The Donkey Rustlers

CHAPTER 4 Reconnaissance

“The first thing,” said Amanda, “is to find out how many donkeys there are in the village. Do you know how many there are, Yani?”

Yani shrugged.

“I’m not sure,” he said. “I’ve never counted them. Maybe twenty.”

“Well, we’ve got to be absolutely certain,” said Amanda, “because there’s no sense in our only taking half of them.”

“I still don’t see how you are going to work this,” David said doubtfully.

“Shut up and listen,” said Amanda. “As soon as we have found out how many donkeys there are, we then organise a gigantic raid so that we can get them all at once.”

“I think you’re mad,” said David with conviction. “Look, if we take them one at a time,” said Amanda, “by the time we’ve taken three or four, the rest of the villagers will have become worried and put their donkeys under lock and key. We have to get them all at once, or else it’s useless.”

“I still don’t see how we can get twenty donkeys all at once,” said David, “and then, when you’ve got them, what are you going to do with them?”

“Put them up in the hills somewhere,” said Amanda airily.

“I don’t think that’s a very good idea,” said Yani. “because there’s practically nowhere around here where you could hide twenty donkeys without somebody finding them. It would have to be a place which nobody would think of.”

“I know,” said Amanda, her eyes shining, “we’ll bring them out here.”

“What, to Hesperides?” asked David. “I really think you have gone mad. How could we get them out here?”

“Well, how do we get out here?” said Amanda. “We swim.”

“Yes, but can donkeys swim?” asked David.

Roth children looked expectantly at Yani; Yani shrugged.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve never thought about it. We don’t use them for swimming. But certainly, if we hid the donkeys here, nobody would ever dream of looking for them on this island. That is a very good idea.”

“I think it’s an absolutely hair-brained scheme from beginning to end,” said David.

“Why don’t you try it?” said Amanda.

David turned the idea over in his mind. The more he thought about the scheme the more pitfalls it seemed to possess, and the thought of his father’s wrath if they were caught made him feel slightly sick. But, try as he would, he could not think of any alternative to Amanda’s idea.

“All right,” he said reluctantly. “But on one condition, that you leave the organising side of things to me and don’t go doing anything stupid. It will have to be conducted like a military operation and the first thing to do is to find out how many donkeys there are in the village. The second thing to do is to find out whether donkeys can swim, because, if they can’t swim, the whole scheme is useless.”

“Well, horses swim,” Amanda pointed out.

“I know. But it doesn’t necessarily follow that donkeys can,” said David. “Now, we must each have our own job to do so that we can spread out. First of all you and Yani and Coocos, if you can get hold of him, will go round the village and count the donkeys. While you are doing that I will work out a plan so that we can discover whether they can swim or not.”

“Why can’t we just take one down to the beach and push him into the sea?” asked Amanda.

“You can’t do that,” said David, “because if somebody saw us it would give the whole game away. I’ll think up something. Let’s swim back now and you and Yani and Coocos can start counting.”

Excitedly the children swam back to the shore and climbed up the hillside towards the village.

Now that he had accepted Amanda’s basic idea, David was really getting quite intrigued by the whole thing. It was, he confessed to himself, infinitely more interesting to organise this than to work out complicated sums about lizards and carts. So for the rest of the day David thought and thought of a way of finding out whether donkeys could swim, while Amanda, Yani and Coocos, armed with a pad and pencil, solemnly went round the village making a list of people’s donkeys; the interest with which they inquired after everybody’s beasts of burden quite touched the villagers.

“It’s a good thing,” said Yani, when they had almost completed their task, “none of the donkeys have babies, for I think it would be very troublesome to get the baby ones over to the island.”

“Bah!” said Amanda, dismissing that with an airy wave of her hand, “you could always row them over in a boat.”

By the time they had finished, the children had discovered that the village contained eighteen donkeys and one small horse. Five of the donkeys and the horse — they were delighted to discover — belonged to Mayor Oizus.

