumbs in his waistcoat, ‘is here to stay.’

  Sir Henry was the managing director of the company, so you can imag
ine his annoyance when he read in his paper next day that someone had made a car that ran on petrol. He called the company’s inventors together.

  ‘What’s this all about?’ he said. ‘Petrol’s no good for anything. You can’t make it do anything – can you?’

  All the inventors shifted uneasily and started mumbling.

  ‘Well, sir,’ said one, ‘it’s not impossible—’

  ‘Then build a steam car!’ said Sir Henry. ‘Steam is here to stay! We’ve put the electric people out of business; now we’ll do the same for this petrol-driven thing! Build a car, and we’ll challenge it to a race around Gritshire.’

  So they got to work. The story appeared in the papers and all sorts of inventors drove into Gritshire in their cars. There were some driven by soda, some by compressed air, and one driven by clockwork.

  ‘You see, Sir Henry,’ said Norman Spindrift, his chief engineer. ‘It’s a challenge. Baron von Teu has brought his petrol-driven car to race ours, but all these other people want to see if they can beat the both of us. And whoever wins, you know, all the big factories will make his kind of car.’

  The course ran all round Gritshire several times. The County Council officials measured it out – it was five hundred miles long in total – and preparations went ahead for the big race, while the inventors stayed in East Slate’s hotels and worked on their cars. And then the Mayor of Blackbury announced a prize of £10,000 – and a big shiny cup – for the winner!

  On the morning of the race Sir Henry Toggitt helped Norman Spindrift push their new car to the starting line. It was a magnificent creation of boilers and pipes, all painted white and gold. It had four big steel wheels and, since it was driven by steam, towed a little coal tender behind it.

  ‘If this doesn’t win, I’ll eat my hat,’ said Sir Henry, who was wearing a straw hat just in case. ‘What’s it called?’

  ‘The Spirit of Gritshire,’ said Norman.

  Next to the steam car stood Baron von Teu’s petrol-driven one, specially brought over from Prussia for the race. It was bright red with black Maltese crosses on its bonnet, and the baron and his assistant were already aboard. It was called Gerta.

  Behind that was the clockwork-driven car, with its eight drivers still hauling on the big key. Then there was an electric car, an elastic-driven car, a compressed-air lorry, a hot air balloon-powered bus and two sail-powered bicycles.

  ‘Resign now – you all might as well,’ shouted the baron through a megaphone.

  ‘I don’t trust him,’ whispered Sir Henry. ‘I think I shall come with you. After all, if we win we’ll be able to make steam cars for the whole country.’

  Just then the Mayor of Blackbury climbed into the starter’s box and the crowd cheered. His speech went on for quite a long timefn1 and I won’t bore you with it all, but he ended: ‘The course is three times round Gritshire and we’ve posted men all over the place to make sure you don’t cheat, if you’ll excuse me. Eyes on the starting flag please.

  Ready, steady . . . w-a-i-t f-o-r i-t, w-a-i-t f-o-r i-t . . . Go!’

  In a cloud of steam and fumes the Spirit of Gritshire and the baron’s red car roared off. The sail bicycles fell over, the elastic-driven car went twang! and backwards, and the hot air balloon-powered bus floated away.

  Hanging on for dear life, its driver saw the white car and the red car zoom neck-and-neck out of the town. They turned at the crossroads and disappeared in the direction of Slate Old Town, their crews yelling insults at each other. Behind them, going at a good lick, was the clockwork car, its giant spring still unwinding.

  Gerta, Baron von Teu’s petrol-driven car, roared out of Slate Old Town with the Spirit of Gritshire a few metres behind it. The baron was bent low over his steering wheel, and making faces in the driving mirror.

  ‘Hans,’ he said to his assistant. ‘Get the £10,000 prize money we must.’

  ‘Ja,’ said Hans.

  ‘I have a plan . . .’ And so the baron put his foot down hard and pulled away from the other car.

  The plan worked like this. All around Gritshire there were red marker arrows by the road to help the drivers stay on course. It was the work of a moment for Hans to jump out of the car, turn one of the arrows to point down a little side road, leap back in again and be away, before the Spirit of Gritshire came hurtling round the corner.

  The baron laughed so much he almost felt good-tempered. ‘Where – where did the lane go to?’ he managed to gasp.

  ‘Slate Chicken Farm!’ wheezed Hans, biting his handkerchief to stop himself laughing, while the car roared up the road alone.

  Suddenly the hedge seemed to explode and something whizzed out onto the road right in front of the car. All that could be seen under a mass of wire, hens, feathers, eggs and chicken coops were four wheels and a chimney.

