“Missy, you go ‘way from here. Dis very bad mountain, full of bad men. They get you if you don’t go ‘way. Bad things here, Missy.”
“What are you doing here?” asked Lucy-Ann, in a scared voice. “How do you know all this?”
“I been in bad mountain, Missy. I get away. But poor nigger nowhere to go — he afraid of dem big dogs. He stay here in big tree. You go ‘way, Missy, far away!”
Lucy-Ann felt queer, standing there talking to a black-faced man up a tree. She suddenly turned and ran back to the others. She ran fast, and arrived absolutely out of breath.
“What’s the matter, what’s the matter?” cried Jack, seeing from Lucy-Ann’s face that she had had a shock. Lucy-Ann could only gasp out one or two words. She pointed back to the stream.
“Black man!” she gasped. “Black!”
“Black! That’s what David said!” cried Philip. “Get your breath, Lucy-Ann! Tell us what you saw. Quick!”
Lucy-Ann panted out what she had seen and heard. The others listened in astonishment. A black man hiding in a tree — from the dogs! A man who said the mountain was bad — “full of bad men” — whatever did it mean?
“Come on — we’ll ask him what he knows!” cried Jack. “There’s something going on here. We’d better find out and then we can tell Bill when he comes. Quick!”
They all ran back to the stream and peered up the tree. But there was nobody there. The Negro had gone.
“Blow!” said Jack, in disappointment. “He must have seen you scuttle back to us, Lucy-Ann, to tell us you had seen him — and he’s scared, and now he’s gone.”
“It’s a wonder the dogs didn’t find him last night — and before that, when David saw him up this very same tree,” said Jack.
“Well, he’s been rather clever, I should think,” said Philip, looking at the stream. “You know, dogs can’t follow scent through water. They lost it. And I reckon that Negro was clever enough to wade up or down the stream to that tree, and hop up it from the water. The dogs couldn’t possibly follow his scent through the stream. They would lose it wherever he entered the water. Still, he must have felt pretty scared when he saw the dogs milling round near here!”
“Were they hunting for him, do you think?” asked Lucy-Ann fearfully. “He must have been awfully afraid. I should be terrified if I thought a pack of Alsatian dogs was after me.”
The children hunted about for the Negro, but he was nowhere to be seen. They wondered what he ate. There was not much to eat on the mountains except bilberries, wild raspberries and grass.
“Do you think he really meant there were men inside this mountain?” asked Dinah, when they had tired themselves out looking for the black man.
“It seems incredible — but if you remember those noises of rumbling we heard yesterday — and the way the earth shook beneath us — it seems as if there might be men working underground,” said Jack.
“What — as miners or something?” asked Dinah.
“I don’t know. Possibly. Though goodness knows what could be mined inside this mountain, or how they would get the machinery there. There would have to be a road — and then everyone would know.”
“It’s very mysterious,” said Dinah.
Lucy-Ann sighed. “It’s another adventure, that’s what it is. It’s fatal to go off together like this. We go to look for birds, or butterflies or something — and we always stumble into something peculiar. I’m getting tired of it.”
“Poor Lucy-Ann!” said Philip. “We certainly do happen on strange things. I think it’s very exciting. I love adventures.”
“Yes, but you’re a boy,” said Lucy-Ann. “Girls don’t like that kind of thing.”
“I do,” said Dinah at once. “I’ve enjoyed every single one of our adventures. And this one seems more mysterious than any other. What is going on inside this mountain? How I’d love to know! If only we could see that Negro again, we could ask him to tell us all about it.”
“Oh, listen — I do believe that rumbling’s going to start again,” said Lucy-Ann suddenly. “See how frightened Snowy is! Yes — there it comes.”
They sat and listened. Jack put his ear to the ground. At once the rumblings became magnified, and sounded queerer than ever. Was something exploding down there, far in the heart of the mountain?
Then the earth quivered as it had done before and Lucy-Ann clutched at Jack. It was horrible to feel the firm solid earth quivering like a jelly.
It soon stopped. Dinah glanced up at the steep mountain, rearing up just behind them, wondering what its secret was. She suddenly stiffened, and caught hold of Philip’s arm.
“Look!” she said, and pointed upwards.
They all looked. Out of the side of the mountain was drifting a small cloud of smoke. One puff came. Then another. But it was not ordinary smoke. It was a curious crimson colour, and it did not drift away like mist on the wind, but hung like a solid little cloud, close to the mountain, for some time. Then it suddenly became lighter in colour and disappeared.
“Well — whatever was that?” said Jack, in amazement. “I never in my life saw smoke like that before. There must be a vent or something in the side of the mountain there, that lets out smoke or gases.”
“What’s a vent?” asked Lucy-Ann, her eyes looking as if they would drop out of her head.
“Oh — a sort of chimney,” said Jack, “some place with a draught that will take up smoke or gases to the outer air. Whatever’s going on in the mountain produces that smoke, which has to be got rid of. I wonder what else is being produced inside there!”
Nobody could imagine. They couldn’t seem to fit together all the curious facts they knew — the pack of man-hunting dogs — the runaway Negro — the noises, the earth’s shaking, the crimson smoke. It didn’t make any sense at all.
“If only Bill would come!” said Philip. “He might be able to fit this jigsaw together.”
“Or if we would get hold of that Negro Lucy-Ann saw,” said Philip. “He could tell us a lot.”
“We may see him again,” said Dinah. “We’ll watch out for him.”
They did see him again, that very evening — but alas, he didn’t answer any of their questions!
Chapter 14
PLENTY OF THINGS HAPPEN
THEY decided to go for a walk that evening. They would leave Dapple tied up to a tree by the stream, with a note on his harness to say they would soon be back — just in case Bill came when they were away.
“Though he couldn’t possibly be here yet,” said Jack. Still, you never knew with Bill. He had a remarkable way of doing impossible things extraordinarily quickly.
They went off together, Snowy capering about, and Kiki on Jack’s shoulder. They climbed up past the cave where they had slept the night before. Their sleeping-bags were still there, pulled into the cave out of the sun. They meant to sleep in them up on the rock again that night.
“Let’s follow Snowy,” suggested Dinah. “He always seems to know a way to go, though I expect he only follows his silly little nose! But he usually chooses quite possible paths for us.”
So they followed Snowy. The little kid took it into his head to climb up the mountain, but at last they all came to such a steep rocky cliff of rock, almost sheer, that they had to stop. Even Snowy was brought to a halt!
“I’m frightfully hot,” said Dinah, fanning herself. “Let’s sit down under those trees.”
The trees were waving about in the wind. Jack looked longingly up into the wind-blown branches. “It would be lovely and cool up there, in the windy boughs,” he said. “What about climbing up? They look pretty easy to climb.”
“A wizard idea!” said Philip. “I love swinging in the branches at the top of a tree. Want a leg-up, Lucy-Ann?”
Lucy-Ann got a leg-up and soon they were all settled into forking branches, letting themselves be swung about in the wind, which was very strong just there.
“This is lovely,” said Dinah. “Heavenly!”
“Super!” said Jack. “Don’t clutch my shoulder so tightly, Kiki. You won’t fall off!”
Snowy was left down below, bleating. He tried his best to leap up into the tree but he couldn’t. He ran round and round Philip’s tree and then, in a rage, he tore up to a rock and leapt up it and down it without stopping. The children watched him, laughing at his antics.
Then, quite suddenly, a hullabaloo broke on their ears. It was the sound of excited barking and snarling, howling and yelping.
“The dogs!” said Jack, straining his eyes to see where the noise came from. “I say — they’re after the Negro!”