Gerald Durrell - The Donkey Rustlers

“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.

Eventually, having been embraced and kissed on both cheeks by the Mayor, who was beginning to smell a bit owing to the mud, they were released by the happy villagers and made their way to the villa, accompanied by shouts of “Bravo!” and “Brave things” and similar encouraging phrases.

When the children got back to the villa they found their parents in the middle of breakfast. Having changed, they slipped into their places as unobtrusively as possible.

“Ah, there you are,” said Mrs Finchberry-White. “I was just coming to look for you.”

“I understand,” said the General, scrunching his way through large quantities of toast, “that you have just had the somewhat doubtful privilege of saving our Mayor’s life.”

“How did you know that?” asked Amanda, startled.

“There are many things,” said the General, “such as the Facts of Life for example, which a parent is not supposed to vouchsafe to his children and that includes his sources of information.”

“Well, it wasn’t anything really,” said David hastily. “It’s just that the bridge gave way and he fell into the water and he can’t swim, so we pulled him out.”

“A noble feat,” said the General. “After all, he is no mean weight.”

“Want some more marmalade? asked Amanda, in an effort to steer the conversation on to different lines.

“No. thank you,” said the General.

He took his pipe out of his pocket and beat out a rapid tattoo on his leg.

“Must you do that, Henry?” asked Mrs Finchberry-White.

“That’s the noise of Wattusi drums when they’ve failed in an attack,” said the General. “I remember it vividly. There we were — five of us — holed up in a kopje and they attacked at dawn. Enormous fellows, all over six feet, with zebra-skin shields and long slender spears. The plain below us was black with them — like ants. We fired until our gun barrels got red hot and finally drove them off; that was where I lost my leg.”

“No dear,” said Mrs Finchberry-White, “you lost it falling downstairs at the Westburys’.”

“I do wish, my dear,” said the General, testily. “that you wouldn’t always spoil a good story by introducing truth into it.”

The General had at one time or another lost his leg in such a variety of circumstances and in such a variety of places that the children now took very little notice of his stories.

David had something else to occupy his mind: a problem which he put to Amanda as soon as they had finished breakfast and were alone together.

“What about the donkeys braying?” he asked.

“Braying?” said Amanda. “What do you mean?”

“I mean,” explained David, “that if we have got all the donkeys on Hesperides and they start braying, then everyone will know where they are.”

Amanda frowned over this problem for a moment or so.

“I don’t think we need worry,” she said. “After all, donkeys only bray to each other. It’s sort of like one donkey talking to another donkey across the valley, but if they are all together and there are no donkeys on the mainland to talk to, I think they’ll be quiet.”

“I hope you’re right,” said David. “Now, let’s go down and see Yani and have another council of war.”

The children met at Yani’s small whitewashed house and sat out under the vine drinking lemonade. Coocos was in a tremendous state of excitement because his goldfinch had laid an egg, and he was carrying it round carefully in the pocket of his shirt in the hope of hatching it. As the goldfinch had had no opportunity of coming in contact with another goldfinch, the children thought that his chances of success were very slight, but they did not tell him so for fear of hurting his feelings.