by Alan Nolan
When they got to the end of the tunnel it opened out into a rocky chamber. Ogg certainly had been busy that morning – he had made torches from branches and had them dotted around the inside of the cave, lighting it up. ‘Welcome,’ said Ogg. ‘Wipe feet.’
They looked around. At the side of the cave were long slabs of rock that looked like beds or seats, and in the centre was what looked like a stone table with four stone stools around it.
Charlie gasped. ‘The walls,’ she whispered to Conor. ‘Look at the walls!’
The walls were covered in beautiful cave paintings. There were hunting scenes, with stick-figure cavemen throwing spears at mammoths and elk. There were scenes of cavemen building teepee shelters under grey clouds that were showering them with snow. There were also paintings of a woman with long hair and a unibrow, and two smaller cave-people, a boy and a girl. The boy was petting a wolf.
On the back wall behind the stone table there was a painting of a man who looked very like Ogg. ‘My … family,’ he said softly.
Behind them, unnoticed by Conor, Charlie or Ogg, Damian and Gulliver were looking around the side of the tunnel wall, their eyes wide with wonder.
Chapter Fourteen
The Obnoxious Anthropologist
‘Ah, helloooo,’ said Professor Cromwell Griffin as Frank opened the door. ‘You must be Sergeant Delaney.’
‘That’s me,’ said Frank, looking the anthropologist up and down with his cop’s eye. He looked harmless enough, thought Frank, with his big baldy head and wispy grey hair, but what was up with those hairy ears? It was like the professor was trying to smuggle furry gerbils in his ear-holes.
Professor Griffin motioned to his team, who were standing behind him. ‘Allow me to introduce my associates – under-professors Winston Bone and Gerard Flint, and that small fellow on the end is Ponsonby-Squibb. He’s a professor too, if you can believe it.’
The tiny professor at the back shifted his feet in embarrassment and looked at the ground.
At that moment, Clarissa’s car pulled up outside the front gate, and a very tired, very cranky looking woman opened the door, pulled herself out and stomped up the garden path with her head down. Her hair was wild and pulled over to one side in a slightly messy version of her usual bun, and she was wearing a light-blue nurse’s uniform. In her right hand she was carrying a pair of false teeth. ‘Ah no,’ she said, looking at her hand, ‘I’m after bringing home Mrs. Wilson’s dentures again.’
She looked up and noticed the four white-coated professors for the first time. ‘Who are these eejits?’ she said to Frank. She was clearly in no mood to be trifled with.
‘Professors from the Natural History Museum,’ said Frank. ‘What are you doing home so early, love?’
‘Don’t try to change the subject,’ growled Clarissa. ‘What do they want?’
Frank gulped. ‘They’re, em, here about the stolen Stone Age thingymajigs. The ones Conor’s tramp was hiding in the dog’s kennel.’
‘WHAT??’ said Conor’s mum.
Frank gulped again. ‘I was going to tell you …’ he said weakly.
‘Excuse me, madam,’ said Professor Griffin, ‘but it is very important that we establish the whereabouts of your son.’
‘What do you want with Conor? Are you saying he’s done something wrong?’ said Clarissa, turning on the professor. Conor was her only son, and she didn’t like the idea of this jumped-up, hairy-eared, baldy egghead accusing him of some sort of crime.
‘Oh, he’s fine, young lady, but he may be in trouble. That tramp he is associating with may not be all that he seems.’ Griffin squinted at Clarissa and bent down so his face (and his hairy ears) was uncomfortably close to hers. ‘That tramp may be an escaped convict. He may be a dangerous criminal.’
‘Ah here,’ said Frank, ‘there’s no dangerous escaped convicts on the loose. I’m a cop, I would have heard.’ He put an arm around Clarissa. ‘Don’t be frightening her.’
‘He’s on a scout camp in the Phoenix Park,’ said Clarissa.
‘Thank you very much,’ said Griffin, and he marched off with the three other professors in tow. ‘You see, boys,’ he said to them, loud enough for Frank and Clarissa to hear, ‘treat the peasants nicely and they’ll give you what you want.’
‘I shouldn’t have told them where Conor was, should I?’ said Clarissa to Frank. She looked worried. And very tired.
