As he sat there swinging his legs and looking down into that perfect green water, so clear that you could see gold and purple lights shifting beneath it and black lines of rock-like liquorice sticks twisting as the shadows moved, he was forced to admit to himself that he was terribly happy.
He had never lived close, cheek-by-jowl, with the sea, as he was doing now. The thought of five whole weeks spent thus on the very edge of the water made him wriggle his legs so that there was very real danger of his falling over. The juxtaposition of Hamlet who had, of course, followed him, saved him from further danger. He knew that he himself was safe and would never fall, but Hamlet was another matter and must be protected. The dog was perilously near the edge, balancing on his fore-feet and sniffing down; so the boy got up and dragged the dog back, and then lay down among the sea-pinks and the heather and looked up into the cloudless sky.
Hamlet rested his head on the fatty part of his master’s thigh and breathed deep content. He had come into some place where there wandered a new company of smells, appetizing, tempting. Soon he would investigate them. For the present it was enough to lie warm with his master and dream.
Suddenly he was conscious of something. He raised his head, and Jeremy, feeling his withdrawal, half sat up and looked about him. Facing them both were a group of giant boulders, scattered there in the heather, and looking like some Druid circle of ancient stones. Hamlet was now on all fours, his tail up, his hair bristling.
“It’s all right,” said Jeremy lazily. “There’s nobody there——” But even as he looked an extraordinary phenomenon occurred. There rose from behind the boulder a tangled head of hair, and beneath the hair a round, hostile face and two fierce interrogative eyes. Then, as though this were not enough, there arose in line with the first head a second, and with the second a third, and then with the third a fourth. Four round, bullet heads, four fierce, hostile pairs of eyes staring at Hamlet and Jeremy.
Jeremy stared back, feeling that here was some trick played upon him, as when the conjurer at Thompson’s had produced a pigeon out of a handkerchief. The trick effect was heightened by the fact that the four heads and the sturdy bodies connected with them were graduated in height to a nicety, as you might see four clowns at a circus, as were the four bears, a symmetry almost divine and quite unnatural.
The eldest, the fiercest and most hostile, had a face and shoulders that might belong to a boy of sixteen, the youngest and smallest might have been Jeremy’s age. Jeremy did not notice any of this. Very plain to him the fact that the four faces, to whomsoever they might belong, did not care either for him or his dog. One to four; he was in a situation of some danger. He was suddenly aware that he had never seen boys quite so ferocious in appearance; the street boys of Polchester were milk and water to them. Hamlet also felt this. He was sitting up, his head raised, his body stiff, intent, and you could feel within him the bark strangled by the melodrama of the situation.
Jeremy said rather feebly:
“Hullo!”
The reply was a terrific ear-shattering bellow from four lusty throats; then more distinctly: