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‘I kn
ow! You look like a dwarf version of the whiteskins who come here on their big ships,’ observed their rescuer. ‘Do you go as red as a boiled lobster too when you’ve had too much sun?’
He prodded Twigleg in the chest with one finger, as if to make sure that he was real.
‘Hey, watch out!’ cried Lola, threatening the gibbon with the spanner again. ‘He has very fragile limbs, and he really is not a toy for apes!’
Twigleg was much moved by her concern for him, not that the gibbon seemed particularly alarmed by either the spanner or the signal pistol.
‘This island has had some very strange visitors recently,’ he said, picking a beetle out of his white beard.
Visitors…
Even Me-Rah forgot her wing.
‘Have you seen other strangers?’ Twigleg almost swallowed his own tongue in excitement. ‘Was there a boy with them, dark-haired, medium height? And a man with glasses and grey hair…’
‘… and don’t forget the green-skinned giant,’ said the gibbon, ending his sentence for him.
That made Lola raise the spanner again at once. When she was in fighting mood, she wasn’t about to make peace in a hurry.
‘Oh, I see!’ she said. ‘You were one of the kidnappers! Where are our friends? Come on, out with it!’
The gibbon looked at her with as much interest as if he had discovered a strange clockwork toy.
‘I’ve never seen anything like you before,’ he stated. ‘The rats on this island don’t usually wear clothes. Or travel around in…’ here he cast Lola’s plane a mocking glance… ‘or travel around in toy aircraft!’
Lola was about to answer him sharply, but the gibbon cut her short with a long-armed gesture.
‘Your friends are in the same unfortunate situation as mine. And yes, I can take you to them. Although it looks,’ he added, tapping the propeller of Lola’s plane with one finger, ‘it looks as if you’ll need some other means of transport.’
Unfortunately the gibbon was right. The binturong had done a good deal of damage to Lola’s plane. One rotor blade was cracked, and the left wing of the little aircraft had a nasty split in it. Lola looked at the plane as unhappily as if it were an old friend who had been injured, which was understandable after all the adventures they had been through together.
‘Some other means of transport?’ she asked sharply. ‘And where are we supposed to find that?’
The gibbon mockingly bared his teeth, and pointed to his own chest. ‘TerTaWa, at your service. But we’d better wait for morning.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
The Griffins’ Royal Tree
There is nothing in which the birds differ more
from man than the way in which they can build
and yet leave a landscape as it was before.
Robert Lynd, The Blue Lion and Other Essays
Before Twigleg had met TerTaWa, he’d have bet his five fingers (and he was greatly attached to his fingers) that no kind of travel could be more uncomfortable than flying in Lola’s infernal plane. He’d have lost the bet, and with it his fingers. It was a pleasant sensation when the gibbon put him on his hairy shoulder. But then TerTaWa began swinging from tree to tree – so high above the ground that in his mind’s eye Twigleg saw himself smashed down there like the test tube that had given birth to him!
Aaaaahhhhhhhhhhh!
And what did that totally crazy rat do? Lola was humming happily to herself! Even though she’d had to leave her beloved plane behind in the hollow tree. It’s all for my master, Twigleg reminded himself. For my master… Ma-ma-maaaaster!
Close your eyes, Twigleg!
Yes, that did improve things a bit.
