by A S Neill
"Cheek be blowed", said Michael with dignity; "I said rats and I mean rats."
"How rats?"
"Are you all blind?" said Michael. "Haven't you noticed how bold they are becoming these last days? My father says that if men ever failed to keep up civilisation the only animals who could make a new civilisation would be the rats. They are more intelligent than any other animal."
"No use", said Robert, shaking his head. "No hands, and without hands no animal can rule."
"But they could use their forefeet as hands", said Michael.
"That may be", said Betty, "but they have no weight. How could they make big guns and ships and things?"
"Civilisation doesn't need these", said Neill sagely. "A rat civilisation would, of course, be different, better I hope. They won't make poison-gas anyway, and I question if they will have wars. I think we ought to shoot ourselves and give the rats their chance."
Now that they had been made conscious of the rats, they did observe that they were decidedly bolder than they had been. Neill found a big one in the larder one night, but instead of scurrying off it arched its back and showed its teeth. Neill decided to withdraw with as much grace as he could. There was rat poison enough for the taking in many a chemist's shop but the children refused to use it on the ground that it was the sort of poison that burns out the animal's guts cruelly.
"We fight fair", said Robert as he blew the head off a rat with a shot-gun.
"I really don't think the rats will trouble us much", said Pyecraft. "After all they are an animal that is parasitic on man. They live on the rubbish man throws away."
"Then why are we seeing more of them now?" asked David.
"If you ask me", said the wise Gordon, "it is because the cats have taken to the woods and are living on birds mostly; and the dogs aren't bothering about rats when they can kill sheep and cattle and horses. Still, we can manage the rats. Now it would be different if there were lions and tigers about. I suppose that all the wild animals in the Zoo will be dead from starvation by now, eh? Good thing for us, if you ask me."
"Now you come to mention it", said Jean, "I thought I heard a lion roar last night."
There was an uncomfortable silence.
"Impossible", said Betty uneasily.
"Quite impossible", said Michael. "What do you say, David?"
David looked vacantly at the wall.
"They can't have come so far north yet", he said as if speaking to himself.
"What do you mean?" they all cried at once, and David blushed red and looked at Pyecraft.
"What's the mystery?" asked Neill impatiently.
"You tell them, Pyecraft", said David nervously.
Pyecraft laughed guiltily.
"It was a secret between David and me. You remember when we flew to London to get the machine-guns? Well, when we got there we heard dreadful hungry cries coming from the Zoo, and David's tender heart was touched. 'We can't let them die of starvation like that', he said tearfully; 'we must let them free to find food for themselves.' I tried to reason with him, but he was adamant, so what could I do but let him have his way. I left him at the Zoo while I fetched the guns from Woolwich."
Neill glared at David.
"Do you mean to tell us that you deliberately let the wild animals loose?" he demanded.
"I did", said David defiantly.
"Lovely", breathed Betty.
"Spiffing!" chuckled Bunny.
"But how did you manage it without getting eaten up?" asked Jean.
David smiled and his eyes took a far-away look.
"It took a bit of doing", he said proudly. "When I went near the cages the starved brutes leapt at the bars, and I thought that the tigers would break through. I went to the main office and got a ball of string and a box of three-inch nails. Then I cut off long length, tied a nail to one end, took the pins out of the latches and stuck the nails in. When Pyecraft brought back the airship, I got in with my bundle of string ends, and when the ship rose it drew out all the nails and the gates simply needed to be pushed against to open. That of course was only the wild animals; the giraffes and deer and that kind I had let out by hand. Poor brutes, I fear the lions and tigers ate a few of them."
The others had listened with bated breath to this account of adventure.
"I propose that David be shot", said Neill earnestly.
"Shot?" cried Michael with delight. "Shot? Shot for giving us the chance to have a jungle of our own in England? I think we ought to give him a medal."
The other fools agreed with Michael, and Neill went upstairs miserable to bed. And...
