The Wind on the Moon (15 page)

That, however, did not worry Mr. Parker. Mr. Parker forgot everything that Dinah had told him, and looking only at the bulge in Sir Bobadil's neck, exclaimed joyfully, ‘A clue, a clue at last!'

‘After him!' he shouted. ‘Don't let him get away. Surround him, cut him off, capture him, there he goes!'

Mr. Parker led the pursuit at a gallop, and Sir Bobadil might have been taken almost immediately if Mr. Parker had looked where he was going. But in his excitement he tripped over the Ant-eater and fell heavily, which disorganised the chase. So Sir Bobadil got a good start and fled towards the wide lawn in front of Sir Lankester Lemon's mansion.

Now Sir Lankester had been wakened by the noise of the hunt, and was standing on the broad steps in front of the main door, wondering what it was all about. He was wearing a suit of yellow silk pyjamas with red braid on the jacket, a girdle with red tassels, and red Turkish slippers; and he carried a bolas and a boomerang.

Sir Bobadil the Ostrich ran frenziedly on to the lawn. Sir Lankester stepped forward, swung the bolas three times round his head, and let fly. His aim was sure. The iron-weighted rope wrapped itself round and round the base of Sir Bobadil's neck, who staggered, swayed, and fell.

At this very moment, however, the rest of the animals, a wild hunting pack led by Mr. Parker, came charging across the lawn.

‘Rebellion!' cried Sir Lankester. ‘They have broken loose, we are attacked! Down, rebels, down! Virtus semper Viridis—Ma Foi et mon Droit—Du bleibst doch immer was Du bist!'

These foreign phrases were the mottoes of the Lemon family, and Sir Lankester used often to encourage himself by repeating them. They always made him feel even braver than before, so now he did not flinch from the charging animals, but instantly threw his boomerang at Mr. Parker.

But this time his aim was not so good. The boomerang missed, by three yards at least, Mr. Parker's head, and began its return flight. It was not easy to see it in the moonlight, and Sir Lankester did not observe its approach. He was amazed when something struck him on the forehead. Or rather, he would have been amazed if he had had time to think about it. But he had no time, for immediately he fell to the soft turf, stunned.

Well in the van of the pursuing animals was Marie Louise the Llama, and when she saw her beloved master fall, she uttered a piercing scream and raced towards him. He made, indeed, a very handsome and pathetic sight as he lay in the moonlight in his yellow silk pyjamas, with their red braid and red tassels, and the red Turkish slippers, and a trickle of blood on his noble brow.

Marie Louise, kneeling beside him, laid her head on his chest and was convulsed with sobs. The young Baboon began to chafe his feet, the Kinkajous to rub his hands, while the Gnu blew gently on his face to give him air. He was surrounded by his animals, who all revealed, in various ways, the intensity of their grief and their utter devotion. Sir Bobadil was entirely forgotten.

There on the moonlit turf before his stately house lay Sir Lankester among the weeping animals, while a hundred yards away, on the open lawn, the poor silly Ostrich, choked by the bolas and gasping for air, felt sure he was about to die. Twice he struggled to his feet, and fell again. He tried a third time to get up, but rolled on to his back, kicking feebly with his long legs.

At this moment a kangaroo appeared on the edge of the lawn. It was Dorinda.

When Mr. Parker set the animals off in pursuit of Sir Bobadil, Dinah and Dorinda with a Howler Monkey called Siren, who had a very loud voice, were already on their way to the main part of the zoo. There, they had thought, was the most important place to watch. But then, for a moment, they were undecided. Perhaps it would be as well for one of them to join Mr. Parker's hunt, while the other kept to the original plan? So Dorinda said that she would go with the Giraffe, and as swiftly as she could she hurried after the disappearing animals.

Sir Lankester looked very handsome

She arrived on the lawn too late to see the collapse of Sir Lankester. The first thing she saw was Bobadil waving his legs in the air.

‘Who did this?' she asked, as she began to unwrap the bolas from his neck.

‘Urgk, urgk!' croaked Sir Bobadil, who could say no more.

‘And what's this?' she demanded, as she felt the lump in his neck, which was about eighteen inches higher up.

‘Urgk!' said Sir Bobadil.

Dorinda felt it more carefully.

‘I do believe,' she said, ‘that it's something belonging to me! And if it is, then you
are
a thief, as everyone thought, because eating other people's property is only another form of stealing, and it's greedy too. It serves you right that it stuck in your throat, and though you couldn't swallow it, you're going to
unswallow
it, and unswallow it this minute, or I shan't take this rope off your throat.'

‘Urrurgk. Urrugagrurgk,' said Sir Bobadil.

‘You mean you can't unswallow it unless I take the rope off first?'

‘Brurrugh.'

‘But you promise you will?'

‘Grurg.'

‘All right then, I'll trust you. But if you don't—well, something much worse than a bolas is going to hit you!'

Then Dorinda unwrapped the rope that was wound so tightly round Sir Bobadil's throat, and after some wriggling, writhing, and coughing for a little while, the Ostrich laid on the turf the bottle containing Mrs. Grimble's magic draught.

‘Excuse me,' he said.

Bendigo the Bear lay in the shadow of a rock beside a group of cages, waiting. Here was where the thief lived, and Dinah, when she let Bendigo out of prison, had said: ‘If the animals guarding the nest fail to capture him, he's almost certain to make for home. Then you will have to stop him. He'll be in a desperate mood, but you're very strong. Do you think you can do it?'

