Free Hills End by Ivan Southall Page B

across the rock pan towards the tormented river. It still crashed from the skies and showered in cascades from the bluff. The skies were not clouds. They were an ocean falling.
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    Hills End groaned and swayed beneath the assault of the storm. Littered across the flats were rooftops and walls and fowlhouses and crushed water-tanks, fabrics and sodden paper, and creeping towards them was the swirling, muddied River Magnus, every second rising higher, reaching farther, every second destroying more and more.
    The deserted little town had no one to hold it together, to help it to face its most dangerous hours. Piece by piece it broke away and no one was there to pull it together again, to nail it down, to strengthen it with bolts, to secure it to its mother Earth with ropes and cables. No one was there to barricade the broken doors and windows. No one was there to save the things that people valued more than money, books and pictures and rocking chairs and instruments to make music. No one was there to comfort the terrified animals or the little birds in aviaries.
    No one was there. Not even Frank Tobias.
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    Paul was restless and succeeded for several minutes in hiding the water that was entering the cave. He had a suspicion that Adrian had noticed it, because Adrian was very jumpy, and Adrian indeed had known as soon as Paul had known. He had feared this from the moment the rain had started. Every boy knew that the caves sometimes ran high with water, not high enough to drown anyone, but certainly high enough to give one a bad fright. No boy would venture near the caves in the wet and this storm was as bad as the wet at its worst. Maybe it went even farther than that. Maybe this was the sort of rain they had never seen before.
    Suddenly Frances said, ‘I think we’d better move, don’t you, Paul?’
    â€˜Why, for heaven’s sake?’
    â€˜Paul!’ Frances put a lot of expression into that pronouncement of his name.
    He shifted uncomfortably because he was sitting in the puddle, still trying to hide it. He sighed.
    â€˜Oh, all right. I suppose it might get damp down here. What say we sit up on the ledge with the bones? I suppose rain might get blown in and float round a bit. Then we can have our lunch, eh? Who’s hungry?’
    Adrian was very nervous, but he rather admired Paul at that moment. ‘I’m hungry,’ he said. ‘Yeah, let’s have lunch. What say we sit up on the ledge and have lunch?’
    â€˜With all those horrible bones?’ Maisie shuddered. ‘Not me. I’m going to stay right here.’
    Frances said firmly, ‘They’ve got to know sooner or later, Paul.’
    â€˜Know what?’ squeaked Harvey. ‘What’s goin’ on round here?’
    Paul swallowed. ‘We might get wet. If we don’t sit up on the edge I think we’ll get very wet.’
    â€˜Yeah,’ said Adrian. ‘Much too wet. Right up to our ears, maybe—and that’d kill you, Harvey. Gee, you’d die if you got water in the ears.’
    Gussie jumped to her feet. ‘Do you mean we’re going to get flooded?’
    Adrian nodded and Paul nodded and Frances nodded.
    â€˜Right up to the ears? ’ howled Harvey.
    â€˜Perhaps. But not if we sit on the ledge.’
    â€˜That’ll be right,’ said Maisie, ‘or the bones wouldn’t be there, would they? They would have been washed away some other time.’
    There must have been a lot of truth in that. Trust Maisie to go straight to the truth.
    They moved their things on to the ledge and ate their lunches and watched the water flow in. They must have watched for half an hour, then Paul realized that the lantern was becoming dim. The battery must have been an old one.
    â€˜We’ll have to switch off,’ he said, ‘or we won’t have any light when perhaps we’ll need it most.’
    â€˜Oh, dear!’ Gussie shivered. ‘Must you,