"Look here! That far cellar, where the wall doesn't go quite up to the
roof--that space we made out was under the dining-room--I could creep
under there. I believe it leads into behind this door."
"Get me out! Oh do, do get me out, and let me come!" shouted the
barrel-imprisoned Dentist from the unseen regions near the door.
So we got him out by Oswald lying flat on his front on the top barrel,
and the Dentist clawed himself up by Oswald's hands while the others
kept hold of the boots of the representative of the house of Bastable,
which, of course, Oswald is, whenever Father is not there.
"Come on," cried Oswald, when Denny was at last able to appear, very
cobwebby and black. "Give us what's left of the matches!"
The others agreed to stand by the barrels and answer our knocking on the
door if we ever got there.
"But I daresay we shall perish on the way," said Oswald hopefully.
So we started. The other cellar was easily found by the ingenious and
geography-bump-headed Oswald. It opened straight on to the moat, and we
think it was a boathouse in middle-aged times.
Denny made a back for Oswald, who led the way, and then he turned round
and hauled up his inexperienced, but rapidly improving, follower on to
the top of the wall that did not go quite up to the roof.
"It is like coal mines," he said, beginning to crawl on hands and knees
over what felt like very prickly beach, "only we've no picks or
shovels."
"And no Sir Humphry Davy safety lamps," said Denny in sadness.
"They wouldn't be any good," said Oswald; "they're only to protect the
hard-working mining men against fire-damp and choke-damp. And there's
none of those kinds here."
"No," said Denny, "the damp here is only just the common kind."
"Well, then," said Oswald, and they crawled a bit further still on
their furtive and unassuming stomachs.
"This is a very glorious adventure. It is, isn't it?" inquired the
Dentist in breathlessness, when the young stomachs of the young
explorers had bitten the dust for some yards further.
"Yes," said Oswald, encouraging the boy, "and it's _your_ find, too," he
added, with admirable fairness and justice, unusual in one so young. "I
only hope we shan't find a mouldering skeleton buried alive behind that
door when we get to it. Come on. What are you stopping for now?" he
added kindly.
"It's--it's only cobwebs in my throat," Denny remarked, and he came on,
though slower than before.
Oswald, with his customary intrepid caution, was leading the way, and he
paused every now and then to strike a match because it was pitch dark,
and at any moment the courageous leader might have tumbled into a well
or a dungeon, or knocked his dauntless nose against something in the
dark.
"It's all right for you," he said to Denny, when he had happened to kick
his follower in the eye. "You've nothing to fear except my boots, and
whatever they do is accidental, and so it doesn't count, but _I_ may be
going straight into some trap that has been yawning for me for countless
ages."
"I won't come on so fast, thank you," said the Dentist. "I don't think
you've kicked my eye out yet."
So they went on and on, crampedly crawling on what I have mentioned
before, and at last Oswald did not strike the next match carefully
enough, and with the suddenness of a falling star his hands, which, with
his knees, he was crawling on, went over the edge into infinite space,
and his chest alone, catching sharply on the edge of the precipice,
saved him from being hurled to the bottom of it.
"Halt!" he cried, as soon as he had any breath again. But, alas! it was
too late! The Dentist's nose had been too rapid, and had caught up the
boot-heel of the daring leader. This was very annoying to Oswald, and
was not in the least his fault.
"Do keep your nose off my boots half a sec.," he remarked, but not
crossly. "I'll strike a match."
And he did, and by its weird and unscrutatious light looked down into
the precipice.
Its bottom transpired to be not much more than six feet below, so Oswald
turned the other end of himself first, hung by his hands, and dropped
with fearless promptness, uninjured, in another cellar. He then helped
Denny down. The cornery thing Denny happened to fall on could not have
hurt him so much as he said.
The light of the torch, I mean match, now revealed to the two bold and
youthful youths another cellar, with _things_ in it--very dirty
indeed, but of thrilling interest and unusual shapes, but the match went
out before we could see exactly what the things were.
[Illustration: OSWALD DID NOT STRIKE THE NEXT MATCH CAREFULLY ENOUGH.]
The next match was the last but one, but Oswald was undismayed, whatever
Denny may have been. He lighted it and looked hastily round. There was a
door.
"Bang on that door--over there, silly!" he cried, in cheering accents,
to his trusty lieutenant; "behind that thing that looks like a _chevaux
de frize_."
