They had some trouble just outside, where the sea was very choppy indeed. The wind had changed a little, and the sea was rougher. They put up the sail and ran home in great style, exulting in the feel of the wind on their cheeks and the spray on their faces.
As they got near the shore after their long run, they saw the two girls waiting for them, and they waved. Dinah and Lucy-Ann waved back. Soon the boat slid to its mooring-place and the boys got out and tied it up.
‘Did you find the Great Auk?’ cried Lucy-Ann.
‘Is Joe back?’ asked Philip.
‘You’ve been ages,’ said Dinah, impatient to hear everything.
‘We’ve had a fine adventure,’ said Philip. ‘Is Joe back?’
All these questions were asked at the same moment. The most important one was – was Joe back?
‘Yes,’ said Dinah, with a giggle. ‘He came back about an hour ago. We were watching for him. Luckily, he went straight down into the cellar with some boxes he brought back in the car, and we followed him. He opened that inner door and went into the back cellar with the boxes – and the cellar where the trap-door is – and we remembered where you’d put the key of that door, got in, and locked him in. He’s banging away there like anything.’
‘Good for you!’ said the boys, pleased. ‘Now he won’t know we’ve been out in his boat. But how on earth are we going to let him out without his knowing we’ve locked him in?’
‘You’ll have to think of something,’ said Dinah. The boys walked up to the house, thinking hard.
‘We’d better slip down quietly and unlock the door when he’s having a rest,’ said Philip at last. ‘He can’t keep banging at the door for ever. As soon as he stops for a bit of rest, I’ll quietly put the key in the lock and unlock the door. Then I’ll slip upstairs again. The next time he tries the door, it will open – but he won’t know why.’
‘Good!’ said the others, pleased. It seemed a very simple way of setting Joe free without his guessing that it had anything to do with them.
Philip took the key and went down into the cellar as quietly as he could. As soon as he got down there he heard Joe hammering on the door. The boy waited till he had stopped for breath, and then pushed the big key quietly into the lock. He heard Joe coughing, and turned the key at the same moment, and then withdrew it. The door was unlocked now – and Joe could come out when he wanted to. Philip shot across the cellar to the steps, ran up them, out into the kitchen, and joined the others.
‘He’ll be out in a minute,’ he panted. ‘Let’s slip up on to the cliff, and as soon as we see Joe again, we’ll walk down to the house, pretending we are just back from a walk. That will puzzle him properly.’
So they all ran up to the cliff, lay down on the top, and peeped over to see when Joe appeared. In low voices the boys told the girls all they had found on the Isle of Gloom.
The two girls listened in amazement. Deep holes in the earth – a stream that was bright green – a pile of food tins – how very strange! No one had expected anything like that. It was birds they had gone to see.
‘We simply must go back again and find out what those shafts lead down to,’ said Jack. ‘We’ll find out, too, if there were once mines of some sort there. Perhaps your Uncle Jocelyn would know, Dinah.’
‘Yes, he would,’ said Dinah. ‘Golly, I wish we could get hold of that old map of the island he spoke about – the one he couldn’t find. It might show us all kinds of interesting things, mightn’t it?’
Kiki suddenly gave one of her express-train screeches, which meant she had sighted her enemy, Joe. The children saw him down below, looking all round, evidently for them. They scrambled to their feet and walked jauntily down the path to the house.
Joe saw them and came to meet them, fury in his face. ‘You locked me in,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell Miss Polly of you. You ought to be whipped.’
‘Locked you in!’ said Philip, putting a look of sheer amazement on his face. ‘Where did we lock you in? Into your room?’
‘Down in the cellar,’ said Joe, in a furious voice. ‘Here’s Miss Polly. I’ll tell of you. Miss Polly, these children locked me into the cellar.’
‘Don’t talk nonsense,’ said Aunt Polly. ‘You know there is no lock on the cellar door. The children have been for a walk – look at them just coming back to the house – how can you say they locked you in? You must be imagining things.’
