Gerald Durrell - The Donkey Rustlers

“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.

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.