by B. B.
He looked below. And that one glance nearly sent him tumbling out of the fir. His brothers were standing at the base of the tree, little pigmies, their faces like white scraps of paper. Tiny particles of bark dust dislodged by his exertions wavered downwards into the giddy pit beneath. The Blind Pool looked no bigger than a duck pond. Robin gasped, his head swimming.
On all sides, like a vast green bowl, stretched Brendon Chase. Beyond were the rolling fields and the sunlit Weald. The little farms were like toy farms. He could see Brendon Park and the big red house standing among its many terraces with the lake to one side of it.
Ugh! It was horrible!
He shut his eyes again and then began to come down, taking care not to crush the egg in his pocket against a bough. Descending a tall tree is worse than going up because you have to look where you are putting your feet. The return to earth was a nightmare, indeed that climb of Robin’s recurred for many years afterwards in the form of a terrible dream.
But eventually the worst was over, trees and bushes resumed their normal proportions and he no longer felt like a tiny fly perched on a precipice.
Down and down he came and at last he was at the final bough. His feet felt for the dead fir branch and the next moment he landed, both toes together, on the soft bracken. And what a sight he was! His knees and arms were red and raw, his eyes full of bits of bark and his face as black as the ground.
‘Let’s see the egg,’ said Big John eagerly; ‘do let’s see it!’ Robin put his hand in his pocket and drew out that round hard thing which had cost so much pluck and labour. There it lay, in the cup of his grimy claw, the loveliest treasure.
It was nearly round, with a white ground almost hidden by the most exquisite rich red-brown mottling.
‘Phew!’ gasped Big John. ‘What a beauty! Why didn’t you take the lot?’
‘Don’t be an ass,’ snapped Robin, ‘there were only two and, really, we shouldn’t have taken this one. But … after that climb I had to!’
He took up the egg and turned it over. Was there ever such a glorious prize as this honey buzzard’s egg?
‘My!’ gasped Robin in spite of himself. ‘But it was worth that awful climb.’
‘Why awful climb?’ asked Little John. ‘It was an easy tree, wasn’t it?’
‘Easy tree,’ replied Robin with scorn, ‘I’d like to see either of you go up there! I thought I should never do it. You can see for miles from the top – you can see Brendon and the Weald and the whole forest.’ Then he realized that his brothers, standing on the ground, could never visualize that staggering view, they could never guess what sickening agony he had been through up there in the pine top.
But there was a glow inside him which warmed him like a fire. He had overcome his cowardice and giddiness and by sheer pluck had won through. And this glorious egg had been worth it – it was a jewel beyond price. ‘Feels pretty heavy,’ said Big John who was holding it up to the light. ‘We’ll have a job to blow it.’
Robin took the egg. ‘Here, give it to me, you’ll break it. And if that happened,’ Robin glared at Big John, ‘ … why I believe I’d kill you!’
Overhead they heard the mewing cry once more and saw both birds come wheeling over the oaks. They circled round in wide circles, barely moving their strikingly barred and spotted wings.
Robin watched them and suddenly he felt rather a mean beast. Pity there had been only two eggs in the nest! But honey buzzards do not lay more than three at the most. Perhaps that was why they were so rare! He looked at the egg again in his hand. It was a shame to take it, a rotten shame! Up there in the pine top the true significance of his act had not been apparent. Yet it was such a beautiful egg and to once more undergo that frightful ordeal by height was unthinkable.
He held it up to the sun as Big John had done. If an egg is new laid it is semi-transparent. But this blotched and clouded egg was difficult to see through. It certainly felt queer. Then he shook it against his ear. Immediately he knew that all was well. There would be no need now to contemplate returning this treasure – it was addled! As he shook it he heard the ‘slop slop’ of liquid inside, a sure sign that it was rotten.
He heaved a deep sigh, a sigh of satisfaction and relief. It was as though he had been rewarded for his pluck by a kindly Providence. He need have no qualms now about robbing those wheeling birds, whose hold on existence was as precarious as his had been a few short minutes ago!