‘They locked me in,’ said Joe sulkily, suddenly remembering that the inner cellar was his own secret place and that he had better not go into any details, or Aunt Polly would go down and discover the door he had so carefully hidden.
‘I didn’t lock him in, Aunt Polly,’ said Philip earnestly. ‘I’ve been ever so far away all morning.’
‘So have I,’ said Jack, quite truthfully. Aunt Polly believed them, and as she knew that the four children were always together, she imagined that the girls had been with them. So how could any of them have played a trick on Joe? And anyway, thought Aunt Polly, there was no lock on the door to the cellar, so what in the wide world did Joe mean? He really must be getting confused.
‘Go and do your work, Joe,’ she said sharply. ‘You always seem to have your knife into the children, accusing them of this and that. Leave them alone. They’re good children.’
Joe thought otherwise. He gave one of his famous scowls, made an angry noise, beautifully copied by Kiki, and returned to the kitchen.
‘Don’t take any notice of him,’ said Aunt Polly. ‘He’s very bad-tempered, but he’s quite harmless.’
The children went back into the house, winking at one another. It was nice to have Aunt Polly on their side. All the same, Joe was piling up grievances against them. They must look out.
‘Funny,’ thought Jack. Aunt Polly says Joe is quite harmless – and Bill Smugs says he’s a dangerous fellow. One of them is certainly wrong.’
18
Off to the island again
What should be done next? Should they tell Bill Smugs of their adventure? Would he be angry because they had evaded their promise, without actually breaking it, and gone out to the island in someone else’s boat? The children decided that he might be very angry. He had great ideas of honour and promises and keeping one’s word.
‘Well, so have we,’ said Jack. ‘I wouldn’t have broken my promise. I didn’t. I just found a way round it.’
‘Well, you know what grown-ups are,’ said Dinah. ‘They don’t think the same way as we do. I expect when we grow up, we shall think like them – but let’s hope we remember what it was like to think in the way children do, and understand the boys and girls that are growing up when we’re men and women.’
‘You’re talking like a grown-up already,’ said Philip in disgust. ‘Stop it.’
‘Don’t talk to me like that,’ flared Dinah. ‘Just because I was talking a bit of sense.’
‘Shut up,’ said Philip, and got a box on the ear from Dinah immediately. He gave her a slap that sounded like a pistol-shot and she yelled.
‘Beast!’ she said. ‘You know boys shouldn’t hit girls.’
‘I shouldn’t hit ordinary decent girls, like Lucy-Ann,’ said Philip. ‘But you’re just too bad-tempered for words. You ought to know by now that if you box my ears you’ll get a jolly good slap. Serves you right.’
‘Jack, tell him he’s a beast,’ said Dinah; but Jack couldn’t help giving Dinah some advice.
‘You should keep your hands to yourself,’ he said to her. ‘You’re so quick at dishing out ear-boxes, and you ought to know by now that Philip won’t stand for it.’
Lucy-Ann looked distressed. She hated these quarrels between the brother and sister. Philip put his hand into his pocket and pulled out a box in which he had kept an extraordinarily tame beetle for days. Dinah knew he meant to open the box and put the beetle close to her. She gave a scream and rushed out of the room.
Philip put the box back into his pocket, after letting the enormous beetle have a run on the table. Wherever he hel
d out his finger the beetle ran to it in delight. It really was amazing the way all creatures liked Philip.
‘You oughtn’t to keep it in a box,’ said Lucy-Ann. ‘I’m sure it hates it.’
‘Well, watch then,’ said Philip, and put the box out on the table again. He opened it, took out the beetle, and put it at the other end of the big table. He put the box, with its lid a little way open, on to the middle of the table. The beetle, having explored the top of the table thoroughly, made its way to the box, examined it, and then climbed into it and settled down peacefully.
‘There you are!’ said Philip, shutting the box and putting it back into his pocket. ‘It wouldn’t go deliberately back into its box if it hated it, would it?’
‘Well – it must be because it likes being with you,’ said Lucy-Ann. ‘Most beetles would hate it.’
‘Philip is a friend to everything,’ said Jack, with a grin. ‘I believe he could train fleas and keep a circus of them.’
