Chapter Eleven

STRANGE HAPPENINGS

Everyone awoke at Anne’s call. Julian thought he was in bed, and leapt out, forgetting that he was in the top bunk. He landed with a crash on the floor, shaken and alarmed.
“Oh, Ju! You forgot you were in the top bunk!” said George, half scared and half amused. “Are you hurt? Anne, whatever is the matter? Why did you call out? Did you see something?”
“No. I heard something - and felt something!” said Anne, glad that the others were awake. “So did Timmy. But it’s all gone now.”
“Yes, but what was it?” asked Julian, sitting on the edge of Dick’s bunk, and rubbing his knee, which had struck the floor when he fell.
“It was a... a... well... a kind of very very deep rumbling,” said Anne. “A deep-down rumbling - very far away. Not like thunder up in the sky. More like a thunderstorm underground! And then there was a... a shuddering! I felt the edge of my bunk and it seemed to be sort of - well - quivering. I can’t quite explain it. I was awfully scared.”
“Sounds like a small earthquake,” said Dick, wondering if Anne had dreamt all this. “Anyway - you can’t hear or feel it now, can you? You’re sure you didn’t dream all this, Anne?”
“Quite sure!” said Anne, “I...” And just at that very moment it all began again! First the curious grumbling, muffled, and “deep-down”, as Anne had described it - then the equally strange “shuddering”. It crept through their bodies till they were all shuddering a little too, and could not stop.
“It’s as if we were shivering in every part of us,” said Dick, in wonder. “Sort of vibrating as if we had tiny dynamo engines working inside us.”
“Yes! You’ve described it exactly!” said George. “Goodness - when I put my hand on Timmy I can feel him doing the ‘shudders’ - and it’s just like putting my hand on something working by electricity! You know the sort of small vibrations you feel then.”
“It’s gone!” said Dick, just as George finished speaking. “I’m not ‘shuddering’ any more. It suddenly stopped. And I can’t hear that grumbling, far-off noise now. Can you?”
Everyone agreed that both the noise and the shuddering had stopped. What in the wide world could it be?
“It must be something to do with that curious ‘shimmering’ I saw in the sky over Old Towers Hill tonight,” said Dick, remembering. “I’ve a good mind to go and look out of the window that faces the hill opposite, and see if it’s there again.”
He leapt out of his bunk and ran to the window. At once he gave a loud cry. “Come and look! Whew! Just come and look!”
All the others, Timmy as well, rushed to the window at once, Timmy standing on his hind legs to see. Certainly there was something queer to look at!
Over the hill opposite hung a mist - a curious glowing mist, that stood out in the pitch black darkness of the night! It swirled heavily, not lightly as a mist usually does.
“Look at that!” said Anne, in wonder. “What a strange colour - not red - not yellow - not orange. What colour is it?”
“It’s not a shade I’ve ever seen before,” said Julian, rather solemnly. “I call this jolly strange. What’s happening here? No wonder Aily’s mother told us those stories - there’s really something in them! We’d better make a few enquiries tomorrow.”
“It’s funny that both the shimmering I saw and that cloud too are over Old Towers Hill,” said Dick. “You don’t think it’s something that’s happening in Old Towers House, do you?”
“No. Of course not,” said Julian. “What could happen there that would make us feel the effects here, in this hut - that queer shuddering, for instance? And how in the world could we hear a rumbling from a mile or so away, if it were not thunder? And that certainly wasn’t.”
“The mist is going,” said Anne. “Look - it’s changing colour - no, it’s just going darker. It’s gone!”
They stood looking out for a short while longer, and then Julian felt Anne shivering violently beside him.
“You’re frozen!” he said. “Come on, back to bed. You don’t want to get another awful cold and cough. My word - this is all very queer. But I expect there’s a sensible explanation - probably there are mines around here, and work is being done at night as well as day.”
“We’ll find out,” said Dick, and they all climbed thankfully back into their bunks, feeling very cold. Julian turned up the stove a little more, to heat the room better.
George cuddled Timmy and was soon as warm as toast, but the others lay awake, trying to get their cold hands and feet warm again. Julian felt very puzzled. So there was a lot of truth in that woman’s peculiar tale, after all!
They awoke late the next morning, for they had been tired out with their exertions the day before, and with the excitements in the night. Julian leapt out of his bunk when he found that it was actually ten to nine, and dressed quickly, calling to the others. He went out to get some snow to put into the kettle.
Soon breakfast was ready, for Anne was next to get up, and she began quickly to prepare some food. Boiled eggs and ham, bread, butter and jam - and good hot cocoa again. Soon they were all eating and chattering, talking over the happenings of the night, which somehow didn’t seem nearly so remarkable now that daylight was everywhere, brilliant with the snow, and the sun trying to come out from behind the clouds.
