Read Borribles Go For Broke, The Online
Authors: Michael de Larrabeiti
Borribles Go For Broke, The (19 page)
It was a long trek across the underground citadel and the seven Borribles passed many Wendles on their way, but no one asked their business or stopped them to demand their destination. By the time Spiff marched them out on to the banks of the Wandle the Borribles knew their disguise was perfect and they were filled with confidence and determination.
They came to a halt near a small jetty where two skiffs were moored. These were the boats used by the sentries for travelling to and from the derrick. Everywhere, on both sides of the river, sat or stood small groups of Wendles, all of them waiting for the treasure to be unearthed. On the platform itself the great wheel turned and creaked as the buckets clanked and the mud-covered figure of Torreycanyon stumbled forever forward.
‘Strike a light,’ said Vulge, ‘it don’t bear thinking about, do it? Our mates working in that shit for months and months. Old Flinthead’s got a lot to answer for.’
‘That’ll do,’ said Stonks, walking up and down in front of his companions like a commander inspecting his troops. ‘Remember everyone along here is watching us right now, so try to make it look as if you know what you’re doing. When I give the order, Bingo, Vulge, Sydney and me will get into this boat here. You other three will make for one of those tunnels. You’ll be able to see everything from there, and whatever you do, Chalotte, don’t take your eyes off Spiff.’
‘I ain’t going anywhere,’ said Spiff. ‘I want to see what a mess you make of it,’ and he did a right turn, saluted like a Wendle and
stamped off towards the nearest corridor with Chalotte and Twilight following.
stamped off towards the nearest corridor with Chalotte and Twilight following.
Stonks watched them go and then ordered his own contingent into the larger of the two boats. Vulge and Bingo took the oars and, shoving off, they rowed into midstream.
Sydney bit her lip as the water slipped by. ‘Have we got a chance, Stonksie?’ she said.
Stonks sat in the stern and gazed at the derrick as they approached it. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘If we’re lucky with the four guards and if we can get the prisoners out of the mine before we’re noticed, then we’ll get away.’
Bingo and Vulge gave a few more strokes of the oars and their skiff arrived at the platform. One of the guards came to the edge of it and Vulge turned in his seat and threw him a rope. ‘Tie us up, mate,’ he called, and the guard knelt and hooked the painter on to a large nail, but there his friendliness ceased. As soon as Vulge made to climb from the boat the Wendle lowered his spear so that the point of it was only an inch or two away from the Stepney Borrible’s face.
‘Where do you think you’re going, mush? You’ve got to have a special writing from Flinthead to get on here.’
Vulge hesitated; he didn’t know what to say.
Stonks stood up in the stern of the boat, frowning. ‘That’s exactly it,’ he said, ‘we’re special from Flinthead. It’s an emergency. The off-duty guard told him about the shuttering in the shaft, said it was weak, likely to fall in and bury everything; we’ve got to inspect it.’
‘I know nothing about that,’ grumbled the guard. ‘I’ve had strict orders.’
Stonks raised both arms. ‘You do as yer please, me old china; you know what Flinthead will be like if we go back without having done what we were sent to do. If that treasure gets buried under a thousand tons of mud you can bet your ears you’ll be down there with it.’
The guard paled and Stonks reflected, not for the first time, that Flinthead’s strength was also his weakness. The Wendles were so scared of him that they had no confidence in themselves. ‘It’s up
to you,’ went on Stonks, ‘but I wouldn’t be in your waders, mate, if you send us off with a flea in our ear.’
to you,’ went on Stonks, ‘but I wouldn’t be in your waders, mate, if you send us off with a flea in our ear.’
‘All right,’ said the guard, ‘but watch yer step or I’ll skewer yer.’
Vulge leapt easily on to the platform, in spite of his limp, and held out a hand to pull the three others up to him.
‘Thanks,’ said Stonks, who came last, and he walked across to the great treadmill. Close to, it was a massive thing and inside it the tortured shape of Torreycanyon shambled along like a drunkard, tumbling forward at a dangerous angle, always on the point of falling over but never quite managing to leave his feet far enough behind. The cumbersome wheel turned, the heavy mud splashed down into the river and the yellow lights above sprayed a dismal colour over everything. As Stonks listened to the rumbling of the treadmill and the banging of the buckets his eyes began to burn with pity and a fearful anger gnawed at the back of his brain.
