Smiler was on the rucksack like a flash and leaping up the great stairway three steps at a time. He didn’t look back to see what was happening, but he heard the Skipper shout and then the sound of feet thudding across the floor.
Holding firmly to the precious rucksack Smiler shot up the stairs. He swung round the landing post at the top, raced by the portraits of the elegant Lady Elphinstone and the warlike Sir Alec, and disappeared into a corridor like a hunted rabbit going into a warren. Behind him he heard an angry bellow from the Skipper. The whole plan of the castle clear in his mind, Smiler sprinted down the corridor, swung left, charged up a flight of stairs and began to work his way by a devious route towards the tower which would give him escape to the woods at the back of the castle. Behind him he could hear the noise of the following men. But as he reached the top of the stairs, he was aware of something which he knew could be more than awkward for him. He had forgotten Bacon who had been resting under the great hall table. And here now, hard on his heels, was Bacon, barking his head off and prancing ahead of him as though this was some splendid new game. He knew that, as long as Bacon was with him, the dog’s barking would give the men a lead to his whereabouts.
He ran down another corridor. Then, thinking fast, he stopped by a bedroom door and opened it. He swung half in and Bacon, thoroughly enjoying the lark, dashed into the room past him. Smiler turned on his heels and jumped into the corridor, slamming the door. As he raced away he could hear Bacon barking in a frenzy behind the door.
For two or three minutes Smiler ran through the top corridors and pelted up and down stairs until the sounds of pursuit faded behind him. Satisfied that he had a good lead, he headed for the back tower.
He came darting out on to the low battlement top, hoisted himself up on to the parapet and jumped. He landed with a crash right in the heart of a large rhododendron bush and rolled in a tangle of leaves and branches to the ground. The next second he was on his feet and heading at top speed for the pine trees. When he was well in the pines he stopped and looked back, listening, his shoulders rising and falling as he fought for breath. There was no one in sight behind, but he could hear, very faintly, the sound of Bacon’s barking. To make it easier for running he slipped the rucksack over his shoulders and raced away along a small path that led to the southern cliffside of the island. As he did so, he was not relishing the moment to come.
In a short while he was out of the trees on to the close turf of the cliffs. The wind coming up the loch, full of rasping rain squalls, smacked hard into his face. The whole loch as far as he could see was a wilderness of white-capped, rolling waves.
Smiler, head lowered against the wind, ran across the turf to a point on the cliffs immediately above the underwater entrance to the cave. He halted on the edge and shuddered. There was a rough jumble of loose boulders for about ten feet below him and then a sheer drop – into water that was beating against the base of the cliff in great, swinging rollers, leaden and sullen looking with spouting spume and froth marbling them.
Smiler looked back to the trees. There was no one in sight. Then he looked down at the water and his heart sank. Holy Crikeys, it was going to be like jumping off the top of a church tower! For a moment he thought it was too much, that he couldn’t do it … Then self-anger burst inside him and he shouted aloud into the wind, ‘You got to do it, Samuel M. You got to do it!’
The next minute he was scrambling down amongst the loose rocks and boulders to the point where he could make his jump. He looked down and saw Dobby’s rock, the waves now crashing over the top of it. But it was only a brief look because he knew that the longer he looked the more likely he was not to jump.
As the rain and wind battered at his face, he took a deep breath, grabbed his nose tight with his right hand – and jumped.
It was the most extraordinary three or four seconds of Smiler’s life. As he leaped out into space, the fierce wind took him and, from the resistance offered by the hump of the rucksack on his back, it swung him round in a slow spin like a lazy top. He went down to the water, feet first. One moment he was looking at rock face and the next at the loch. Trees, cliffs, loch, hills and scudding clouds and rain storms swept before his eyes in a slow whirl – and then he hit the water with an almighty bang. A great spout of foam shot skywards and then peeled off into a ragged, dying ring of wind-torn spray petals.