‘Probably not,’ said Frank. ‘Come on, we’ll go and get Conor ourselves before those eejits do.’
Chapter Fifteen
Row, Row, Row Your Log …
Ogg’s scout troop packed their belongings in their rucksacks and cleaned up the camp, taking down the teepee and tidying up the leaves and branches. Unusually for Damian and Gulliver, they did their fair share of tidying, giving Ogg many curious glances as they did so. When they were all finished, the clearing looked exactly as it had done when they arrived the day before.
‘Good,’ said Ogg. ‘Now come. We go O’Connell.’ He was wearing his Stone Age fur coat over the blue jumper Conor had given him, and he was smiling to himself.
The four scouts followed Ogg through the trees, across the playing fields of an old secondary school and out onto the banks of the River Liffey.
‘So, what are we going to do now, Ogg?’ asked Charlie. ‘Walk by the river all the way into the city as far as O’Connell Bridge?’
‘No walk,’ said Ogg. ‘We swim like duck.’
‘SWIM?’ said Damian. ‘You’ve got to be as crumbly as a pack of crackers. I’m not swimming all the way into town.’
‘You can’t swim anyway,’ said Gulliver.
‘Shaddap, Gulliver,’ snapped Damian. ‘I liked you better when you were drinking ink.’
‘We not swim like this …’ Ogg waved his arms in what looked like a passable butterfly stroke. ‘We swim in … canoe!’ He moved apart the rushes that were growing at the water’s edge to reveal a wooden canoe that he had carved out of a big wooden tree trunk.
‘Ogg, that is amazing!’ cried Conor.
‘There’s oars and everything,’ said Charlie, jumping into the canoe. ‘Come on, boys, don’t be scared. Get in, it’s perfectly safe!’
The others weren’t convinced, but, somewhat scared to disobey Charlie, they carefully boarded the carved wooden boat. It rocked a bit, but looked seaworthy enough.
Ogg got in last and sat at the back of the canoe. He took the oars in his huge hands and started to paddle off downstream, towards the city. The scouts sat back in the boat and relaxed. They looked up at the beautiful blue sky. This was the life!
They had almost reached the town of Chapelizod when they heard it – a sort of pulsing mechanical fluttering sound, low and steady, like the blades of a windmill on a very blowy day. It seemed to be getting closer.
Charlie pointed up into the blue sky. ‘There!’ she cried. ‘That spot! Behind the trees!’
‘I think it’s a helicopter,’ said Damian.
Ogg put down the oars and looked up towards the shape in the sky, shading his eyes from the sun. Gulliver took out his binoculars from his rucksack and squinted into the eyepieces. ‘It IS a helicopter, and there are four people in it – all wearing white coats.’ He dropped the binoculars. ‘And one of them is holding a net!’
‘Four guys in white coats with a net?’ wondered Conor.
‘Give me a look,’ said Damian, grabbing the binoculars from Gulliver. The helicopter was coming closer now. ‘Hold on a cotton-pickin’ minute,’ said Damian. ‘I recognise these guys! They’re visiting professors! I saw them at the Natural History Museum!’
‘The museum?’ said Conor. ‘Ogg! THE NET! These jokers must be coming for Ogg! THEY MUST WANT TO CAPTURE HIM FOR THEIR MUSEUM!’
Charlie gasped. ‘Quick, Ogg!’ she shouted. ‘We’ve got to get away from them! Paddle as fast as you can!’
Ogg started to paddle, his huge, muscled arms flexing as they moved the oars back and forth. The scouts joined in, helping him shift the oars
.
As they started to glide through the water at a fair old speed, Damian shouted back to Conor, ‘What is going on here, Corcoran? Why are these museum geeks chasing your uncle?’ He couldn’t hide the fear in his voice.
Conor took a deep breath. He had some explaining to do.
‘Okay,’ said Conor, ‘long story short – Ogg is a caveman that Charlie and I found frozen in a glacier in the Wicklow Mountains. Those ancro–, andro–’
‘Anthropologists,’ chipped in Ogg, helpfully.
‘… scientists probably want to capture him and put him in a weird zoo or something. Ogg is our friend and we’re not going to let that happen.’
Damian and Gulliver glanced at each other. ‘Fair enough,’ shrugged Gulliver.
