Hills End by Ivan Southall Read Free Book Online

‘it might be that I’ve forgotten, but I’m sure they were different.’
    â€˜Very well, Adrian.’ Miss Godwin glanced at her watch. ‘We’ll find out how good an explorer you are. I think you’d better lead the way with Paul, don’t you, and the rest of us can follow very carefully?’
    â€˜Yes, miss. There’s no danger, really. It looks much worse than it is. There’s only one thing. Don’t look down unless you’ve got something to hang on to.’
    â€˜Do you hear that, children? Adrian says there’s no danger and Adrian knows. But if any of you would rather stay down here just say the word.’
    Gussie would have liked to have stayed, very, very much, but she was frightened that everyone would tease her. She didn’t like the look of the water trickling from the rocks, or the moss and the slime. And her legs were aching, with the awful ache that she got sometimes and that her mother called ‘growing pains’. It didn’t seem right that it hurt to grow, Gussie thought, but perhaps that was why the trees groaned sometimes. Perhaps it hurt them, too.
    Maisie, too, was rather anxious, but she was frightened to speak up, frightened that everyone would make fun of her.
    â€˜If it is an important discovery,’ she said, ‘will we all be famous?’
    â€˜I don’t know about that,’ said Miss Godwin. ‘Adrian will be the famous one. We’ll have to name the discovery after him.’
    â€˜Golly!’ said Paul, shaken for the moment. ‘Can we do that?’
    â€˜Of course we can. It’s our right, and if the Government agrees the caves will be known by his name for ever and ever.’
    â€˜No kiddin’?’ queried Adrian.
    Miss Godwin coughed discreetly. ‘That isn’t quite the word, Adrian, but it is a fact. They’ll be named in your honour.’ Perhaps she was rueful then. She wasn’t selfish, but it would have been nice if they had suggested the discovery be named after her. She couldn’t expect children to think of that.
    â€˜I’ll tell you what,’ she said, ‘because we’ve all come here today, I’ll write a special chapter in my book and put down all your names, and then all of us can bask in Adrian’s glory. Do you like that for an idea?’
    They certainly liked that and all talked at once and Gussie even forgot her growing pains.
    â€˜Come along then. Let’s start.’

4
Danger
    Frank Tobias, the foreman, woke up with a headache and a stiff neck. He blinked in the direction of the big clock on the office wall and was vaguely surprised. It was five minutes past eleven.
    He had a stale taste in his mouth and his nostrils seemed to be blocked and that dull ache in his head throbbed and throbbed. He shouldn’t have allowed himself to fall asleep. Nothing sapped more life from a man than sleeping in broad daylight with the sun blazing against the window panes and down upon a creaking iron roof.
    He had brought a vacuum flask from his home and he poured a mug of tea and panted while he sipped it, because it was difficult to breathe. He felt as though he had had his head in a bag, felt half suffocated, and even a little squeamish. Then he realized that something was wrong, something was missing. The silence, apart from the occasional creaking in the roof, was complete.
    Suddenly, he lurched from his chair. The engine had stopped. Great Scott! What had happened to the diesel? And then he knew. He hadn’t refuelled it. It was always refuelled at eight. That upset over the kids had put it out of his mind. What a fine thing! The foreman of all people! If Ben Fiddler couldn’t trust his foreman whom could he trust? That meant every refrigerator in town would be defrosting, even the big freezing chamber in the shop for the meat, and the butter would be melting, and the milk turning sour. Glory, what a mess there’d be, with an