TO BE CONTINUED
- Discussion Of Chapter 2
"That bit about me letting the animals at the zoo is a bit far-fetched", said David critically. "Cages don't have latches with pins in them."
"They ought to have", said I.
"And the dogs wouldn't get into packs", said Robert; "at least, not for quite a long time, and certainly the little dogs wouldn't join with the big ones. Foxes and wolverines never join up with wolves. No, Neill, not good enough."
"Ah", I remarked, "you haven't studied dialectic materialism."
"What has that got to do with dogs?"
I smiled knowingly.
"You don't know what Marx said about barks, evidently", I said.
Robert looked at me as if I was a bad cheese.
"You always fool when you can't defend yourself", he said angrily. "And I know you are wrong about the rats."
"I could a tail unfold", I began, but Jean interrupted me.
"I think it very silly to stay on at Summerhill if we are the last people alive. I want to go to London and take things from all the shops there. We could stay in Buckingham Palace and go to all the picture-houses, and --"
"Picture-houses?" I asked with raised eyebrows.
"Oh", said Jean, "I forgot. Of course not; there would be nobody to make the film thing go."
"And no electricity", said Michael. "Still, it would be good fun to go to London. Do take us to London, Neill."
"Perhaps", I said - "perhaps next time we shall go to London.”
Chapter 3
It was Jean who first saw the tiger. She had gone out alone to Snowden's farm to gather eggs.
"I heard a funny sort of growl in the cattle run", she said breathlessly, "and I thought it was one of the dogs, and when I looked I saw a great big cat, and it was eating one of the cows. All messy like, with blood dripping from its mouth. I just ran like blazes all the way back."
"Bet it was an ordinary cat", said Robert.
"It had stripes", said Jean, "and it was big as a horse."
"I don't believe it anyway", said David, "but I'm not going out of the house to-day."
Pyecraft saw the tiger and its mate next day, and everyone spent the day carting statues from the town to make a barricade. Michael discovered a new method.
"Best if we take all their legs and use them as logs, then lay the bodies across them like this. The arms are best like this - shoring the lot up."
"Yes", said Neill, "but what about this heap of heads?"
Michael had no idea what to do with the heads, but Bunny solved the problem by using them as hand-grenades during the first attack.
Gordon suggested filling the heads with gun-powder or TNT, but the sentiment of the party was against this idea.
"Pity to waste emptiness", sighed Gordon, as he studied the heads of the local council.
The stockade was rather fun. There was really no necessity to man it by night, for in the house they were safe from all animals, but the call of adventure gripped them, and at night one could see sentries pacing up and down behind the wall of Leiston citizens. But the tigers did not attack. There was an attack one night and Robert swore he had killed three tigers and a lion, Bunny two elephants, Evelyn six leopards, and Betty ten crocodiles. In the morning, they found three dead sheep. Snowden's sheep had been alarmed by a dog and had stampeded blindly into the stockade. After that, when the chil
dren were a nuisance, Neill looked at them very hard and said: "Stockade." It always silenced them.
A wave of discontent passed over the group.
Said Neill to Pyecraft: "What's up with them? They look fed up with something. What is it?"
"They are fed up with being here", said Pyecraft. "They need a change. If we flew them to London it would cheer them up for a bit."
So when Neill proposed that they should visit London they all welcomed the idea boisterously. They crowded into the airship and in half an hour were looking down on St Paul's. At Jean's suggestion Pyecraft brought the ship down in front of Buckingham Palace, and at once they all rushed in to see what a stone king looked like. They couldn't find him, and then Gordon recalled reading that he had been on a yachting cruise off the coast of Ireland.
"All the better", said David; "for we'd have had to park him if we wanted his room, and it would feel disloyal to park a king, wouldn't it?"
"His head might fall off, like Corkie's", said Betty.
"Or like Charles the Second's", said David, who had been taught history by Neill.