‘We kind of guessed that anyway,’ said Damian. ‘Gully, let’s get rowing.’ And they did.
The helicopter was almost overhead as the wooden canoe splashed down the weir at Chapelizod. There was a drop of a couple of metres and they almost turned over, but Ogg leaned his considerable weight to the left-hand side and the boat, with the four frightened scouts inside, quickly righted itself and sailed on.
The scouts could plainly see the four professors looking out of the helicopter windows; one of them was in the pilot’s seat. The craft hovered over the boat, keeping pace with it. The downdraft from the helicopter rotors churned the water and rocked the little boat violently from side to side. The scouts clung on while Ogg pulled on the oars.
‘Watch out!’ yelled Charlie.
One of the professors, a lanky one with a bald head and (even from this distance, Charlie could see quite clearly) very hairy ears launched a net downwards towards the boat. At that moment the canoe slipped under Chapelizod Bridge, and the net landed harmlessly on the roof of a passing rubbish lorry that was driving over it.
The canoe came out the other side of the bridge, and Ogg rowed harder than ever. The boat skipped over the water, heading downstream towards the city.
As they reached the city quays with the helicopter still in hot pursuit, Conor thought he heard someone calling his name. But how could that be? They were in the middle of the river, rowing for dear life while being pursued by an extremely noisy helicopter! Nevertheless, he was sure he could hear someone calling him. He looked around, and on the south bank of the river he saw a small figure waving her arms and shouting. It was his mum!
‘COOOONNNNNOOOORRRRRRRR!’ she roared, hanging over the quay wall.
Frank had pulled up sharply on a one-way road at the side of the river when Clarissa, alerted by the hovering helicopter, had spotted the boat furiously being rowed down the river. Cars stuck behind him were blowing their horns and drivers were shouting out their windows at Frank, calling him a variety of most unpleasant names.
Frank hopped out and flashed his police badge. ‘Move around – Garda business!’ he said loudly. The drivers shut up and moved meekly around his parked car.
Frank joined Clarissa at the wall. ‘Is that Conor?’ he asked.
‘He’s fine!’ said Clarissa. ‘Charlie and another couple of boys are with him, but they’re being chased by that helicopter! The big man in the boat is trying to save them!’
She started to dial 999, wondering which service she should ask for in the case of a child in the company of a large man wearing furs being chased downriver in a rickety wooden canoe by a helicopter full of men in white coats, when Frank took the phone out of her hands.
‘Clobberstown Station, now!’ he shouted, then, ‘Seamus? It’s Frank. I need a favour.’
Chapter Sixteen
Bridge over Troubled Water
The small wooden log canoe skipped along the water, under Queen Street Bridge, Millennium Bridge and the Ha’penny Bridge, all the time with the helicopter following, just metres above, rising sharply upwards over each bridge and swooping downwards at the other side.
Inside the helicopter, Professor Jasper Ponsonby-Squibb was shouting to be heard over the noise of the rotors. ‘Sir!’ he cried. ‘Professor Griffin! This is madness! We can’t chase a boat in a helicopter like this! They are only children – they’ll fall in the water and catch pneumonia and it will all be our fault!’
‘Shut up, Ponsonby-Squibb! This will be the most important anthropological discovery of our age! He’s a real live CAVEMAN! I’m going to be the most famous professor of anthropology in the world! I’m going to be rich! I should have known you wouldn’t have the stomach for the chase – not like Flint and Bone here!’
‘Actually, Professor,’ said Gerard Bone, ‘I don’t think this is a particularly good idea either – Professor Flint only has a learner helicopter pilot licence!’
With that, Ponsonby-Squibb snapped. He lunged over the pilot’s seat to wrestle the control stick from Flint’s hands. The helicopter banked sharply to one side, and the rotors made a horrendous JUDDERing noise.
‘That’s it, Flint!’ cried Griffin, hanging out of the window. ‘Put her down! They are going under that wide bridge ahead. Land on it and we’ll catch them at the other side!’
Flint didn’t have much of a choice but to land. The rotors were catching and stalling, SHUDDERing to a stop and starting up again.
‘Land on the bridge?’ shouted Flint over the ear-bending sound of the failing helicopter rotors. ‘We’ll be lucky not to crash into it!’
