The Borribles - Larrabeiti Michael - Страница 26

Soon the Adventurers were re-equipped and in marching order. They found food upstairs in the well-stocked kitchen and they ate as they had not eaten for many a day. Then, smiling and almost crying with happiness, they went out into the yard.

Knocker went to the cart and threw his haversack into it; Napoleon, keeping close behind him, did the same.

The others hesitated for a moment and lowered their haversacks to the ground.

"Where," asked Sydney, "are you going with that cart?"

"What do you mean?" said Knocker, his eyes widening, taken aback. "Rumbledom, of course."

"We think," said Chalotte, "that escaping from a Borrible-Snatcher is an Adventure in itself, let alone killing one. We've earned our names already."

"But that is not what we came for." Knocker looked at the ring of faces that surrounded him, searching for some support. The support came immediately, from an unexpected source.

"No," said Napoleon Boot stepping forward, "that is not what we came for. I'm with Knocker."

"I think I have earned my English name," said Adolf. "I understand Chalotte, she is right, we have done enough, but I go with Knocker. That is because I am slightly mad. I have a thing about Adventures."

"We all want to go really," said Bingo, sitting on his haversack, "but . . . I mean . . . we've been so knocked about by Erbie, and we haven't eaten properly for ages."

"We aren't fit for the job, now, are we?" said Torreycanyon. "Perhaps we should rest up for a bit, eh?"

"What are you on about?" snapped Napoleon. "We can't go back now, what would we look like?"

Seven Borribles looked selfconscious and shifted their feet.

"However rotten we feel," insisted Knocker, "we've got to go on. We're free now, that's a tonic in itself. Anyway, you lot can do what you like. The three of us are going. Get the horse, Nap."

Bingo stood up and the others moved a step.

Chalotte said, "If Knocker and Nap can agree for once then something very dodgy is happening, so we'll have to go along, I suppose, to see what they're up to," and she gave Knocker and Napoleon a long and piercing look.

Bingo shrugged his shoulders, threw his haversack into the cart and quoted a proverb at no one in particular, "If you're my friend, follow me round the bend."

The others did as he did and exchanged grim smiles with Knocker. The horse was brought from the stable and Sydney went over and spoke to him affectionately.

"So we're all going to Rumbledom, Sam, after all, and you will come with us. Rumbles don't like horses, but we do, you will be our mascot and mate and we will protect you." And all of them stroked him and gave him lumps of sugar they had taken from the house and they put him between the shafts and made ready. They took a long raincoat from the house too, a good one that Dewdrop had always worn on rainy nights, and Bingo who was the lightest, sat on Stonks's shoulders, for he was the strongest, and Stonks sat on the driving seat of the cart and they put the raincoat round Bingo's shoulders and it looked for all the world as if an adult was driving. The rest of the Adventurers hid under the tarpaulin at the back and with a crack of the whip and with a "Giddeyup, old Sam, me deario, ain't it?" Bingo drove them out of the yard and they began the last lap of their journey to the borders of Rumbledom, South-West Nineteen.

"There's one thing," said Knocker, as they all sat warm and content under the canvas, "we were in Engadine so long that the Rumbles have probably given us up for dead—and if they don't like horses, so much the better. Sam can take us right up to their front door and kick it down."