To the children’s huge relief the two men disappeared. Jack, who by climbing to the very top of the tree could see the aeroplane, waited till he could see the two men passing by it on their way to their own hut.
Then he called down to the others, “All clear now. They’re by the plane. My word — what a shock I had when those shots went off! Lucy-Ann nearly fell off her branch.”
“Lizzie shot out of my pocket and disappeared,” said Philip. “I say, I hope Kiki’s all right, Jack. She must have been scared out of her life when the shots rang out in that little shed.”
Kiki was sitting petrified on the beam when the children went into the cowshed. She crouched down, trembling. Jack called to her softly.
“It’s all right, Kiki. Come on down. I’m here to fetch you.”
Kiki flew down at once and landed on Jack’s shoulder. She made a great fuss of him. “Mmm-mm-mm!” she kept saying. “Mm-mm-mm!”
It was dark in the shed. The children didn’t like it. Lucy-Ann kept feeling there might be someone hiding in the corners. “Let’s come out,” she said. “What are we going to do tonight? Is it safe to sleep where we did last night?”
“No. We’d better take our rugs and things somewhere else,” said Jack. “There’s a patch of bushes higher up, where we’d be sheltered from the wind and hidden from view too. We could take them there.”
“I say — do you know what we left in the shed?” said Philip suddenly. “We left our sacks of tins. Look, there they are in that corner!”
“What a mercy the men didn’t notice they were full of something!” said Jack. “Still, I’m not surprised they took no notice of them, really. They just look like heaps of rubbish. We’ll drag them up to the bushes, though. Our store of food is too precious to be left behind.”
They dragged the sacks to the patch of bushes and left them there. Then they debated what to do about the things up the tree.
“Let’s just bring down the rugs and our macks,” said Jack. “The clothes we used for pillows are wrapped in the rugs. We could leave the suitcases up there. We don’t want them dragged about with us.”
It was now getting so dark that it was quite difficult to get the rugs and macks down, but they managed it somehow. Then they made their way again to the bushes. Dinah and Lucy-Ann spread out the “bed,” as they called it.
“It won’t be so warm here,” said Dinah. “The wind creeps round rather. Where are we going to hide tomorrow? Those men will look behind these bushes, that’s certain.”
“Do you remember that waterfall?” asked Philip. “There seemed to be a nice lot of rocks and hiding-places down towards the foot. I believe we could climb down there and find quite a good place.”
“Yes, let’s,” said Lucy-Ann. “I’d like to see that waterfall again.”
They all lay down on the rug. They pressed close together, for it was certainly cold. Dinah took a pullover from her “pillow” and put it on.
Suddenly she gave a scream, making the others jump. “Oh! OH! There’s something running over me! It must be a rat!”
“Well, it isn’t,” came Philip’s delighted voice. “It’s Lizzie! She’s found me. Good old Lizzie!”
So it was. How the little lizard had discovered where Philip was nobody could imagine. It was part of the spell that Philip always seemed to exercise on wild creatures.
“Don’t worry, Dinah,” said Philip. “Lizzie is safely in my pocket now. Poor thing, I bet she felt dizzy falling down the tree.”
“Dizzy Lizzie,” said Kiki at once, delighted with the two words. “Dizzy Lizzie.”
Everyone laughed. Kiki was really funny at times. “Doesn’t she love to put words together that have the same sounds?” said Lucy-Ann. “Do you remember last hols she kept saying ‘fusty-musty-dusty’ till we nearly screamed at her?”
“Fusty-musty-dusty, dizzy Lizzie,” said Kiki at once, and screeched.
“Don’t,” said Jack. “You’re only showing off now, Kiki. Go to sleep. And if you dig your claws into my tummy like you did this morning, I’ll smack you.”
“God save the King,” said Kiki devoutly, and said no more.
The children talked for a little while longer. Then the girls and Philip fell asleep. Jack lay on his back, with Kiki on one of his ankles. He looked up at the stars. What was the good of promising Aunt Allie they wouldn’t have any more adventures? The very night they had promised her, they had whizzed off in a strange aeroplane to an unknown valley, where, apparently, some sort of “treasure” was hidden. Most extraordinary. Most — extra —— And then Jack was asleep too, and the stars shone down on the four children, moving across the sky till dawn slid into the east and put out all the stars one by one.
Philip awoke early. He had meant to, for he did not know how early the men might start hunting for the owner of the “voice.” He awoke the others and would not listen to their protests.
“No, you’ve really got to wake up, Dinah,” he said. “We must start early today. Go on — wake up! — or I’ll put dizzy Lizzie down your neck.”
That woke poor Dinah up properly. She sat up and tried to slap Philip, but he dodged away. She hit Kiki instead. The parrot gave a surprised and aggrieved squawk.
“Oh, sorry, Kiki,” said Dinah. “Sorry. I didn’t mean that for you. Poor, poor Kiki!”
“What a pity, what a pity!” said Kiki, flying off in case Dinah sent out any more slaps.
“We’ll have a quick breakfast,” said Jack. “Sardines, biscuits and milk, I think. I saw a tin of sardines at the top of one of our sacks. Yes, here it is.”
They saw smoke rising up from where the two men were, and knew that they too were up. So they finished their breakfast quickly, and Dinah once more pushed the tins down a convenient rabbit-hole. Then they ruffled up the grass on which they had been lying, so that it did not look quite so flat.
“I think we’d better find a good hiding-place for most of these tins,” said Philip, “and take just a few of them with us to last us for today. We can’t possibly lug these heavy sacks along all the way.”
“Couldn’t we drop them into the middle of these bushes?” said Dinah. “They’re awfully thick. Nobody would guess they were there. We could slip back and fetch any we wanted.”
So the sacks were dropped into the middle of the bushes, and certainly no one could see them unless they actually crawled into the very middle. Then the children gathered up their rugs, macks and odd clothes and set off. The boys carried the tins, and Jack had his camera and his glasses as well. So they were heavily laden and could not go very fast.
They took the same way that they had taken before. When they came to the grassy, flower-strewn hillside they sat down for a rest. After all, the men would hardly be following them! They would be hunting all round and about the cowshed.
Suddenly, from far off, Jack caught sight of a brilliant, twinkling flash. He lay down flat at once, telling the others to do the same. “There’s someone using field-glasses down there,” he said. “We may not be seen if we lie flat. I just caught the flash of the sun on the eye-lenses. Dash! I forgot the men might sweep the mountainside with glasses. They’ll be after us if they’ve seen us.”
“Let’s crawl to that rock and get behind it,” said Philip. “Come on. Once we’re behind there we can get on and find the waterfall.”
Chapter 10
A FINE HIDING-PLACE
WHEN they were behind the rock the children felt sure they could not be seen, and they breathed more easily. Philip looked round and about. The gully they had been in before lay a little to the left. They could reach it without being seen from below.
“Come on,” said Philip, choosing a path that put rocks or bushes between them and the valley below. “This way.”
Up the hot gully went the children, and came to the ledge that ran round a steep bit of the mountain. They made their way round and once more saw the wonderful view they had seen before. Above them stood the ruined, burnt-out farm-house. Lucy-Ann carefully didn’t look at it. It gave her such a miserable feeling to see the blackened beams and fallen walls.
They stood and listened for the sound of the waterfall. It came softly to their ears, a continuous, musical sound, like a far-off orchestra playing a simple tune.
“What a lovely noise!” said Dinah. “Philip, shall we climb down or up now? If you want to go to the foot of the waterfall and hide somewhere among the rocks there, we ought to climb down, oughtn’t we? Last time we climbed up — over that rocky, stony bit.”