The Donkey Rustlers

CHAPTER 5 The Rustling

The children met at Yani’s small whitewashed house and sat out under the vine drinking lemonade. Coocos was in a tremendous state of excitement because his goldfinch had laid an egg, and he was carrying it round carefully in the pocket of his shirt in the hope of hatching it. As the goldfinch had had no opportunity of coming in contact with another goldfinch, the children thought that his chances of success were very slight, but they did not tell him so for fear of hurting his feelings.

“Now,” said Amanda, “when are we going to do this?”

“I’ve decided,” said David, “that we must wait for full moon.”

“But that’s not until about ten days’ time,” protested Amanda.

“I don’t care,” said David stubbornly, “it must be full moon. We have got to have enough light to see by and we won’t waste the ten days because there are masses of things that we’ve got to do. Remember, we can’t afford to make any mistakes.”

“I agree with David,” said Yani. “I think it’s essential that we do it at full moon, otherwise it’s going to make the job twice as difficult.”

“All right,” said Amanda reluctantly, “but what are we going to do in the meantime?”

“Well,” said David, “the first thing to do is to take some food over to the island to feed the donkeys when we’ve got them. We don’t know how long we’re going to have to keep them there. We can’t take it all at once, because it would look suspicious, so every day, little by little, we will take some hay and some corn out.”

“Sometimes Coocos can do this at night,” suggested Yani. “Nobody really worries about what he does.”

“That’s a good idea,” said Amanda, and Coocos beamed at her.

“Then,” said David, “we ought to have some practice runs so that we know exactly what we are doing on the night.”

“Yes,” said Amanda. “I think that’s very important. Otherwise we will get muddled up and make a hash of it.”

So during the next ten days the four of them quietly and unobtrusively shifted enough fodder to Hesperides to keep even the most finicky of donkeys happy for at least one week. They also worked out a system of communication by owl noises, the number of hoots varying with the message. They found the easiest path from the village down to the beach opposite Hesperides and walked up and down it until they knew every stone and every twist of it. They also went round the village again and again checking on where the donkeys were stabled at night.

Then at last the moon, which had been a mere silver thread in the sky became round and fat and rose blood-red from the sea and they knew that the time had come for their great endeavour.

“Mother, do you mind if we spend to-night out camping?” asked Amanda one morning. “The moon is so lovely now, we thought it would give us a chance to do some moonlight bathing.”

“Of course not, dear,” said Mrs Finchberry-White. “I’ll pack up some food, shall I? And make sure you take a blanket and that sort of thing.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” said Amanda. “I’ll organise all that side of it.”

“Where are you going?” inquired the General, adding a touch of purple to an unfortunate cypress tree. “Not that I am particularly interested, but I feel it might be useful to know in case I have to send someone to rescue you from a shark or something.”

“Oh,” said David. “We are not going very far. Just down to the beach opposite Hesperides.”

Amanda packed up sufficient food for herself and David, Yani and Coocos and, in order to add a certain air of verisimilitude to their story (and to put her mother’s mind at rest) she rolled up a couple of blankets and (on her mother’s insistence) a couple of sheets. Then, at five o’clock, carrying their things, the children made their way down to the beach where Yani and Coocos were waiting for them. Here they lit a fire out of drift-wood and grilled some fish while they waited for it to get dark and for the moon to rise. They had decided to leave the fire alight so that, from a casual observer’s point of view, it would give the impression that they were still on the beach, and it would also act as a beacon for them as to the exact spot on the beach which was closest to Hesperides. David had spent two days working this out with the aid of a length of clothes line and endless mathematical formulae.

Although the children pretended to be very casual about the whole thing, they were all tense with excitement and Amanda, though she would never have admitted it, even felt slightly sick. Presently the moon, round and as red as a drop of blood, lifted itself over the edge of the sea and floated slowly up into the sky turning gradually to bronze and then to gold and finally to silver,

Well,” said David, with an air of nonchalance, “I suppose it’s about time we started.”

“Yes,” said Amanda, swallowing.

“Now, are we all sure that we know what we have got to do?” asked David.