“Jolly well serve him right when we pinch his,” said Amanda. “I bet that’ll make him sweat even more than he sweats now.”

At firefly time the children held another council of war down in the olive groves. Amanda reported to David the number of donkeys and also, what was more important. where each one was stabled overnight.

“It’s going to be a bit difficult,” said David gravely, studying the list. “I think we could probably get away with nine or ten of them in one night, but how we are going to manage the rest I am not quite sure.”

“Well, next to Mayor Oizus,” said Amanda, “the one who has the most is Papa Nikos.”

“And he always gets up very, very early and goes down to the fields,” said Yani. “We might stand a chance of getting them there.”

“Anyway,” said Amanda impatiently, “have you thought out how we can find out whether they can swim?”

“Yes,” admitted David, with a certain amount of smugness. “I have thought up a very good idea. You know that river just before you get to the fields, with the little wooden bridge?”

“Yes,” said Amanda.

“Well, if we could sabotage that in some way so that when they lead a donkey across it it would collapse, we would find out whether the donkey could swim and, at the same time, it is not so deep that we couldn’t rescue it if it couldn’t swim.”

“David, that is a clever idea,” said Amanda, her eyes sparkling.

“But, how are you going to sabotage the bridge?” inquired Yani.

“Well, I went down and inspected it this afternoon,” said David. “Actually it is so rickety that it doesn’t require very much at all. I think if you just saw through the two centre supports, anything getting into the middle of it will push the whole thing into the water.”

Amanda gave a delighted crow of laughter.

“You are clever, David,” she said admiringly. “I can’t wait to do this. When shall we do it?”

“Well, the sooner the better,” said David. “I thought we’d go down to-night, as there’s no moon, and do it then. Then we can get up very early in the morning and go down there and watch. The trouble is we don’t seem to have a saw in the house.”

“I’ve got a saw,” said Yani excitedly. “I’ll bring that.”

“Now remember, Coocos,” said David, pointing his finger sternly at the bowler-hatted boy, “you are not to say a word to anybody about this.”

Coocos shook his head vigorously and crossed himself. “No, Coocos won’t say anything,” said Yani, “because he’s my friend.”

That night the children slipped quietly out of their bedrooms and down the stairs. Each creak made them start nervously for fear it would wake the General and bring his wrath down upon them. They finally got out of the house without disturbing their parents and made their way, together with Yani and Coocos, taking infinite and quite unnecessary precautions against being seen, to the little bridge that spanned the rather muddy canal on the edge of the corn fields. David stripped off his clothes and slipped into the brown water and disappeared under the bridge, having posted the rest of them at strategic points so that should the sound of sawing be heard by anyone who might come to investigate, they could all warn him. Then he set to work. In a very short time — for he found the wood was soft and semi-rotten — he succeeded in sawing through the two uprights that supported the centre of the bridge. He then uprooted them and replanted them in the mud so that, at a casual glance, they looked as if they were still supporting the bridge although in actual fact they were useless. He then climbed out on to the bank, carefully washing the mud from his legs, dressed himself, and then the children made their way back to their respective homes.

The sky was pearly pink and green with dawn light and there were still a few freckles of stars in it when David went into Amanda’s room and woke her up. They went and met Yani and Coocos and made their way down in the fresh morning air to the little bridge. Conveniently close to the bridge several large clumps of bamboo were growing, which offered extremely good hiding places from which they could watch the result of their experiment and here they settled down and waited in silence for the first of the villagers to put in an appearance.

It was perhaps unfortunate that the first person to come down to the bridge that morning was Mayor Oizus himself. He was certainly the last person the children had expected, for normally Mayor Oizus spent most of his time sitting in the local café, while Mrs Oizus did all the work in the fields, but the previous day Mrs Oizus had complained about some curious animal which seemed to be ruining the corn crop and so the Mayor had decided to take the unprecedented step of going down to see for himself. In order to save himself the arduous task of walking, he had decided to ride on one of his donkeys.

“Saint Polycarpos!” whispered Yani, his eyes wide. “It’s the Mayor himself.”