‘Let me get my arms round him,' Bendigo had growled, ‘and I'll crush him to death!'

During his imprisonment he had been, naturally enough, in a very bad temper, for he had no
Times
to read, and he was being punished for a crime which he had not committed. But now he had a chance to get rid of his anger upon the real thief. A glorious, honey-sweet revenge! With all his wrathful heart he hoped and prayed that the other animals would fail to find or hold the criminal, so that he, Bendigo, might have the exquisite pleasure of halting him, wrestling with him, and, if possible, breaking his abominable back.

That is what Bendigo promised himself as he waited in the shadow. ‘I'll break his abominable back,' he growled, and grew impatient because the thief did not come at once.

In front of the cages, and in front of the rock beside which Bendigo lay, there was a narrow strip of grass, and before that a road about ten feet broad. Beyond the road there was more grass, with shrubs and bushes, and behind them could be seen a few trees, their leaves in the moonlight as still as the leaves on a Chinese scroll.

Suddenly Bendigo stiffened, and the coarse hair on his neck rose harsh and bristling. In the bushes beyond the road, only a few inches above the ground, he saw, like tiny yellow lamps, two palely glittering eyes. He lay perfectly still, and slowly, very slowly, the eyes came nearer. They left the darkness of the bushes, and drew close to the farther edge of the road. But only the eyes were visible. There seemed to be nothing else.

Then, with unbelievable speed, they were over the road, and behind them, with a fast-flowing movement, came a thick round body. Bendigo, with a roar, hurled himself upon it. It was the Python. The Python was the thief.

Now there began a fearful battle.

The Python was about twelve feet long, and first of all Bendigo seized it by the middle and tried to lift it off the ground. The middle came up in a great loop, but quickly the Python coiled its head-end round one of his legs, its tail-end round the other, and threw Bendigo off his feet. They rolled over and over on the road, the Bear tied up in the snake. Then the Python broke loose, and tried to escape into its house by a secret hole under the wall which it used, unknown to Mr. Plum the keeper, for going in and out whenever it wanted. But Bendigo caught it by the tail, and there was a tug-of-war with Bendigo hauling and pulling in one direction, and the Python straining with all its length of mighty muscle to get away in the other.

Bendigo was unable to drag it away from the hole, but the Python couldn't get away from the Bear, so after three or four minutes of desperate pulling it suddenly turned, and its head, like a battering-ram, leapt straight at Bendigo's throat.

Just in time, Bendigo struck. His rough right paw hit the Python a dreadful blow on the side of the head, and the front end of the snake—some four or five feet of it—fell limply to the ground. But Bendigo, of course, had been obliged to let go the tail in order to hit the head, and before he could avoid it, the tail-end—some five or six feet of it—coiled itself round his waist and tried to squeeze him to death, while the head-end, recovering its breath, again struck at him like a battering-ram.

But again and again, now with his right paw and now with his left, Bendigo clouted the darting head, beating it to one side, then to the other, and at last the Python fell senseless to the ground, and its tail uncoiled from Bendigo's waist. Then Bendigo, picking up the loose body and holding it about three or four feet from the head-end, struck its skull against the wall of the nearest cage and killed it.

‘Oh, well done, well done!' cried Dinah. ‘Brave Bendigo!'

She had arrived, with Siren the Howler Monkey close beside her, in time to see most of the fight, and though she had been afraid, she had watched every blow and throw, every trick and turn of the struggle.

‘Oh, brave Bendigo!' she repeated. ‘How magnificently you fought! But I was terribly afraid for you. Every time that dreadful head struck at you, I felt sure you were going to be killed. My heart almost stopped beating.'

Bendigo struck its skull against the wall

‘Nonsense,' said Bendigo, puffing and panting. ‘It was just the sort of fight I like, and I feel all the better for it. Did you see that first punch I gave him?'

‘It was wonderful,' said Dinah.

‘You've got to know how to time your punches,' said Bendigo. ‘Balance and timing—that's the secret of a good punch. I used to do a lot of boxing when I was a boy.'

‘When were
you
a boy?' asked Dinah.

But Bendigo, in spite of the brave way in which he had been talking, was very tired. His last words had been no louder than a whisper, and now he was sitting on the grass with hanging head and shoulders relaxed, looking like the oldest and most weary bear in the world. He paid no attention to Dinah's question.

Siren the Howler had been examining the dead Python, and now he called softly to Dinah.

‘Look!' he said, pointing to a round swelling in the snake's body. ‘There's the egg, Lady Lil's egg. He swallowed it, but it doesn't seem to be broken.'

‘But how can we get it out?'

‘I don't know,' said Siren.

‘If we had a knife,' said Dinah, ‘we could do an operation and cut it out. Bendigo! Do you know where we can get a knife?'

‘I've got a little one,' said Bendigo in a weary voice. ‘I use it for cutting cigars. People sometimes give me a cigar on a Sunday afternoon.'

‘I didn't know that bears could smoke cigars,' said Dinah.

‘Didn't you?' asked Bendigo, and slowly, with a groan at every movement, he got up and shambled towards them.

He had a little knife on a chain round his neck. He opened it and made a long neat cut in the Python's hide. The egg was unharmed.

‘You'd better take it back to Lady Lil while it's warm,' said Bendigo. ‘I'm going to my bed. I'm just a trifle tired, I think. Don't forget to come and lock me in. And you'd better hurry up and get the others back to their cages, for it's nearly morning, and there'll be trouble if old Plum finds them out and about when he gets up.'