Five Children and It
There was another shout from the camp across the moat--and then the
beleaguered fortress felt that the attack had indeed begun.
It was getting rather dark in the room above the great gate, and Jane
took a very little courage as she remembered that sunset _couldn't_ be
far off now.
"The moat is dreadfully thin," said Anthea.
"But they can't get into the castle even if they do swim over," said
Robert. And as he spoke he heard feet on the stair outside--heavy feet
and the clang of steel. No one breathed for a moment. The steel and the
feet went on up the turret stairs. Then Robert sprang softly to the
door. He pulled off his shoes.
"Wait here," he whispered, and stole quickly and softly after the boots
and the spur-clank. He peeped into the upper room. The man was
there--and it was Jakin, all dripping with moat-water, and he was
fiddling about with the machinery which Robert felt sure worked the
drawbridge. Robert banged the door suddenly, and turned the great key in
the lock, just as Jakin sprang to the inside of the door. Then he tore
downstairs and into the little turret at the foot of the tower where the
biggest window was.
"We ought to have defended _this_!" he cried to the others as they
followed him. He was just in time. Another man had swum over, and his
fingers were on the window-ledge. Robert never knew how the man had
managed to climb up out of the water. But he saw the clinging fingers,
and hit them as hard as he could with an iron bar that he caught up from
the floor. The man fell with a splash into the moat-water. In another
moment Robert was outside the little room, had banged its door and was
shooting home the enormous bolts, and calling to Cyril to lend a hand.
Then they stood in the arched gate-house, breathing hard and looking at
each other.
Jane's mouth was open.
"Cheer up, Jenny," said Robert,--"it won't last much longer."
There was a creaking above, and something rattled and shook. The
pavement they stood on seemed to tremble. Then a crash told them that
the drawbridge had been lowered to its place.
"That's that beast Jakin," said Robert. "There's still the portcullis;
I'm almost certain that's worked from lower down."
And now the drawbridge rang and echoed hollowly to the hoofs of horses
and the tramp of armed men.
"Up--quick!" cried Robert,--"let's drop things on them."
Even the girls were feeling almost brave now. They followed Robert
quickly, and under his directions began to drop stones out through the
long narrow windows. There was a confused noise below, and some groans.
"Oh dear!" said Anthea, putting down the stone she was just going to
drop out, "I'm afraid we've hurt somebody!"
Robert caught up the stone in a fury.
"I should hope we _had_!" he said; "I'd give something for a jolly good
boiling kettle of lead. Surrender, indeed!"
And now came more tramping and a pause, and then the thundering thump of
the battering-ram. And the little room was almost pitch dark.
"We've held it," cried Robert, "we _won't_ surrender! The sun _must_ set
in a minute. Here--they're all jawing underneath again. Pity there's no
time to get more stones! Here, pour that water down on them. It's no
good, of course, but they'll hate it."
"Oh dear!" said Jane, "don't you think we'd better surrender?"
"Never!" said Robert; "we'll have a parley if you like, but we'll never
surrender. Oh, I'll be a soldier when I grow up--you just see if I
don't. I won't go into the Civil Service, whatever anyone says."
"Let's wave a handkerchief and ask for a parley," Jane pleaded. "I don't
believe the sun's going to set to-night at all."
"Give them the water first--the brutes!" said the bloodthirsty Robert.
So Anthea tilted the pot over the nearest lead-hole, and poured. They
heard a splash below, but no one below seemed to have felt it. And again
the ram battered the great door. Anthea paused.
"How idiotic," said Robert, lying flat on the floor and putting one eye
to the lead-hole. "Of course the holes go straight down into the
gate-house--that's for when the enemy has got past the door and the
portcullis, and almost all is lost. Here, hand me the pot." He crawled
on to the three-cornered window-ledge in the middle of the wall, and,
taking the pot from Anthea, poured the water out through the arrow-slit.
And as he began to pour, the noise of the battering-ram and the
trampling of the foe and the shouts of "Surrender!" and "De Talbot for
ever!" all suddenly stopped and went out like the snuff of a candle; the
little dark room seemed to whirl round and turn topsy-turvy, and when
the children came to themselves there they were, safe and sound, in the
big front bedroom of their own house--the house with the ornamental
nightmare iron-top to the roof.
They all crowded to the window and looked out. The moat and the tents
and the besieging force were all gone--and there was the garden with its
tangle of dahlias and marigolds and asters and later roses, and the
spiky iron railings and the quiet white road.
Everyone drew a deep breath.
"And that's all right!" said Robert. "I told you so! And, I say, we
didn't surrender, did we?"
"Aren't you glad now I wished for a castle?" asked Cyril.
"I think I am _now_," said Anthea slowly. "But I wouldn't wish for it
again, I think, Squirrel dear!"
"Oh, it was simply splendid!" said Jane unexpectedly. "I wasn't
frightened a bit."
"Oh, I say!" Cyril was beginning, but Anthea stopped him.
"Look here," she said, "it's just come into my head. This is the very
first thing we've wished for that hasn't got us into a row. And there
hasn't been the least little scrap of a row about this. Nobody's raging
downstairs, we're safe and sound, we've had an awfully jolly day--at
least, not jolly exactly, but you know what I mean. And we know now how
brave Robert is--and Cyril too, of course," she added hastily, "and
Jane as well. And we haven't got into a row with a single grown-up."