Coocos nodded vigorously, so did Yani and Amanda. They had, after all, been practising it for ten days.

They had decided that their first sortie should be directed against the Mayor. This, they thought, was not only fair, but, apart from that, he owned one of the largest number of donkeys in the village. So they made their way up the hillside and crept with infinite stealth towards the Mayor’s house. The Mayor stabled his horse and his donkeys in a small shed that lay behind the house and so, while Amanda concealed herself behind an olive tree ready to give the alarm should the Mayor suddenly appear, the others made their way round the back of the house to the stables. The door to the stables was an old one and held shut by a heavy wooden bar, and this caused them a certain amount of trouble. The bar had to be lifted out with infinite precautions against noise and the doors eased open inch by inch so that they did not creak. Then the reluctant donkeys had to be led out one by one and tethered to each other and then finally the horse was tethered to them as the leader. They led the string of animals into the olive groves, where Amanda awaited them, twittering with excitement.

“You’ve got them!” she whispered excitedly. “That’s marvellous!”

“Don’t speak too soon,” said David grimly. “Now, if Coocos rides the horse, he can take this lot down to the beach and tether them and then come back.”

“As a matter of fact,” said Amanda, thoughtfully, “that horse might be jolly useful. With it Coocos can go up and down that path very much faster.”

“Yes, you are quite right,” said Yani. “It will be a help, and also I think the donkeys like following it.”

So Coocos was despatched down to the beach with the Mayor’s five donkeys and the children awaited his reappearance.

While they waited, David crept back to the Mayor’s house and pinned to the door of the stable a large notice, which he had got Yani to write out in Greek in rather shaky capitals, which read DONKEYS OF THE WORLD UNITE.

“That should give them something to think about,” said David with satisfaction, when it had been successfully attached to the stable door.

In a remarkably short space of time, Coocos reappeared on the Mayor’s horse and the children continued with their rustling. In a number of cases the job was simplicity itself, for the donkey was simply tethered under a convenient olive tree and all they had to do was untie it and lead it away.

With the donkeys of Philimona Kouzos, however, things were a little more difficult. Kouzos was notorious as being the biggest coward in the village and took infinite precautions to guard both himself and his livestock against the innumerable disasters which — he felt — constantly lurked around him. In consequence, his two donkeys were put in a shed at night, the door of which was firmly closed with a large and ancient padlock. Amanda and David had investigated this and had discovered that with the aid of a screwdriver it was possible to remove the entire lock but the whole process would take some time, So Yani waited round the front of the house in case Kouzos should put in an appearance while Amanda and David went to work with a screwdriver. They were just removing the last screw when the screwdriver slipped in David’s sweaty hands and he dropped it. That would not have been so bad but the trouble was that it fell with a resounding crash on an upturned bucket near the stable door. The children froze instantly and held their breath; in the still night, the sound of the screwdriver on the bucket had sounded like the crash of a bomb. Inside the house they heard stirrings and mutterings.

“Quick,” hissed David, “let’s get the donkeys out.”

Suddenly Yani saw Philimona Kouzos, clad in his thick woollen vest and underpants, carrying a lantern and a shot-gun, appear framed in the doorway of his house.

“Who’s that?” he quavered. “Stand still, or I’ll fire.”

As Kouzos was as notorious for his bad marksmanship as he was for his cowardice, this made Yani chuckle. He uttered a couple of loud moans, and assumed a screeching, quavering voice.

“I am Vyraclos, Kouzos,” he screeched, “and I have come to suck your blood and steal your soul.”

Kouzos, who had always felt inside himself that something like this would happen one day, dropped his lantern with fright and it promptly went out.

“Saint Polycarpos preserve me!” he shouted loudly, “Dear God be with me.”

“It is no good,” said Yani, giving a hideous cackle, “I have come for your soul.”

In the meantime, Amanda and David had gone into the stable and were endeavouring to extract Kouzos’s two donkeys. The animals had had an extremely hard day’s work and so were not, understandably, terribly enthusiastic about the idea of being removed from a warm, comfortable stable, with every prospect of having to do a night shift. So the children had the utmost difficulty in getting them out, but Yani, round the front of the house, was giving such an excellent imitation of Vyraclos that he was keeping Kouzos invoking every saint on the calendar. So the slight noise that the children made in pushing and pulling and tugging to get the donkeys out went unnoticed. As soon as Yani saw them disappear into the trees with the donkeys he uttered a few final moans to keep Kouzos happy and followed them swiftly.

