David gave a great kick with his left foot to make sure it wasn’t
touching anything. Certainly it touched nothing, but he felt the air
stream swiftly by him. Then he kicked with his right foot, and the same
thing happened.
‘I do believe I’m flying,’ said he aloud. ‘Now there’s a hedge coming.
If I am really remembering how to fly, and if I kick downwards, I shall
get over it.’
He made a sort of spring in the air, and bounded high over the hedge
without even touching its topmost twigs.
‘It’s all quite easy,’ he shouted. ‘I must remember carefully how it’s
done. You run, and then you get on the tips of your toes, and then you
run a little more, and then you’re up. If you want to get higher you
kick downwards. And I suppose if you want to go downwards, you just take
a sort of little header.’
This answered perfectly. He had been learning to swim lately, and made a
bob with his head, and spread his arms in front of him. Next moment he
was within a foot or two of the ground, and kicked downwards again to
bring himself up.
‘Now I’ll float,’ he said, ‘and see what happens.’
He spread his arms and legs out like a starfish, drew a long breath, and
looked at the sky, as his father had taught him to do. This, too,
succeeded, and he found himself motionless in the air, perhaps drifting
a little in the morning wind.
‘I’ll go higher now,’ he said. ‘I’ll just wander up to the top of the
elm trees, and see what’s going on there.’
[Illustration: How Canon and Mrs. Rook quarrelled over a stick]
He had calculated his distance pretty well for a beginner, and a few
downward kicks in the air brought him brushing against the topmost
boughs of the elm that stood on the far side of the lake beyond the
garden. It seemed to be spring-time, for there was a great commotion
among the rooks, as he pushed the young green leaves aside and looked
in. A pair of them were quarrelling as to which way a particular stick
ought to be laid, one wanting it laid crossways, the other straight.
They had lived for years before they came here in a cathedral close, and
were always known as Canon and Mrs. Rook. But when they saw him, they
stopped arguing.
‘Why, bless me, you’ve remembered it at last,’ said Canon Rook. ‘And it
doesn’t make you feel giddy, does it?’
‘Not a bit,’ said David. ‘It’s the loveliest thing that ever happened.
Why didn’t you tell me before how to do it?’
‘Bless you, we were telling you all day long,’ said Mrs. Rook, ‘but you
always pretended to forget.’
Suddenly it struck David that he had known how to fly all his life, but
had merely forgotten.’
‘Why, of course, I knew all along,’ he said. ‘And shall I always be able
to fly now?’
‘Until the next time that you forget. But boys _are_ forgetful
creatures, you know,’ said Mrs. Rook.
‘So are girls,’ said David. ‘But I won’t forget this time. And may I try
to pass my flying certificate at once?’
‘Why, certainly,’ said Canon Rook, ‘if we can get a committee together.
Birds are a bit busy now that it’s building time, but it’s not every day
that a boy comes up for his flying certificate, and I shouldn’t wonder
if they came. I’ll go and call them.’
He flew up to the very topmost twig of the elm, and balanced himself
there.
‘Urgent call—caw, caw,’ he shouted. ‘A young gentleman has just come up
here to try for his flying certificate, if the committee will kindly
attend. Urgent—caw, caw, caw,’ he repeated.
Instantly there was a chirping and calling of birds on all sides, from
the other elms, and from the fields below, and the bushes and the lake.
A pair of brown owls were the first to arrive from the ivy in the church
tower, with their spectacles, without which they cannot see by day. Then
came a cloud of finches: bull-finches, green-finches, haw-finches, and
chaf-finches; and wood pigeons came cooing in, and a couple of jackdaws,
who tried to talk to David in his own tongue, and thought they could do
it very well indeed, though all they could say was ‘Jack’! Jays came
screaming out of the wood, with nice fresh paint on the blue streaks on
their wings, and woodpeckers tapped to know if they had come to the
right elm, and there were nightingales learning the new tunes for the
year, and blackbirds, already getting a little hoarse, singing the
February tunes. Herons came clattering up from the lake, and teal and
wild duck, and moorhens tried to join them, but they couldn’t fly as
high as this, and only flapped about the lake, saying ‘Hear, hear! Hear,
hear!’ A pheasant with burnished copper plates on his back, rocketed up,
and a woodcock or two, flying ‘flip-flap, flip-flap,’ and swifts and
martens cut circles and loops in the air. There was a nightjar who
opened his mouth very wide, and made a sort of gargling noise instead of
singing, and linnets, and robins which hadn’t finished dressing, and
were still buttoning their red waistcoats, and, like a jewel flung
through the early morning sunlight, a kingfisher came and perched on
David’s shoulder. Larks left the tussocks of grass in the meadow below,
and carolled their way upwards, and wild-eyed hawks sat a little apart,
for fear they should be too much tempted at the sight of so many plump
birds all assembled together. So they sat on another branch, and shut
their mouths very tight, as if they were eating caramels, remembering
that when a flying-committee is assembled it is considered very bad form
to eat your fellow-members. There were freshly varnished starlings, and
speckled thrushes, and hundreds of rude noisy sparrows, and, long before
all the committee were assembled, half the elms in the rookery were
crowded with birds, for the passing of a human candidate was a very
unusual event indeed, and nobody wanted to miss it.