“Splendid.” said Amanda, starting to giggle.

“Shut up,” hissed David. “He’ll hear us.”

“He’s going to be terribly angry,” said Yani.

“Serves him right,” said Amanda. “That’s what my father would call ‘poetic justice’.”

They watched as the donkey, with great patience, considering the weight of the Mayor, plodded down the hillside and clip-clopped its way towards the bridge. It was very early and the Mayor, who was unaccustomed to such physical exertion as donkey-riding at dawn, was nodding sleepily as his mount jogged along. It came to the bridge and the children held their breath. It clattered on to the bridge and David watched in an agony of suspense, for he was not at all sure that his sabotage would work, but, to his intense delight, as the donkey reached the centre of the bridge, the whole thing gave way with a most satisfying scrunch, and both donkey and Mayor were precipitated into the water with a most glorious fountain-like splash, accompanied by a very heart-warming yell of fear from the Mayor.

“It worked!” said David, his eyes shining with excitement, “It worked!”

“Absolutely wonderful!” Amanda exclaimed ecstatically.

“You did that very well, David,” said Yani.

However, they now discovered two things: that the donkey could swim remarkably well, and soon had itself out of the canal, whereas the Mayor could not swim at all.

“What shall we do?” said Yani. “We can’t let him drown. We’d better go and help him.”

The Mayor was clinging to a piece of driftwood from the bridge and bellowing for help at the top of his lungs, although at that hour in the morning it was unlikely, he felt, that there would be anybody around. He invoked the saints several times and tried to cross himself, but if he crossed himself he found he had to let go of the piece of wood, which was the only thing between himself and a watery grave.

“Yani can’t go and help him,” said Amanda, “because if he sees Yani he’ll know, so we’d better go.”

Amanda and David ran along the bank towards the floundering Mayor.

“Don’t worry, Mr Mayor,” shouted Amanda. “We’re coming.”

“Save me! Save me!” yelled the Mayor.

“Stop shouting, we’re coming,” said David impatiently. They made their way down the banks of the canal and plunged into the water.

“I’m drowning,” cried the Mayor in such a plaintive tone of voice that Amanda was seized with a fit of giggles.

“Be quiet,” said David soothingly. “You are all right.”

The children got on each side of the portly Mayor and, supporting him under his armpits, they dragged him, dripping and covered with mud and water-weed, to the bank up which he scrambled looking not unlike a rather ungainly walrus getting out on to an ice floe, He presented a sight so comic that Amanda had to go and stand behind an olive tree so that she could laugh, and even David’s mouth was not under complete control as he inquired tenderly after the Mayor’s health.

“You saved me,” said the Mayor, crossing himself several times with great rapidity. “You brave children, you saved me.”

“Oh, it was nothing,” said David unconcernedly. “We just happened to be passing and we heard you shouting. We were just going down for a — for — er — for an early morning swim.”

“It was in the mercy of God that you were passing,” said the Mayor, removing a piece of water-weed from his moustache. “Undoubtedly the mercy of God.”

“What were you doing up so early?” said David accusingly.

“I had to go down to the fields to see about my corn. It just shows one should not do foolish things. Somebody should have repaired that bridge a long time ago. I kept telling them about it,” he panted, completely untruthfully. “So now they will have to do something about it.”

It was fortunate that the Mayor’s donkey had scrambled ashore on the same bank as the Mayor and was standing grazing placidly under the trees. Amanda and David hoisted the mud-covered and dripping Mayor Oizus on to the back of his donkey and accompanied him up to the village.

“We know two things now,” said Amanda in English, so that the Mayor would not understand. “One is that donkeys swim and the other thing is that mayors don’t.” She was convulsed once more with giggles.

“Shut up. you fool,” hissed David. “He’ll think there’s something funny if you go on like that.”

