the Camel's Hump of Doom

by Paul Cooper

  When the enormous cloud of dust settled at last, there was no sign that any of it had ever been there. The pyramid, the pharaoh and his mummies were all gone. Apart from the buzz of Peregrine’s plane, silence returned to the desert.

  ‘Where do you think they’ve gone?’ asked Howard.

  ‘Who knows?’ shrugged Tammy. ‘But at least Nokankumin’s with all his mummies.’

  ‘So who wants an ice lolly?’ piped up Curly.

  A penguin poked its head out of the hatch. ‘You still haven’t paid for the one you’ve got, pal,’ it said.

  Up overhead, Peregrine threw the Sopwith Camel into a victory roll.

  Before the PiPs could leave, they waited for the Camel Island police so they could hand over the members of the Ancient Order of Nokankumin.

  ‘We’ve waited all our lives to bring the pharaoh back,’ said Cam-Ho-Tep bleakly. ‘What are we going to do now? Our lives have no purpose.’

  Tammy thought this over. ‘You probably ought to take up a new hobby,’ she said. ‘You can think of one when you’re in jail.’

  Now that Brian had looked at his head, Pete was feeling OK again (although he refused to have any bandages on it in case they ruined his hairstyle).

  ‘There’s just one thing I don’t understand,’ said Pete. ‘Who was that mysterious pig in the desert? The one who showed us the biplane?’

  Brian gave him a wide-eyed stare as he put away his medical kit. There were hundreds of things about this mission that the PiPs medic didn’t understand.

  ‘I’ve got another question,’ said Tammy. ‘How did you even get that old pile of junk in the air?’

  She pointed across the sand to where the biplane lay. Once again it looked like a total wreck. There was no way something in that condition could ever budge the slightest bit, let alone fly across the desert to the rescue.

  ‘Maybe we could ask the nice lady,’ piped up Curly, slurping his eleventh ice lolly. ‘She’s over there!’

  The other pigs looked towards the dune the young trainee was pointing at. The robed pig was there, looking impossibly tall with the setting sun behind her. She pulled back the hood and smiled at the PiPs for just a moment. The sun at her back seemed to shine even brighter, dazzling the pigs. When their eyes adjusted, the mysterious figure was gone.

  ‘That was weird,’ said Tammy.

  Brian just blinked. He looked again at the setting sun, and then shook his head in disbelief. Sometimes it was better to say nothing, and so he did not tell the others that the pig on the dune had looked exactly like the hieroglyphic symbol of the ancient pig-headed goddess Hamm.

  EPILOGUE

  While the others flew back to HQ, Peregrine dropped Howard off on Pig Island. The two brothers shook trotters for the first time in years.

  ‘So what are you going to do now?’ beamed Peregrine fondly. ‘You can hardly put your head back in the sand after all that, can you?’

  Howard bristled. ‘What, I suppose I ought to grow a moustache like yours and swan about in the skies, should I?’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ said Peregrine. ‘You could never grow a fine moustache like mine.’

  ‘Only a fat old walrus would want to grow a moustache like that.’

  And so on.

  Before they parted, the last words Howard said were, ‘Big Nose’. The last words Peregrine said were, ‘Chicken Legs’. It was an odd way for brothers to get on, but it was the way of the Oinks-Gruntingtons.

  The other members of the PiPs were happy to return to the steady drizzle of Snout Island.

  Only Brian still looked dazed after everything that had happened. ‘There was a scientific explanation for it all, of course there was,’ he mumbled to himself as they went inside. ‘No such thing as ancient gods or magic. It probably has something to do with black holes causing time and space to bend and … Yes, that’s it! It wasn’t magic, it was just PHYSICS at work!’

  As he rambled on, he didn’t hear the footsteps behind him. Something tapped him on the shoulder and he turned to look right into the bandaged face of another mummy.

  ‘WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!’ yelled Brian, the pig of science. He tore out of the common room faster than a cheetah on jet-powered roller skates.

  ‘What’s his problem?’ asked Lola. ‘I only wanted to show him my mummy costume for the party.’ She did a little twirl. ‘See – you can’t notice my spot now with this costume!’

  The other pigs were at the window, watching as Brian charged across the lawn in front of PiPs HQ. He was going so fast that he tripped and went sprawling, right into a puddle. He got up slowly and looked down at his mud-soaked trousers.

  Tammy gave the others a knowing look. ‘He needs to change his trousers now. See? Mystic Moggy’s horoscopes are always right!’

  Tammy was still chuckling about this fifteen minutes later when she had to nip to the loo. That’s when she stopped laughing.

  ‘Hello!’ she shouted. ‘There’s no toilet paper in here! Can anyone hear me? HELLO!’

  Find the words opposite hidden in this grid.

  (Look carefully – some may be backwards or diagonal!)

  * Turn to page 150 for the answers.