David felt rather frightened when the test for the birds’ flying
certificate was explained to him, for, of course, that is a much stiffer
examination than anything that happens to the young gentlemen in the
flying corps. Not only had he got to do all the clumsy man-tricks which
they perform with their aeroplanes, in which they don’t really fly, and
are only flown with, but some bird-tricks as well, and to get his
certificate he had to satisfy every single one of the committee, which
now consisted of several thousand people. But Canon Rook, who, as he had
summoned the committee, was chairman of it, told him not to be afraid.
‘You can remember all right,’ he said, ‘and besides, each bird who sets
a question will show you first what you’ve got to do. Caw! Silence,
please.’
But it took a long time to get silence this morning, for nesting was
going on, and all the ladies were talking about the different linings
for nests, and the best way of stitching and hemming them. Some said
‘mud,’ and some said ‘feathers,’ and some said ‘bits of things,’ and the
kingfisher said, ‘Give me fish-bones.’ However, the birds round Canon
Rook began calling ‘Silence’ too, and by degrees this spread until the
whole committee was calling ‘Silence’ at the tops of their voices, and
making far more noise than ever. But this was a step in the right
direction, and soon the hubbub died down, and Canon Rook spoke again.
‘The candidate is David Blaize, a boy still quite unfledged, except on
the top of his head,’ he said, ‘and his age is six.’
‘Rather old!’ cooed a wood pigeon.
‘Yes, but it’s better late than never,’ said Canon Rook, ‘and I’m sure
we’re all very pleased that he has remembered how to fly at last. He’ll
probably be a bit stiff from age, and you mustn’t expect too much. He
will now please jump off, loop the loop twice, and return to his seat.
Caw!’
David had often seen the airmen doing that, and he jumped off the bough
and made two very neat loops without any difficulty, and returned again,
brushing the hair out of his eyes.
‘Right, O!’ screamed the whole of the committee.
‘Spinning nose-dive!’ said Canon Rook.
David remembered that too. You had to put your head down, and spin like
a dead leaf on a windless day. It made him a little giddy, but the
committee were pleased with him, and only the owl said that his
conscience would not allow him to pass that, since he did not call it
flying at all, but falling. So all the rest chattered and screamed and
sang at him till his spectacles fell off, which made his conscience get
quite confused and forget what it wouldn’t allow him to do. Then
followed the tail-slip, in which David stretched out his legs in front
of him and held his toes in his fingers, so that he sat down in the air
and slid backwards, just as if there wasn’t a chair there when he had
expected one.
That finished the first part, and then all the committee began talking
at once in order to settle what bird-tricks he should have to do. They
were inclined to let him off rather easily, because it was considered a
sporting thing for a boy to attempt the bird-test at all, and they made
up their three thousand minds that, if he did one bird-trick perfectly,
that would be enough. Then, when all the birds had shouted ‘Silence’
until they were quite hoarse, Canon Rook cleared his throat and spoke.
‘The bird-test is as follows—caw,’ he said. ‘The candidate will attempt
to do the lark-trick, starting from the ground and returning to it
again. Show him what he’s got to do, one of you larks.’
A lark dropped from the tree and crouched in a tussock of grass. Then it
jumped off the ground and began mounting in a perpendicular line, rising
very slowly and singing as it went.
When it had got to the top of its flight it hovered there, and slowly
descended, still singing. About ten feet from the ground it stopped
singing, and dropped plump into the tussock from which it had risen.
‘Candidate, please,’ said Canon Rook.
‘Must I sing too?’ asked David.
‘Of course that’s part of it,’ said the lark, still rather breathless.
‘Any one could do it without singing.’
‘Strictly speaking, it’s not a singing competition,’ said Canon Rook.
‘Can you sing?’ he asked David.
David remembered how Noah had offered him a post to sing in opera in the
ark, evenings and matinées, and, though no doubt birds were a more
musical audience, he felt that it would be untrue, after that, to say he
couldn’t sing.
