Читать книгу The Magic Walking-Stick - John Buchan - Страница 5

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NEXT morning, which was Monday, Bill awoke about an hour before dawn. This was not his usual custom, but he had gone to sleep so full of exciting thoughts that sleep did not altogether break their continuity. He lay for a while thinking. Before he could be quite sure of the powers of the new staff he must make another experiment, an experiment in cold blood, well-considered, premeditated. There was time for it before the family breakfast at nine.

He put on fives-shoes and a dressing-gown, got the stick out of the playbox, and tiptoed downstairs. He heard a housemaid moving in the direction of the dining-room and Groves opening the library shutters, but the hall was deserted. There was a garden door in the hall, of which the upper part was glass and now heavily shuttered. As quietly as he could, Bill undid the fastenings, wrestled with the key, and emerged into the foggy winter half-light.

It was bitterly cold, but it seemed to Bill essential that the experiment should be made out of doors, for there might be trouble if he appeared suddenly in the night-nursery on his return and confronted the eyes of Peter or Elsie. So he padded down the lawn to a retired half-moon of shrubbery beside the pond. His shoes were soon soaked with hoar-frost, and a passing dawn wind made him shiver and draw his dressing-gown around him. He had decided where to go, for in this kind of weather he yearned for heat. He plunged his stick in the turf.

"I want to be on the beach in the Solomon Islands," said Bill, and three times twisted the handle....

His eyes seemed to dazzle with an excess of light, and something beat on his body like a blast from an open furnace.... Then he realised that he was standing on an expanse of blinding white sand, which a lazy blue sea was licking. Half a mile out were what looked like reefs, with a creamy crest of spindrift. Behind him, at a distance of perhaps two hundred yards, was a belt of high green forest out of which stuck a tall feather of palms. A hot wind was blowing and tossing the tree-tops, but it only crisped the farther sea and did not break the mirror of the lagoon.

Bill gasped for joy to find his dream fulfilled. He was in the Far Pacific, where he had always longed to be. In the forest behind him there must be all kinds of wonderful fruits and queer beasts and birds. He calculated that he had nearly an hour to spend, and might at any rate penetrate the fringes of its green mysteries.

But in the meantime he was very hot and could not endure the weight of winter pyjamas and a winter dressing-gown. Also he longed to bathe in those inviting waters. So he shed everything and hopped gaily down to the tide's edge, leaving the stick still upright in the sand.

The sea felt as delicious as it looked, but Bill, though a good swimmer, kept near the edge for fear of sharks. This was very different from the chill flood-waters of Alemoor. He looked down through blue depths to a floor like marble, and the water was a caress. Bill wallowed and splashed, with the fresh salt smell, which he loved, in his nostrils.

By and by he ventured a little farther out, and floated on his back, looking up at the pale, hot sky. For a little he was unconscious of the passage of time, as he drifted on the aromatic tide. Then he saw a little reef close at hand, and was just on the point of striking out for it when he cast a glance back towards the shore.

Bill got the fright of his life, for at the edge of the forest stood men—dark-skinned men—armed with spears. He had forgotten that these islands might have other things in them besides strange fruits and birds and beasts.

They had halted and were looking at his stick, but apparently they had not yet seen him. Supposing they got the stick, what on earth would happen? With a fluttering heart Bill made for the shore.

As soon as he was in shallow water the men caught sight of him and moved forward. He was perhaps fifty yards from the stick, which cast its long morning shadow on the sand, and they were two hundred yards on the farther side. At all costs he must get to it first. He sprang out of the sea, and as he ran he saw to his horror that the men ran also—ran in great bounds, shouting and brandishing their spears.

His little naked body scurried up the sand. The fifty yards seemed miles, and it was an awful thing to run towards those savage faces and not away from them. Bill felt his legs giving way beneath him, as in his nightmares, when he had found himself on a railway track with an express approaching and could scarcely move. But he ran faster than he thought, and before he knew had laid a quivering hand on the stick.

No time to put on his clothes. He managed to grab his dressing-gown with one hand and the stick with the other, and as he twirled the handle a spear whizzed by his ear.

"I want to be home," he gasped, and the next second he stood naked between the shrubbery and the pond, clutching his dressing-gown. The Solomon Islanders had got his pyjamas and his fives-shoes, and I wonder what they made of them!

The cold of a November morning brought him quickly to his senses. He clothed his shivering body in his dressing-gown and ran by devious paths to the house. But this time the hall was clearly not for him. Happily the gun-room door was unlocked, and he was able to ascend by way of empty passages and back-stairs to the nursery floor.

He did not, however, escape the eagle eye of Elsie, the nurse, who read a commination service over a boy who went out of doors imperfectly clad on such a morning. She prophesied pneumonia and plumped him into a hot bath.

Bill applied his tongue to the back of his hand. Yes, it tasted salt, and the salt smell was still in his nose. It had not been a dream.... He hugged himself in the bath and made strange gurgling sounds of joy. The experiment had been brilliantly successful, and the magic of the staff was amply proved. But he must go carefully, very carefully. He had suddenly an awful reminiscence of fearsome black faces and bloodshot eyes.

Events that morning did not go according to programme. There was no walk with the dogs, for Bill was in disgrace. Elsie wailed for lost pyjamas, of which he could give no account. Under cross-examination he was, as the newspapers say, reticent. He avoided Peter and spent the time before departure in wrapping up his new stick in many layers of brown paper and tying it firmly with string. In this way he thought he might safely carry it back to school.

But in the bustle of leaving it was somehow left behind, and Bill only discovered his loss when he was half-way to London. The discovery put him into a fever of anxiety. He could not go back for it, and there was the awful risk that in his absence Peter or Groves or some other interfering person might monkey with it. Or it might get lost. Deep gloom settled upon his spirit. At luncheon he was so morose that Aunt Alice, who had strong and unorthodox views about education, observed that he seemed to be a clear proof that the public school system was a failure.

Without the stick there were none of the delights for Bill over which he had gloated in church. His first idea was to have it sent to him, but that seemed too risky. In the past various parcels, despatched by rail or post, had gone astray. Nor was there the chance of a visit from someone at home, for his mother and father and Peter presently went up to London for several weeks.

So Bill wrote to Groves, the butler, a very ill-spelt letter, demanding that he should find the brown paper parcel and put it securely in his playbox. He enclosed one of his scanty stamps for a reply. It was four days before the answer came, and it did something to relieve Bill's anxiety. The parcel had been found—awful thought! in Peter's playbox—and Groves had duly stowed it away as directed. Bill breathed freely again.

But the last weeks of that half lacked gaiety. His disappointment died away, but he had many spasms of anxiety. He counted the days to the Christmas holidays.