The Wind on the Moon (28 page)

‘Come down, Dorinda!'

‘We're off!' said Mr. Corvo. ‘Three cheers! Hurrah!'

The van started abruptly and he fell against the portrait of the third Duke of Starveling. ‘He would be very angry if he were still alive,' said Mr. Corvo. ‘I beg Your Grace's pardon, Your Grace.'

‘I'm hungry,' said Dorinda. ‘Let's have supper.'

They set out the primus stove and lighted it, and made cocoa, and put plates on the table, and opened a tin of fruit, and cut bread and butter, and ate a lot of chocolate biscuits, and then opened another tin of fruit, and had some slices of a seven-pound plum cake that Mr. Corvo had brought in case there wasn't enough for them on the original store-list.

‘I also brought some tins of salmon and some lemonade,' he said, ‘and because this is our first meal together, and therefore a kind of birthday feast, I propose that we shall now have some salmon and lemonade.'

So they all made a very good supper except the Puma, who had eaten so much the day before that she was already asleep in the wardrobe. Then they washed the plates, using a piece of the sheet that Dinah had taken from the spare bedroom, and water from a hot-water bottle. In the bottom drawers of the left-hand tallboy there were twenty-four bottles of various kinds—stone hot-water bottles and rubber hot-water bottles and wine bottles and ginger-beer bottles—all full of water; and in Mr. Corvo's room, as part of one of the walls, there was a washstand with a jug and two basins, one of which they used for washing the dishes.

Then they sat and talked, and presently Mr. Corvo went to his own room, and they all lay down and slept.

Some time during the night the van stopped, and Dinah, half waking, heard a voice from the tunnel: ‘Can I come in, please?'

‘I think,' said Mr. Corvo, who had an electric torch and was wearing a crimson silk dressing-gown, ‘that we are now in the railway station at Dover. Now they must unfasten the body of the van, and lift it on to a railway truck. Then we shall make a little journey, a very short one, on the train ferry. We shall be crossing the Channel!'

They heard voices outside, and men working, and someone climbing to the roof of the van. Then they heard the noise of a crane, and something heavy fell with a crash on the roof. That was the great steel hook by which the van was to be lifted.

The ropes were made fast, there was some more shouting, and jerkily the room began to move. It rose a little with one side higher than the other so that the floor was sloping, then rose with another jerk, swung sideways, travelled forward, and then, jerkily again, began to descend. It met the floor of the railway truck on to which it was being lowered with a bump and a second bump, bang came the hook on the roof, another man climbed up and walked noisily to and fro, on both sides of them people were loudly talking, and someone was whistling
Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do
.

At last the noises died away, for which they were very glad, and Mr. Corvo cautiously opened the trap-door and looked out. The night was not uncomfortably dark.

‘There is no one in sight,' he said. ‘If you would like to go out for a little walk, it will be quite safe. But do not go far.'

So Dinah and Dorinda, hurriedly dressing, climbed out on to the roof, and down the side of the van by an iron ladder, and jumped off the truck. The train, of which their truck formed a part, was in a goods yard outside the station. In the darkness the great furniture vans seemed larger than ever, and the deserted yard was cold and cheerless. A wind blew strongly from the sea, and suddenly they both felt very unhappy.

They climbed down the side of the van

‘I wish we weren't going to Bombardy,' said Dorinda.

‘So do I,' said Dinah.

‘We needn't,' said Dorinda. ‘It isn't too late to change our minds and go home.'

‘I'm afraid it is,' said Dinah. ‘Think how disappointed Mr. Corvo would be. Think of all the trouble that Professor Bultek has taken to make us comfortable. Think of having to explain to the Puma and the Falcon that we're frightened. And think of Father.'

‘Oh dear,' said Dorinda, ‘there are always so many things to think about, and I hate thinking.'

‘Come on,' said Dinah, and taking Dorinda by the hand led her back to the truck. They climbed up and went through the trap-door into their room again. They found Mr. Corvo cutting a hole in the floor with a hammer and a chisel.

