Gerald Durrell - The Donkey Rustlers

“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.

“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.”

“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.