Aunt Effie's Ark (5 page)

“That must have been when you found the end of the string and pulled it,” said Becky. “We felt it and guessed you wanted help.”

“But we didn't find the string,” said Marie. She looked at us, and her eyes glared. “I only found you because I saw your lamp at the top of the stairs.”

“Then who…” Ann's face went white. “Who pulled the string…?”

It was a curious fact that when scared, Jazz became slightly pedantic. “Perhaps,” he said, his voice shaking with terror, “you should rephrase your question and ask
rather, ‘What is pulling the string?'” We followed his eyes to where the end of the string was jerking across the floor and into the dark.

As something in the dark pulled the other end of the string, Alwyn screamed. We all screamed and rushed downstairs to Aunt Effie's bedroom. Peter ran back up the stairs, slammed the door shut, turned the key in the lock, ran back down, slammed the door at the foot of the stairs, and turned the key in that lock, too. But he'd locked himself on the wrong side of the door. We screamed even louder as he unlocked the door, jumped through to our side, slammed and locked the door again.

“You'll wake Aunt Effie,” he said so mildly our screams turned to laughter. Aunt Effie's steady snore made everything seem homely and safe. Our laughter trickled away, and one or two of us whimpered.

Downstairs where the lamps were lit, and the huge backlog glowed red against the chimney, Hubert's shadow rocked backwards and forwards. “You found the door to the barn?” he said to Peter and Marie. “Please take me there at once. I can never sleep in a strange bed!”

Nobody wanted to go back up to that dark floor above Aunt Effie's bedroom. We told Hubert about the cobwebs and about something undoing the string from the doorknob, and then tugging it.

“You were alone up there and in the dark,” Hubert chuckled. “You just got yourselves a bit worked up. I'll show you there's nothing to be afraid of. Come along now.” He was so old and reassuring, the lamps so bright, the fire so warm, we laughed at our fears.

Marie looked at Peter. “Even if we can't find the string, we can follow our footprints through the dust on the floor. But, first, let's get the feast ready. You're sure you won't stay and eat with us?” she asked Hubert.

Hubert shook his head. “I just want to sleep in my own bed,” he said, “but, by all means, do prepare your feast first.”

We heaped the big table with food and drink. It glowed in the firelight so the table looked stacked with treasure. “Let's eat it now!” said Victor, but David said, “We promised Hubert.”

Upstairs, we followed Peter's and Marie's footprints through the dust. Marie painted a white line on the floor so we wouldn't get lost on the way back.

“Come on, come on!” said Hubert. He glanced around at the darkness. There was a peculiar knocking.

“You were the one who said there was nothing to be afraid of,” Marie told him.

“That was different. We were downstairs in the light.” The knocking was the sound of all Hubert's knees banging together. He had saved the little ones from the Tattooed Wolf just that morning, but we now saw a cowardly side to his character. Laughing and
talking noisily, we surrounded and led him the rest of the way. We saw no cobwebs, and soon came to a door. Marie painted “Barn” on it in big white letters.

Hubert neighed with excitement at being home and made such a noise pushing Marie aside and getting into the barn, we were afraid he'd waken the stock. In the light from the little lamp Peter had left burning for the small pig, Hubert clip-clopped noisily to his stall. He looked up at his name written above the door. “Hubert!” he read aloud. He galloped inside and lay down on the straw with a whinny of relief. That woke the small pig who squealed.

Then Lizzie and Jessie had to look at their donkey and bantam and whisper to them until they woke
braying
and clucking. The next thing, the geese woke, and the gander started hissing. We had to send Daisy to give him a good telling-off. But by then the turkeys were going, “Gobble! Gobble! Gobble!” That set the bulls
bellowing
– bulls dislike turkeys. The cows joined in. The other horses stamped and neighed, and the donkeys hee-hawed. The stock were just showing how pleased they were to see us, but it was very noisy.

Daisy's singing voice was rather sweet and true, and she now sang the stock a little French lullaby. One by one, lulled by the melody and intrigued by the words in a foreign language, they quietened down and went back to sleep.