Denny had never been to Woolwich, and while Oswald was explaining what a
_chevaux de frize_ is, the match burnt his fingers almost to the bone,
and he had to feel his way to the door and hammer on it yourself.
The blows of the others from the other side were deafening.
All was saved.
It was the right door.
"Go and ask for candles and matches," shouted the brave Oswald. "Tell
them there are all sorts of things in here--a _chevaux de frize_ of
chair-legs, and----"
"A shovel of _what_?" asked Dicky's voice hollowly from the other side
of the door.
"Freeze," shouted Denny. "I don't know what it means, but do get a
candle and make them unbarricade the door. I don't want to go back the
way we came." He said something about Oswald's boots that he was sorry
for afterwards, so I will not repeat it, and I don't think the others
heard, because of the noise the barrels made while they were being
climbed over.
This noise, however, was like balmy zephyrs compared to the noise the
barrels insisted on making when Dicky had collected some grown-ups and
the barrels were being rolled away. During this thunder-like interval
Denny and Oswald were all the time in the pitch dark. They had lighted
their last match, and by its flickering gleam we saw a long, large
mangle.
"It's like a double coffin," said Oswald, as the match went out. "You
can take my arm if you like, Dentist."
The Dentist did--and then afterwards he said he only did it because he
thought Oswald was frightened of the dark.
"It's only for a little while," said Oswald in the pauses of the
barrel-thunder, "and I once read about two brothers confined for life in
a cage so constructed that the unfortunate prisoners could neither sit,
lie, nor stand in comfort. We can do all those things."
"Yes," said Denny; "but I'd rather keep on standing if it's the same to
you, Oswald. I don't like spiders--not much, that is."
"You are right," said Oswald with affable gentleness; "and there might
be toads perhaps in a vault like this--or serpents guarding the treasure
like in the Cold Lairs. But of course they couldn't have cobras in
England. They'd have to put up with vipers, I suppose."
Denny shivered, and Oswald could feel him stand first on one leg and
then on the other.
"I wish I could stand on neither of my legs for a bit," he said, but
Oswald answered firmly that this could not be.
And then the door opened with a crack-crash, and we saw lights and faces
through it, and something fell from the top of the door that Oswald
really did think for one awful instant was a hideous mass of writhing
serpents put there to guard the entrance.
"Like a sort of live booby-trap," he explained; "just the sort of thing
a magician or a witch would have thought of doing."
But it was only dust and cobwebs--a thick, damp mat of them.
Then the others surged in, in light-hearted misunderstanding of the
perils Oswald had led Denny into--I mean through, with Mr. Red House and
another gentleman, and loud voices and candles that dripped all over
everybody's hands, as well as their clothes, and the solitary
confinement of the gallant Oswald was at an end. Denny's solitary
confinement was at an end, too--and he was now able to stand on both
legs and to let go the arm of his leader who was so full of fortitude.
"This _is_ a find," said the pleased voice of Mr. Red House. "Do you
know, we've been in this house six whole months and a bit, and _we_
never thought of there being a door here."
"Perhaps you don't often play 'King of the Castle,'" said Dora
politely; "it _is_ rather a rough game, I always think."
"Well, curiously enough, we never have," said Mr. Red House, beginning
to lift out the chairs, in which avocation we all helped, of course.
"Nansen is nothing to you! You ought to have a medal for daring
explorations," said the other gentleman, but nobody gave us one, and, of
course, we did not want any reward for doing our duty, however tight and
cobwebby.
The cellars proved to be well stocked with spiders and old furniture,
but no toads or snakes, which few, if any, regretted. Snakes are
outcasts from human affection. Oswald pities them, of course.
There was a great lumpish thing in four parts that Mr. Red House said
was a press, and a ripping settle--besides the chairs, and some carved
wood that Mr. Red House and his friend made out to be part of an old
four-post bed. There was also a wooden thing like a box with another box
on it at one end, and H.O. said--
"You could make a ripping rabbit-hutch out of that."
Oswald thought so himself. But Mr. Red House said he had other uses for
it, and would bring it up later.
It took us all that was left of the afternoon to get the things up the
stairs into the kitchen. It was hard work, but we know all about the
dignity of labour. The general hated the things we had so enterprisingly
discovered. I suppose she knew who would have to clean them, but Mrs.