So by the time that the eastern horizon was starting to pale into the great dawn, they had assembled on the beach all but four of the donkeys in the village. The four that were missing belonged to Papa Nikos. It was these four donkeys that had particularly worried David for, because of the position of the stable, it was impossible to steal them from Papa Nilcos’s house. However, Yani had said, somewhat mysteriously, that he had worked out a method of obtaining them.

“I think we’ve done wonders,” said Amanda, looking with satisfaction at the line of fourteen depressed donkeys and the horse.

“We haven’t finished yet.” David pointed out.

“Don’t you think we ought to get this lot across to Hesperides?” asked Amanda, “and then we have only got Papa Nikos’s ones to worry about.”

“Yes,” said Yani. “That would be sensible.”

All the donkeys had been reluctant enough to go out at night in the first place. However, since fate had decreed they should be removed from their comfortable stables and led down to the beach in the middle of the night and forced to stand there, they accepted it with their usual humility. But when they discovered they were expected to enter the water and swim, their disapproval was unanimous. They kicked and bucked and one of them even broke loose and took the unprecedented step of actually cantering down the beach with the children in hot pursuit. They finally caught him and re-tethered him with the rest. The donkey’s disapproval of sea bathing at dawn was so great that it took the children over an hour to get their catch to Hesperides. Once they had arrived there, the donkeys hauled themselves ashore and shook themselves vigorously and sighed deep, lugubrious sighs to indicate their irritation and their disapproval of the whole venture. Carefully the children led them, one at a time, up the steps to the little terraced area round the church. Here they tethered them and provided each donkey with a large enough quantity of food to keep its mind occupied. They then swam back to the shore for their final bit of rustling.

“Now,” whispered Yani, when they were close to the fields concealed behind a clump of bamboos, “Papa Nikos is working those two fields over there. He generally tethers his donkeys under that fig tree. When he arrives, I’ll slip round behind the bamboos over there and create a disturbance.”

“What sort of disturbance?” asked Amanda.

“Wait and see,” said Yani mysteriously, grinning at her.

“I assure you it will keep their attention off the donkeys — but you and David and Coocos must move fast because I won’t be able to keep them occupied for very long.”

“You managed to keep Kouzos occupied,” said Amanda giggling.

“Bah!” said Yani, “that was easy. He’s a fool, that one; but Papa Nikos is not a fool and so we’ll have to take great care.”

Patiently the children waited and presently, as it grew light and the sun started to rise, they heard the sound of Papa Nikos and his family coming down to the fields. The only flaw that there could be in their plan was that Papa Nikos might not bring down his full complement of donkeys, but to their relief they saw that he had brought all four of them with him. He and his wife and two sons came down to the fields, chattering gaily, tethered the donkeys under the fig tree and then, getting out their hoes, they started to work, turning the soil over.

“Now is the time,” said Yani.

To Amanda’s amazement, Yani suddenly produced a large penknife from his pocket and before the children could stop him, he had stabbed himself twice in his bare foot so that the blood ran down between his toes.

“What are you doing?” asked Amanda, horrified.

Yani grinned at her.

“We’ve got to make it realistic,” he said, “otherwise it won’t fool Papa Nikos. Now, once you’ve got the donkeys take them over to Hesperides and then come up to the village. I shall be up there.”

He put his knife away and then disappeared through the bamboos.

“What do you think he’s going to do?” asked David.

Amanda shrugged.

“I don’t know,” she said, “but he’s no fool, so let’s leave it to him. Come on, we’d better move closer to the fig tree so that we’re ready.”

