“I think you’re mad,” said David with conviction. “Look, if we take them one at a time,” said Amanda, “by the time we’ve taken three or four, the rest of the villagers will have become worried and put their donkeys under lock and key. We have to get them all at once, or else it’s useless.”
“I still don’t see how we can get twenty donkeys all at once,” said David, “and then, when you’ve got them, what are you going to do with them?”
“Put them up in the hills somewhere,” said Amanda airily.
“I don’t think that’s a very good idea,” said Yani. “because there’s practically nowhere around here where you could hide twenty donkeys without somebody finding them. It would have to be a place which nobody would think of.”
“I know,” said Amanda, her eyes shining, “we’ll bring them out here.”
“What, to Hesperides?” asked David. “I really think you have gone mad. How could we get them out here?”
“Well, how do we get out here?” said Amanda. “We swim.”
“Yes, but can donkeys swim?” asked David.
Roth children looked expectantly at Yani; Yani shrugged.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve never thought about it. We don’t use them for swimming. But certainly, if we hid the donkeys here, nobody would ever dream of looking for them on this island. That is a very good idea.”
“I think it’s an absolutely hair-brained scheme from beginning to end,” said David.
“Why don’t you try it?” said Amanda.
David turned the idea over in his mind. The more he thought about the scheme the more pitfalls it seemed to possess, and the thought of his father’s wrath if they were caught made him feel slightly sick. But, try as he would, he could not think of any alternative to Amanda’s idea.
“All right,” he said reluctantly. “But on one condition, that you leave the organising side of things to me and don’t go doing anything stupid. It will have to be conducted like a military operation and the first thing to do is to find out how many donkeys there are in the village. The second thing to do is to find out whether donkeys can swim, because, if they can’t swim, the whole scheme is useless.”
“Well, horses swim,” Amanda pointed out.
“I know. But it doesn’t necessarily follow that donkeys can,” said David. “Now, we must each have our own job to do so that we can spread out. First of all you and Yani and Coocos, if you can get hold of him, will go round the village and count the donkeys. While you are doing that I will work out a plan so that we can discover whether they can swim or not.”
“Why can’t we just take one down to the beach and push him into the sea?” asked Amanda.
“You can’t do that,” said David, “because if somebody saw us it would give the whole game away. I’ll think up something. Let’s swim back now and you and Yani and Coocos can start counting.”
Excitedly the children swam back to the shore and climbed up the hillside towards the village.
Now that he had accepted Amanda’s basic idea, David was really getting quite intrigued by the whole thing. It was, he confessed to himself, infinitely more interesting to organise this than to work out complicated sums about lizards and carts. So for the rest of the day David thought and thought of a way of finding out whether donkeys could swim, while Amanda, Yani and Coocos, armed with a pad and pencil, solemnly went round the village making a list of people’s donkeys; the interest with which they inquired after everybody’s beasts of burden quite touched the villagers.
“It’s a good thing,” said Yani, when they had almost completed their task, “none of the donkeys have babies, for I think it would be very troublesome to get the baby ones over to the island.”
“Bah!” said Amanda, dismissing that with an airy wave of her hand, “you could always row them over in a boat.”
By the time they had finished, the children had discovered that the village contained eighteen donkeys and one small horse. Five of the donkeys and the horse — they were delighted to discover — belonged to Mayor Oizus.
“Jolly well serve him right when we pinch his,” said Amanda. “I bet that’ll make him sweat even more than he sweats now.”
At firefly time the children held another council of war down in the olive groves. Amanda reported to David the number of donkeys and also, what was more important. where each one was stabled overnight.
“It’s going to be a bit difficult,” said David gravely, studying the list. “I think we could probably get away with nine or ten of them in one night, but how we are going to manage the rest I am not quite sure.”
“Well, next to Mayor Oizus,” said Amanda, “the one who has the most is Papa Nikos.”
“And he always gets up very, very early and goes down to the fields,” said Yani. “We might stand a chance of getting them there.”
“Anyway,” said Amanda impatiently, “have you thought out how we can find out whether they can swim?”
“Yes,” admitted David, with a certain amount of smugness. “I have thought up a very good idea. You know that river just before you get to the fields, with the little wooden bridge?”
“Yes,” said Amanda.
“Well, if we could sabotage that in some way so that when they lead a donkey across it it would collapse, we would find out whether the donkey could swim and, at the same time, it is not so deep that we couldn’t rescue it if it couldn’t swim.”
“David, that is a clever idea,” said Amanda, her eyes sparkling.
“But, how are you going to sabotage the bridge?” inquired Yani.
“Well, I went down and inspected it this afternoon,” said David. “Actually it is so rickety that it doesn’t require very much at all. I think if you just saw through the two centre supports, anything getting into the middle of it will push the whole thing into the water.”
Amanda gave a delighted crow of laughter.
“You are clever, David,” she said admiringly. “I can’t wait to do this. When shall we do it?”
“Well, the sooner the better,” said David. “I thought we’d go down to-night, as there’s no moon, and do it then. Then we can get up very early in the morning and go down there and watch. The trouble is we don’t seem to have a saw in the house.”
“I’ve got a saw,” said Yani excitedly. “I’ll bring that.”
“Now remember, Coocos,” said David, pointing his finger sternly at the bowler-hatted boy, “you are not to say a word to anybody about this.”
Coocos shook his head vigorously and crossed himself. “No, Coocos won’t say anything,” said Yani, “because he’s my friend.”
That night the children slipped quietly out of their bedrooms and down the stairs. Each creak made them start nervously for fear it would wake the General and bring his wrath down upon them. They finally got out of the house without disturbing their parents and made their way, together with Yani and Coocos, taking infinite and quite unnecessary precautions against being seen, to the little bridge that spanned the rather muddy canal on the edge of the corn fields. David stripped off his clothes and slipped into the brown water and disappeared under the bridge, having posted the rest of them at strategic points so that should the sound of sawing be heard by anyone who might come to investigate, they could all warn him. Then he set to work. In a very short time — for he found the wood was soft and semi-rotten — he succeeded in sawing through the two uprights that supported the centre of the bridge. He then uprooted them and replanted them in the mud so that, at a casual glance, they looked as if they were still supporting the bridge although in actual fact they were useless. He then climbed out on to the bank, carefully washing the mud from his legs, dressed himself, and then the children made their way back to their respective homes.