The Adventures of Bottersnikes and Gumbles. Desmond Digby

       WILLIGUMBLE — LATE AS USUAL

      ‘We’ll never let ourselves get caught by those creatures again,’ the Gumbles said, next morning. ‘Never, never, never, never!’

      ‘We’ll go away where they’ll never find us,’ Happigumble said. ‘One more paddle first, though.’

      Someone suddenly cried, as they were paddling: ‘Where’s Willigumble? He’s not here!’

      They called for him but there was no answer, and searched up and down the creek-bank but there was no sign; and after much anxious hunting they sat down and looked at each other glumly. No one said a word, but in each Gumblehead was the dreadful thought: Willigumble must have been left behind with the Bottersnikes. Little Willi, on his own. He was the smallest Gumble of them all.

      Happigumble jumped up. ‘We’ll have to go and rescue him,’ he said. ‘Somehow.’

      They started up the hill towards the rubbish heaps. Somehow they would get him back.

      They had not gone far before a coloured thing came hurtling down the hill towards them. Faster and faster it came, off the road it bounced, sending them scattering, and lodged against a bush. It was an asparagus tin, with something inside that looked like a lump of dough — but when they pulled it out and squeezed it into shape, it was Willigumble. He was giggling all over.

      ‘Fatso of a Bottersnike couldn’t read,’ Willigumble gurgled. ‘Put me in the wrong tin!’

      ‘Silly old Willi, late as usual,’ the Gumbles joked. But there was great relief.

      ‘The Bottersnikes did kick up a rumpus when they found you’d all gone,’ Willigumble told them. ‘They turned the rubbish heaps upside down and all they found was the bottom of the jam tins; and then Owl told them about the tins rolling down the hill in the moonlight — disgusting, he called it, ’cos it scared the game — and the Bottersnikes told Owl not to be an idiot, it couldn’t happen, they said, and Owl told the Bottersnikes it could and did, and there was a fearful argument; and then the Bottersnikes said: “We’ll try it then, just to show what a fool Owl is,” and they took my tin across to the road and gave it a push — and here I am!’

      ‘And there are the Bottersnikes coming after us,’ cried Happigumble, ‘and O, grasshoppers, look at their ears! What are we going to do? Tinkingumble, have a tink quickly!’

      Two or three of them squeezed Tinkingumble till he was nearly all head, because he had his best tinks that way; and meanwhile the Bottersnikes were waddling down the hill shouting furiously and blaming Owl for letting their last Gumble get away. Their ears were brilliant. In their horny hands they carried new jam tins.

      The tink came in a moment, clear as a cricket’s chirrup, and the Gumbles crowded round. ‘What is it, Tinkingumble? What’s the tink?’

      ‘We must cross the creek,’ he said.

      ‘Yes, yes, but how? It’s too deep!’ For Gumbles, though they love to splash in shallow water, cannot swim.

      ‘In Willigumble’s tin, of course,’ he said. So they took Willigumble’s asparagus tin, the only one that didn’t have its bottom cut out, and using gum leaves as oars they paddled over in loads of four or five, with one oarsman bringing the tin back for the next trip.

      The Bottersnikes arrived at the sandy beach just as the last tinful rowed away — and there they stopped. Bottersnikes hate water. If they get wet, they shrink, and have to be hung up to dry. So they stood on the bank and raged. Safe on the other side the Gumbles pulled rude faces, cheekily waved goodbye and scuttled into the bush.

      The long ears glowed red hot with fury as the Bottersnikes howled and growled on the creek-bank, until at last the King roared ‘Snonk!’ and they became quieter.

      The King said: ‘We will make a Gumbletrap.’

      ‘A trap to catch Gumbles in — oh, clever, clever!’ the Bottersnikes shouted. But what did a Gumbletrap look like? The King knew, perhaps, but he wouldn’t tell them, he just stood there tickling his stomach with the end of his tail.

      A Bottersnike called Glob spoke up. ‘Suppose there was a hole in the ground and we covered it with branches so’s they couldn’t see it, then when they walked over it they’d all fall in.’

      The King thought about this for two minutes and said: ‘Just what I was going to say myself. Dig the hole.’

      This looked too much like work, so Glob said, a bit nervously: ‘Why don’t we get Smiggles to dream one?’

      For very lazy people dreaming can be a way of getting things done, and this Bottersnike named Smiggles was useful sometimes because whatever he dreamed of became real — until he went to sleep again, then his first dream vanished to make room for his next. The trouble was that no one knew whether Smiggles would dream what he was told to dream about or something quite different.

      ‘Go to sleep, Smiggles,’ the King ordered, ‘and dream a hole. A big one.’

      Smiggles went to sleep with no difficulty at all, and while they waited for the dream to come along the others pottered about looking for a bit of rubbish to make them feel at home. Presently two of these pottering Bottersnikes found an old weedy hole near the road that someone had dug ages ago, but they didn’t know this, they said: ‘Idiot, he’s dreamed it in the wrong place,’ and went and told the King.

      ‘Move it,’ the King said. ‘Put it down by the creek.’

      Four Bottersnikes picked the hole up by the corners and staggered with it to the creek-bank, where they laid twigs and leaves over it so that it couldn’t be seen from the top. Also they threw a dead branch across the creek to make a bridge, and the hole was just by the end of the bridge so that as the Gumbles stepped off they would be sure to fall in.

      ‘A very cunning Gumbletrap,’ they boasted — and then Smiggles woke up. ‘Not a bad hole, Smig,’ they told him, ‘except it was in the wrong place.’

      ‘But I didn’t dream a hole,’ said Smiggles, puzzled. ‘I dreamed a radiogram.’ Which now stood awkwardly in the bush — an expensive model, with lots of knobs and polished wood, though under the circumstances, not much use.

      The King looked at Smiggles’ dreamwork and snorted, then at the cunning Gumbletrap, but was not pleased with that either. ‘The Gumbles are too light,’ he growled. ‘They’ll walk over the twigs without falling in. The idiot what thought of this Gumbletrap ought to have his head sat on.’

      Glob hurriedly suggested that they should all get into the hole — for they had to hide somewhere — and pull the Gumbles down as they came across. The Bottersnikes liked the idea of this. They squeezed in the hole together, covered up again with leaves and twigs, snuffled their noses loudly and had a bit of a sleep while they waited.

      All this time the Gumbles had been playing with some frogs farther down the creek. When the sun began to get hot they came back for another paddle at their favourite beach — all except Willigumble, who had stopped to tell some young tadpoles that they couldn’t possibly play leapfrog until they had grown legs. The Gumbles were ever so cautious. On the far bank they stopped, looked and listened, wary for the merest whiff of danger; but no Bottersnikes could be seen; so they