Red House was awfully pleased and said we were dears.
We were not very clean dears by the time our work was done, and when the
other gentleman said, "Won't you all take a dish of tea under my humble
roof?" the words "Like this?" were formed by more than one youthful
voice.
"Well, if you would be happier in a partially cleansed state?" said Mr.
Red House. And Mrs. Red House, who is my idea of a feudal lady in a
castle, said, "Oh, come along, let's go and partially clean ourselves.
I'm dirtier than anybody, though I haven't explored a bit. I've often
noticed that the more you admire things the more they come off on you!"
So we all washed as much as we cared to, and went to tea at the
gentleman's house, which was only a cottage, but very beautiful. He had
been a war correspondent, and he knew a great many things, besides
having books and books of pictures.
It was a splendid party.
We thanked Mrs. R.H. and everybody when it was time to go, and she
kissed the girls and the little boys, and then she put her head on one
side and looked at Oswald and said, "I suppose you're too old?"
Oswald did not like to say he was not. If kissed at all he would prefer
it being for some other reason than his being not too old for it. So he
did not know what to say. But Noel chipped in with--
"_You'll_ never be too old for it," to Mrs. Red House--which seemed to
Oswald most silly and unmeaning, because she was already much too old to
be kissed by people unless she chose to begin it. But every one seemed
to think Noel had said something clever. And Oswald felt like a young
ass. But Mrs. R.H. looked at him so kindly and held out her hand so
queenily that, before he knew he meant to, he had kissed it like you do
the Queen's. Then, of course, Denny and Dicky went and did the same.
Oswald wishes that the word "kiss" might never be spoken again in this
world. Not that he minded kissing Mrs. Red House's hand in the least,
especially as she seemed to think it was nice of him to--but the whole
thing is such contemptible piffle.
We were seen home by the gentleman who wasn't Mr. Red House, and he
stood a glorious cab with a white horse who had a rolling eye, from
Blackheath Station, and so ended one of the most adventuring times we
ever got out of a play-beginning.
The _time_ ended as the author has pointed out, but not its
resultingness. Thus we ever find it in life--the most unharmful things,
thoroughly approved even by grown-ups, but too often lead to something
quite different, and that no one can possibly approve of, not even
yourself when you come to think it over afterwards, like Noel and H.O.
had to.
It was but natural that the hearts of the young explorers should have
dwelt fondly on everything underground, even drains, which was what made
us read a book by Mr. Hugo, all the next day. It is called "The
Miserables," in French, and the man in it, who is a splendid hero,
though a convict and a robber and various other professions, escapes
into a drain with great rats in it, and is miraculously restored to the
light of day, unharmed by the kindly rodents. (N.B.--Rodents mean rats.)
When we had finished all the part about drains it was nearly
dinner-time, and Noel said quite suddenly in the middle of a bite of
mutton--
"The Red House isn't nearly so red as ours is outside. Why should the
cellars be so much cellarier? Shut up H.O.!" For H.O. was trying to
speak.
Dora explained to him how we don't all have exactly the same blessings,
but he didn't seem to see it.
"It doesn't seem like the way things happen in books," he said, "In
Walter Scott it wouldn't be like that, nor yet in Anthony Hope. I should
think the rule would be the redder the cellarier. If I was putting it
into poetry I should make our cellars have something much wonderfuller
in them than just wooden things. H.O., if you don't shut up I'll never
let you be in anything again."
"There's that door you go down steps to," said Dicky; "we've never been
in there. If Dora and I weren't going with Miss Blake to be fitted for
boots we might try that."
"That's just what I was coming to. (Stow it, H.O.!) I felt just like
cellars to-day, while you other chaps were washing your hands for
din.--and it was very cold; but I made H.O. feel the same, and we went
down, and--that door _isn't shut now_."
The intelligible reader may easily guess that we finished our dinner as
quickly as we could, and we put on our outers, sympathising with Dicky
and Dora, who, owing to boots, were out of it, and we went into the
garden. There are five steps down to that door. They were red brick when
they began, but now they are green with age and mysteriousness and not
being walked on. And at the bottom of them the door was, as Noel said,
not fastened. We went in.
"It isn't beery, winey cellars at all," Alice said; "it's more like a
robber's store-house. Look there."