Smiler went under and down and down until he thought it would go on for ever. Then, slowly, the motion stopped and he began to kick for the surface, his nose and mouth full of water where his hand had been jerked away from his nostrils. He kicked upwards against the weight of the rucksack and, when he thought it would never happen and he would burst, from holding his breath, he was on the surface. For a moment he rode there, swinging high and low on the wave troughs, panting and fighting for breath. From the corner of his eye he saw Dobby’s rock. A quick glance upwards showed him that the cliff top held no watcher. He swam towards the cliff well to the right of the rock. He knew exactly where the underwater arch was in relation to the rock. It was hard work with the silver-weighted rucksack dragging at his back and the mad turmoil of water at the cliff foot tossing him here and there, but after a little while he judged that he was in the right position.
He trod water for a moment and took a deep breath. Then, with all the strength he could muster, he heaved himself up and porpoise-dived down, fighting with arms and legs to get low enough to go through the archway and saying to himself, Keep going, Samuel M., Keep going …
Two minutes later Bacon arrived at the cliff top and began to run to and fro along its length, barking and whining. A little while after that Billy Morgan and the Chief Mate arrived. Billy Morgan, no fool, had heard Bacon barking in the room when they had lost Smiler in the castle. He had let the dog out and the two men had followed it through the castle maze and finally out on to the battlements at the back. Here Bacon had jumped down the wall and raced away through the pines after Smiler. The two men had gone back through the castle and had followed up through the pines as fast as they could.
They stood now looking along the line of the cliffs and watching Bacon racing up and down barking.
Through the wind the Chief Mate said, ‘What you think, Billy. Is he makin’ a swim for it?’
Billy turned on him with a snarl. ‘You fool. Look at the water. No one would try that. Take a header down there and try to get across to the shore? What you think the boy is? Superman?’
‘Then where is he?’
‘Hidin’ along these cliffs somewhere. He knows the place well. He’s here somewhere and we’re going to find ’im – and when we do I’ll welt the skin off his rear end good and proper. He probably knows some cave or nooky place. We’ll find it. But we ain’t taking no chances. He might have doubled back and be trying for the boats.’
‘Well, he can’t use ours,’ said the Chief Mate. ‘ I got the spark plug in me pocket.’
‘Maybe – but he might be mad enough to try the other boat. He ain’t wantin’ in guts. You get back there and make sure he can’t use it – and keep your eyes peeled. You see ’im – then give him a touch of lead around his legs. That’ll bring him up short. I’ll see what I can do with the tike.’
The Chief Mate began to trot off along the cliff top towards the jetty with the gun under his arm. Billy Morgan started to search along the rocks and boulders that reached a little way, down the cliffs. Bacon, who had lost the scent of his master, went with him, his barking now changed to a low, anxious whining.
Billy Morgan was a methodical man, especially when he wanted something badly. And right now he wanted Smiler and the silver and jewels. He made a careful examination of the cliff top as far as the westerly point, the wind buffeting at him and the rain squalls drenching him. Then he came back and worked the cliffs all the way up until the point where they began to slope down to the little promontory that sheltered the castle bay. Here he was met by the Chief Mate, who reported that he had fixed the boats so that Smiler couldn’t
use them.
‘No sign of ’im?’ he asked Billy Morgan.
‘No. But the young devil’s around somewhere.’
‘What we goin’ to do, then?’
Billy Morgan rubbed his fat chin thoughtfully and then said, ‘I’m goin’ back to where the dog was and do some serious thinkin’.’
The Chief Mate’s eyes widened. ‘What, in all this weather?’
‘If it snowed enough to put out the fires of Dingley Dell, I wouldn’t leave this cliff while there’s a scrap of daylight. That silver and tom-foolery is ours and I means to ’ave it. Now you get back to the castle kitchen and fetch up some food. I’m going to find that lad. Nobody hands Billy Morgan one in the bread-basket and gets away with it.’
