Presently a shriek told of the first catastrophe; then followed another and yet another, and soon the darkness was rent by cries, shrieks, and lamentations, whilst somewhere near the Bindles" tent rose the voice of one crying from a wilderness of canvas for "Enery.
Mrs. Bindle was awakened by the loud slatting of the tent-flap.
Pandemonium seemed to have broken loose. The wind howled and whistled through the tent-ropes, the rain swept against the canvas sides with an ominous "swish," the pole bent as the tent swayed from side to side.
"Bindle," she cried, "get up!"
""Ullo!" he responded sleepily. He had taken the precaution of not removing his trousers, a circ.u.mstance that was subsequently used as evidence against him.
"The tent"s coming down," she cried. "Get up and hold the prop."
As she spoke, she scrambled from beneath the blankets and seized the brown mackintosh, which she kept ready to hand in case of accidents.
Wrapping this about her, she clutched at the bending pole, whilst Bindle struggled out from among the bedclothes.
Scrambling to his feet, he tripped over the tin-bath. Clutching wildly as he fell, he got Mrs. Bindle just above the knees in approved rugger style.
With a scream she relinquished the pole to free her legs from Bindle"s frenzied clutch and, losing her footing, she came down on top of him.
"Leave go," she cried.
"Get up orf my stomach then," he gasped.
At that moment, the wind gave a tremendous lift to the tent. Mrs. Bindle was clutching wildly at the base of the pole, Bindle was striving to wriggle from beneath her. The combination of forces caused the tent to sway wildly. A moment later, it seemed to start angrily from the ground, and she fell over backwards, whilst a ma.s.s of sopping canvas descended, stifling alike her screams and Bindle"s protests that he was being killed.
It took Bindle nearly five minutes to find his way out from the heavy folds of wet canvas. Then he had to go back into the darkness to fetch Mrs. Bindle. In order to effect his own escape, Bindle had cut the tent-ropes. Just as he had found Mrs. Bindle, a wild gust of wind entered behind him, lifted the tent bodily and bore it off.
The suddenness of the catastrophe seemed to strike Mrs. Bindle dumb. To be sitting in the middle of a meadow at dead of night, clothed only in a nightdress and a mackintosh, with the rain drenching down, seemed to her to border upon the indecent.
"You there, Lizzie?" came the voice of Bindle, like the shout of one hailing a drowning person.
"Where"s the tent?" demanded Mrs. Bindle inconsequently.
"Gawd knows!" he shouted back. "Probably it"s at Yarmouth by now. "Oly ointment," he yelled.
"What"s the matter?"
"I trodden on the marjarine."
"It"s all we"ve got," she cried, her housewifely fears triumphing over even the stress of wind and rain and her own intolerable situation.
From the surrounding darkness came shouts and enquiries as disaster followed disaster. Heaving ma.s.ses of canvas laboured and, one by one, produced figures scanty of garment and full of protest; but mercifully unseen.
Women cried, children shrieked, and men swore volubly.
"I"m sittin" in somethink sticky," cried Bindle presently.
"You"ve upset the marmalade. Why can"t you keep still?"
Keep still! Bindle was searching for the two bottles of Guinness" stout he knew to be somewhere among the debris, unconscious that Mrs. Bindle had packed them away in the tin-bath.
As the other tents disgorged their human contents, the pandemonium increased. In every key, appeals were being made for news of lost units.
By the side of the tin-bath Mrs. Bindle was praying for succour and the lost bell-tent, which had sped towards the east as if in search of the wise men, leaving all beneath it naked to the few stars that peeped from the scudding clouds above, only to hide their faces a moment later as if shocked at what they had seen.
Suddenly a brilliant light flashed across the meadow and began to bob about like a hundred candle power will-o"-the-wisp. It dodged restlessly from place to place, as if in search of something.
Behind a large acetylene motor-lamp, walked Patrol-leader Smithers, searching for one single erect bell-tent--there was none.
Shrieks that had been of terror now became cries of alarm. Forms that had struggled valiantly to escape from the billowing canvas, now began desperately to wriggle back again to the seclusion that modesty demanded. With heads still protruding they regarded the scene, praying that the rudeness of the wind would not betray them.
Taking immediate charge, Patrol-leader Smithers collected the men and gave his orders in a high treble, and his orders were obeyed.
By the time the dawn had begun nervously to finger the east, sufficient tents to shelter the women and children had been re-erected, the cause of the trouble discovered, and the men rebuked for an injudicious slacking of the ropes.
"I ought to have seen to it myself," remarked Patrol-leader Smithers with the air of one who knows he has to deal with fools. "You"ll be all right now," he added rea.s.suringly.
"All right now," growled the man with the stubbly chin as he looked up at the grey scudding clouds and then down at the rain-soaked gra.s.s. "We would if we was ducks, or ruddy boy scouts; but we"re men, we are--on "oliday," he added with inspiration, and he withdrew to his tent, conscious that he had voiced the opinion of all.
V
Later that morning three carts, laden with luggage, rumbled their way up to West Boxton railway-station, followed by a straggling stream of men, women, and children. Overhead heavy rainclouds swung threateningly across the sky. Men were smoking their pipes contentedly, for theirs was the peace which comes of full knowledge. Behind them they had left a litter of bell-tents and the conviction that Daisy in all probability would explode before dinner-time. What cared they? A few hours hence they would be once more in their known and understood Fulham.
As they reached the station they saw two men struggling with a grey ma.s.s that looked like a deflated balloon.
The men hailed the party and appealed for help.
"It"s the ruddy marquee," cried a voice.
"The blinkin" tent," cried another, not to be outdone in speculative intelligence.
"You can take it back with you," cried one of the men from the truck.
"We"re demobbed, ole son," said Bindle cheerily. "We"ve struck."
"No more blinkin" camps for me," said the man with the stubbly chin.
""Ear, "ear," came from a number of voices.
"Are we down-hearted?" enquired a voice.
"Nooooooooo!"
And the voices of women and children were heard in the response.
Some half an hour later, as the train steamed out of the station, Bindle called out to the porters:
"Tell the bishop not to forget to milk Daisy."