‘I have found a tool-chest,' he said. ‘It is a most useful thing to find. I also discovered that between the bottom of the van and the floor of the truck there is a space of several inches. So when I have cut this hole we shall be able to pour away the dirty water in which knives and plates and forks are being washed from day to day. That will be a convenient arrangement.'

Having cut a hole in the floor, six inches square, Mr. Corvo took the lid of a biscuit-tin, beat the edges flat, laid it over the hole, spread the carpet on top, and proudly declared, ‘Now there is no draught and everything is perfect! Let us all go to bed again, and do not wake until we are at sea.'

They heard in their dreams the noise of shunting, of engines whistling, of trucks clashing their iron buffers together, of men calling, and a ship's siren, but they were tired with the excitement of beginning their journey, and neither Dinah nor Dorinda woke until the table slid down the floor and fell noisily against a tallboy. Then Dinah opened her eyes and saw the walls leaning this way, then leaning the other, and the drawers sliding out of the tallboy, then sliding in again. She heard a hundred noises, of wood creaking, and ropes straining, and the furniture grumbling as it moved to and fro, and the wind howling, and waves thumping and slapping the sides of the ship. She had a curious feeling as though her stomach were swimming like a celluloid duck when you sweep a sponge up and down the bath; and when she sat up she felt so dizzy that she had to lie down again.

‘Oh, Dorinda!' she cried.

‘Oh, Dinah!' cried Dorinda. ‘I'm going to be sick!'

Then softly from the wardrobe the Puma began to howl in a minor key. ‘Oh, oh!' she cried. ‘Why ever did I come to sea? Oh, misery! Sorrow is me. Woe, woe, woe!'

‘Poor Puma,' said Dinah.

‘Poor us,' said Dorinda.

‘You mustn't be sick,' said Dinah.

‘I must,' said Dorinda.

The waves slapped the sides of the ship, the walls leaned this way and that, the furniture creaked and grumbled, the ship strained, and the wind shouted like an angry giant chasing a little giant who had been throwing stones at him. For nearly an hour Dinah and Dorinda were desperately unhappy, and then the sea grew calmer, and Dinah said faintly, ‘It was very thoughtful of Mr. Corvo to cut a hole in the floor.'

‘It was very useful,' said Dorinda.

A tired voice came from the tunnel: ‘May I come in, please?'

Mr. Corvo crawled in and lay on the floor. ‘I do not want to get up,' he said. ‘It is more comfortable like this.'

‘We're beginning to feel better,' said Dinah.

‘I came to see if you want some breakfast,' said Mr. Corvo.

‘No!' cried Dorinda. ‘No, no, no!'

‘Then I shall go back to my own room,' said Mr. Corvo, ‘for I do not want any either. How is the Puma?'

‘Would that I had stayed in the Forest of Weal,' moaned the Puma. ‘It would have been less pain to be torn to pieces by the angry hounds than to suffer like this!'

They fell into a half-sleep again and paid no attention to the bustle and busyness and the voices outside, that now spoke French, when the ship docked and the trucks were run ashore and shunted into a siding. In the early afternoon there was more shunting, they became part of a train, and the train set off on its journey. Then, when the train was running smoothly, with a pleasant rhythmical noise, Dinah sat and exclaimed, ‘Dorinda! We're abroad! Do you realise that? We're in a foreign country.'

‘I'm hungry,' said Dorinda.

‘What is there to eat?' asked the Puma.

‘Can I come in, please?' said Mr. Corvo.

‘I'm going to look at the view,' said Dinah, and climbed up to open the trap-door in the roof.

Quite suddenly they were all happy again, and everyone felt hungry and excited. They ate an enormous meal, and took turns in climbing up the chest of drawers to look at the flat well-tilled fields of France that went rolling past.