In the underwater cave Smiler sat on the ledge below the niche in which he had found the Elphinstone jewels. Although there was some light coming in from the thin slit high up in the roof, it was darker in the cave than he had known it before. It was also colder.
Three feet below his ledge the surface of the cave water, taking turbulence from the rollers outside, sloshed and slapped around sending little gouts of spray spurting up on to the ledge.
Smiler had come through the cave entrance all right, but the weight of the heavy, water-sodden rucksack had held him down so that he had had to fight his way to the surface. He flopped over now on his back, exhausted. Trickles of water streamed away over the ledge from his wet clothes and the water-logged rucksack.
For about five minutes Smiler lay flat out, getting his strength and his breath back. Then he slowly sat up and began to take stock of his position. Above the noise of the water in the cave he could hear the whistle of the wind through the crack high above him. He stood up and stripped off his clothes and wrung all the water he could from them. Then he spread them over the rock face so that they would dry out a bit. It was at this moment that he realized that he was hungry. Remembering that the Skipper had a supply of beer in his rucksack, he wondered if the man had kept food there as welL He pulled out the silver and the jewels and stacked them neatly against the rock wall. At the bottom of the rucksack were two cans of beer, a large unopened bar of chocolate, and a packet of biscuits wrapped in cellophane through which the water had not penetrated. Smiler had a breakfast of a small piece of chocolate, three biscuits, and a can of beer. He was careful about not eating too much food, but he had no worry about getting thirsty because he could always drink the loch water.
Sitting there, as naked as the day he was born, and finding the hard rock unkind on his bare bottom, Smiler began to sort things out.
Thing Number One was that at the moment he was safe and he had the silver and jewels. In two or three days, he knew, Laura and the Laird would be up. All he had to do was to sit things out until then … At least, he thought that was all. But when he began to think about that, then Thing Number Two came popping into his mind. In those two or three days the Skipper and the Chief Mate wouldn’t be idle. They would be looking for him. They would know he was hiding somewhere because they would know that he could never have swum from the island to the loch shore in this weather with a thumping heavy rucksack on his back. For certain they would make a thorough search of the island – and they wouldn’t be the only searchers. The moment they let Bacon out of the bedroom (might already have done so), then Bacon would come looking for him. And Bacon had a good nose and would certainly lead them to the cliffs. Holy Crikeys, he thought – Bacon could spoil everything! First thing you’ll know, Samuel M., he told himself, is that old Bacon will be sniffing away at that cliff crack up there and then barking his head off if he gets a scent of you … It mightn’t happen right away but sooner or later it would. And when it did, all the Skipper and the Chief Mate would want would be a pickaxe and crowbar to break their way in from the top.
Sitting cross-legged, munching at his biscuits and sipping his beer, Smiler gave the situation very hard thought. Time, he decided, was not on his side. He had to get help as soon as he could. The moment the Skipper saw anyone coming up to the island he knew the man would run for it – and to bring help to the island while this weather lasted could only be done in one way. Laura would never come up unexpectedly on a friendly visit while the weather was bad. But, if he could somehow get back to the castle when it was dark and hoist the flag to half-mast, then early the next morning someone on the mainland would see it, and maybe see it long before the Skipper noticed it. In fact the Skipper might never notice it. And then – suddenly Smiler felt more cheerful – it wouldn’t just be Laura who came up. It would be her father and brother, all anxious to know what the trouble was.
That’s it, Samuel M., Smiler told himself, that’s it. You got to sneak out tonight and get that flag up to half-mast.
While Smiler was in his cave, sorting things out and planning his future movements, the Skipper and the Chief Mate were not idle. Billy Morgan, though he was a rogue and a villain, was far from being an unintelligent man – and his intelligence was spurred now by the thought of losing the wonderful load of swag which he had found in the castle.
