Free Aunt Effie and the Island That Sank by Jack Lasenby Page A

stop our teeth from falling out. “I’d rather have scurvy,” said Alwyn.
    “It’s turned your teeth black,” he told the little ones who cried.
    “I don’t know why you listen to anything Alwyn says!” Beckysaid, but they were already listening to him again.
    “I went to school with a little girl who had golden hair down to her waist,” Alwyn told the little ones. “It all fell out one day because she got drunk on spruce beer and stayed in the hot springs too long. Poor creature: bald for life!” Alwyn shook his head. “She had to wear a wig made out of old rope. It was so itchy, she kept taking it off and scratching her head.”
    “I think my hair’s falling out,” cried Lizzie, and the other little ones all scratched their heads and cried and said they were itchy, too.
    We dug a pit, and jacked the rimu trunk across it. Peter stretched a chalked string, twitched it up in the middle so it smacked down and left a white line the length of the log.
    Taking turns, we pit-sawed along the line. Pulling up on top, pulling down below, we sawed that log into long wooden tram rails, and laid them on sleepers up the bank.
    “While you were playing with the school inspectors and their butterfly nets at the Auckland Railway Station,” Aunt Effie said, “I did a deal. I swapped a false map of Wicked Nancy’s Island for the driving wheels off the Rotorua Express.” She dragged back some green canvas and revealed several huge, flanged, iron wheels on the deck.
    We bolted the wheels to the sides of the Margery Daw. We dug in the toes of the timber-jacks, spun the handles, and shifted her on to the wooden rails. “Another advantage of a scow’s flat bottom,” said Aunt Effie. “A keel boat would need a cradle to keep her on the tramway.”
    Marie and the dogs dragged a hawser up the slope and made it fast around the rimu’s stump. The rest of us stuck our bars into the capstan and heaved until it turned, the hawser tightened, andthe driving wheels began skidding. We threw handfuls of sand on the tramlines so the wheels gripped, and the Margery Daw rose dripping and rolled towards the stump. Jazz wetted his finger and ran it along the rails. The wheels had crushed the sand till it was as slick as water.
    In the grass beyond the stump, we laid out a kedge anchor on the hawser, and dug its flukes into the ground. “Altogether!” said Aunt Effie, and we stamped, sang sea shanties, shoved on our bars, turned the capstan, and kedged the Margery Daw across the flat paddocks. Each time we got near the kedge, we laid it out ahead again. It was much easier than winching her up the bank out of the creek.
    “Aunt Effie?”
    “Yes.”
    “Aunt Effie?”
    “I’m listening.”
    “Aunt Effie?”
    “Well, what is it, Lizzie?”
    “Aunt Effie, you know when we were winching the Margery Daw out of the creek.”
    “Yes.”
    “Well, remember you said the earth is flat?”
    “Yes?”
    “Well, if the world’s flat, how come we were winching the Margery Daw uphill?”
    “A very good question!” said Aunt Effie. “The sea,” she said, “is pretty flat. When the wind blows, it goes up and down a bit in waves and then goes flat again. It goes on and on, flat, until you come to one of those edges where you sail over on to another side of the world. You can sometimes tell where the edges arebecause you see other boats sailing up over them.”
    “Like when you just see the tops of their masts?”
    “You’ve got the idea. The sea’s mostly pretty flat, but the earth’s got hills that go up and down a bit more than the waves. That’s why we had to winch uphill from the creek to get the Margery Daw running across the paddocks. But although the hills go up and down, and although the waves go up and down, the world’s still just a big box with six flat sides.”
    “But I remember you once said we were sailing downhill.”
    “Running ahead of the wind,” said Aunt Effie. “It’s called sailing downhill, because it’s so