The cooks lit their fires, and the smoke curled high into the still air, and there was a good smell of frying bacon. General Gait was just about to eat a boiled egg, when there was a great BOOOOOOM from a belt of trees some way off, and a dozen cannon-balls came swishing through the air towards the Honeytown camp. They all fell harmlessly into the river, raising great spouts of water. Giant Dumpling began hopping about near the water.
“Oh my stars!” he exclaimed. “Oh, bless me! Oh dear, dear, dear, we’ll all be killed, that’s for sure. Those dreadful Mosslanders, they’re shooting at us.”
“Well, it is a war!” exploded General Gait. “Do you expect them to throw flowers? For goodness’ sake, Giant Dumpling, do try to look brave and fierce even if you cannot feel it.”
At that moment the Honeytown cannons opened fire. Being so near, they made an earth-shaking BANG. This gave Giant Dumpling such a fright that he fainted on the spot. His great body dropped like a falling tower, with a deafening SPLASH into the river. He was so big, and so fat, that he filled the river from bank to bank; and the tremendous splash he made, sent a wave as high as a house racing down the river. The great wave sped towards Moss Bridge. The wave hit the bridge, and there was a tearing and rending and splintering of wood, and the bridge disappeared under a seething mass of water. The great wave smashed onward. The water subsided. There was no bridge.
“The bridge’s down!” shouted General Gait. “We’re trapped! We cannot get back to Honeytown!”
“Oh yes we can,” said Peter Gaskin. “Look, sir, Giant Dumpling’s dammed the river, he’s so fat. We can retreat across the river bed—it’s almost dry—or we can use Giant Dumpling himself as a bridge.”
“BOOOOM. BOOOOM. BOOOOM.” The Mossland cannons were firing steadily now, and the balls fell uncomfortably close.
“Quick, sir, before Giant Dumpling gets up!” shouted Peter.
“Sound the retreat,” ordered General Gait, and all along the line the trumpets shrilly answered him, “Retreat! Retreat!” in their own tongue.
The cavalry galloped across the dry river-bed. The foot-soldiers climbed with all speed across Giant Dumpling’s gently breathing body. The mules and donkeys, struggling with heavy loads, were last across, scrambling over the stones of the dry river. Then the Mossland army appeared, galloping at full speed towards the river, waving their swords and shouting in triumph.
“We’ve downed their giant! Their giant’s dead! Charge! Kill the Honeytowners! Take all their land! Charge! Charge!”
Seeing that the river was now dry they galloped still faster, straight towards the dismayed Honeytowners, who stood ready to take the full force of their assault. The Mosslanders plunged into the river-bed. They were so near now that the Honeytowners could see the evil light of battle in their faces, the eagerness to kill, and a chill fear struck at the Honeytowners’ hearts. Giant Dumpling chose this very moment to get up. With many a groan, he lumbered to his feet, climbing out of the deep river bed. The great river, which had been piling up behind him, was released, and it swept down upon the Mosslanders now with all its pent-up force. They began to turn back. Too late! The deep water was upon them. They were engulfed and swept away before they had time to draw breath to shout a warning. The swift river ran on, tossing a few wooden spears to its surface. The Mossland army was gone, without so much as a cry. The Honeytowners stood in stunned silence on the river bank.
“Poor fellows. Poor fellows,” said General Gait, sadly.
“They would have killed us, sir,” said Peter.
“I know it, I know it, my boy, but it’s a sad bad business,” General Gait answered.
Meanwhile Giant Dumpling was finding himself, feeling for the dreadful wound he was sure he had suffered, wailing and moaning on the river side.
“My poor head. My poor head. They’ve shot me, sure enough, and look at my poor clothes, all wet and muddy. If I’m not shot I’ll catch my death of cold, lying in that nasty cold river all this while. Oh, deary me.”
“You’re not wounded, Giant Dumpling,” said the Mayor.
“Not wounded?” said Giant Dumpling, staring in disbelief.
“No, you . . . well you sort of fainted when our guns went off,” said the Mayor.
“Fainted? I fainted? Dear, oh dear. So now I’m in disgrace for being a coward,” moaned Giant Dumpling.
“No, no, no, not at all,” said the Mayor. “You’re the hero of the day.”
“The hero?”
“Yes, you’ve won the battle, and saved us all from a horrible death.”
“Won? Saved?” murmured Giant Dumpling, too bemused to put two words together, but beginning to smile.
“Yes, dear fellow,” said the Mayor. “You tell him. General, you’re better at battles than I am.”
So General Gait told Giant Dumpling the whole story, and made him a Field-Marshal on the spot. They dried his clothes over a big fire, and they all marched home joyfully, this time with Giant Dumpling leading, looking as pleased as could be. When they reached Honeytown the whole town sang and feasted far into the night and the people cheered Giant Dumpling until his head spun.
That was the happiest day of Giant Dumpling’s long life. The people gave him all the honey he wanted, and he certainly grew no thinner. As Peter said,
“If he hadn’t been so fat, he couldn’t have won the battle.”
Moss Bridge was never rebuilt, and the river was so feared that no one would venture on it in a boat, so the Honeytowners were safe from the Mosslanders, thanks to their unwarlike giant. They grew their fruit, and tended their bees, and never thought of war again.
Giant Dumpling lived to a ripe and contented old age: there was no happier giant in all the world. Years and years afterwards, he would tell the story of the great battle when he became a famous hero, just as it is written here.
THE MACHINE MONSTER
By Daphne Froome
Millions of years ago, when the world was full of monsters, there lived a Brontosaurus which was a very evil monster indeed. It was greedier, and very much larger, than any other Brontosaurus that had ever existed, and it was also more bad-tempered, and it turned the vast, shallow lake in which it spent most of its time into a place of terror by rampaging about, night and day. The sound of its great tail thrashing the surface of the water could be heard for miles around, and when it roamed out on to the shore the weight of its huge, scaly body shook the earth. Its head, on its long, twisting neck, suddenly appearing out of the clouds of mist that were drawn up by the heat of the sun, terrified the small animals who dwelt around the lake, and if they fled too late the massive, clawed feet would often crush them into the ground.
Being so large, so brutal, and so very vicious, it was feared even by the other Brontosaurus monsters, and when eventually it died (of overeating) they were very grateful to settle down once more to eat their water plants and weeds in peace; but the small animals that it had spent so much time terrifying, seeing now that the dreadful creature lay quite still and could do them no more harm, gathered round, mocking and jeering, and one, the smallest animal of all, climbed up on to the end of its great spiked tail and gave it a tweak.
When the monster’s evil spirit saw this it became so angry that it determined to roam the earth until it could reason out some way of finding a really horrible revenge. Now this was not easy, for it had become so proud of its gigantic body and long neck that, though it wandered ceaselessly, it could not anywhere find another body that it considered magnificent enough for the fiercest Brontosaurus of all time to occupy.