The door was opened suddenly and fiercely.
"You ought to be ashamed of yourselves," said the voice of Martha, and
they could tell by her voice that she was very angry indeed. "I thought
you couldn't last through the day without getting up to some mischief! A
person can't take a breath of air on the front doorstep but you must be
emptying the water jug on their heads! Off you go to bed, the lot of
you, and try to get up better children in the morning. Now then--don't
let me have to tell you twice. If I find any of you not in bed in ten
minutes I'll let you know it, that's all! A new cap, and everything!"
She flounced out amid a disregarded chorus of regrets and apologies. The
children were very sorry, but really it was not their faults.
You can't help it if you are pouring water on a besieging foe, and your
castle suddenly changes into your house--and everything changes with it
except the water, and that happens to fall on somebody else's clean cap.
"I don't know why the water didn't change into nothing, though," said
Cyril.
"Why should it?" asked Robert. "Water's water all the world over."
"I expect the castle well was the same as ours in the stable-yard," said
Jane. And that was really the case.
"I thought we couldn't get through a wish-day without a row," said
Cyril; "it was much too good to be true. Come on, Bobs, my military
hero. If we lick into bed sharp she won't be so furious, and perhaps
she'll bring us up some supper. I'm jolly hungry! Good-night, kids."
"Good-night. I hope the castle won't come creeping back in the night,"
said Jane.
"Of course it won't," said Anthea briskly, "but Martha will--not in the
night, but in a minute. Here, turn round, I'll get that knot out of your
pinafore strings."
"Wouldn't it have been degrading for Sir Wulfric de Talbot," said Jane
dreamily, "if he could have known that half the besieged garrison wore
pinafores?"
"And the other half knickerbockers. Yes--frightfully. Do stand
still--you're only tightening the knot," said Anthea.
CHAPTER VIII
BIGGER THAN THE BAKER'S BOY
"Look here," said Cyril. "I've got an idea."
"Does it hurt much?" said Robert sympathetically.
"Don't be a jackanape! I'm not humbugging."
"Shut up, Bobs!" said Anthea.
"Silence for the Squirrel's oration," said Robert.
Cyril balanced himself on the edge of the water-butt in the backyard,
where they all happened to be, and spoke.
"Friends, Romans, countrymen--and women--we found a Sammyadd. We have
had wishes. We've had wings, and being beautiful as the day--ugh!--that
was pretty jolly beastly if you like--and wealth and castles, and that
rotten gipsy business with the Lamb. But we're no forrarder. We haven't
really got anything worth having for our wishes."
"We've had things happening," said Robert; "that's always something."
"It's not enough, unless they're the right things," said Cyril firmly.
"Now I've been thinking"--
"Not really?" whispered Robert.
"In the silent what's-its-names of the night. It's like suddenly being
asked something out of history--the date of the Conquest or something;
you know it all right all the time, but when you're asked it all goes
out of your head. Ladies and gentlemen, you know jolly well that when
we're all rotting about in the usual way heaps of things keep cropping
up, and then real earnest wishes come into the heads of the beholder"--
"Hear, hear!" said Robert.
"--of the beholder, however, stupid he is," Cyril went on. "Why, even
Robert might happen to think of a really useful wish if he didn't injure
his poor little brains trying so hard to think.--Shut up, Bobs, I tell
you!--You'll have the whole show over."
A struggle on the edge of a water-butt is exciting but damp. When it was
over, and the boys were partially dried, Anthea said--
"It really was you began it, Bobs. Now honour is satisfied, do let
Squirrel go on. We're wasting the whole morning."
"Well then," said Cyril, still wringing the water out of the tails of
his jacket, "I'll call it pax if Bobs will."
"Pax then," said Robert sulkily. "But I've got a lump as big as a
cricket ball over my eye."
Anthea patiently offered a dust-coloured handkerchief, and Robert bathed
his wounds in silence. "Now, Squirrel," she said.
"Well then--let's just play bandits, or forts, or soldiers, or any of
the old games. We're dead sure to think of something if we try not to.
You always do."
The others consented. Bandits was hastily chosen for the game. "It's as
good as anything else," said Jane gloomily. It must be owned that
Robert was at first but a half-hearted bandit, but when Anthea had
borrowed from Martha the red-spotted handkerchief in which the keeper
had brought her mushrooms that morning, and had tied up Robert's head
with it so that he could be the wounded hero who had saved the bandit
captain's life the day before, he cheered up wonderfully. All were soon
armed. Bows and arrows slung on the back look well; and umbrellas and
cricket stumps through the belt give a fine impression of the wearer's
being armed to the teeth. The white cotton hats that men wear in the
country nowadays have a very brigandish effect when a few turkey's
feathers are stuck in them. The Lamb's mail-cart was covered with a
red-and-blue checked table-cloth, and made an admirable baggage-wagon.
The Lamb asleep inside it was not at all in the way. So the banditti set
out along the road that led to the sand-pit.
"We ought to be near the Sammyadd," said Cyril, "in case we think of
anything suddenly."
It is all very well to make up your minds to play bandit--or chess, or
ping-pong, or any other agreeable game--but it is not easy to do it with