‘I’ll kill ’em for this,’ he said, under his breath, ‘I’ll kill ‘em, every last one.’
As he stood there one of the guards came up beside him and laughed. ‘This is the way to treat ’em,’ he said, and he cracked his whip, making it curl across Torreycanyon’s shoulders. The captive Borrible lost his balance, tottered for a moment, and then ran on, just a little faster.
Stonks swallowed hard. His friend was a ghost, a shadow. His clothes were in tatters, he was barefoot and covered from heel to head in a dark stickiness, a mixture of sweat, mud and blood. There was slime in his eyes, slime in his hair. He was not far from death, ground down to nothing for the sake of the Rumbles’ treasure.
‘What’s his name?’ asked Stonks for something to say.
‘Torreycanyon,’ said the guard, ‘and he’s the lucky one. He’s a bit like a pet dog to us, running round in his wheel. You should see the others down below, you’d have to see the state they’re in to believe it. No fresh air, gasping for breath. If you could see their skin, which you can’t ’cos of the mud, you’d find it had all gone green with mildew. I don’t reckon they can live much longer, they may not live until they finds the treasure even.’
‘Very interesting,’ said Bingo, biting back his temper, ‘but we’re only here to see the shuttering.’
‘Yes,’ said Stonks, ‘we’d better get on with the job.’ He went past the treadmill and looked into the mouth of the mine. The chief guard was by his side.
‘Well, that’s it,’ said the Wendle. ‘About a quarter of a mile down they reckon they are now, wood planks all the way round the outside with two big beams going across every fifteen feet or so to stop the planks falling inwards, ’cos the weight of the mud and earth behind is enormous, and pushing in all the time. If that lot slipped I don’t know what would happen, a bleedin’ eruption I should think.’
The rescuers were silent. The shaft was about ten feet in diameter and, as the guard had said, the safety of the diggings depended on the solid beams that crossed at right angles to each other at regular intervals all the way to the bottom. Huge wedges held the first timbers in position; massive they were and rising above the level of the platform. Sydney sidled to the rim and peered down. Below her she saw an electric light and another platform, and below that another and another until they became so small they disappeared.
‘Can’t see anything moving,’ said Sydney.
‘And you won’t,’ said the chief guard, ‘they’re too deep; they’ve been out of sight for months. There’s two at the bottom digging their hearts out, and another follows behind. Black feller!’
‘He’s black now all right,’ said another guard and he laughed.
‘He has to keep the whole shaft in good order,’ continued the chief, ‘otherwise, if those beams give way, any of ’em, why the whole shebang would collapse and kill ‘em all, not to mention losing the treasure.’
‘Still getting enough timber?’ asked Vulge.
‘We’re having a bit of trouble since the SBG arrived outside, still we’ve got enough to be going on with.’
Stonks glanced at the banks of the river. No one seemed particularly interested in what was taking place on the platform. It was time to begin; he had to get rid of the sentries. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘we’d better start our inspection.’ He looked at the chief guard. ‘Will you come to the first landing with me, I’ve already seen something there I don’t like the look of.’
‘Well, all right,’ said the Wendle, ‘but I’ll be buggered if I’ll go any further. I can’t stand it in there, it gives me the creeps.’
Stonks winked at Vulge and whispered, ‘You stay here and send me another one when I asks yer.’
Vulge perched on the coping of the shaft and watched Stonks follow the guard down the ladder. Bingo scrutinized the towpaths and Sydney placed herself near the treadmill. Whatever happened to her, she had decided, the guard with the whip was going into the mud. Her sharp knife was ready.
The moment Stonks arrived below he went to stand by the Wendle and called his attention to a split in the shuttering. The guard leant over to examine the fault and Stonks nudged him gently into space. For a split second the Wendle ran on thin air like a cartoon cat; his spear sprang from his grasp, his eyes bulged and then down he went, surprised, leaving only a small and diminishing scream behind him.
Stonks glanced up at Vulge and raised two fingers; he wanted another one.
‘I think your mate’s slipped,’ said Vulge quietly. ‘You’d better have a look.’
The guards who were nearest came to the shaft and bent forward to see.