‘Yes, I can sing,’ he said. ‘At least Noah thought so.’
‘I think he’d better have a try first,’ said the nightingale. ‘It would
be awful if he sang very badly all the time, and we had to bear it till
he got down again, as the committee mayn’t interrupt a candidate in the
middle of a test.’
‘Sing a few bars, David,’ said Canon Rook.
It had been the tune of ‘Rule Britannia’ sung to the words,
‘Never do, never do,
Never, never, never do,’
that had pleased Noah so much, and David began to sing them again. But
he had hardly sung the first line before the nightingale and the
blackbirds and the thrushes and the other professional musicians all
turned quite pale and swooned. They were gradually restored by being
fanned with their friends’ wings, but they still trembled, and were
floppity. Other birds were merely in shrieks of laughter, and David felt
very much confused, till a corncrake perched on his knee and said:
‘You sang excellently, quite excellently: don’t mind them.’
But it was unanimously decided that David should not sing while he did
the lark-flight, and he jumped off the bough, and stood in a
privet-bush, which was to do duty for a tussock of grass, as he was too
big for a tussock. In order to make his performance more life-like, it
was settled that all the larks should sing together as he mounted and
descended, stopping when he was three feet from the ground, for he was
too heavy to drop from ten feet.
‘One, two, caw, three, off,’ said Canon Rook.
David gave a little spring in the air as he had seen the lark do, and
began treading air with his feet, and beating gently downwards with his
outspread fingers, and as he took flight it sounded in that still bright
air as if all the larks in the world had begun to sing. He found he
mounted rather too quickly at first, and so ceased treading air, using
his hands alone. Slowly he mounted and the music of the larks entered
his heart and made him feel happier than he had known it was possible to
be. He gasped with pleasure as he rose, like when you sit in your bath
on a cold evening, and pour the first spongeful of hot water down your
back, only now it was spring and singing and flying that tingled all
over him. He hung high above the tree-tops in the blue, and the earth
was like one flower beneath him. Long he hovered there, and then with a
sigh began slowly to descend. There was dead silence in the tree-tops
where the committee sat, except for the singing of the larks, but he
knew that hundreds of bright eyes were watching him, to see if he was
really flying as larks fly.
[Illustration: David does the lark-flight]
At length the topmost twigs of the privet-tree hit his foot, and he
folded his hands across his chest and dropped.
Instantly the most tremendous hubbub of bird voices broke out, and the
clapping of thousands of wings.
‘That’ll do,’ they all shouted. ‘It’s silly to have any more
examination, especially since we’re all so busy. He’s a real lark, and
as a lark’s a bird, he’s a bird-boy, and he can fly just as larks fly,
so give him his certificate. Well done, David,’ and a whole cloud of
birds began settling all over him.
‘Lift him up,’ they all chirped. ‘Don’t fly, David; we’re going to carry
you. Keep your legs and arms still, or we’ll peck you. Carry him up.
One, two, three—away we go. Lord, what a weight a boy is!’
Some took hold of his hair with their beaks, others grasped his clothes
in their claws, others took hold of his bootlaces, and with David lying
back, laughing partly from joy, and partly because they tickled, they
hoisted him up into the top bough of the elm again.
Canon Rook had already got out the flying certificate, and was signing
his name to it, and when he had signed it he flapped his wings over it
till the ink was dry.
‘David Blaize,’ he said. ‘I have the pleasure of presenting you with a
first-class bird-flying certificate. The meeting is adjourned.’
‘Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah,’ sang all the committee, and they rose in the
air together, with the noise as of a gale blowing. ‘Good-bye, David
Blaize, you bird-boy. Don’t forget your flying. Practise every day, old
man!’
‘Caw—about that stick,’ said Mrs. Rook. ‘I want it crossways, and
crossways I’ll have it, or I’ll knock down the whole thing! Caw, caw,
caw!’
[Illustration: The birds carry up David
to get his flying certificate]
David saw he was not wanted any more; besides he belonged to them now,
and understood how busy they were. So he put his precious certificate in
his pocket and flew off, like a swift, without moving arms or legs and
only balancing and turning in the air. You just had to move your head
first, and all the rest followed. You _thought_ what you wanted to do,
and you were doing it. . . .
He spent an hour or two in the air, and then, as his arms were getting a
little stiff with the new sort of exercise, and he was thirsty, he
swooped down to the edge of the lake to get a drink and have a rest. As
he touched ground a moorhen came out from under the bank, in an awful
fright at a boy being there whom he hadn’t seen coming. But then he
opened his red mouth, laughed, and came splashing and flying back again.