“Goodnight, Hubert!” we whispered, and the little ones called, “Thank you for rescuing us, Hubert.” We tiptoed back through the door marked “Barn”. The last sound we heard was an old cow who suffered insomnia humming to herself the tune of Daisy's lullaby.

Alwyn picked up the end of the string, where it had come undone and fallen off the doorknob. He tied it around his finger, and started rolling it up as we walked along Marie's white-painted line. As we went we jabbered about the feast, how much we were going to eat, how quickly, and how much more than anyone else. All except for Daisy who prided herself on being a dainty feeder.

We'd been walking some time when Victor asked, “Where's Alwyn?”

Peter held up his lantern, ran back, and we saw Alwyn being dragged into the shadows. “Something's pulling the string!” he screamed.

We all shrieked.

“Stop it, Alwyn!” Marie told him.

“I want my bunk!” Jessie cried. She'd had a long, sometimes terrifying day.

“Now he's scared the little ones,” said Daisy. “
Typical
! All because he just has to act the giddy goat! No wonder Mr Jones always says he'd hate to have to teach a classroom of Alwyns!”

“Here!” Peter handed the lantern to Marie, put his arms around Alwyn's waist, and pulled.

“Here!” Marie handed the lantern to Daisy and leapt to put her arms around Peter's waist.

One by one we all leapt, put our arms around the waist of the one in front of us and pulled. But we were all dragged the other way.

Just one of us was left holding the lantern. And she had the sense to do something that saved us all from whatever was pulling us into the dark. Jessie put down the lantern, opened her pocket knife, and cut the string
where Alwyn had tied it around his finger.

We all fell backwards. The cut end of the string twitched, jerked, and wriggled away. Peter began
following
it, and Marie insisted he paint a row of white dots so he could find his way back.

“But what's pulling the string?” screamed Daisy.

“It must be the wind,' Marie said in her reasonable voice.

“The wind couldn't pull all of us!”

“There must be a perfectly rational explanation,” said Peter as, painting white dots, he followed the wriggling string into the dark.

When Peter didn't come back and didn't answer our yells, Marie followed the white dots. When she didn't reply to our yells, Daisy followed. At last we all followed the white dots and found Peter, Marie, and Daisy
staring
down at two little skeletons lying in one another's arms. Each little skull wore a gold crown. The end of our string was wound around the fingers of one bony hand. Jazz sobbed, inconsolable, profoundly moved as always by royal occasions.

“But there weren't really any little princes…” Marie cried. “I just made up that story to scare the little ones
from going upstairs without us.”

“That doesn't matter now,” said Peter. “But you tell me this: how can a skeleton that's been dead for a couple of hundred years pull a piece of string?”

Horrified, we huddled the little ones into the
middle
, and backed away along the white dots. We found Marie's painted line, clattered down the stairs, locked both doors behind us, made sure Aunt Effie was all right, and ran down to the kitchen. We were so upset, we ignored the feast and went straight to bed.

Next morning as we dressed in front of the fire Victor said, “It'd be a shame to waste all that good food!” So we ate the feast, for breakfast. Hundreds and thousands, sausage rolls, butterfly cakes, and cream horns, Old Furry Soup, Dead Man's Eyes in Porridge, Dead Man's Ears in Yellow Custard, and a delicious Dead Man's Arm. Jessie and Lizzie cried when we told them they were eating Dead Man's Arm, but Becky whispered to them, “It's really steamed raisin roll,” and they asked for more.

“I wish we'd fed the stock first,” said Peter, when we were lying groaning around the table. One by one, we got to our feet and followed him upstairs and across
to the barn. The stock were curious about what had happened last night, but we didn't feel like talking.

“There's something not right, starting the day with a feast,” said Victor. “It didn't taste quite the same.”

“That's all very well coming from you,” said Daisy. “Whose idea was it?”

We spent much of the rest of the day like that, squabbling, lying around thinking deep thoughts, and not wanting to move much.

“Like crocodiles digesting their victims,” said Ann.

“That's not very ladylike,” Daisy told her.

“I'm not a very ladylike girl.”