We had got to the inner cellar, and there were heaps of carrots and
other vegetables.
"Halt, my men!" cried Oswald, "advance not an inch further! The bandits
may lurk not a yard from you!"
"Suppose they jump out on us?" said H.O.
"They will not rashly leap into the light," said the discerning Oswald.
And he went to fetch a new dark-lantern of his that he had not had any
chance of really using before. But some one had taken Oswald's secret
matches, and then the beastly lantern wouldn't light for ever so long.
But he thought it didn't matter his being rather a long time gone,
because the others could pass the time in wondering whether anything
would jump out on them, and if so, what and when.
So when he got back to the red steps and the open door and flashed his
glorious bull's-eye round it was rather an annoying thing for there not
to be a single other eye for it to flash into. Every one had vanished.
"Hallo!" cried Oswald, and if his gallant voice trembled he is not
ashamed of it, because he knows about wells in cellars, and, for an
instant, even he did not know what had happened.
But an answering hullo came from beyond, and he hastened after the
others.
"Look out," said Alice; "don't tumble over that heap of bones."
Oswald did look out--of course, he would not wish to walk on any one's
bones. But he did not jump back with a scream, whatever Noel may say
when he is in a temper.
The heap really did look very like bones, partly covered with earth.
Oswald was glad to learn that they were only parsnips.
"We waited as long as we could," said Alice, "but we thought perhaps
you'd been collared for some little thing you'd forgotten all about
doing, and wouldn't be able to come back, but we found Noel had,
fortunately, got your matches. I'm so glad you weren't collared, Oswald
dear."
Some boys would have let Noel know about the matches, but Oswald didn't.
The heaps of carrots and turnips and parsnips and things were not very
interesting when you knew that they were not bleeding warriors' or
pilgrims' bones, and it was too cold to pretend for long with any
comfort to the young Pretenders. So Oswald said--
"Let's go out on the Heath and play something warm. You can't warm
yourself with matches, even if they're not your own."
That was all he said. A great hero would not stoop to argue about
matches.
And Alice said, "All right," and she and Oswald went out and played
pretending golf with some walking-sticks of Father's. But Noel and H.O.
preferred to sit stuffily over the common-room fire. So that Oswald and
Alice, as well as Dora and Dicky, who were being measured for boots,
were entirely out of the rest of what happened, and the author can only
imagine the events that now occurred.
When Noel and H.O. had roasted their legs by the fire till they were so
hot that their stockings quite hurt them, one of them must have said to
the other--I never knew which:
"Let's go and have another look at that cellar."
The other--whoever it was--foolishly consented. So they went, and they
took Oswald's dark-lantern in his absence and without his leave.
They found a hitherto unnoticed door behind the other one, and Noel says
he said, "We'd better not go in." H.O. says he said so too. But any way,
they _did_ go in.
They found themselves in a small vaulted place that we found out
afterwards had been used for mushrooms. But it was long since any fair
bud of a mushroom had blossomed in that dark retreat. The place had been
cleaned and new shelves put up, and when Noel and H.O. saw what was on
these shelves the author is sure they turned pale, though they say not.
For what they saw was coils, and pots, and wires; and one of them said,
in a voice that must have trembled--
"It is dynamite, I am certain of it; what shall we do?"
I am certain the other said, "This is to blow up Father because he took
part in the Lewisham Election, and his side won."
The reply no doubt was, "There is no time for delay; we must act. We
must cut the fuse--all the fuses; there are dozens."
Oswald thinks it was not half bad business, those two kids--for Noel is
little more than one, owing to his poetry and his bronchitis--standing
in the abode of dynamite and not screeching, or running off to tell Miss
Blake, or the servants, or any one--but just doing _the right thing_
without any fuss.
[Illustration: WITH SCISSORS AND GAS PLIERS THEY CUT EVERY FUSE.]
I need hardly say it did not prove to be the right thing--but they
thought it was. And Oswald cannot think that you are really doing wrong
if you really think you are doing right. I hope you will understand
this.
I believe the kids tried cutting the fuses with Dick's pocket-knife that
was in the pocket of his other clothes. But the fuses would not--no
matter how little you trembled when you touched them.
But at last, with scissors and the gas pliers, they cut every fuse. The
fuses were long, twisty, wire things covered with green wool, like
blind-cords.