Ogg’s boat slipped quietly through the river water and under the bridge as the helicopter lurched out of the sky and dropped straight down for the last couple of meters, plopping with a massive KKRRUUNNCHH! onto the surface of O’Connell Street Bridge.
The professors emerged from the slightly wrecked aircraft, and Professor Griffin ran to the opposite side. ‘Come on, you fools! What are you waiting for, the green man?’ he shouted angrily. ‘It’s Sunday, there’s no traffic.’
The three under-anthropologists reluctantly followed him over to the side of the bridge.
‘Now,’ said Griffin, ‘we wait for the boat to come out, and then, by Jingo, we’ll have ’em!’
They waited. And waited.
No boat emerged.
Griffin was bewildered. Where was his caveman?
‘Flint, Bone,’ he said, ‘grab hold of Ponsonby-Squibb’s ankles and dangle him over the side of the bridge. I want to see what’s going on under there.’
Ponsonby-Squibb had started to protest when the little wooden log canoe glided out from under the bridge – completely empty!
‘My caveman!’ cried Griffin. ‘Where is he? WHAT HAPPENED TO MY CAVEMAN??!!’
‘FREEZE!’ shouted Frank. He was standing on the bridge holding out his police badge, with Conor’s mum behind him. Also behind him were twenty-four members of the Garda Síochána and seven Garda cars with their sirens on and lights blazing.
‘WHERE’S MY SON?’ shouted Clarissa, grabbing Griffin by the collar of his white coat.
He gulped. She looked even more tired and cranky than she had that morning in Clobberstown Crescent – and she had looked pretty tired and cranky then. Griffin just pointed at the empty boat, floating downriver towards Dublin Bay.
‘I’m so sorry, we tried to stop him,’ said Ponsonby-Squibb meekly. He was trying his best to put the ‘apology’ into ‘anthropology’.
Clarissa ignored him and turned her attention again to the quivering Griffin. ‘That boy is the best thing in my life, and if you and your helicopter have harmed a blade of hair on his head, I swear I’ll … I’ll …’ She couldn’t think of a punishment that would be harsh enough.
But luckily for Clarissa, she didn’t have to, because at that moment she heard Frank’s voice. ‘CLARISSA! Conor’s here! He’s fine and so are the others!’
Frank was climbing down the side of the bridge, onto its ornate supporting pillars, and underneath he could see, clinging onto the beams below, Charlie, Damian and Gulliver. With them, holding on tight with huge, muscled arms was the massive fur-clad figure of Ogg, and gripping onto Ogg’s legs … was Conor.
The guards (the one
s who weren’t bundling a grumbling Professor Griffin and his colleagues from the Snetterton Museum of Natural History into the back of the police cars) joined together with Frank and Clarissa to pull the scouts out from under O’Connell Bridge to safety. It took seven guards to pull Ogg out.
After Clarissa and Frank had hugged Conor and kissed him and checked that he and Charlie and the others weren’t injured, they stood in front of Ogg.
Frank stuck out his hand and shook Ogg’s warmly. ‘You saved Clarissa’s boy. Thank you,’ he said.
‘You are most welcome,’ said the caveman.
Clarissa hugged Ogg tightly and kissed him on the elbow, which was as far up as she could reach.
‘Mum, Frank – I’d like you to meet Ogg,’ said Conor. ‘Ogg the caveman.’
‘I couldn’t care less if you are a caveman, a milkman or a spaceman,’ said Clarissa. ‘Frank told me that Conor has been letting you stay in the dog’s kennel while I have been working. After what you have done, you are welcome to stay with us as long as you like, and not in the kennel – our home is your home.’
Ogg smiled a gigantic, wide smile. Conor hugged his mum and then hugged Frank. Charlie started to cry, and Ogg put his big arms around all four of them.
Gulliver and Damian were standing to one side and watching the scene when Dennis and the rest of the scouts arrived. The scouts looked in wonder at the crashed helicopter. ‘I hope they had insurance,’ said Dennis to nobody in particular.
Gulliver, looking at Ogg and the others hugging, began to smile and snivel at the same time. Let’s call it ‘smivelling’.
‘Oh, dry up, Gulliver,’ said Damian, and then joined in, having a good smivel himself.
