第16章

'Well--anyway,' said Anthea, 'the safest thing is to leave the carpet there with her sitting on it.Perhaps it'll be a lesson to her, and anyway, if she thinks it's a dream it won't matter what she says when she gets home.'

So the extra coats and hats and mufflers were piled on the carpet.

Cyril shouldered the well and happy Lamb, the Phoenix perched on Robert's wrist, and 'the party of explorers prepared to enter the interior'.

The grassy slope was smooth, but under the trees there were tangled creepers with bright, strange-shaped flowers, and it was not easy to walk.

'We ought to have an explorer's axe,' said Robert.'I shall ask father to give me one for Christmas.'

There were curtains of creepers with scented blossoms hanging from the trees, and brilliant birds darted about quite close to their faces.

'Now, tell me honestly,' said the Phoenix, 'are there any birds here handsomer than I am? Don't be afraid of hurting my feelings--I'm a modest bird, I hope.'

'Not one of them,' said Robert, with conviction, 'is a patch upon you!'

'I was never a vain bird,' said the Phoenix, 'but I own that you confirm my own impression.I will take a flight.' It circled in the air for a moment, and, returning to Robert's wrist, went on, 'There is a path to the left.'

And there was.So now the children went on through the wood more quickly and comfortably, the girls picking flowers and the Lamb inviting the 'pretty dickies' to observe that he himself was a 'little white real-water-wet duck!'

And all this time he hadn't whooping-coughed once.

The path turned and twisted, and, always threading their way amid a tangle of flowers, the children suddenly passed a corner and found themselves in a forest clearing, where there were a lot of pointed huts--the huts, as they knew at once, of SAVAGES.

The boldest heart beat more quickly.Suppose they WERE cannibals.

It was a long way back to the carpet.

'Hadn't we better go back?' said Jane.'Go NOW,' she said, and her voice trembled a little.'Suppose they eat us.'

'Nonsense, Pussy,' said Cyril, firmly.'Look, there's a goat tied up.That shows they don't eat PEOPLE.'

'Let's go on and say we're missionaries,' Robert suggested.

'I shouldn't advise THAT,' said the Phoenix, very earnestly.

'Why not?'

'Well, for one thing, it isn't true,' replied the golden bird.

It was while they stood hesitating on the edge of the clearing that a tall man suddenly came out of one of the huts.He had hardly any clothes, and his body all over was a dark and beautiful coppery colour--just like the chrysanthemums father had brought home on Saturday.In his hand he held a spear.The whites of his eyes and the white of his teeth were the only light things about him, except that where the sun shone on his shiny brown body it looked white, too.If you will look carefully at the next shiny savage you meet with next to nothing on, you will see at once--if the sun happens to be shining at the time--that I am right about this.

The savage looked at the children.Concealment was impossible.He uttered a shout that was more like 'Oo goggery bag-wag' than anything else the children had ever heard, and at once brown coppery people leapt out of every hut, and swarmed like ants about the clearing.There was no time for discussion, and no one wanted to discuss anything, anyhow.Whether these coppery people were cannibals or not now seemed to matter very little.

Without an instant's hesitation the four children turned and ran back along the forest path; the only pause was Anthea's.She stood back to let Cyril pass, because he was carrying the Lamb, who screamed with delight.(He had not whooping-coughed a single once since the carpet landed him on the island.)'Gee-up, Squirrel; gee-gee,' he shouted, and Cyril did gee-up.The path was a shorter cut to the beach than the creeper-covered way by which they had come, and almost directly they saw through the trees the shining blue-and-gold-and-opal of sand and sea.

'Stick to it,' cried Cyril, breathlessly.

They did stick to it; they tore down the sands--they could hear behind them as they ran the patter of feet which they knew, too well, were copper-coloured.

The sands were golden and opal-coloured--and BARE.There were wreaths of tropic seaweed, there were rich tropic shells of the kind you would not buy in the Kentish Town Road under at least fifteen pence a pair.There were turtles basking lumpily on the water's edge--but no cook, no clothes, and no carpet.

'On, on! Into the sea!' gasped Cyril.'They MUST hate water.

I've--heard--savages always--dirty.'

Their feet were splashing in the warm shallows before his breathless words were ended.The calm baby-waves were easy to go through.It is warm work running for your life in the tropics, and the coolness of the water was delicious.They were up to their arm-pits now, and Jane was up to her chin.

'Look!' said the Phoenix.'What are they pointing at?'

The children turned; and there, a little to the west was a head--a head they knew, with a crooked cap upon it.It was the head of the cook.

For some reason or other the savages had stopped at the water's edge and were all talking at the top of their voices, and all were pointing copper-coloured fingers, stiff with interest and excitement, at the head of the cook.

The children hurried towards her as quickly as the water would let them.

'What on earth did you come out here for?' Robert shouted; 'and where on earth's the carpet?'

'It's not on earth, bless you,' replied the cook, happily; 'it's UNDER ME--in the water.I got a bit warm setting there in the sun, and I just says, "I wish I was in a cold bath"--just like that--and next minute here I was! It's all part of the dream.'

Every one at once saw how extremely fortunate it was that the carpet had had the sense to take the cook to the nearest and largest bath--the sea, and how terrible it would have been if the carpet had taken itself and her to the stuffy little bath-room of the house in Camden Town!