“I’ll slip out down to the beach and see if George is anywhere about,” said Jack, thinking hard. “If he is he’ll come back with me, I’m sure - and he could tell me what’s happened to Dimmy - and I could tell him what has happened to Mr. Diaz and Luiz!”
The others laughed. They liked to think of Mr. Diaz and Luiz, prisoners on the secret island, not knowing when they were to be taken off!
Jack slipped out of the back door and the others bolted it after him. They decided to keep a watch from the windows, to see if anyone came near. So Peggy and Paul kept watch from the front windows, and Mike and Nora from the back. But nobody came near. Not even a dog barked anywhere. It was all very still and peaceful.
The children talked to one another. Peggy found her knitting, and knitted and chatted to Paul. Mike did a jig-saw puzzle with Nora, looking up every other minute to make sure that nobody was coming in through the back garden.
A loud thumping on the back door startled everybody dreadfully. Mike jumped and dropped the jig-saw on the floor. He had seen nobody come into the back garden. Paul and Peggy ran in from the front room, looking quite scared.
“Who do you suppose it is?” whispered Nora.
“Can’t imagine,” whispered back Mike. “Anyway, we’d better all keep as quiet as possible, then maybe they’ll go away.”
So they all kept very quiet. The thumping came again - somebody banging on the back door with his bare fists. “Bang all you like,” said Mike in a low voice. “You won’t get in!”
“Let me in!” cried a voice - and how they all jumped with joy! For it was Jack’s voice! It was he who was thumping on the door!
“What idiots we are!” cried Mike, leaping to his feet. “We might have guessed it was Jack - but I never thought he’d be back so soon!”
They all tore downstairs to open the door to Jack. He came in, quite cross with them:
“Whatever did you keep me waiting all that time for?” he asked indignantly. “I thought you must have gone to sleep!”
“Sorry, Jack,” grinned Mike. “We didn’t see you come, and we didn’t expect you back so soon. We thought you might be the enemy. How did you get through the back garden without being seen?”
“Crawled under the currant bushes,” said Jack, with a grin. “I thought I’d give you a surprise - but I seem to have given you a good fright instead.”
“Did you see George?” asked Mike eagerly.
“Not a sign of him,” answered Jack. “His boat was there all right - but I couldn’t see him anywhere on the beach, or in the fields either. He seems to have disappeared into thin air just like Dimmy!”
“It’s all very peculiar,” said Mike. “Where in the world has everybody gone - and why is that aeroplane there - and what’s been happening whilst we were on our island?”
“I wish I could tell you,” said Jack. “What about some tea, Peggy? Are there any cakes in the tin?”
Peggy and Nora boiled a kettle for tea, and cut some bread and butter. There was honey on the larder shelf, and some gingerbread in the cake tin. They ate it all, and wished there was more.
“I vote we take something up to the tower bedroom for supper, and go up there now,” said Mike, when they had finished. “We can lock ourselves in, and be safe till morning. The two girls can have my bed, and we three boys can share Jack’s bed and that old sofa. We shall sleep safely till the morning!”
“I feel jolly tired now,” said Nora. “It’s all the excitement, I expect. Let’s take the snap cards up with us and have a game. I shall go to sleep unless I do something!”
So after they had washed up the tea-things, Peggy collected some supper and Jack hunted for the snap cards. They saw that all the downstairs windows and doors were fastened, and then they went upstairs to the top bedroom of the tower. They locked the door and sat down to play snap.
Paul had never played snap before, and he was dreadfully bad at it. He simply could not see when two cards were alike, and the others made him jump when they yelled out “snap.”
“I can see why you call it snap!” he said at last. “You snap at one another like dogs! It is a game for dogs, not children.”
That made the others roar with laughter. And it was whilst they were laughing that they heard a strange noise. They all looked up.
“An aeroplane!” said Jack. “Is it that one in the field going away?”
They rushed to the window. No - the blue and silver plane was still there - but another plane was soaring round and round, on the point of landing. Mike caught up the field-glasses that lay on the window-sill, and looked at the aeroplane through them.
Then he gave such a tremendous yell that poor Paul fell off his chair and tumbled in a heap on the ground!
“Mike! What’s up?” cried the others.
“It’s Daddy’s plane!” shouted Mike, dancing round in joy. “Can’t you see the red on it? I bet Daddy and Mummy have flown over from Ireland, because Dimmy is sure to have let them know about us and Prince Paul! Oh, if they’re back everything’s all right!”
The others screamed with delight, and hung out of the window to watch the plane. It circled down over the field, and came neatly to rest beside the blue and silver plane. The propeller stopped whizzing round. Two people climbed out of the cock-pit, dressed in flying clothes and goggle helmets.
“Come on! It’s Dad and Mummy all right!” shouted Mike. He raced to the door and unlocked it. He tore down the stairs with all the others at his heels and unlocked and unbolted the front door. Then like a pack of dogs the children scampered over the lane, and across the big field to the aeroplanes.
“Children! We thought you were safely on the secret island!” cried their mother’s voice. She took off her helmet and smiled at them all. They crowded round her and hugged her. Prince Paul held back shyly. But Mrs. Arnold drew him to her and gave him a hug like the rest.
“Where’s Dimmy?” said Captain Arnold. But nobody knew!
The End of the Adventures
“Come on back to Peep-Hole, Dad,” said Mike. “We’ll tell you everything there!”
So they all went back to Peep-Hole, and, sitting in the front room, they talked at the tops of their voices. All that Captain and Mrs. Arnold had heard was that the children had rescued somebody and taken him off to their secret island. Dimmy had sent them a long telegram because they had moved from place to place in Ireland, and she could not get hold of them to telephone the news.
Then they had tried to telephone Dimmy but had got no answer, so they had got into their aeroplane and flown straight over to Spiggy Holes to find out what was the matter.
“And here we are!” said Captain Arnold. “What about some food? I’m famished! We’ve got a hamper in the plane - go and get it, Jack and Mike.”
The boys tore off to get it - but as they went across the lane to the field, they heard the sound of a big car coming down the road. They stopped and looked. Peep-Hole was at the end of the lane - the road stopped just there, so whoever came down the lane must go to Peep-Hole. Who was coming?
The car was full of men. There were at least five. Mike caught hold of Jack’s arm and they fled back to Peep-Hole. “They might be coming to take Paul away!” he yelled. “Quick, come back and we’ll lock the doors. Thank goodness Dad and Mummy are there!”
They shot back into the house and locked the front door. The car stopped outside with a screech of brakes, and four men got out. They were all in some kind of uniform and looked rather grand. They walked up the path and thundered on the knocker.
“Who’s that?” said Captain Arnold in astonishment.