  The baron CRASHED into a broken coop and an egg landed on his head. He sat there screaming with rage while the Spirit of Gritshire disappeared up the road. Worse was to come. There was a purring noise behind them, and out of the hedge came all the other cars in the race.

  That night, Sir Henry and his assistant, Norman Spindrift, stayed at the King’s Legs in Blackbury, with the steam-powered car parked outside the door.

  In the middle of the night Gerta pulled up outside the pub. Hans got out and, opening the bonnet of the steam car, did something to the engine. Then he went round all the other cars and there was the sound of important bits being removed.

  As dawn began to break, he got back in the car. Their laughter dying away in the distance, he and the baron chugged away.

  A little way down the road, a tramp having a quiet sleep under the hedge was woken up by the sound of evil laughter. There was a whizzing noise and a large bag of assorted cogwheels, pipes, springs and other essential machinery flew over the hedge and hit him on the head!

  ‘This is terrible!’ said Sir Henry.

  It was morning and all the competitors in the Great Gritshire Road Race stood around outside the King’s Legs in Blackbury.

  I say ‘all’, but Baron von Teu wasn’t there. He’d driven on through the night – after sabotaging all the other cars. They were parked in the hotel courtyard and every one had a bit of machinery missing.

  ‘The rotten rotter,’ said Sir Henry. ‘Can you repair it?’

  ‘Not without going all the way back to East Slate for my tools,’ said Norman.

  Just then a figure appeared round the corner. He wore a long grey overcoat and a green hat, with a great grey beard in between the two. But what really caught the eye was the collection of ironmongery that hung all over him – a big drum, cymbals on knees and elbows, a harmonica, bells on the hat, a piece of linoleum under one arm and a tuba around the waist.

  ‘Well, well,’ said Sir Henry. ‘I haven’t seen a one-man band since I was a nipper.’

  But with a cry Norman Spindrift leaped up and rushed down the road, returning with the tramp held by one ear.

  ‘Oi,’ said the tramp.

  ‘Look,’ said Norman. ‘He’s banging the drum with a piston out of our engine!’

  ‘That thing he’s using as a whistle is our exhaust pipe!’ said the driver of the gas bus. And all the other drivers started to shout as they identified bits of their cars.

  ‘Where did you get all these, you wretched wretch?’ bellowed Sir Henry.

  ‘Search me, guv. I was having a quiet kip under the hedge last night when someone bunged them on top of me – leggo of my lughole!’

  ‘Leggo his lughole – I mean let go of his ear,’ said Sir Henry thoughtfully. ‘More of the baron’s evil doings, I see. How would you like fifty pounds for your band, my man.’

  ‘Well, it’s by way of being my living, guv . . .’

  ‘A hundred pounds.’

  ‘Done!’

  It was the work of about half an hour to fit all the pieces back into the cars and drive on. The one-man band, who said his name was Ron Snipe, rode on the Spirit of Gritshire’s coal tender and played tunes on the tuba.
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  Several hours later Baron von Teu woke up. He was sleeping in a cornfield miles up the road, because, of course, he didn’t expect any of the others to catch him up.

  He nudged Hans. ‘I thought I heard the cursed steam-car hoot,’ he said.

  ‘Impossible.’

  Whoop! Whoop!

  ‘Quick, quick, quick! Where’s the starting handle! Get off my foot! Gah! Hurry!’

  The petrol-driven car Gerta roared off in a cloud of dust.

  The Spirit of Gritshire was nearing the end of the race. But she still had to pass through the deep Dankly Gorge in the Gritshire mountains . . . where the baron had another surprise in store.

  When the newly repaired cars roared into Dankly Gorge, the Spirit of Gritshire was well in the lead, and it looked as though Sir Henry and Norman Spindrift still had a chance to win the £10,000 prize – if they could only catch up the beastly baron.

  But Baron von Teu had other ideas. There, right where the gorge was narrowest, a great heap of rocks blocked the road. The baron and Hans were sitting on top playing Snap for ha’pennies.

  ‘Unblock this road at once, you villainous villain!’ bellowed Sir Henry.

  ‘There’s no way round except over the mountains,’ said the baron. ‘Why not try that way?’

  And with a horrible laugh he and Hans jumped down from the rocks, got in their car on the other side and chugged off.

  ‘The rotten rotters,’ fumed Sir Henry. ‘I’ve got a jolly good mind to take the other road and still beat them.’

  ‘It’ll take half an hour longer,’ moaned Norman. ‘There’s no way we can do it.’

  Then Sir Henry had an idea. ‘What about that safety thingummy on the car’s boiler – what would happen if we strapped it down?’

  ‘We’d go very fast for a little while and then go off bang,’ said Norman. ‘The steam couldn’t escape, see?’ He looked at Sir Henry. ‘You don’t want to—’