‘It’s only the new bird-boy, my dear,’ he said to his wife. ‘I didn’t
recognise him at first. Tired of flying, David?’
David laughed.
‘Only just for the minute,’ he said. ‘Oh, I’m having the nicest time I
ever had since I came through the blue door. I am so thirsty, too!’
He lay down on the bank, with his head over the edge, and was scarcely
surprised to find that the lake tasted like the most delicious lemonade,
with ice and plenty of sugar. Then he lay back in the long grass, and
listened to the birds talking, and the sap humming in the growing herbs.
Just in front of him was the lake, and beyond that the garden of his own
home and the house. But he was no longer afraid that he was back in the
ordinary world again, though he was in the ordinary places. He had gone
through the blue door, and his eyes and ears were opened to thousands of
things he had never seen before in those familiar places. All the
colours were infinitely brighter than they had ever been, and there were
new sounds in the air, and new scents.
It was puzzling to know what time of the year it was (not that it
mattered). Birds were building, so it should be spring, and yet the sun
was as hot as any summer sun he had ever known, and some of the trees
had turned red, as happened in the autumn, and the steep hill beyond the
house was covered with dazzling white snow, so that he could toboggan if
he liked. It seemed as if all the nicest things of all the seasons were
gathered together into this one morning, and he wanted to look at them
all, and explore the places he knew so well, which looked so much more
lovely than he had ever known them. So presently, when he had rested, he
flew across the lake in the manner of the moorhen, with his feet
dabbling in the water, and landed on the lawn at the other side.
The flower-beds were absolutely covered with blossoms; not a trace of
the dull brown earth was to be seen. Then a breeze came up from the
lake, and set the flowers swinging on their stalks. But they did not
swing quite in the ordinary way, for the stalks stopped still, and only
the flowers themselves swung. Farther and farther they swung, this way
and that, and then the sound of bells began to come out of them. The
Canterbury bells and the campanulas began, because they were
professional bells, but by degrees everything else joined in, lilies and
roses and hollyhocks and lupins, and love-lies-a-bleeding, and every
other flower that you can imagine, for they were all in blossom together
this morning. Little tiny chimes, like the note of musical boxes, came
from the violets, so soft that David had to put his ear among their
leaves to hear them, and the loudest notes of all seemed to come from
the sunflowers, but they were more like the clashing of big golden
cymbals.
David listened a long time in a sort of ecstasy of pleasure, and then
this pealing got somehow into his bones, and he had to do something
joyful too. But as he could not make a bell of himself, he must throw
himself into the air, and poise like a hawk hovering, flapping his arms
all the time, and stopping in the same place, and then he skimmed away
with arms quite still and stretched taut, and flew over the roof of his
house so close that, the tips of his fingers touched one of the
chimney-stacks. Then for a long while he made an eagle-flight, going in
wide circles, without moving his arms, and mounting higher and higher
till the earth grew small and dim below him, and the sound of the
bell-flowers died away, and he seemed to be the only thing that existed
in this great blue desert of air. Of all his adventures since he came
through the blue door, this was the most delightful.
The sun had got low when he descended to earth again, and the flowers
had ceased ringing in the garden-beds. Birds were still moving in the
bushes, but none was flying now, for it was getting quite dark, and
David felt that both the desire and the power of flying were leaving
him, as was only natural when night came on. Once or twice he ran and
jumped off the ground, but he could no longer tread the air properly: it
was as if his feet broke through it. Or when he tried to mount slowly,
like the lark, just dabbling the air down with his hands, his hands went
through it instead of pressing it below him. But he was sure that he
remembered the way to do it still, though it didn’t seem quite as easy
as it had this morning. However, if he was a bird-boy, he had to fly at
bird-times, and not at night, and after falling rather heavily on the
gravel-path, when he tried to do the swift-trick, he thought it better
to give it up till morning.
He was not in the least sleepy, and he was sure that there were plenty
of other adventures awaiting him. The only question was in which
direction he should go to look for them. But his flying had made him
thirsty again, and as the lake was so close it was worth while going
down to it, to have another drink of that delicious lemonade before it
got absolutely dark. So again he lay down on the bank, and was just
going to drink, when he heard a tramp of feet, and, looking round, saw
that the long gravel walk just behind him was entirely lined with
soldiers; at least they were standing in two lines like soldiers, and
they looked as if they had been put there on purpose, as soldiers do,
not like a queue of people taking tickets, who look as if they had come
there by accident. Then again in front of them, at the end of the line,
was standing a very stout man in khaki, with a lot of ribands across
him, so that if he was not a Brigadier-General, he certainly ought to
have been one. Furthermore, on the lawn behind them were rows and rows
of tents and a band was playing.
