“Well, we’ll think of something,” said Amanda firmly. “We’ve simply got to solve this problem. We can’t let that horrible fat Oizus take all Yani’s land away from him. After all, he’s only got about two acres and it’s barely enough to support him.”
“I know that,” said David. “But I keep telling you, it will have to be a good idea because if we muck it up it will make it worse for Yani,”
“I,” said Amanda with great dignity, “will think of something in the morning.”
She carried her oil lamp into her bedroom as regally and as beautifully as a princess and closed the door.
“I don’t envy the man who marries you,” David shouted as he made his way down the corridor to his own room. Amanda opened her door.
“I shouldn’t think you would get anybody to marry you,” she replied and then closed it. David tried to think up a suitably cutting answer to this, but could not, so he decided to go to bed and work on his lizard and cart problem.
The following morning the children met Yani down on the golden beach and together they swam slowly out to Hesperides, pausing now and then to dive down to the sea bottom to examine a strange fish or a black sea-urchin that lay curled like a hibernating hedgehog in a rock crevice in the shallow water. They landed on the tiny island and made their way up the steps, leaving black, wet footprints that were soon dried by the sun. On the terrace at the top they spread themselves like starfish round the small well, and then concentrated once more on Yani’s problem.
“My father says,” explained Amanda, “that kidnapping is a very bad crime and so therefore we cannot kidnap the Mayor’s wife.”
“This gives me great joy,” said Yani, “for, as I told you, she would be very heavy to carry, and she eats like three pigs.”
“I was thinking last night,” said David, “that none of the village really like Oizus, do they?”
“No,” said Yani, “as a matter of fact they all dislike him very much. But he’s in as Mayor for four years, and so they have got to put up with him. What can one do?”
“If we could do something,” said David, “that would turn the village against him, this might make him see reason.”
“Yes, but what?” asked Yani.
The children lay and racked their brains. Presently Yani rose to his feet and grinned down at Amanda, lying golden and beautiful in the sun.
“Would you like a drink?” he inquired.
“A drink?” she asked. “From where?”
“From the well,” said Yani, his eyes sparkling with laughter.
“I don’t think so,” said Amanda grimly. “I’ve no particular desire to get typhoid.”
“Ah, no,” said Yani. “Look, I’ll show you.”
He went to the well and threw back the great iron lid that covered it. Then he hauled on the rope. There was a splashing and a gurgling and a clanking noise and out of the cool depths of the well he pulled a bucket in which reposed some bottles of lemonade, From under a stone at the side of the well he pulled out an opener, removed the metal cap from a bottle and handed it to Amanda with a flourish.
“But how did these get here?” asked Amanda, bewildered.
Yani grinned his broad and attractive grin.
“I swam over with them this morning,” he said, “very early and put them down the well so that they should be cool. So now you won’t get typhoid, eh?”
“You are sweet, Yani,” said Amanda and her eyes filled with tears. “I wish we could think of something to do to help you.”
Yani shrugged philosophically.
“If you can’t, you can’t,” he said, “But at least you have tried, That shows that you are my friends.”
Amanda drank her cool think and then lay back in the sun, her mind busy with Yani’s problem, while David and Yani wrangled over the problems of lizards pulling a cart.
Distant sounds were wafted out to the tiny island from the mainland of Melissa: the tinny voice of one old peasant woman greeting another; the sound of a young rooster practising, rather ineffectually, his first attempts at crowing; the barking of a dog and then the familiar, lugubrious sounds of a donkey braying.
Amanda sat up suddenly.
“Shut up,” she hissed at the two boys. “Listen.”
They stopped their conversation and listened patiently for a second or so, but all that could be heard was the mournful braying of the donkey.
“What are we supposed to be listening to?” asked David at length.
“That,” said Amanda, with a beatific smile spreading over her face as the last mournful notes of the braying ceased.
“But that was only a donkey,” said Yani, puzzled.
“Only a donkey,” said Amanda. “You say only a donkey? That is the solution to your problem.”
“What are you talking about?” asked David irritably. “How can a braying donkey solve his problems?”
Amanda swung round on them, her face flushed, her eyes almost black.
“Don’t you see, you fish brains?” she said. “We have been trying to think of something that will turn the village against the Mayor, and that’s it.”
“But how,” said Yani, bewildered, “can a donkey turn the village against the Mayor?”
Amanda sighed the short exasperated sigh of a woman who is dealing with the foolishness of men.
“Listen,” she said. “All the fields of the village lie down below the hillside on the flat country. Now, how do people work those fields and gather their crops and then carry them to the village?”
“By donkey, of course,” said Yani, puzzled.
“Well, there you are,” said Amanda triumphantly. “Remove the donkeys and you paralyse the entire village and you cannot call it kidnapping, because it’s donkeys that you are taking.”
“What a beautiful idea,” said Yani, starting to laugh.
“I don’t know that it’s a very sensible one,” said David, “We will have to think about it.”
“I don’t know why you always have to think about things,” said Amanda, “Why don’t you do them?”
“But what is your idea, anyway?” asked David.
“I will tell you,” said Amanda and she leaned forward with her eyes sparkling.
CHAPTER 4
Reconnaissance
“The first thing,” said Amanda, “is to find out how many donkeys there are in the village. Do you know how many there are, Yani?”
Yani shrugged.
“I’m not sure,” he said. “I’ve never counted them. Maybe twenty.”
“Well, we’ve got to be absolutely certain,” said Amanda, “because there’s no sense in our only taking half of them.”
“I still don’t see how you are going to work this,” David said doubtfully.
“Shut up and listen,” said Amanda. “As soon as we have found out how many donkeys there are, we then organise a gigantic raid so that we can get them all at once.”