They loved the Palace. The Life Guards had been paraded at the entrance when the cloud came, and there they stood at attention, a straight, erect line of stone manhood. Robert grinned and gave the sergeant at the end a mighty shove, and the line did a graceful topple over all the way down. The children laughed uproariously, and thought it so great fun that they went out into the streets and toppled over all the cinema and theatre queues. Michael was lucky enough to find a line of policemen in Oxford Street, and he duly pushed them over sideways.
The House Of Commons interested them a lot. The Prime Minister had been delivering a speech about leaving no alley unexplored and no stone unturned when the cloud came. Neill satisfied a life long wish by making a speech telling the members what he thought about them and their misgovernment. Then Michael, who is a bit of a Bolshie, spent ten minutes throwing Cabinet Ministers' heads about.
"They are so light", he exclaimed; but it took both his hands to shy Lloyd George's head at Winston Churchill. It was all good clean fun, as Pyecraft put it. But it left the house in a bit of a mess.
The next objective of the children was the shops. Neill went to Buck & Ryan's and took all the lovely tools he had wanted to have, but Pyecraft informed him kindly but firmly that he refused to clutter up the airship with seven lathes, four shaping machines, and three tons of miscellaneous tools. The boys at once made for the gun shops, and then for the toy departments of Gamage's and Selfridge's. Evelyn went to the HMV shop and sat all afternoon playing records on a spring-driven gramophone. The radiograms, of course, were useless without current, but later she found a radiogram that ran on batteries. Betty did the fashion shops of Bond Street, and appeared in the evening wearing three diamond necklaces, five tiaras (all at once), and an assortment of jewelled wristlet watches. Jean stayed in a chocolate shop most of the afternoon, and had to be carried home to the Palace. Pyecraft and Neill finished their tour in the Ritz wine cellar. They musically informed Bunny, who had come to look for them, that they would not be home till morning.
Visiting shops took some days. There was so much to take, so much more to wish that one could carry. Every boy had a multi-bladed knife, a few knuckledusters, scores of marbles, to say nothing of sundry whips and daggers and swords. The girls had heaps of gramophone records and boxes of lipstick and stacks of gold jewellery. Neill had two hundredweight baccy from Dunhills, and Pyecraft... now, that's funny, but Pyecraft was the only one who did not take anything. Gordon asked him why.
"That's an easy one", he smiled. "I was a millionaire and anything I wanted I could buy."
"And did you buy it", asked Gordon.
Pyecraft considered for a moment.
"Now I come to think of it, I didn't", he said. "I had all the money but I never seemed to think to want to buy anything with it."
It must be remembered that the streets in London were far from normal. It was not easy to make one's way along in a maze of taxi smashes and stone crowds. Motoring was out of the question. A few stray dogs were about, but there was not sign of Zoo animals. They visited the Zoo and found only a few monkeys and reptiles. Bare bones showed that the beasts of prey had made a way with many of the running kind of animals.
"Wouldn't you kids care to visit your homes", asked Neill one night as he reclined in the throne.
Gordon, who trying on the crown, looked up.
"That's an idea", he said interested.
He went home next day and returned at night.
"How were the old folks", asked Neill.
"They didn't give me much of a welcome", grinned Gordon.
"Oh!"
"Mother wasn't there", he said, "but father was in the garden. There is one good thing about this cloud business: no need to waste money on tombstones. All you do is to plant a chap in his garden and he is his own tombstone."
The children refused to leave London in spite of the arguments of Neill and Pyecraft. The men were talking in the bar of the Criterion.
"I don't like the look of the kids", said Pyecraft.
"They are so pale and sickly looking."
"Vitamin starvation", said Neill.
"No fresh greens or fruit: vitamin C deficiency. We should take them back to the country."
"But they won't come", protested Pyecraft.
"In that case", said Neill jokingly, "it would be better to bump them off, for rather a quick death than a lingering death from some deficiency disease. We'll give them to the end of the week, and if they refuse to come... we'll use a machine-gun on them", and they both laughed.