‘He’s fallen to the next platform,’ called Stonks. ‘You’ll have to come and help me fetch him up.’
‘Dammit,’ said the Wendles, but they laid their spears on the planking and climbed down the ladder.
‘Blimey,’ said Bingo, ‘that first guard was a pushover.’
‘No jokes,’ said Vulge. ‘Grab hold of one of them spears and pretend you’re on duty. We don’t want them Wendles on the shore to get suspicious. I’ll watch Stonks.’
But there wasn’t much for Vulge to see. The two guards arrived on the landing. Stonks got them to the edge, the Wendles stared downwards and the next thing they knew they were falling fast, rigid with terror, clutching their bodies one to the other in the hope that somehow they could alter the laws of gravity and so save themselves. The noise when it came was solid and sickening. Stonks looked up and raised four fingers; he wanted the guard with the whip.
‘Here, mate,’ said Vulge. ‘Your two chums want you. I can’t
make out what they’re saying, got a speech impediment have they?’
make out what they’re saying, got a speech impediment have they?’
The guard threw his whip on to a pile of tools near the treadmill and ambled over to where Vulge sat. ‘They’re a bunch of idiots,’ he said, and leant over the parapet. Sydney had kept pace with him across the platform and as soon as he halted she hit him very hard in the kidneys, taking the breath out of his body so that he couldn’t call or shout, then she bent rapidly to his heels, grasped them securely, and simply upended her victim into the mine. Fortunately he made no sound until his head hit the planks of the landing. There he rolled and groaned until Stonks helped him on his way with a soft touch of the foot, easing the unconscious Wendle into the shaft so that he could join his colleagues.
‘My, my,’ said Vulge as he watched the body swoop and dive like a swallow, ‘he has gone down in the world.’
‘Shall we tell Torreycanyon now?’ asked Sydney.
Vulge looked at the river banks. All was quiet. ‘No,’ he said at length. ‘He might get excited and give us away. Hurry, let’s get on guard, them Wendles on the shore will get suspicious if there ain’t someone walking up and down all the time. And keep cracking the whip.’
So the three Borribles seized their spears and stood sternly to attention or marched to and fro across the platform.
‘I can hardly believe it,’ murmured Sydney. ‘It all seems to be going to plan.’
Twilight and Chalotte surveyed the river from the safety of a tunnel, staring anxiously across the Wandle to where the wooden derrick floated on the slow rise and fall of the black-green mud. Streams of darkness poured down between the yellow lights that the Wendles had raised and it was a darkness that was at one with the dingy waters of the river. Somewhere behind Chalotte sat Spiff, not watching, strangely melancholy, alone.
‘They’re going well,’ said Twilight. ‘Stonks has got three of them into the mine and no one on shore has twigged it yet, and Bingo and Sydney are pretending to be on guard.’
‘I know,’ said Chalotte, her voice hopeful. ‘But it’ll be a bit different when they bring the prisoners out; they’ll have to go like the clappers then.’
Suddenly Twilight laid hold of Chalotte’s arm. ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘What’s that whispering in the tunnels?’
Chalotte cocked an ear and the whispering, faint at first, began to grow more definite. It was a threatening and insistent noise, a soft squelching, a noise that brought fear with it. Chalotte was mystified, then she realized what it was; it was the sound of many scores of Wendles in supple waders running at a relentless speed. It was the sound that Flinthead’s bodyguard made when it moved—direct, dedicated, unswerving and vicious—and when the bodyguard moved Flinthead moved with it, his shapeless nose sniffing the way.
‘Oh, it can’t be,’ wailed Chalotte, ‘it mustn’t be.’
Her wishes made no difference. Within a minute or two a mass of heavily armed Wendles poured out of the tunnels on each side of the river, the light glinting on their spears and helmets. Many of them carried lightweight skiffs and their stride did not break as they reached the Wandle and ran on into it, launching themselves, their speed remaining constant as they went from running to rowing so that they flew on to the surface of the mud like black and orange water-bugs. Many more warriors spread out along the banks, prodding ordinary Wendles from the towpaths with the butts of their spears. Then came a clashing of weapons and a huge shout, and in the midst of fifty hand-picked soldiers Flinthead appeared, his golden jacket shining and his eyes brilliantly opaque with the coldness of his triumph.
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