As they sat round the table, eating and talking, Timmy ran to the door and began to bark. “Now what’s up?” said Dick. Then a face looked in at the window!
It was a remarkable face, old, lined and wrinkled, yet curiously young-looking too. The eyes were as blue as a summer sky. It was a man’s face, with a long, raggedy beard and a moustache.
“Gracious - he looks like one of the old prophets out of the Bible,” said Anne, really startled. “Who is he?”
“The shepherd, I expect,” said Julian, going to the door. “We’ll ask him in for a cup of cocoa. Maybe he can answer a few questions for us!”
He opened the door. “Are you the shepherd?” he said. “Come in. We’re having breakfast and we can give you some too, if you like.”
The shepherd came in, and smiled, making many more wrinkles appear on his weather-beaten face. Julian wondered if he spoke English, or only Welsh. He was a fine-looking fellow, tall and straight, and obviously much younger than he looked.
“You are kind, young sir,” he said, standing there with his crook, and Anne suddenly felt that there must have been men just like this all through the history of the world, ever since there had been sheep on the hills, and men to watch them.
The shepherd spoke slowly, for English words were not easy to him. “You want to send - to send - words - to the farm?” he said, in the lilting Welsh voice, so pleasant to hear.
“Oh yes - please take a message to the farm,” said Julian, handing him some bread and butter, and a dish of cheese. “Just say we’re fine, and all is well.”
“All is well, all is well,” repeated the shepherd, and refused the bread and cheese. “No. I do not eat now. But the drink, yes, I will have, and thanking you I am, for the morning is cold.”
“Shepherd,” said Julian, “did you hear queer noises last night - rumblings and grumblings - and did you feel shudderings and see a coloured mist over the hill yonder?”
The shepherd listened intently, trying to follow the strange English words. He understood that Julian was asking him something about the opposite hill.
He took a sip of his cocoa, and looked over to the hill. “Always it has been a strange hill,” he said slowly, pronouncing some of his words queerly, so that they were hard to understand. “My grandad told me a big dog lay below, growling for food, and my granny said witches lived there and made their spells, and - and the smock rose up...”
“Smock? What does he mean by that?” said George.
“He means ‘smoke’ I should think,” said Julian. “Don’t interrupt. Let him talk. This is very interesting.”
“The smock rose up, and we saw it in the sky,” went on the shepherd, his forehead wrinkled with the effort of using words he was not familiar with. “And it comes still, young ones, it comes still! The big dog, he growls, the witches they cook in their pots, and the smock, it rises.”
“We heard the big dog growling last night, and saw the witches’ smoke,” said Anne, quite under the spell of the lilting voice of the old shepherd.
The man looked at her and smiled. “Yes,” he said. “Yes. But the dog is worse now and the witches are more bad - more wickit, much more wickit...”
“More wicked?” said Julian. “How?”
The shepherd shook his head. “I am not clever,” he said. “I know few things - my sheep, and the wind and the sky - and I know too that the hill is wickit - yes, more wickit. Near it you must not go, young ones! For there the plough will not plough the fields, the spade will not dig, and neither will the fork.”
This somehow sounded so much like a piece out of the Old Testament that the children felt quite solemn. What a strange and impressive old man - and yet he was only a shepherd.
“Still,” thought Julian, gazing at him, “he has absolutely nothing to do but think long long thoughts all the hours he sits watching his sheep. No wonder he says extraordinary things. But what does he mean about the plough not ploughing the fields, I wonder?”
The shepherd put his cup down on the table. “I go now,” he said. “And I take your words to Mrs. Jones. And I thank you for your kindness. Good day!”
He went out with great dignity, and the children saw him striding past the window, his beard being blown backwards by the wind.
“Well!” said Dick, “what a character! I almost felt that I was in church, listening to a preacher. I liked him, didn’t you? But what did he mean about ploughs not ploughing and spades not digging? That’s nonsense!”
“Well - it may not be,” said Julian. “After all, we know that our car wouldn’t go down that hill fast - and you remember that Aily’s mother - the shepherd’s wife - said that the postman had to leave his bicycle at the bottom of the hill - even that wouldn’t work! So it’s quite likely that in the old days ploughs went too heavily and too slowly to plough properly, and that spades were the same.”
“But why?” said Anne, puzzled. “Surely you don’t really believe these things? I know our car went crawling down - but that might have been because something went wrong in its works for a little while!”
“Anne doesn’t want to believe in ploughs and spades and forks that won’t do their jobs!” said Dick, teasingly. “Come on - let’s forget the queer happenings last night and put on our skis. I feel pretty stiff after yesterday - but a bit of skiing down those slopes will do me good. What about it?”
“Yes! Come on!” said Julian. “Buck up with the clearing away, Anne - Dick and I will get out the skis. Hurry!”