So David came to the conclusion that these were soldiers, and that he
himself must be something, but he didn’t at present know what it was. It
began to get clearer in a minute.
The Brigadier-General saluted, and came down the bank towards David, who
got up at once, and tried to forget he was thirsty. It was evident that
something was going to happen without his having to go in search of it.
Half-way down the bank, the Brigadier-General suddenly tripped over his
own spurs, which were on the toes of his boots, and began rolling down
into the lake. He fell into it with a loud splash, and all the soldiers
behind began laughing.
‘Silence in the ranks!’ said David very grandly, turning round, for he
knew that he must be somebody tremendous to have a Brigadier-General
salute him.
There was a loud coughing sound from the lake, and a water-logged voice
spluttered out:
‘If your Grace would have the kindness to extend to me the tip of your
Field-Marshal’s baton, I should easily be able to get to land without
the least risk of pulling your Grace in.’
That shed a fresh light on the situation, for David now knew that he was
either a duke or an archbishop, and was also a field-marshal. He
couldn’t think of any archbishops who were field-marshals, but the names
of the Duke of Marlborough and the Duke of Wellington instantly occurred
to him as fitting the situation.
‘I suppose I must be one of them,’ thought David, ‘unless I’m just
Field-Marshal the Duke of Blaize, and if I was I should surely have
known it before. But let me get my poor Brigadier-General out first.’
He found that he had under his arm a long pole like a fishing-rod, which
was almost certainly his baton, and so he tied his handkerchief to the
end of it, and began fishing for the Brigadier-General. It had got quite
dark by now, and he could only just see a line of foam where the
Brigadier-General was splashing about. Then there came a tug at his
handkerchief, which bent his baton nearly double.
‘Oh, I got a bite then,’ said David excitedly.
‘So did I, your Grace,’ said the Brigadier-General. ‘The fishes are
biting my toes something awful. But there are spurs on them, and I think
I’ve caught a pike.’
David fished again with renewed vigour, for now there was a chance of
catching a brigadier-general and a pike all at one go, which was very
sumptuous fishing.
‘Look here,’ he called out, ‘if I catch you, and you’ve caught a pike,
it’s me who’s caught the pike, isn’t it?’
‘That’ll be settled by court-martial, your Grace,’ said the voice from
the darkness. ‘Do put your baton a little lower.’
David felt very much inclined to say that he wouldn’t go on fishing
for him at all, unless he (the Brigadier-General) promised that
he (David) should be considered to have caught not only him (the
Brigadier-General), but also that he (David) should be allowed to claim
the capture of the pike which he (the Brigadier-General) said that he
(the Brigadier-General) had caught. But it was so difficult to express
all this in terse soldierly language, that he decided to catch the
Brigadier-General first, and settle the rest of it afterwards. Besides,
if the Brigadier-General sank, David would have caught neither, and
could very likely be court-martialled himself.
So he lowered the point of his baton, and soon got a better bite, and
began towing him to land.
‘Shall I gaff him, your Grace,’ asked another officer, saluting David
with both hands at once.
‘No, I’m going to catch him all by myself,’ said David, remembering how
the footman had helped him to catch a pike once, and how it hadn’t been
at all the same thing as having caught it unassisted. ‘Get back into
barracks at once.’
David brought his Brigadier-General alongside, and caught hold of
something slippery which wriggled.
‘That’s the pike,’ said a choking voice from the other end of the
Brigadier-General. ‘Lend a hand, your Grace, to a drowning soldier.’
David kept tight hold of the pike with one hand, put his baton over his
shoulder, and began walking up the bank. The Brigadier-General came up
out of the water with a loud pop, just as if a cork had been drawn.
‘That’s the ginger-beer, your Grace,’ he said.
‘Is it? It was lemonade this morning,’ said David. ‘This is an awfully
strong pike. Turn up the light, somebody.’
[Illustration: David rescues the Brigadier-General]
‘That’s all very well,’ said a discontented voice from the ranks. ‘But
where is the blooming light? This is the darkest guard of honour I ever
honoured.’
‘There’s a door in the ground,’ said David, being jumped about by the
pike. ‘It’s either water or light, but I can’t remember which.’
‘I’ve had enough water for the present,’ said the Brigadier-General,
shaking himself like a dog. He began with his head, and shook all down
his body, and finished up with his sword.
