The Homeward Bounders Read Free

didn’t know either. He gave me a book on chess and another on tennis and another on hunting—none of them the slightest use—and one called Buildings of Note . That was not much use either. It actually had a picture of the Old Fort, one of those beautifully neat gray drawings of the front of it, harpoons and all. Underneath that, someone had spilt ink all over what it said.
    I was so annoyed that, like a fool, I took it and showed it to the Librarian. And he thought I’d done it. That’s the worst of being a boy. You get blamed for everything. I still haven’t got used to it. He howled and he raved and he ordered me out. And I had to go. It made me more determined than ever to find out about the Old Fort. I was so annoyed.
    That ink was no accident. I thought that even then. There was no ink anywhere else on the book. They don’t want people to know. It would have looked odd if there had been nothing about the Old Fort. Someone would have tried to find out. So They let it get into the book and then made sure no one could read it. That’s the way They do things.
    â€œYou think you’ve put me off, don’t you?” I said to Them in the street outside the Library. “Well, you’re wrong.”
    I went home. It was order day. In the shop, my father was packing piles of groceries in cardboard boxes to take round to customers. Rob usually took them. As I told you, Rob liked all things to do with the shop. But I was there, so I was roped in too. For once, that was just what I wanted. Rob was annoyed. He was afraid I was going to want to ride the tricycle. Rob loved that thing, and so did my father—I can’t think why. It weighed about a ton, and it had a solid metal box in front to put the cardboard boxes in. Once you had even one box of groceries aboard, your legs creaked just getting the trike moving, and the only way you could go was either in a straight line forward, or round in a tight circle. I let Rob have it. I took up the nearest box and carried it off. As soon as I was out of sight of Rob, I threw away the note on top which said Mrs. Macready and carried the box, groceries and all, down to the Old Fort.
    Not a bad idea, I thought, as I went up the steps to the thick shut front door. I rang at the brass bell beside it and heard it go clang clang clang in the silence deep inside. My heart seemed to be clanging too, so hard that it hurt. Then I waited. When one of Them came, I was going to say, “Your groceries, sir. Like me to put them in the kitchen for you?” Not a bad idea.
    I waited. And I waited. The stamped-out anchor was on the part of the door plate level with my eyes, and now, while I waited, I stared at it and saw that there was a crown over the end of it—the part they call the shank. And, after a while, my heart stopped clanging and I began to get annoyed. I rang again. And a third time. By that time I was hating that crowned anchor personally—but nothing like I did later. I’ve come upon pubs and inns all over the place called The Crown and Anchor. No matter how desperate I am, I can’t ever bring myself to go into them. I always suspect that They are waiting inside.
    Around five o’clock, I saw that it was no good. This is ridiculous! I thought. What do they do for groceries? Don’t they eat? But really what I thought was that five o’clock was after office hours, and that the fellows had probably taken off their gray cloaks and gone home.
    Well, there was an easy answer to that one. Go and take a look. What a fool I was!
    So round the corner to the side street goes this fool, carrying his box of groceries, along to the best place to climb the wall. I put the box down in the street and used it to tread on to get a leg up. There was an awful squishy crunching as I took off from it—eggs probably—but I took no notice and got on top of the wall. Maybe I was more scared than I would admit. I did stay on top of