So, for the whole of that morning, he searched the cliffs methodically and to help him he had Bacon. He made a rough collar and lead with the cord with which he had bound Smiler’s hands, and he worked Bacon slowly along the line of the cliffs and the rocks and boulders and gullies just below their crests before they fell away in sheer rock faces. It was hard work in the high wind and stinging rain but Billy Morgan kept at it until he had searched the whole cliff top again and again and again. Each time Billy Morgan and Bacon passed within a few feet of the cliff crack which let light into Smiler’s cave. But the slit was hidden in the crevice of two horizontal overlapping rocks and not visible to any passer-by. If the weather had been clear and windless Bacon would almost certainly have caught the scent of Smiler coming from the cave. But this day there was no hope of his doing so. The wind and rain tore along the brink of the cliffs sweeping all scent away.
In the end Billy Morgan realized that this was probably the reason for Bacon’s lack of success. But, if the weather wasn’t helping him in his search, he knew that so long as it lasted there was no hope of Smiler getting off the island. And the weather had become worse: The wind had strengthened to almost gale force and it was heavy with rain. Now and again from the surrounding hills there were long, rolling peals of thunder and vicious blue jabs of lightning.
Billy Morgan and the Chief Mate took turns for the rest of that day to stand watch on the length of cliff in case Smiler should come out of his hiding place. They wore old mackintoshes which they had found in the castle storeroom. While one was on watch the other ate, rested and got dry in the castle.
Down at the jetty the two boats had been made secure. The spark plug had been taken from the outboard motor and the oars of the Laird’s boat had been carried up to the castle and hidden. In addition, the Chief Mate had found a length of chain and a padlock and key in the storeroom. He had passed the chain round the centre thwart of the Laird’s boat and looped it around the centre thwart of their own boat, and then through an iron mooring ring in the jetty wall. Nobody could move the boats without unlocking the padlock or cutting the chain.
It was not until darkness fell that the two men gave up their shared vigil on the clifftop. They retired to the castle for the night where the peat fire in the great hall had been piled high so that they could dry off their wet clothes.
They made themselves comfortable with a glass of the Laird’s whisky each before the fire.
The Chief Mate said, ‘How long we goin’ to keep up this lark, Billy?’
Billy Morgan said, ‘Now don’t you start fussin’, Chiefy. So long as this weather lasts nobody’s comin’ up here. And as one what ’as done his time at sea I can tell you that it’s set for a couple of days at least. That lad’s a-hidin’ somewhere with all our tom-foolery from the nicest tickle that ever was. I ain’t givin’ that up until I have to. That lad’s only got a few biscuits and a piece of chocolate and growin’ lad
s have got demandin’ Auntie Nellies. If we can’t find ’im with the dog – then he’ll be out for food sooner than later. He won’t come out for nothin’ else – so we can both sleep in the kitchen tonight. That’s where all the grub is. And we’ll ’ave the dogs with us.’
‘But say we ’ave to give it up?’ said the Chief Mate.
‘Then we ’as to, Chiefy, and we’ll ’ave worked for over a month for no more than this bit of chicken feed.’ As he spoke he pulled Smiler’s money envelope from his pocket and slipped the notes out on to his knees.
‘How much?’ asked the Chief Mate.
Billy Morgan counted the notes and said, ‘ Little more than a pony … Hullo, what’s this?’ From among the notes Billy picked out a piece of folded paper. He spread it open and after a moment or two he said, ‘Well, well, who’d ’ave believed it? ’Ere, take a dekko at this.’
He handed the paper over to the Chief Mate and then leaned back in his chair. Staring at the ceiling he said aloud to himself, ‘Well, well … come the worse and you felt real nasty, Billy … then real nasty you could be … Yes, real nasty …’ He slowly began to chuckle to himself and it was not a very pleasant sound.
Late that afternoon it had grown so cold in the cave that Smiler had put on his partly dried clothes. To keep himself warm he did some exercises but they did not seem to help much. However, they did make him hungry, and by the time darkness came all his chocolate was gone and half the biscuits.
Flight of the Grey Goose Page 15