When they returned to camp they blew the prize. The smell was appalling, but the job was safely done. Robin still has that egg in his collection and whenever he looks at it the memory of his great ordeal returns.
A week after Robin Hood’s great climb, Big John came running into camp one morning, breathless with excitement. He had been out collecting firewood not far from the clearing when, so he said, he had heard a great humming noise and looking up he had seen a dark cloud of bees buzzing round the top of an old oak stump. ‘There’s millions of them,’ gasped Big John, ‘they’re swarming, just like Rumbold’s bees. Can’t we take the swarm?’ The others jumped up and hurried after him. In the glorious sunlight which flooded one of the many little forest clearings, Big John pointed to an oak stump. It was apparently hollow and all about its crown the bees darkened the sky like a miniature dust storm.
‘I’ll bet there’s some honey in that tree,’ said Big John, ‘if we could only get it out. Honey will keep for years and years if the combs aren’t broken. How grand it would be if we could get some!’
‘There goes the swarm,’ exclaimed Little John excitedly. ‘The old queen’s off and is taking her retainers with her. Let’s follow!’
‘Not a hope,’ said Robin, ‘they may go for miles across the forest until they swarm properly.’
But the bees did not go far. With a deep terrifying hum they passed over the clearing and all alighted on a sallow branch. Soon the great, brown, rather revolting looking ball of glistening insects began to weigh it down until it hung suspended, appearing not unlike a bulging shopping bag.
‘If only we had a hive to put them in!’ exclaimed Little John. ‘Can’t we make one?’
Robin was sitting deep in thought, watching the swarm as it hung there motionless.
‘I have it! Let’s make a straw hive like Rumbold’s; they’re easy to make. I saw him make one once.’
‘But we haven’t any straw!’
‘No, but we can find some long dried grass, there’s heaps of it along the rides. Come on!’
They soon found all the dead grass they required and they plucked armfuls of it. Robin began twisting it up into a thick rope, in the way he had seen Rumbold do at the Dower House. Soon they had a long length of it, firmly bound together. They coiled it round on itself, twisting it all the time, until they had made a sort of dome-shaped hat of hay. They bound each successive rope with cross lashings of briar and in a remarkably short time had constructed quite a professional looking hive.
‘Now we’ve made the beastly thing,’ observed Robin, ‘I expect when we get back to the clearing the bees will have gone.’ But they had not. The big glistening bag still hung suspended from the sallow, not five feet from the ground.
‘It’s all right,’ said Robin, who knew something of the ways of those mysterious little creatures who work so hard and live in such disciplined communities. ‘I don’t think they’ll go now. We’ll wait until a bit later, just when the sun’s getting low, and then we’ll take the swarm. But first we must decide where we’re going to have it. We mustn’t put it too near our tree. We’ll hide it away in a little open space somewhere, close by, where it will be handy to camp.’
With a little searching they found such a place within ten minutes’ walk of their oak, and there, as though it had been planned purposely, was an ash butt which made a natural table. It was a stump, some four feet in height, with a fairly even top and on this they decided to place the hive when they had taken the swarm.
Robin took a little of their precious sugar and, mixing it with water
, splashed the mixture inside the plaited grass hive. ‘That’s to make ’em feel at home,’ said Robin. ‘They always like the inside of the new hive smelling sweet.’ It now remained to get the bees and it took some courage to approach that glistening crawling bag. There was enough poison in those little creatures to kill the boys many times over.
But they had often seen Rumbold take a swarm and had even helped him, and had never been badly stung. So when the sun set, they spread Little John’s coat flat on the ground and placed the hive on top, raising the whole contraption a few inches on a levelled mound of loam.
They made a little door at the base of the hive and placed a flat piece of wood covered with a white handkerchief at the entrance, tilting it slightly so as to make a little ladder. Then, very carefully, Robin cut the branch above the swarm with his hunting knife, moving gently and smoothly as he had seen Rumbold do, and as gently the whole swarm was lowered to the spread coat in front of the ladder to the hive. The bees soon found this little bridge. First went the large queen and after her all her train. It took some while for all the bees to crawl inside, but they did so just as though they knew a house had been prepared for them. ‘I can’t think why they don’t fly off again,’ said Little John, ‘they’re awfully obliging little beasts.’