They crept round the field and concealed themselves in the bushes near the fig tree. Presently, to their astonishment and alarm, they saw Yani come out of the bamboos into full view of Papa Nikos and his family. As if this was not bad enough, he actually called out a good morning to Papa Nikos, who replied cheerfully. Asking intelligent questions about the crops. Yani made his way along the edge of the field and through the grass towards the spot where Papa Nikos was working. Suddenly, so suddenly that it made Amanda jump, Yani uttered a piercing scream and then fell to the ground.

“A snake! A snake!” he screamed. “I’ve been bitten by a snake.”

Instantly Papa Nikos and his entire family dropped their hoes and rushed across the field to where Yani was writhing realistically in the grass. They gathered round him and lifted his head and examined the wound in his foot, chattering excitedly and commiserating and suggesting any number of antidotes, well-known to be useful in the case of snake bite. Yani’s screams were so deafening that Papa Nikos and his family had to shout at each other to make themselves heard. This cacophony successfully covered up the noise that Amanda, David and Coocos made in untethering the donkeys and leading them away.

“A hot iron,” bellowed Papa Nikos. “That’s what we need. A hot iron.”

“No, no,” shrieked Mama Nikos. “Garlic and olive oil. My mother always used to use garlic and olive oil.”

“I’m dying,” screamed Yani. Since he had seen (through his half-closed lids) that the donkeys had been successfully removed, he was rather enjoying the sensation that he was causing.

“No, no, my golden boy,” bellowed Papa Nikos, “we won’t let you die. We’ll take you to the village and get a hot iron.”

“Garlic and olive oil,” shrilled Mama Nikos. “Not a hot iron.”

“Shut up, woman,” shouted Papa Nikos. “Do you think that I, with all my experience, don’t know best?”

“I am dying,” moaned Yani in a most realistic, quavering voice.

“Give him a drop of wine! commanded Papa Nikos. “There’s a bottle near the donkeys.”

So excited were the whole family over Yani’s predicament that one of the sons ran and fetched the bottle of wine without even noticing that the donkeys were no longer tethered to the fig tree. Yani fainted with great realism and they had to lift his head and force a dribble of wine through his clenched teeth.

“I’m dead,” he moaned, coming round. “I’m dead!”

“No, my soul. No, my soul,” shouted Papa Nikos. “We’ll take you this instant to the village and cure you. Go and get one of the donkeys to carry him on.”

The sons ran to obey him and then suddenly came to a halt when they realised that the fig tree was donkeyless.

“Papa,” they said, “the donkeys have disappeared.” Papa Nikos’s face grew purple with rage. “You foolish woman,” he said, rounding on his wife as being the obvious cause of the trouble. “You couldn’t have tied them up properly. You fish brain.”

“Fish brain!” screeched Mama Nikos indignantly. “Fish brain yourself. I tied them up perfectly well.”

“Well, they’ve disappeared, so you can’t have done,” said Papa Nikos.

“I’m dying,” moaned Yani.

“Well, we’ll have to carry him up to the village,” said Papa Nikos, “and come back to look for the donkeys afterwards. They can’t have gone far.”

“I’m already dead,” said Yani. “It’s useless taking me to the village.”

“No, no, my soul,” said Papa Nikos, patting him gently. “You’ll not die.”

The four of them lifted Yani up and trudged wearily back to the village with him, Yani assuring them every step of the way that they might just as well put him down under an olive tree and leave him to die as there was no hope for him.

At length, panting and exhausted, they reached the main square of the village, where people were just starting to come to life. Two tables in the café were hastily put together and Yani was laid upon them. Immediately, practically the entire village gathered round. Even Papa Yorgo (well over a hundred as you will remember) tottered out to give his advice, which was listened to respectfully as he was the oldest inhabitant and should therefore have had more experience with snake bite than anybody else. Everybody talked at once. Everybody contradicted everybody else and the whole scene took on such mammoth proportions that Yani was hard pressed not to laugh. Eventually, after his foot had been anointed with seventeen different remedies and bound up in a piece of most unhygienic cloth, he was carried reverently down to his house and put to bed. They closed the shutters and door firmly to keep out every breath of fresh air, for it was well known that fresh air was the worst thing you could have in the case of illness and then, stridently arguing, they made their way back to the village and in the gloom of his little room Yani lay on his bed and laughed until the tears poured down his cheeks.