Then Noel and H.O. (and Oswald for one thinks it showed a goodish bit of
pluck, and policemen have been made heroes for less) got cans and cans
of water from the tap by the greenhouse and poured sluicing showers of
the icy fluid in among the internal machinery of the dynamite
arrangement--for so they believed it to be.
Then, very wet, but feeling that they had saved their Father and the
house, they went and changed their clothes. I think they were a little
stuck-up about it, believing it to be an act unrivalled in devotedness,
and they were most tiresome all the afternoon, talking about their
secret, and not letting us know what it was.
But when Father came home, early, as it happened, those swollen-headed,
but, in Oswald's opinion, quite-to-be-excused, kiddies learned the
terrible truth.
Of course Oswald and Dicky would have known at once; if Noel and H.O.
hadn't been so cocky about not telling us, we could have exposed the
truth to them in all its uninteresting nature.
I hope the reader will now prepare himself for a shock. In a wild whirl
of darkness, and the gas being cut off, and not being able to get any
light, and Father saying all sorts of things, it all came out.
Those coils and jars and wires in that cellar were not an infernal
machine at all. It was--I know you will be very much surprised--it was
the electric lights and bells that Father had had put in while we were
at the Red House the day before.
H.O. and Noel caught it very fully; and Oswald thinks this was one of
the few occasions when my Father was not as just as he meant to be. My
uncle was not just either, but then it is much longer since he was a
boy, so we must make excuses for him.
* * * * *
We sent Mrs. Red House a Christmas card each. In spite of the trouble
that her cellars had lured him into, Noel sent her a homemade one with
an endless piece of his everlasting poetry on it, and next May she wrote
and asked us to come and see her. _We_ try to be just, and we saw that
it was not really her fault that Noel and H.O. had cut those electric
wires, so we all went; but we did not take Albert Morrison, because he
was fortunately away with an aged god-parent of his mother's who writes
tracts at Tunbridge Wells.
The garden was all flowery and green, and Mr. and Mrs. Red House were
nice and jolly, and we had a distinguished and first-class time.
But would you believe it?--that boxish thing in the cellar, that H.O.
wanted them to make a rabbit-hutch of--well, Mr. Red House had cleaned
it and mended it, and Mrs. Red House took us up to the room where it
was, to let us look at it again. And, unbelievable to relate, it turned
out to have rockers, and some one in dark, bygone ages seems, for
reasons unknown to the present writer, to have wasted no end of
carpentry and carving on it, just to make it into a _Cradle_. And what
is more, since we were there last Mr. and Mrs. Red House had succeeded
in obtaining a small but quite alive baby to put in it.
I suppose they thought it was wilful waste to have a cradle and no baby
to use it. But it could so easily have been used for something else. It
would have made a ripping rabbit-hutch, and babies are far more trouble
than rabbits to keep, and not nearly so profitable, I believe.
_THE TURK IN CHAINS; OR, RICHARD'S REVENGE_
THE morning dawned in cloudless splendour. The sky was a pale cobalt
colour, as in pictures of Swiss scenery. The sun shone brightly, and all
the green things in the garden sparkled in the bewitching rays of the
monarch of the skies.
The author of this does not like to read much about the weather in
books, but he is obliged to put this piece in because it is true; and it
is a thing that does not very often happen in the middle of January. In
fact, I never remember the weather being at all like that in the winter
except on that one day.
Of course we all went into the garden directly after brekker. (PS.--I
have said green things: perhaps you think that is a _lapsus lazuli_, or
slip of the tongue, and that there are not any green things in the
winter. But there are. And not just evergreens either. Wallflowers and
pansies and snapdragons and primroses, and lots of things, keep green
all the year unless it's too frosty. Live and learn.)
And it was so warm we were able to sit in the summer-house. The birds
were singing like mad. Perhaps they thought it was springtime. Or
perhaps they always sing when they see the sun, without paying attention
to dates.
And now, when all his brothers and sisters were sitting on the rustic
seats in the summer-house, the far-sighted Oswald suddenly saw that now
was the moment for him to hold that council he had been wanting to hold
for some time.
So he stood in the door of the summer-house, in case any of the others
should suddenly remember that they wanted to be in some other place. And
he said--
"I say. About that council I want to hold."