The Stolen Lake Read Online Free PDF

use it while he's a-giving dinner and doing the civil to old Brandyblossom," calculated Dido, "so there's no harm in
my
borrowing it for a couple of hours."
    When she had eaten her cake, she drew the glass from its case and, with its help, studied various features of the twilit shore. She could see the small town of Tenby clearly enough—its wharves, quays, the shipping at anchor in the river mouth, the tall black-and-white houses with feathery palms above them on the hillside. Then there came a belt of dense green, presumably the forest of Broceliande, full of pythons, pumas, alligators, and aurocs. Beyond that again, much farther off, hardly visible to the naked eye but clear enough through the powerful glass, lay a line of silvery foothills, below the higher peaks. Dido stared at these hills, trying to discover the point at which the Severn River tumbled over them in its majestic series of cataracts. She thought she had found the right spot—a white zigzag line against the gray of the hills—when she chanced on an even more interesting sight—what looked like a long procession of camels moving very slowly southward across the lens of the telescope.
    Were
they camels? If not camels, then what else could they be? They were shaggy, long-haired beasts, long necked too, with heads like those of sheep. Each bore on its back a large bulging pack. Each was led by a drover, and the procession crept at a snail's pace, as if the loads were a tremendous weight. As they toiled along, they were outlined clearly, some against the green sunset sky, some against the rose-flushed snow-clad peaks.
    "Blow me," muttered Dido. "Ain't there a right lot of them, jist?"
    She began to count, but counting was not Dido's strong point, and she gave up after four sets of twenty.
    "Reckon they must use camels in New Cumbria where we'd use carriers' carts," she decided. "Maybe they finds it best to shift goods at night when the aurocs has gone to roost. Them aurocs must be a plaguy nuisance, if they can scrag a sheep or a cow like Dora nobbles a mouse."
    The last of the line of loaded camels disappeared into a dark cleft among the hills. It was now becoming really dark. Following Mr. Holystone's instructions for doing so, Dido found the Southern Cross; then she heard the pinnace being whistled for, so she tucked the telescope under her duffel jacket and went below. As she descended the companionway, Mr. Brandywinde and the captain came out of the dining room.
    "Perhaps by tomorrow," the captain was saying, "you will have received more information as to this—this
loss
that Her Majesty has sustained."
    "Oh, what she has lost she refuses to say," caroled Mr. Brandywinde. "It seems to have vanished like last Wednesday!"
    "Let us hope not!" retorted Captain Hughes acidly, "or my mission is but a sleeveless errand."
    "A fool's errand—what a shocking thought! A fool in the forest of Bro-cel-iande, one foot on the water and one on the land."
    At this moment Mr. Brandywinde laid eyes on Dido, who was politely waiting in the galley doorway for the two men to pass by. The agent's bloodshot eyes bulged until it looked as if they would burst from their sockets like horse chestnuts—he gulped, gasped, and fell into such a fit of coughing and choking that, if he had been on deck, it seemed highly probable that he would have fallen overboard as he staggered about.
    "Deuce take the fellow!" exclaimed Captain Hughes impatiently. "Here—Holystone—thwack him on the back! Give him some hartshorn or spirits of tar—otherwise the man will take an apoplexy!"
    Restoratives having been administered, Mr. Brandywinde was presently able to mop his streaming eyes and apologize.
    "It is nothing—nothing—a trifling infirmity," he panted, still staggering. "Takes me thus at times—but it is nothing at all, I assure you! A slight disability resulting from the quantity of pepper in the diet hereabouts—nothing, sir, nothing, nothing! You must try the pepper-pot stew,