“Nor me!” said Lizzie. “I'm a crocodile full of Dead Man's arms and legs.”

Then Alwyn had to go too far as usual. “I'm a ladylike crocodile,” he said in a la-di-da voice. “I've just eaten twelve ladies with my ragged teeth, and I can feel them kicking inside me.”

“You are disgusting!” Daisy said.

“You are disgusting!” Alwyn echoed.

We all felt much better after a hearty lunch. It was then we remembered to run upstairs and close Aunt
Effie's
window that we'd left open after firing the cannon. The snow was so deep it had covered the downstairs windows and door.

“The Tattooed Wolf could have climbed in Aunt
Effie's
window and eaten her!” said Marie.

“Aunt Effie would wake and eat any Tattooed Wolf that dared climb in her window,” said Peter. “Especially one that called her by The Name We Dare Not Say!”

We agreed but, just in case, we screwed steel
shutters
over the window. We caulked and tarred and felted
and schenammed them, too. Peter drilled a peep-hole to see what was going on outside.

“The Tattooed Wolf's come back. It's got a bandage on one ear.” We all laughed. But when Peter put his eye back to the peep-hole, he couldn't see anything. “Maybe there's some snow covering it.”

“It's the Tattooed Wolf looking through at us!” screamed Daisy, and she ran downstairs and had
another
fit of hysterics. Ann ran down too, and sat on the lid of the bread bin this time.

Peter took a funnel and a large blue bottle of castor oil and waited by the darkened peep-hole. The Tattooed Wolf took its eye away and put its mouth there instead.

“Ooowhooooo!” it howled. “I've eaten the stock in the barn. And I'll eat you, too, if you don't let me in.” As it howled, Peter stuck the funnel through the
peephole
and emptied the whole bottle of castor oil straight down its gullet.

“Ooowhooooo, Euphemia! Ooowhooooo!” went the Tattooed Wolf. “Euphem–oowhooauugluff! Chorffugglecluff! Horrorplickoffalcluffgrufflebluff!”

“It swallowed the lot. All that castor oil will give it the giant trots,” Peter said.

“What's the trots?”

“Diarrhoea,” Peter told Jessie. “Only nobody can spell it, so we say trots instead.”

“What's diarrhoea?”

“It means the Tattooed Wolf will have to go to the dunny every five minutes for the next twenty-four hours.”

“Where do wolves go to the dunny?” asked Lizzie.

“Anywhere they like.”

“Poo!”

“It's okay. The snow will cover it, so it won't stink.”

As we climbed into our bunks that night, Lizzie asked, “Peter, how do skeletons go to the dunny?”

“They don't go.”

“Why not?”

“Because they're dead. They haven't any stomachs.”

“Don't skeletons eat feasts?” asked Lizzie.

“Skeletons can't eat anything, so they don't have to go to the dunny.'

“Poor little princes,” said Lizzie, and Jazz sobbed and would not be comforted until Peter read us another page of The Wind in the Willows.

“If we had a boat like the Water Rat's, we could escape from the Tattooed Wolf,” said Lizzie.

“When spring comes and Aunt Effie wakes, we'll go sailing on the Margery Daw again.”

“What's the Margery Daw?”

“Don't you remember our scow we built?”

“Don't you remember cutting down the kauri,
sawing
it into logs, building the dam, and floating the logs down the river?”

“Don't you remember sailing across the Hauraki Gulf to Auckland?”

“Don't you remember the hermit, the missionary, and the pirate?”

“Don't you remember the fog, and the Horse
Latitudes
, and the Doldrums, and crossing the Equator?”

Casey, Lizzie, Jared, and Jessie stuck their heads out of their bunks and shook them.

“I remember firing a cannon,” said Lizzie.

“I remember that!” said Jessie.

“One was called Humpty,” said Casey.

“And the other was Dumpty,” said Jared. But that was all the little ones remembered.

“It'll all come back to you next summer,” said Peter, “when you see the Margery Daw again.” He pulled our doors across, left a lamp turned down for Jessie, and climbed into his bunk.