When at last darkness had come all the bees had retired to bed and they carried the hive – which boomed angrily within – to the little clearing and put it on the log. Robin was careful to leave a little ledge outside the entrance as an alighting board.
The coat was withdrawn very gingerly, but most of the bees had – as Robin had known they would – gone up under the dome of the nest.
Next morning when they visited it they found that the bees had already settled down in their new home and had begun work, flying in and out just like Rumbold’s bees in the orchard at home!
‘When shall we get some honey?’ asked Little John. ‘How long shall we have to wait for it?’
‘Well, we ought to get some honey in August. She’s an old queen and will lay plenty of eggs.’
‘What’s happened to the young queen?’ asked Little John, whose knowledge of the ways of bees was obviously sketchy.
‘Oh, she’s still in the original tree. That reminds me, chaps. We’ll have a look at the old nest. If only we could get inside that tree we should find pounds and pounds of honey!’
When they examined the oak stump carefully they saw that, as is usual in trees where honeybees hive, it was hollow. There was room for one person to stand inside the trunk and they could hear the humming of the hive above their heads. The wood seemed to be rotten so they hacked and poked until at last a lump of touchwood came away and several bees fell through from the nest above. One of them landed down Robin’s neck and promptly stung him.
If they were to take the honey they must be quick, for the bees up above were beginning to be suspicious. The boys quickly built a fire inside the tree and piled on sodden leaves and moss to make a dense white smoke. This was soon seen issuing from the top of the stump above their heads in a thick yellowy-blue spiral and the bees, unable to stand the blind choking reek, began to leave the nest and fly off to the surrounding trees. Many, quite stupefied, fell down inside the tree and Big John was stung three times on the head and neck.
When all had ceased to issue from the upper hole, Robin again assaulted the mass of rotten wood above his head. Suddenly it came away, crumbling, and there were the combs, one on top of the other in tiers, every one symmetrical and perfect, cemented to the inner skin of the oak stump. The upper combs were a rich brown, almost a mahogany, tint. ‘Those are the old combs,’ said Robin, who was now dislodging the golden treasure and passing it down to his brother outlaws. ‘The upper ones are always dark like that. These bees have been here for years and years. My gracious! There’s nearly half a hundredweight of honey in this stump.’ And indeed there was.
Even the old honey was as good as the new, though it had been there for ten years, possibly more.
Covered in bee stings and with honey all over their clothes, the outlaws went back to the clearing, carrying their spoils. They stored the combs in a large cavity in their oak tree and helped themselves whenever they felt inclined. There would be no more hankering for sweet things now. The forest had provided their sugar.
And as for the bees in the skip, they settled down well and would no doubt have provided the outlaws with another golden harvest in August had not some creature – Robin said it was a badger – broken open the hive one night and robbed them of every bee.
9. Bunting
The mystery of how Harold had escaped from the Dower House was quite baffling to Aunt Ellen and to the police. His bedroom door had been locked on the outside – had she not opened it herself that morning when he was due to return to school? – and close search below the window showed no trace of footmarks. Yet, somehow or another, he had got out of the house and, stranger still, had taken with him various commodities from the kitchen. Then, Sergeant Bunting concluded that his brothers had forced an entrance to the Dower House and it was they who had unlocked the bedroom door, and ransacked the kitchen cupboards.
He said as much to Aunt Ellen. Indeed, there seemed no other explanation. A search of all the windows and doors revealed no clue to the way the boys had got into the house. The coal chute had not been used for years and nobody suspected it was there. Hidden away under the shrubberies it was quite invisible, though I admit that Sergeant Bunting, had he been a little more thorough, would certainly have found it. But there we are. It was not found, and the mystery was a baffling one to everyone concerned.