There was a good deal of conversation going on in the ranks, and David
determined to show himself an iron disciplinarian when the pike had
finished bouncing him about. He kept tripping up in his sword, and his
cocked hat, which he knew he had on his head, kept coming forward over
his eyes, and rows on rows of medals jingled on his breast. The pike, of
which he was resolved not to let go, had dragged him away into the
flower-bed, and every now and then a bell jingled from the sleeping
flowers.
‘Oh, do let go,’ said a whisper near him. ‘I’m not a pike at all. How
can you be so silly? I’m Miss Muffet’s spider, and I was just skating
along over the water, when that stupid spur caught me. I’m keeping her
waiting, and I hate keeping a lady waiting.’
David let go at once, and he heard the spider canter away. At the same
moment a stream of light shot up from the door in the ground, and
putting his cocked-hat straight, he marched back to the guard of honour,
with his baton, on the end of which fluttered his handkerchief, over his
shoulder. He certainly had sailor-trousers on, but he was so covered
with medals that he could not see what sort of coat he was wearing. It
buttoned close round his neck, and he had an awful fear that it was the
coat he had worn when errand-boy to the Bank. But there was no time to
attend to that now, for his guard of honour were all yawning and looking
bored, and his Brigadier-General was saluting, propping his elbow up
with the other hand.
‘If it will please your Grace to inspect the guard of honour,’ he said,
‘we can get to work on the plan of campaign, for there isn’t a moment to
waste!’
‘Attention!’ said David.
The Brigadier-General poked him in the side.
‘They are at attention,’ he whispered.
‘I must have much more attention than that,’ said David, beginning his
inspection. ‘What’s this man doing with a toasting fork instead of a
rifle, for instance?’
‘If you please, your Grace, I was cooking sausages for your Grace’s
supper, when I was ordered out, and I hadn’t time to put down my
toasting fork nor nothing. It’s cruel hard if a poor soldier——’
‘Silence in the ranks!’ said David.
[Illustration: Field-Marshal David inspects his guard of honour]
The next one had got a croquet-mallet on his shoulder, the next a
golf-club, and on the shoulder of the next was sitting a grey parrot,
who pretended to sneeze loudly as David passed. The next had an
umbrella, the next a pair of tongs; then came a judge in a wig, and a
newspaper man who had folded a copy of the _Times_ into a sort of lance.
Altogether they were the oddest kind of guard of honour that David could
imagine, and reminded him of some new sort of happy families. But then
they might all be thinking that he was an equally curious sort of
Field-Marshal, and so it was best, for the present, to pretend that
everything was in order.
He came to the end of this very extraordinary line, and didn’t know what
to do next. But his Brigadier-General whispered to him, ‘Say something
nice, your Grace, and dismiss them. They know what to do.’
‘It’s all extremely nice,’ said David in a loud firm voice, ‘and I
congratulate you on your fit and soldierly appearance. You are all
dismissed. Good-night.’
The Brigadier-General gave a little sob.
‘They will all remember your Grace’s beautiful words till their dying
day,’ he said, as the men fell out. ‘I dare say they won’t have long to
wait for _that_,’ he added.
‘Oh, do you expect a battle soon?’ asked David.
‘Your Grace shall see the maps that show the movement of the enemy for
yourself,’ said the Brigadier-General.
All the time they were threading their way through the tents on the
lawn, and tripping over ropes and stepping into saucepans, and hitting
their toes against shells, for the light from the door in the ground had
gone out, and it was impossible to see what there was, or where you were
going. The Brigadier-General’s spurs got constantly caught in
tent-ropes: when this happened he cut the rope with his sword, and the
tent fell down flat. David thought this was rather a high-handed and
hasty proceeding, but he daren’t say much for fear of betraying some
desperate ignorance, for it might be the privilege of Brigadier-Generals
to cut any ropes they pleased.
Presently they came to a large square tent brilliantly lit inside, so
that David could read the notice-board outside it, which said:
‘Head and tail quarters of his Grace,’ so he knew that this was his, and
entered.
The tent smelled strongly of sausages, and no wonder, for one of the two
tables was covered with them. The other was covered with maps. The rest
of the furniture consisted of a small camp-bed, and a dressing-table, on
which swords and tooth-brushes and medals and soap and bootlaces and
cocked hats were lying about in the utmost confusion. A fire was burning
brightly against the wall of the tent, which looked rather dangerous to
David. It had already burned a hole right through the canvas behind it.
‘I think that fire had better be put out,’ he said to the
Brigadier-General; ‘it can’t be very safe.’
The Brigadier-General blew at it as you would blow at a candle, and it
went out instantly.
‘And now we’ll study the movements of the enemy,’ said David, going to
the map table.