By the time they got back to the village everybody was astir and their mouths dropped open with astonishment at the sight of their leading citizen, caked from head to foot in mud and leaving a trail of water, riding into the main square. Immediately, magically, almost the entire village assembled. For one thing it gave them considerable pleasure to see the Mayor in this distraught condition, and for another thing, nothing exciting had happened in the village since old Papa Nikos, three years previously, had got drunk and fallen down a well, from which he was extracted with extreme difficulty.

The Mayor, making the most of the situation, climbed painfully off his donkey and staggered to the nearest chair in the café. He had realised, as all Greeks do, the good dramatic possibilities of such a situation, He gasped, he fainted several times and had to be revived with ouzo, and was so incoherent at first that the villagers were quivering with a desire to know precisely what had happened. At last, with much gesturing and much crossing of himself, the Mayor told his story and although there must have been nearly two hundred people standing around, you could have heard a pin drop. The entire village, it seemed, was holding its breath, so that nobody should miss a word of this thrilling story. When the Mayor came to the rescue part. the villagers were delighted. Fancy! The children of their English people rescued the Mayor! The fact that, later on, when speculating on the incident, the general consensus of opinion was that it was rather a pity he had been rescued, was not thought of for this brief moment. Amanda and David were the heroes of the day. They were embraced and kissed and plied with glasses of wine and those hideous sticky preserves which were so dear to the hearts of the people of Kalanero. Amanda and David were, of course, acutely embarrassed and felt very guilty, and indeed looked it, but this the villagers attributed to natural English modesty.

Eventually, having been embraced and kissed on both cheeks by the Mayor, who was beginning to smell a bit owing to the mud, they were released by the happy villagers and made their way to the villa, accompanied by shouts of “Bravo!” and “Brave things” and similar encouraging phrases.

When the children got back to the villa they found their parents in the middle of breakfast. Having changed, they slipped into their places as unobtrusively as possible.

“Ah, there you are,” said Mrs Finchberry-White. “I was just coming to look for you.”

“I understand,” said the General, scrunching his way through large quantities of toast, “that you have just had the somewhat doubtful privilege of saving our Mayor’s life.”

“How did you know that?” asked Amanda, startled.

“There are many things,” said the General, “such as the Facts of Life for example, which a parent is not supposed to vouchsafe to his children and that includes his sources of information.”

“Well, it wasn’t anything really,” said David hastily. “It’s just that the bridge gave way and he fell into the water and he can’t swim, so we pulled him out.”

“A noble feat,” said the General. “After all, he is no mean weight.”

“Want some more marmalade? asked Amanda, in an effort to steer the conversation on to different lines.

“No. thank you,” said the General.

He took his pipe out of his pocket and beat out a rapid tattoo on his leg.

“Must you do that, Henry?” asked Mrs Finchberry-White.

“That’s the noise of Wattusi drums when they’ve failed in an attack,” said the General. “I remember it vividly. There we were — five of us — holed up in a kopje and they attacked at dawn. Enormous fellows, all over six feet, with zebra-skin shields and long slender spears. The plain below us was black with them — like ants. We fired until our gun barrels got red hot and finally drove them off; that was where I lost my leg.”

“No dear,” said Mrs Finchberry-White, “you lost it falling downstairs at the Westburys’.”

“I do wish, my dear,” said the General, testily. “that you wouldn’t always spoil a good story by introducing truth into it.”

The General had at one time or another lost his leg in such a variety of circumstances and in such a variety of places that the children now took very little notice of his stories.

David had something else to occupy his mind: a problem which he put to Amanda as soon as they had finished breakfast and were alone together.

“What about the donkeys braying?” he asked.

“Braying?” said Amanda. “What do you mean?”

“I mean,” explained David, “that if we have got all the donkeys on Hesperides and they start braying, then everyone will know where they are.”

Amanda frowned over this problem for a moment or so.

“I don’t think we need worry,” she said. “After all, donkeys only bray to each other. It’s sort of like one donkey talking to another donkey across the valley, but if they are all together and there are no donkeys on the mainland to talk to, I think they’ll be quiet.”

“I hope you’re right,” said David. “Now, let’s go down and see Yani and have another council of war.”