‘There’ll be room,’ said Julian. ‘Hallo, Mr Luffy! You’ve been out early!’
Mr Luffy came up and glanced at Jock. ‘Ah, is this your friend from the farm? How do you do? Come to spend a few days with us? I see you have an armful of rugs!’
‘Yes. Jock’s coming to camp a bit with us,’ said Julian. ‘Look at all the food he’s brought. Enough to stand a siege!’
‘It is indeed,’ said Mr Luffy. ‘Well, I’m going to go through some of my specimens this morning. What are you going to do?’
‘Oh, mess about till lunchtime,’ said Julian. ‘Then we might go for a walk.’
Mr Luffy went back to his tent and they could hear him whistling softly as he set to work. Suddenly Jock sat up straight and looked alarmed.
‘What’s the matter?’ asked Dick. Then he heard what Jock had heard. A shrill whistle blown loudly by somebody some way off.
That’s my stepfather’s whistle,’ said Jock. ‘He’s whistling for me. Mum must have told him, or else he’s found out I’ve come over here.’
‘Quick – let’s scoot away and hide,’ said Anne. ‘If you’re not here he can’t take you back! Come on! Maybe he’ll get tired of looking for you, and go.’
Nobody could think of a better idea, and certainly nobody wanted to face a furious Mr Andrews. All four shot down the slope and made their way to where the heather was high and thick. They burrowed into it and lay still, hidden by some high bracken.
Mr Andrews’s voice could soon be heard, shouting for Jock, but no Jock appeared. Mr Andrews came out by Mr Luffy’s tent. Mr Luffy, surprised at the shouting, put his head out of his tent to see what it was all about. He didn’t like the look of Mr Andrews at all.
‘Where’s Jock?’ Mr Andrews demanded, scowling at him.
‘I really do not know,’ said Mr Luffy.
‘He’s got to come back,’ said Mr Andrews, roughly. ‘I won’t have him hanging about here with those kids.’
‘What’s wrong with them?’ inquired Mr Luffy. ‘I must say I find them very well-behaved and pleasant-mannered. ‘
Mr Andrews stared at Mr Luffy, and put him down as a silly, harmless old fellow who would probably help him to get Jock back if he went about it the right way.
‘Now look here,’ said Mr Andrews. ‘I don’t know
who you are, but you must be a friend of the children’s. And if so, then I’d better warn you they’re running into danger. See?’
‘Really? In what way?’ asked Mr Luffy, mildly and disbelievingly.
‘Well, there’s bad and dangerous places about these moorlands,’ said Mr Andrews. ‘Very bad. I know them. And those children have been messing about in them. See? And if Jock comes here, he’ll start messing about too, and I don’t want him to get into any danger. It would break his mother’s heart.’
‘Quite, ‘said Mr Luffy.
‘Well, will you talk to him and send him back?’ said Mr Andrews. ‘That railway yard now – that’s a most dangerous place. And folks do say that there’re spook-trains there. I wouldn’t want Jock to be mixed up in anything of that sort.’
‘Quite,’ said Mr Luffy again, looking closely at Mr Andrews. ‘You seem very concerned about this – er -railway yard.’
‘Me? Oh, no,’ said Mr Andrews. ‘Never been near the horrible place. I wouldn’t want to see spook-trains – make me run a mile! It’s just that I don’t want Jock to get into danger. I’d be most obliged if you’d talk to him and send him home, when they all come back from wherever they are.’
‘Quite,’ said Mr Luffy again, most irritatingly. Mr Andrews gazed at Mr Luffy’s bland face and suddenly wished he could smack it. ‘Quite, quite, quite!’ Gr-r-r-r-r-r-r!
He turned and went away. When he had gone for some time, and was a small speck in the distance, Mr Luffy called loudly.
‘He’s gone! Please send Jock here so that I can – er -address a few words to him.’
Four children appeared from their heathery hiding-place. Jock went over to Mr Luffy, looking mutinous.
‘I just wanted to say,’ said Mr Luffy, ‘that I quite understand why you want to be away from your stepfather, and that I consider it’s no business of mine where you go in order to get away from him!’
Jock grinned. ‘Oh, thanks awfully,’ he said. ‘I thought you were going to send me back!’ He rushed over to the others. ‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘I’m going to stay, and, I say – what about going and exploring down that tunnel after lunch? We might find that spook-train then!’
‘Good idea!’ said Julian. ‘We will! Poor old George -she’ll miss that little adventure too!’
15 George has an adventure
George had gone off with one fixed idea in her mind. She was going to find out something about that mysterious tunnel! She thought she would walk over the moorlands to Kilty’s Yard, and see what she could see there. Maybe she could walk right back through the tunnel itself!
She soon came to Olly’s Yard. There it lay below her, with Wooden-Leg Sam pottering about. She went down to speak to him. He didn’t see or hear her coming and jumped violently when she called to him.
He swung round, squinting at her fiercely. ‘You clear off!’ he shouted. ‘I’ve been told to keep you children out of here, see? Do you want me to lose my job?’
‘Who told you to keep us out?’ asked George, puzzled as to who could have known they had been in the yard.
‘He did, see?’ said the old man. He rubbed his eyes, and then peered at George short-sightedly again. ‘I’ve broken my glasses,’ he said.
‘Who’s “he” – the person who told you to keep us out?’ said George.
But the old watchman seemed to have one of his sudden strange changes of temper again. He bent down and picked up a large cinder. He was about to fling it at George when Timmy gave a loud and menacing growl. Sam dropped his arm.
‘You clear out,’ he said. ‘You don’t want to get a poor old man like me into trouble, do you? You look a nice kind boy you do. You wouldn’t get Wooden-Leg Sam into trouble, would you?’
George turned to go. She decided to take the path that led to the tunnel and peep inside. But when she got there there was nothing to see. She didn’t feel that she wanted to walk all alone inside that dark mouth, so she took the path that Julian had taken the night before, over the top of the tunnel. But she left it half-way to look at a curious bump that jutted up from the heather just there.
She scraped away at the heather and found something hard beneath. She pulled at it but it would not give. Timmy, thinking she was obligingly digging for rabbits, came to help. He scrambled below the heather – and then he suddenly gave a bark of fright and disappeared!
George screamed: ‘Timmy! What have you done? Where are you?’
To her enormous relief she heard Timmy’s bark some way down. Where could he be? She called again, and once more Timmy barked.
George tugged at the tufts of heather, and then suddenly she saw what the curious mound was. It was a built-up vent-hole for the old tunnel – a place where the smoke came curling out in the days when trains ran there often. It had been barred across with iron, but the bars had rusted and fallen in, and heather had grown thickly over them.
‘Oh, Timmy, you must have fallen down the vent,’ said George, anxiously. ‘But not very far down. Wait a bit and I’ll see what I can do. If only the others were here to help!’
But they weren’t, and George had to work all by
herself to try and get down to the broken bars. It took her a very long time, but at last she had them exposed, and saw where Timmy had fallen down.
He kept giving short little barks, as if to say: ‘It’s all right. I can wait. I’m not hurt!’
George had to sit down and take a rest after her efforts. She was hungry, but she said to herself that she would not eat till she had somehow got down to Timmy, and found out where he was. Soon she began her task again.
She climbed down through the fallen-in vent. It was very difficult, and she was terrified of the rusty old iron bars breaking off under her weight. But they didn’t.
Once down in the vent she discovered steps made of great iron nails projecting out. Some of them had thin rungs across. There had evidently once been a ladder up to the top of the vent. Most of the rungs had gone, but the iron nails that supported them still stood in the brick walls of the old round vent. She heard Timmy give a little bark. He was quite near her now.