The sky was pearly pink and green with dawn light and there were still a few freckles of stars in it when David went into Amanda’s room and woke her up. They went and met Yani and Coocos and made their way down in the fresh morning air to the little bridge. Conveniently close to the bridge several large clumps of bamboo were growing, which offered extremely good hiding places from which they could watch the result of their experiment and here they settled down and waited in silence for the first of the villagers to put in an appearance.
It was perhaps unfortunate that the first person to come down to the bridge that morning was Mayor Oizus himself. He was certainly the last person the children had expected, for normally Mayor Oizus spent most of his time sitting in the local café, while Mrs Oizus did all the work in the fields, but the previous day Mrs Oizus had complained about some curious animal which seemed to be ruining the corn crop and so the Mayor had decided to take the unprecedented step of going down to see for himself. In order to save himself the arduous task of walking, he had decided to ride on one of his donkeys.
“Saint Polycarpos!” whispered Yani, his eyes wide. “It’s the Mayor himself.”
“Splendid.” said Amanda, starting to giggle.
“Shut up,” hissed David. “He’ll hear us.”
“He’s going to be terribly angry,” said Yani.
“Serves him right,” said Amanda. “That’s what my father would call ‘poetic justice’.”
They watched as the donkey, with great patience, considering the weight of the Mayor, plodded down the hillside and clip-clopped its way towards the bridge. It was very early and the Mayor, who was unaccustomed to such physical exertion as donkey-riding at dawn, was nodding sleepily as his mount jogged along. It came to the bridge and the children held their breath. It clattered on to the bridge and David watched in an agony of suspense, for he was not at all sure that his sabotage would work, but, to his intense delight, as the donkey reached the centre of the bridge, the whole thing gave way with a most satisfying scrunch, and both donkey and Mayor were precipitated into the water with a most glorious fountain-like splash, accompanied by a very heart-warming yell of fear from the Mayor.
“It worked!” said David, his eyes shining with excitement, “It worked!”
“Absolutely wonderful!” Amanda exclaimed ecstatically.
“You did that very well, David,” said Yani.
However, they now discovered two things: that the donkey could swim remarkably well, and soon had itself out of the canal, whereas the Mayor could not swim at all.
“What shall we do?” said Yani. “We can’t let him drown. We’d better go and help him.”
The Mayor was clinging to a piece of driftwood from the bridge and bellowing for help at the top of his lungs, although at that hour in the morning it was unlikely, he felt, that there would be anybody around. He invoked the saints several times and tried to cross himself, but if he crossed himself he found he had to let go of the piece of wood, which was the only thing between himself and a watery grave.
“Yani can’t go and help him,” said Amanda, “because if he sees Yani he’ll know, so we’d better go.”
Amanda and David ran along the bank towards the floundering Mayor.
“Don’t worry, Mr Mayor,” shouted Amanda. “We’re coming.”
“Save me! Save me!” yelled the Mayor.
“Stop shouting, we’re coming,” said David impatiently. They made their way down the banks of the canal and plunged into the water.
“I’m drowning,” cried the Mayor in such a plaintive tone of voice that Amanda was seized with a fit of giggles.
“Be quiet,” said David soothingly. “You are all right.”
The children got on each side of the portly Mayor and, supporting him under his armpits, they dragged him, dripping and covered with mud and water-weed, to the bank up which he scrambled looking not unlike a rather ungainly walrus getting out on to an ice floe, He presented a sight so comic that Amanda had to go and stand behind an olive tree so that she could laugh, and even David’s mouth was not under complete control as he inquired tenderly after the Mayor’s health.
“You saved me,” said the Mayor, crossing himself several times with great rapidity. “You brave children, you saved me.”
“Oh, it was nothing,” said David unconcernedly. “We just happened to be passing and we heard you shouting. We were just going down for a — for — er — for an early morning swim.”
“It was in the mercy of God that you were passing,” said the Mayor, removing a piece of water-weed from his moustache. “Undoubtedly the mercy of God.”
“What were you doing up so early?” said David accusingly.
“I had to go down to the fields to see about my corn. It just shows one should not do foolish things. Somebody should have repaired that bridge a long time ago. I kept telling them about it,” he panted, completely untruthfully. “So now they will have to do something about it.”
It was fortunate that the Mayor’s donkey had scrambled ashore on the same bank as the Mayor and was standing grazing placidly under the trees. Amanda and David hoisted the mud-covered and dripping Mayor Oizus on to the back of his donkey and accompanied him up to the village.
“We know two things now,” said Amanda in English, so that the Mayor would not understand. “One is that donkeys swim and the other thing is that mayors don’t.” She was convulsed once more with giggles.
“Shut up. you fool,” hissed David. “He’ll think there’s something funny if you go on like that.”
By the time they got back to the village everybody was astir and their mouths dropped open with astonishment at the sight of their leading citizen, caked from head to foot in mud and leaving a trail of water, riding into the main square. Immediately, magically, almost the entire village assembled. For one thing it gave them considerable pleasure to see the Mayor in this distraught condition, and for another thing, nothing exciting had happened in the village since old Papa Nikos, three years previously, had got drunk and fallen down a well, from which he was extracted with extreme difficulty.
The Mayor, making the most of the situation, climbed painfully off his donkey and staggered to the nearest chair in the café. He had realised, as all Greeks do, the good dramatic possibilities of such a situation, He gasped, he fainted several times and had to be revived with ouzo, and was so incoherent at first that the villagers were quivering with a desire to know precisely what had happened. At last, with much gesturing and much crossing of himself, the Mayor told his story and although there must have been nearly two hundred people standing around, you could have heard a pin drop. The entire village, it seemed, was holding its breath, so that nobody should miss a word of this thrilling story. When the Mayor came to the rescue part. the villagers were delighted. Fancy! The children of their English people rescued the Mayor! The fact that, later on, when speculating on the incident, the general consensus of opinion was that it was rather a pity he had been rescued, was not thought of for this brief moment. Amanda and David were the heroes of the day. They were embraced and kissed and plied with glasses of wine and those hideous sticky preserves which were so dear to the hearts of the people of Kalanero. Amanda and David were, of course, acutely embarrassed and felt very guilty, and indeed looked it, but this the villagers attributed to natural English modesty.