Little did they know that David and Bunny were listening behind a barrel of rum.
As they made their zigzag way back to the Palace a shot whizzed by their heads.
Barflies and flies on the wall; by F K Waechter
"These silly asses playing with rifles", muttered Neill, but as they approached the Palace they were challenged by the voice of David.
"Who goes there?" "Friends."
"What friends?"
"Pyecraft and Neill."
The answer came sharp and clear.
"Traitors! You were overheard in the Criterion bar. Give it them, boys", and a volley rang out. The two men fled, and dodging behind a stone company of the Dorsets they made their escape. The war had begun.
The men decided to make the Tower of London their headquarters. There they knew would be arms enough and to spare.
"Outnumbered", said Pyecraft, "we must rely on our brains. We must first of all a barricade of beefeaters, and one of us will always have to be awake."
"Don't worry", said Neill, "they'll soon forget about us with all the shops to raid. They are only playing at war; they want excitement, that's all."
Pyecraft went out to reconnoitre and when he returned he said: "I got quite a start as I was coming into the yard. A small Grenadier stone trumpeter stood with trumpet to lips, and as I passed I could have sworn that the trumpet made a toot."
"Nerves", said Neill. "You are jumpy. Let's go and have a look at your trumpeter", and they went out into the yard. The trumpeter was not there, but on the ground lay his scarlet uniform and trumpet. They were staring at these in consternation when they heard Michael's voice behind the wall. He was speaking to Robert.
"Great idea that of yours - pretending to be a stone bugler", he was saying. "Not only for spying, but it makes them nervy."
Neill spent the afternoon bashing innocent stone bugler boys over the head with a hammer. Next morning the courtyard was filled with queer figures. The children had raided Madame Tussaud's and had brought the entire population of the Chamber of Horrors, and set them up in rows. The men looked out, and the horrible leer of Crippen met their gaze. Charles Peace stood beside Crippen.
"Hell!" cried Pyecraft in terror. "Their heads are moving!"
They were unaware that the inventive David was behind the wall pulling strings.
"It's a rotten beastly way t
o wage war", said Neill passionately. "It isn't war; it is barbarism."
"Who began it?" asked a Cupid over a fountain, and Betty dropped her bow and arrow and scuttled over the wall.
Soon the two men were almost distraught: they saw an enemy in every stone policeman and death in every servant girl.
"We must get out of this", said Neill. "Let's take to the river", and at the dead of night they carried their machine-guns to a motor boat and drifted down the river. They dared not start the motor for fear of betraying their escape. They anchored of Chatham and spent a sleepless night. In the morning they saw that the Hood was anchored close by.
"It's tragic to see a ship like that", said Pyecraft. "Look at it, the biggest battleship afloat, and what is it to-day? A grave of stone sailors."
"Ses you", said Bunny, and a fifteen-inch gun boomed. The shell crashed in Hammersmith Broadway, for the only range that Bunny knew about was the kitchen one. The children appeared on the Hood bridge with hand-grenades, and if a typical London fog had not descended at that moment this story would have lost its two heroes. But in the fog they got away.
"If we go to Buckingham Palace they will never think of looking there", said Neill.
"Good idea", said Pyecraft, "but we'll make ourselves doubly safe by putting on policemen's uniform, so that if they come we simply stand like stone statues."
The plan had to be modified because there was no policeman's uniform large enough to fit Pyecraft, but in the War Office they found many Major-Generals of Pyecraft's figure. Neill put on a policeman's uniform and helmet.
They had lunch in the King's private room, and they were just about to clear away when they heard footsteps. They jumped up and took positions on the floor. Neill took up a policeman's attitude, and Pyecraft bent down as if picking up a piece of paper. The children entered.
"Hullo", said Jean, "what's been happening here?"
"They've come and sneaked our grub", said Evelyn. "They must be in the house, for the coffee is steaming. Come on, let's search." They all rushed from the room.
"What fools we were!" said Neill; "we ought to have made for the airship."