‘I shouldn’t like that,’ said Lucy-Ann, looking disgusted. ‘Oh dear, I wonder where Dinah has gone off to. I wish you wouldn’t quarrel like this. We were having such a nice talk about what to do next.’
Dinah had left the room in a rage, her arm stinging from Philip’s slap. She wandered down the passage that led to her uncle’s room, thinking up horrid things to do to her brother. Suddenly her uncle’s door opened and he peered out.
‘Oh, Dinah – is that you? The ink pot here is empty,’ he said, in a peevish voice. ‘Why doesn’t somebody fill it?’
‘I’ll get the ink bottle for you,’ said Dinah, and went to get it from her aunt’s cupboard. She took it to the study and filled her uncle’s ink pot. As she turned to go, she noticed a map on a chair nearby. It was the one that her uncle could not find before – the large one of the Isle of Gloom. The little girl looked at it with interest.
‘Oh, Uncle – here’s that map you told us about. Uncle, do tell me – used there to be mines on the island?’
‘Now, where did you hear that?’ said her uncle, astonished. ‘That’s old history. Yes, there used to be mines, hundreds of years ago. Copper mines – rich ones too. But they were all worked out years ago. There’s no copper there now.’
Dinah pored over the map. To her delight it showed where the shafts were, that ran deep down into the earth. How the boys would like to see that map!
Her uncle turned to his work, forgetting all about Dinah. She picked up the map and slipped out of the room very quietly. How pleased Philip would be with the map!
She had forgotten all her anger. That was the best part about Dinah – she bore no malice, and her furies were soon over. She ran down the passage to the room where she had left the others. She flung open the door and burst in.
The others were amazed to see her smiling and excited face. Lucy-Ann could never get used to the quick changes in Dinah’s moods. Philip looked at her doubtfully, not smiling.
Dinah remembered the quarrel. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘I’m sorry I boxed your ears, Philip. Look here – I’ve got that old map of the island. What do you think of that? And Uncle Jocelyn told me there were mines there, once – copper ones – very rich. But they are worked out now. So those shafts must once have led down to the mines.’
‘Golly!’ said Philip, taking the map from Dinah’s hands and spreading it out. ‘What a map! Oh, Dinah, you are clever!’
He gave his sister a squeeze and Dinah glowed. She quarrelled with her brother continually, but she loved getting a word of praise from him. The four children bent over the map.
‘There’s the gap in the rocks – as plain as anything,’ said Dinah. The boys nodded.
‘It must have always been there,’ said Jack. ‘I suppose that’s the only way the old miners could use to go to and from the island. How thrilling to think of their boats going and coming – taking food there, bringing back copper! Golly, I’d like to go down and see what they are like.’
‘Look, all the old shafts are marked,’ said Philip, and he placed his finger on them. ‘There’s the one we must have found those tins near, Freckles, look! – and here’s the stream. And now I know why it’s green. It’s coloured by the copper deposits still in the hills, I bet.’
‘Well, perhaps there is still copper there then,’ said Dinah, in great excitement. ‘Copper nuggets! Oooh, I wish we could find some.’
‘Copper is found in veins,’ said Philip, ‘but I think it’s found whole, in nuggets too. They might be valuable. I say – shall we, just for a lark, go across to the island, go down to the mines, and hunt about a bit? Who knows, we might find nuggets of copper.’
‘There won’t be any,’ said Jack. ‘No one would leave a mine if there were still copper to be worked. It’s been deserted for hundreds of years.’
‘There’s something stuck on to the back of the map,’ said Lucy-Ann suddenly. The children turned it over, and saw a smaller map fastened to the larger one. They smoothed it out to look at it – and then Philip gave an exclamation.
‘Of course! It’s an underground map of the island – a map of the mines. Look at these passages and galleries and these draining-channels to take away water. Golly, part of these mines are below the level of the sea.’
It was weird to look at a map that showed the maze of tunnels under the surface of the island. There had evidently been a vast area mined, some of it under the sea itself.