The rest of the day passed quickly, and when night came the train stopped in a little town where it was divided into two, and the furniture van trucks were shunted on to a siding outside the town. There they remained for two or three hours, and Dinah and Dorinda, Mr. Corvo and the Puma, got out and had a walk, and met the Falcon who, high in the sky, had followed the train without difficulty. Then they went back and slept soundly.

The following day seemed very long. The train was running through wooded country, between hills and beside rivers, with here a turreted castle among the trees and there a town at the end of a bridge, and if they had all been sitting comfortably beside a broad window, looking at the ever-changing view, the hours would have gone by pleasantly enough. But they could look through the trap-door only one at a time, and always when they stood with head through the roof they had to come down in a few minutes to take cinders out of their eyes. The day was hot and the room grew stuffy, and the creaking of the closely packed furniture seemed to be getting louder and louder.

Dinah yawned and Dorinda grumbled and they became more and more impatient. They wanted to reach Gliedermannheim as quickly as thought could take them, they wanted to arrive within five minutes, or ten minutes at the most, and see their father. But also, as they came nearer and nearer to Bombardy, they could not help feeling a little frightened of what might happen when they got there. They tried to imagine what the Castle was like, and what the people were like. They looked at Mr. Corvo and wondered if many of the Bombards were like him, or if more resembled Professor Bultek.

‘What do people talk about in Bombardy?' asked Dorinda.

‘When I was a small boy,' said Mr. Corvo, ‘everybody talked about buried treasure. There was an old man who lived on the side of a mountain, and one day when he was digging a grave to bury his old sheep-dog, which had died, he found a box with six hundred gold coins in it, many of them very large and heavy. After that nearly everybody began to dig, in their spare time, hoping to find treasure, and wherever you went you met people who would tell you about the holes they had made, and what were the best places in which to look for gold.'

‘Did they find a lot?' asked Dinah.

‘They found none at all,' said Mr. Corvo. ‘Nobody, that is, except the old man on the mountain. But nevertheless, for a long time, their conversation was all about buried treasure.'

‘And what did they talk about next?' asked Dorinda.

‘About the holes they had made,' said Mr. Corvo. ‘Some were no bigger than a bucket, and some were as big as a barrel. Some were as little as teacups, and some were as deep as a well. But wherever you went, all over Bombardy, there were holes of one sort or another, and a lot of people thought they should be filled up again, and a lot more people said that trees should be planted in them, and a few people were still of the opinion that the earth was full of gold, and all the holes should be dug deeper and deeper till it was discovered. So there was a lot of talk about that.'

‘And what did they do with the holes?' asked Dinah.

‘Nothing,' said Mr. Corvo. ‘Nothing at all. They left them alone.'

‘What do people talk about now?' asked Dorinda.

‘Very little,' said Mr. Corvo. ‘They have become a silent people, because our infamous Tyrant, Count Hulagu Bloot, has a thousand spies who go everywhere and listen to all that is said, by men and women, throughout the country. And if anyone speaks against Count Hulagu, he is arrested and put in prison. And as there is a great temptation to speak against him, because he is always doing some vile, iniquitous, and cruel thing, the people, to guard their safety, have almost stopped talking. They go about almost in silence now.'

Slowly the day passed. Mr. Corvo told them about Bombardy and its people, and every now and then they would climb on to the roof of the van and look at the view, and then come down again to wipe the cinders from their eyes.

Evening came, and when it was dark the train once more stopped in a siding to let faster trains go by, and they all got out and walked in a field beside the railway, and had some conversation with the Falcon. Then they returned to the stuffy furniture van and slept for a little while, but were wakened when the train started again.

‘We must be getting very near Bombardy now,' said Dinah.

‘Are you frightened?'

‘Not exactly. I'm not feeling perfectly happy, but I don't think I'm frightened.'

‘Nor am I,' said Dorinda, ‘but I've got the sort of pain in my stomach that I get when I am, and I thought that if we put the sofas side by side we could sleep together, and that would be more comfortable, don't you think?'