He took up the first map that lay there, and found it all very clear,
for it represented on a large scale the house and garden and lake and
the village. There was a direction at the top stating, ‘Route of the
Enemy marked in red,’ and David began to follow it.
It started from his house, which was odd, since he had never seen any
trace of any enemy there, and went down the nursery passage till it came
to a square marked ‘Game cupboard, _alias_ Miss Muffet’s.’ Then there
was a gap and a note printed, ‘Enemy movements hard to trace here.
Possibly he flew.’ And the red line began again in the village street
close to the Bank. It went into the Bank and out again, crossed the road
into the shoemaker’s, and then went down the village street to the
bridge. From there it returned to the Bank again. . . .
A terrible idea entered David’s head. This was precisely the route he
had taken himself after going through the blue door. He felt himself
turn pale, and bent over the map again to make certain.
From the Bank the enemy had gone to the house next door, which was
labelled ‘Happy Families’ Institute, _alias_ Miss Milligan’s School for
young ladies, _alias_ Station. Here enemy entrained.’ From there his
route passed through a field or two, and came to the hairdresser’s,
which was labelled ‘Hairdresser’s Junction.’ After that it came to an
end with the note. ‘Enemy seen flying here at 8.34 A.M.’
David had no longer the slightest doubt that he was the enemy, and was
now completely cut off in the middle of the camp of his foes. But then
it puzzled him to know why they had made him their own Field-Marshal.
Perhaps they didn’t know he was the enemy, or perhaps they had made him
their Field-Marshal in order to lure him into this tent in the very
middle of the camp. That seemed far the most likely explanation, and
accounted for the guard of honour being so weird a collection of people.
They were mocking him, or perhaps just putting him to the test, and
seeing whether he knew anything whatever about soldiers. It must have
been quite clear to them that he did not, and he could have kicked
himself to think that he had gone wrestling with Miss Muffet’s spider in
the garden-bed when he ought to have been inspecting. He had thought it
wonderfully grand to fly all day, and be a Field-Marshal as soon as it
got dark, but now it seemed that there were penalties attached to
greatness. Never had he or any other Field-Marshal been in so precarious
a position.
He clearly had to escape, and to escape he had to be alone. He folded up
the map.
‘I have studied that thoroughly,’ he said, ‘and I want to be called at
half-past seven in the morning. I will arrange the battle as soon as I
have breakfasted.’
The Brigadier-General meantime had been eating sausages as hard as he
could. He rapidly swallowed all that was in his mouth.
‘Very good, your Grace,’ he said. ‘I will have the barbed wire put up
round your Grace’s headquarters.’
David reflected rapidly. It was far more likely that the barbed wire was
intended to keep him in, rather than keep other people out. Of course he
could get away by flying—at least he could have this morning, but he
didn’t feel quite so certain about it now. Still it would never do to
let the Brigadier-General think he suspected anything, though he wished
he had let the Brigadier-General drown.
‘Make all the usual arrangements,’ he said.
As soon as he had gone David sat down to think. He felt his heart
beating very quickly, but the whole thing was so exciting that it could
not be called really beastly.
‘The plan is,’ said he to himself, ‘to make them believe I’ve gone to
bed and don’t know that they know that I’m the enemy. I must go to bed
without going to bed.’
That was not so hard to manage. He took off his Field-Marshal’s tunic
with all its medals, and found, to his great relief, that he had his
sailor clothes on below. So he stuffed a pillow into the tunic and
buttoned it all the way down, and put it in his bed. Then he turned a
sponge bag inside out so that it had the grey side outermost, put the
sponge back in it, and laid it at the neck of the tunic with the
Field-Marshal’s cocked hat on the top. He could not spare his trousers
for legs, so he rolled up two maps and placed them in the bed below the
tunic, and covered the figure up to the waist with the bed-clothes.
Anyhow, there was the Field-Marshal in bed in his clothes, ready to
spring up at the call of duty.
‘That’ll convince them if they look in that I’ve gone to bed,’ said he,
‘only it won’t convince them so much if they see me as well. It’s quite
certain I must hide until I go away.’
He crept under the map-table, which had a cloth on it nearly coming to
the ground, and thought of another thing to make them believe he was
unsuspicious and asleep.
‘I’ll snore,’ thought David, remembering how the crow had snored. ‘Haw,
caw, haw. Rumph, humph, haw! Haw haw-w-w-w-w. Rumph!’
He had hardly stopped when he heard whispering outside the tent.
‘Yes, I peeped in,’ said one voice, ‘and there he was a-lying in his
bed, an’ you don’t need to peep in to know he’s lying there still,
sleeping the last sleep he’ll ever sleep on earth.’
