Julian lay still. Maybe the men were still there. He wasn’t going to give himself away. He lay for quite a long time, waiting and wondering. But he heard nothing.
Then he saw a robin fly to a nearby bramble spray. It flicked its wings and looked about for crumbs. It was a robin that came around when the children were having a meal but it was not as tame as most robins, and would not fly down until the children had, left the hollow.
Then a rabbit popped out of a hole on the hillside and capered about, running suddenly up to the hollow.
‘Well,’ thought Julian, ‘it’s plain the men aren’t here now, or the birds and animals wouldn’t be about like this. There’s another rabbit. Those men have gone somewhere though goodness knows where. I can peep over now and have a look, quite safely, I should think.’
He slid himself round and peered over the roof at the back end of the caravan. He looked down at the ground. There was absolutely nothing to be seen to tell him what the men had been doing, or where they had gone! The heather grew luxuriantly there as it did everywhere else. There was nothing to show what the men had been making such a disturbance about.
‘This is really very queer,’ thought Julian, beginning to wonder if he had been dreaming. ‘The men are certainly gone vanished into thin air, apparently! Dare I get down and explore a bit? No, I daren’t. The men may appear at any moment, and it’s quite on the cards they’ll lose their temper if they find me here, and chuck both me and the caravans down the hill! It’s pretty steep just here, too.’
He lay there, thinking. He suddenly felt very hungry and thirsty. Thank goodness he had been sensible enough to take food up to the roof! He could at least have a meal while he was waiting for the men to come back if they ever did!
He began to eat his sandwiches. They tasted very good indeed. He finished them all and began on the cake. That was good, too. He had brought a few plums up as well, and was very glad of them because he was thirsty. He flicked the plum stones from the roof before he thought what he was doing.
‘Dash! Why did I do that? If the men notice them they may remember they weren’t there before. Still, they’ve most of them gone into the heather!’
The sun came out a little and Julian felt hot. He wished the men would come again and go down the hill. He was tired of lying flat on the hard roof. Also he was terribly sleepy. He yawned silently and shut his eyes.
How long he slept he had no idea but he was suddenly awakened by feeling the caravan being moved again! He clutched the chimney in alarm, listening to the low voices of the two men.
They were pulling the caravan back into place again. Soon it was in the same position as before. Then Julian heard a match struck and smelt smoke again.
The men went and sat on the rocky ledge and took out food they had brought, Julian did not dare to peep at them, though he felt sure they had their backs to him. The men ate, and talked in low voices, and then, to Julian’s dismay, they lay down and went to sleep! He knew that they were asleep because he could hear them snoring.
‘Am I going to stay on this awful roof all day long?’ he thought. ‘I’m getting so cramped, lying flat like this. I want to sit up!’
‘R-r-r-r-r-r!’ snored Lou and Dan. Julian felt that surely it would be all right to sit up now that the men were obviously asleep. So he sat up cautiously, stretching himself with pleasure.
He looked down on the two men, who were lying on their backs with their mouths open. Beside them were two neat sacks, strong and thick. Julian wondered what was inside them. They certainly had not had them when they came up the track.
The boy gazed down the hillside, frowning, trying to probe the mystery of where the men had been, and what they were doing up here and suddenly he jumped violently. He stared as if he could not believe his eyes.
A squat and ugly face was peering out from a bramble bush there. There was almost no nose, and an enormous mouth. Who could it be? Was it someone spying on Lou and Dan? But what a face! It didn’t seem human.
A hand came up to rub the face and Julian saw that it was hairy. With a start he knew who the face belonged to Pongo the chimpanzee! No wonder he had thought it such an ugly, unhuman face. It was all right on a chimp, of course quite a nice face but not on a man.
Pongo stared at Julian solemnly, and Julian stared back, his mind in a whirl. What was Pongo doing there? Was Nobby with him? If so, Nobby was in danger, for at any moment the men might wake up. He couldn’t think what to do. If he called out to warn Nobby, he would wake the men.
Pongo was pleased to see Julian, and did not seem to think the roof of a caravan a curious place to be in at all. After all, he often went up on the roofs of caravans. He nodded and blinked at the boy, and then scratched his head for a long time.
Then beside him appeared Nobby’s face a tear-stained face, bruised and swollen. He suddenly saw Julian looking over the roof of the caravan, and his mouth fell open in surprise. He seemed about to call out, and Julian shook his head frantically to stop him, pointing downwards to try and warn Nobby that somebody was there.
But Nobby didn’t understand. He grinned and, to Julian’s horror, began to climb up the hillside to the rocky ledge! The men were sleeping there, and Julian saw with dismay that Nobby would probably heave himself up right on top of them.
‘Look out!’ he said, in a low, urgent voice. ‘Look out, you fathead!’
But it was too late. Nobby heaved himself up on to the ledge, and, to his utmost horror, found himself sprawling on top of Tiger Dan! He gave a yell and tried to slide away but Dan, rousing suddenly, shot out a hand and gripped him.
Lou woke up, too. The men glared at poor Nobby, and the boy began to tremble, and to beg for mercy.
‘I didn’t know you were here, I swear it! Let me go, let me go! I only came up to look for my knife that I lost yesterday!’
Dan shook him savagely. ‘How long have you been here? You been spying?’
‘No, no! I’ve only just come! I’ve been at the camp all morning you ask Larry and Rossy. I been helping them!’
‘You been spying on us, that’s what you’ve been doing!’ said Lou, in a cold, hard voice that filled the listening Julian with dread. ‘You’ve had plenty of beatings this week, but seemingly they ain’t enough. Well, up here, there’s nobody to hear your yells, see? So we’ll show you what a real beating is! And if you can walk down to the camp after it, I’ll be surprised.’
Nobby was terrified. He begged for mercy, he promised to do anything the men asked him, and tried to jerk his poor swollen face away from Dan’s hard hands.
Julian couldn’t bear it. He didn’t want to give away the fact that it was he who had been spying, nor did he want to fight the men at all, for he was pretty certain he would get the worst of it. But nobody could lie in silence, watching two men treat a young boy in such a way. He made up his mind to leap off the roof right on to the men, and to rescue poor Nobby if he could.
Nobby gave an anguished yell as Lou gave him a flick with his leather belt but before Julian could jump down to help him, somebody else bounded up! Somebody who bared his teeth and made ugly animal noises of rage, somebody whose arms were far stronger than either Lou’s or Dan’s somebody who loved poor Nobby, and wasn’t going to let him be beaten any more!
It was Pongo. The chimpanzee had been watching the scene with his sharp little eyes. He had still hidden himself in the bush, for he was afraid of Lou and Dan but now, hearing Nobby’s cries, he leapt out of the brambles and flung himself on the astonished men.
He bit Lou’s arm hard. Then he bit Dan’s leg. The men yelled loudly, much more loudly than poor Nobby had. Lou lashed out with his leather belt, and it caught Pongo on the shoulder. The chimpanzee made a shrill chattering noise, and leapt on Lou with his arms open, clasping the man to him, trying to bite his throat.