‘This section is right under the bed of the sea,’ said Jack, pointing. ‘How queer to work there, and know that all the time the sea is heaving above the rocky ceiling over your head!’
‘I shouldn’t like it,’ said Lucy-Ann, shivering. ‘I’d be afraid it would break through and flood where I was working.’
‘Look here, we simply must go over to the island again,’ said Philip excitedly. ‘Do you know what I think? I think that people are working in those mines now.’
‘Whatever makes you think that?’ said Dinah.
‘Well, those food tins,’ said Philip. ‘Someone eats food there, out of tins. And we couldn’t see them anywhere, could we? So it must be that they were down in the mines, working. I bet you that’s the solution of the mystery.’
‘Let’s go over to Bill and tell him all about it tomorrow, and take this map to show him,’ said Dinah, thrilled. ‘He will tell us what to do. I don’t feel like exploring the mines by ourselves. I somehow feel I’d like Bill with us.’
‘No,’ said Jack suddenly. ‘We won’t tell Bill.’
The others looked at him in surprise.
‘Why ever not?’ demanded Dinah.
‘Well – because I’ve suddenly got an idea,’ said Jack. ‘I believe it’s a friend of Bill’s – or friends – working in those mines. I believe Bill’s come here to be near them – to take food over – and that sort of thing. I bet he uses his boat for that. It must be a secret, I should think. Well – he wouldn’t be too pleased if we knew his secret. He’d never let us go out in his boat again.’
‘But, Jack – you’re exaggerating. Bill’s only come for a holiday. He’s bird-watching,’ said Philip.
‘He doesn’t really do much bird-watching,’ said Jack. ‘And though he listens to me when I rave about the birds here, he doesn’t talk much about them himself – not like I would if someone gave me the chance. And we don’t know what his business is. He’s never told us. I bet you anything you like that he and his friends are trying to work a copper mine over on the island. I don’t know who the mines belong to – if they do belong to anyone – but I guess if it was suspected that there was still copper there, the people who made the discovery would keep it secret on the chance of mining some good copper nuggets themselves.’
Jack paused, quite out of breath. Kiki murmured the new word she had heard.
‘Copper, copper, copper. Spare a copper, copper, copper.’
‘Isn’t she clever?’ said Lucy-Ann; but no one paid any attention to Kiki. The matters being discussed were far too important to be interrupted by a parrot.
&nb
sp; ‘Let’s ask Bill Smugs straight out,’ suggested Dinah, who always liked to get things clear. She disliked mysteries that couldn’t be solved.
‘Don’t be an ass,’ said Philip. ‘Jack’s already told you why it would be best not to let Bill know we know his secret. Maybe he’ll tell us himself one day – and won’t he be surprised to know that we guessed it!’
‘We’ll go over in Joe’s boat again soon,’ said Jack. ‘We’ll go down that big shaft and explore a bit. We’ll soon find out if anyone is there. We’ll take this map with us so that we don’t lose our way. It shows the underground passages and galleries very clearly.’
It was exciting to talk over these secrets. When could they go off to the island again? Should they take the girls this time – or not?
‘Well, I think we shall manage even better this time,’ said Philip. ‘There wasn’t much danger really last time, once we found the passage through the ring of rocks. I’m pretty certain we shall get to the island easily next time. We can take the girls as well.’
Dinah and Lucy-Ann were thrilled. They longed for a chance to go at once, but Joe did not leave Craggy-Tops long enough for them to take his boat. However, he went out in it himself two or three times.
‘Are you going fishing?’ asked Philip. ‘Why don’t you take us with you?’
‘Not going to bother myself with children like you,’ said the man, in his surly way, and set off in his boat. He sailed out such a long way that his boat disappeared into the haze that always seemed to hang about the western horizon.
‘He may have gone to the island, for all we can see,’ said Jack. ‘He just disappears. I hope he brings some fish back for supper tonight.’
He did. His boat returned after tea and the children helped to take in a fine catch of fish. ‘You might have taken us too, you mean thing,’ said Dinah. ‘We could have let lines down as well.’