‘And the barbed wire’s in place?’ asked another voice.
‘Yes. He couldn’t get through if he was fifty Field-Marshals, and he
isn’t one.’
‘Who is he then?’ asked the first voice.
‘Why, he’s that little whipper-snapper as takes us out of our box and
puts us back again, without a “with your leave,” or “by your leave,” nor
anything. We’ll put him in a box to-morrow, tight screwed down, too.’
‘Just like his impudence to think himself a Field-Marshal,’ said the
second. ‘Are we going to hang him first and shoot him next and behead
him last, or t’ other way about.’
‘Makes no odds,’ said the second. ‘Eight o’clock to-morrow morning then,
mate. Turn off the light in his tent, will you?’
David, under his table, shook with rage.
‘The beastly fellows,’ he whispered. ‘And I’ve treated them very kindly,
too. See if I don’t melt them all down over the nursery fire!’
That was all very well, but it was still possible that he would be hung,
shot, beheaded and buried first, and that was the business he had to
attend to now. He was not anywhere near being able to get to the nursery
fire, and in the meantime he was in a tent in the middle of the hostile
camp, with any amount of barbed wire round him, and nothing to cut it
with except a baton and some sausages.
‘Oh, it’s a horrid position,’ thought David very seriously, ‘but I must
say it’s exciting.’
When the whispers had died away he went very cautiously to the door-flap
and peeped out. The moon had risen, and by its light he could see lumps
and chunks of barbed wire piled up high right across the entrance, like
a thicket of blackberry bushes without any leaves on. There was no
possibility of getting out that way, and he walked round his tent,
pressing quietly with his finger against the canvas, and always getting
pricked by the barbed wire which evidently had been heaped up all round
him. Then he came to the fire-place, where the fire had burned a hole in
the canvas, before the Brigadier-General blew it out; and, looking
cautiously out, he saw that there was a gap here between the hedges of
barbed wire, for it had never occurred to anybody that he should get out
right through the middle of the fire.
‘That’s the only chance,’ thought David, his eyes sparkling with
excitement.
He made a quantity of awful snore-noises again after that, and then very
cautiously put his leg through the hole that the fire had burned in the
canvas. Nobody interfered with it, and so he put the other leg through
too, and presently stood outside his tent in a narrow alley between
other tents. David had often sent himself to sleep by imagining himself
escaping from positions of horrible danger, but now that it was
necessary to escape without imagining anything, he felt extremely
wide-awake. Probably there would be sentries guarding the camp, past
whom he must somehow slip, but here in the camp itself there was no sign
of life. Once or twice he ran a few steps in the hope that he might
remember how to fly, but he had no longer any idea now, in the middle of
the night, how to tread air, or paddle with his hands, and he made up
his mind that he must escape on his two feet. The ground was encumbered
with tent-ropes, and the guard of honour appeared to have dropped all
their accoutrements about, for golf-clubs and toasting forks and other
irregular weapons lay around among trench mortars and machine-guns and
the more usual apparatus of battle. Then he came across the grey parrot,
who looked at him with suspicion, and immediately began walking away
with its toes crossed, sneezing continuously. David went on more quickly
and cautiously after that: it was more than possible that this horrid
bird was spying on him. He never had considered parrots to be real
birds, else they would not for ever be trying to make themselves sound
like cats and dogs and Mabel the kitchenmaid.
He had come close to the gravel path by the lake where he had held his
foolish inspection of the guard of honour, and where the camp ended,
without seeing anybody, when suddenly he came upon a large letter,
propped up against a rope and addressed to him. He knew quite well that
this might be some trap, and that it might explode in his face when he
opened it; but, on the other hand, it might be some valuable
communication from the birds. So he bent down to pick it up, but hardly
had he touched it when thousands and thousands of electric bells and
gongs and watchmen’s rattles went off all over the camp, and out of
every tent there came the noise of people getting up and washing their
faces, and brushing their teeth.
There was not a moment to lose, and without any attempt at concealing
himself any more, he rushed across the gravel path, dodged a sentry, and
ran down the bank to the edge of the lake. Since his Brigadier-General
had fallen into the water (indeed, probably, in consequence of that),
the fishes had put up their glass roof, and all over the lake below he
saw the glimmer of their fires of red leaves.
‘Oh, let me in,’ he shouted, feeling like the pin-partridge on the ark.
‘My awful soldiers are going to hang and behead me.’
Already the sentries were close upon him, when a trap-door opened in the
roof, and David jumped down into it. He heard it clang to behind him,
and knew he was safe.