Naturally, since the boys had been observed in High Wood, a very close watch was kept upon it and the adjacent covers. But the fugitives seemed to have disappeared as mysteriously as they had arrived.
By now Aunt Ellen had ceased to worry. She had become resigned and went about with the air of a martyr. Of course, since the chase at High Wood, the whole affair had become big news, not only in the local county paper, but in the London papers as well.
Various suggestions were offered in the readers’ columns for the capture of the boys, some very original.
The Morning Star – with an eye to self-advertisement – then offered a substantial reward for any information which led to the discovery of the boys and this set every amateur detective on the ‘qui vive’. The Woodman’s Arms complained of lack of custom. Many of its regular patrons were out scouring the fields and woods. Sir William, in despair, went to the Riviera and tried to forget it all.
Sergeant Bunting, however, anxious to justify his reputation as a smart man, haunted the Dower House after dark. He decided that if the boys had come back for supplies they would come again, and it was only a matter of watching and waiting.
Many a weary vigil he spent doubled up in the shrubberies and in various stable lofts, his only companions owls, rats and mice. The days passed, and no word was brought by any of the voluntary searchers, and after a while the bar of the Woodman’s Arms began to fill again at night, and other topics than ‘Them Dower ’Ouse Boys’ were discussed.
As for Sergeant Bunting, his name was mud. Everyone said it just showed how powerless were the police and how easy it was for criminals to hide. The boys had, of course, committed no crime in law, unless Rumbold wished to press a charge of stealing, which was of course untrue. The boys had not ‘stolen’ the rifle, they had ‘borrowed’ it and honourably intended to return it as soon as they became tired of living in the forest.
They could perhaps be arrested for vagabondage, for loitering even, without visible means of subsistence, if what Aunt Ellen said was true – that they had no money with them. As a matter of fact Little John had fifteen shillings in silver in his purse, so that charge would not hold good in law. It was very complicated.
However, they were minors, and Sir William, who was a magistrate, said he would like to have the boys well birched. He really meant it.
Truth to say, Aunt Ellen was a little relieved
when she heard the news of the boys being seen in High Wood. At any rate they were well and had come to no harm. Of course it was very wrong of them to run away like that – in fact wrong was not a strong enough word – but she was nevertheless relieved.
The month of June dragged on in baking heat. Never had there been such a year for the hay. It was a record crop. Rain at nights had been ideal. And as the labourers took their midday meals under hedge and bank the topic of the boys’ disappearance was still on every tongue.
‘They’ll be caught in ’Igh Wood, you mark my words.’
‘I reckon they ain’t there at all, but ’iding in some of the lofts up at the Dower ’Ouse.’
Nobody thought of the Chase … nobody, that is, save Sergeant Bunting.
Though Brendon Chase was off Bunting’s beat he nightly contacted PC Cornes at Martyr Bar, four miles distant from Cherry Walden. PC Cornes, a cadaverous, melancholy man, had, on Bunting’s suggestion, been snooping round the Chase. He had been to see Smokoe Joe the charcoal burner, but Smokoe had told him he’d seen nobody in the Chase, ‘blame him if he had,’ neither had he heard any shots or seen signs of fires. This was not surprising. Smokoe was getting on, his sight was not very good and his hearing worse. A whole tribe of outlaws might have been encamped within half a mile of him and he would not know it. He did not wander much from his little shack of pine logs, though every Saturday he trudged the three and a half miles into Cheshunt Toller, the nearest village – and braved the taunts of the village boys. There he purchased his meagre supplies. He lived alone with only a half spaniel, half terrier for company – if you did not count his hens and pigs. He drew his water from an old well behind the shack and occasionally he shot a rabbit or a pheasant when he wanted something for the pot. In hard weather he had even bagged a deer or two; these he sold to a butcher in Cheshunt Toller, one Samuel Snigg.
He was a wizened, whiskered little creature, who suffered from elephantiasis of the nose. At all seasons of the year he wore a leather jerkin, which he kept together with a broad leather belt about his middle, and wore a funny conical old felt hat shaped like an apple pudding.
