This time, the sands started sinking and swirling about in a steady clockwise motion.
Mary was being relentlessly sucked down into a whirlpool of sand.
Seeing this, Roger flung himself, without even a second thought, off from the prow of their Feather-Boat and grabbed hold of Mary’s leg with one hand, the other still clutching his trusty bit of branch. Together, they were swallowed up and relentlessly sucked down into the maw of the swirling morass of sand, both as helpless as two bugs flushed down a plughole.
He found himself quickly choking as his eyes, throat and ears were filled with the shifting, stinging particles of sand, whirling all about him. But no matter what, he wasn’t going to let go of Mary. No matter what. If this was the end of them, then so be it!
But it wasn’t the end. Roger found himself sliding down a short slope, bumping along, with Mary tumbling beside him and himself, still steadfastly and resolutely refusing to let go of her, no matter how much they were being thrown and twisted about.
The sand was hurting his eyes so he could barely dare to squint to try and see where they were heading. But when he did manage a peek, he found they were now tumbling into what at first looked like a cave full of black smoke. But then he realized it wasn’t an actual cave they were tumbling down, but more like a narrow, underground tunnel. And the inky smoke was somehow already beginning to clear away.
But then he saw that they were heading into even greater danger. The cascading sand was gushing like a roaring river down towards a large pothole at the bottom of the tunnel, and they would soon be following and plummeting into its inky depths.
Roger again acted without thinking. He tightened his grip on Mary’s ankle, causing her to yelp in pain, but also as he did so, he fiercely jammed the branch into the side of the tunnel, and the packed sand piled up around the boulders at its edge. This slammed them into the rocky tunnel wall, just short of the deadly pothole.
They were battered and bruised, but they were alive. Roger sat against the rock and peered through the dust, grit and gloom. Together they waited several minutes as the rest of the sand from the hollow flowed relentlessly by them and disappeared down the gaping hole.
Roger quickly rummaged in his satchel and brought out his old and trusty torch. He shined the torch around them to see what he could see. The short answer to that, at first, was nothing. But with the help of his torch and his eyes slowly getting accustomed to the gloom, he saw high above them there was a narrow ribbon of open, if dull sky. They were in fact not in a tunnel at all but were in a long gully or gorge, running like a deep gash between the rocks.
Mary sat next to Roger, gasping and getting her breath back. Most of the inky smoke had cleared now, and the last silvery tendrils of sand had trickled on by, down into the inky well.
“Th-th-thanks for saving me, Roger. You were incredibly brave!” she spluttered to him.
Roger felt rather bashful at being praised like that and really didn’t feel he deserved it.
“Well, I think there was something… or someone else… at work, you know, giving us both a helping hand there. If that sand hadn’t been shifted so it fell into this gully down here, then we’d both have been drowned in it, up there in that hollow,” he told her.
“Well, I don’t know about that. But I do know you threw yourself after me and if it wasn’t for you, we’d be down that pothole right now… and most probably be as dead as Doodoos.”
“Um, erm! OK then. If you say so. But what do we do now then, Mary? Aren’t you a bit worried that things are getting a bit weird, not to mention downright dangerous?”
“Well, that’s what happens on exploring an’ adventures, isn’t it? At least, it is on ours!” she lightly replied, as she dusted herself down and stood up, stretching her limbs and so checking all her bones were still working and intact.
“Come on then, Sir Roger of the Royal Tree Branch, let’s get around that nasty old ‘ole and see what’s at the end of this gully ‘ere, shall we?”
Roger sighed and stood and followed Mary along the edge of the gully wall, cautiously skirting around the edge of the eerily smoking emptiness of the pitch-dark pothole.
“I reckon this hill we’re on, Hooter’s Hill, must be well riddled with caverns and caves,” he mumbled to her. “I don’t like dark underground places, and I don’t like high ones either!”
“We’re nearly there, Roj!” she called back to him. “Look, there’s the end of the crevice. We’ll be able to see where we stand soon.”
The steep walls of the crevice-gully ended and opened out onto the lower, northern slopes of the hillside and then they were stepping onto the flat ledge of a protruding rocky shelf.
There in front of them stretched the hazy panorama of the Bad Wood and directly beneath, the dark, brooding trees of the Pine Forest began. Thick and foreboding and very close now. Beyond the Pine Forest, the Bad Wood proper unfolded in all its green glory.
“Look, there’s the Smoking Tree!” Mary yelled excitedly. “We can still see it. Well, some of the top of it anyway, and it’s still smoking!”
“Well, there’s no turning back now, is there?” Roger huffed. “Let’s get on with it, eh? Let’s finally find out what this mysterious Smoking Tree is all about, shall we?”
CHAPTER 8:
SHADOWS IN THE DARK!
They made their way, step by step, down through the last yards of the rocky outcrop and across a short stretch of wild scrubland full of prickly gorse up to the edge of the Pine Forest.
They paused before entering. Roger was not feeling too brave and adventurous now as he looked in at the gloomy, dark interior of the awaiting Fir trees. They seemed so unfriendly and unwelcoming. He rubbed his bruised posterior as he stood and contemplated the thick wall of trees that loomed before them.
There was much less undergrowth here; the Pine Forest floor was a carpet of pine needles and old brown pinecones scattered haphazardly about. As they stepped into the dry, gloomy confines of the trees themselves, the very air seemed to still and deaden. And Roger noted that it all seemed very quiet and lifeless, as if it was a place always shunned and avoided by any normal forms of natural life.
I wonder if there are any new insects to discover here though? he thought to himself. He couldn’t stop the inner Scientist showing through, no matter what the circumstances.
The Pine Forest stood on the lower slopes of Hooter’s Hill, and as they trudged onward, they soon found themselves falling into a rhythmic pattern of walking and wending their way down through the tall fir trees, passing tree after tree, with the same view surrounding them. Everywhere they looked, they saw the same sight. All the trees looked exactly the same.
Also, they were both starting to feel quite weary and drowsy. The quiet and the gloom had a monotony to it that induced somnambulance, as Roger would have put it. Or making them both very sleepy, as Mary would simply say. Whatever it was called, they were both plodding along now, almost as if sleepwalking.
After a while, Mary came to a stop and turned to Roger with a puzzled look on her face.
“Do you know which way we’re going, Roger?”
“Haven’t a clue,” he answered her morosely. “I thought you knew!”
“Yes… well, I thought I did … but I’m not so sure now!” she replied worriedly.
“It’s very gloomy and eerie here, isn’t it?” she asked him, yawning. “I’m not sure we’re still heading for the Smoking Tree, is all,” she muttered, wearily and half to herself.
“Well, let’s just press on and get through this depressing place, O.K? We can’t have gone that far off course, and we know from the view we got from the top of the hill that the Pine Forest doesn’t go on for too long. I bet we’ll be through it in another ten minutes at most,” Roger told her as confidently as he could.