Gumbles are not so silly as to go crashing into covered holes — unless they go giggly, then they are silly enough for anything.
‘Funny about that hole covered with leaves. I’m sure it wasn’t there before,’ Happigumble remarked, and because it is difficult not to look into a hole, to see how deep it is, they moved the leaves and peeped in.
It was a most extraordinary sight. Water from the creek had seeped into the hole while the Bottersnikes were dozing, and the great, fat creatures who had squeezed to get in had shrunk to the merest of red-eared blobs — no bigger than Gumbles, in fact; and they were howling and clamouring to be let out, but naturally their voices had shrunk too.
The Gumbles went quite hopeless with giggling, at the sight.
‘Get us out of here!’ the Bottersnikes yelled in their ridiculous voices. ‘Can’t you see we’re drowning?’
Shakily, the Gumbles lowered branches, and helped them out. Face to face with the shrunk ’snikes they burst into giggles all over again. ‘You don’t look nearly as bad this size,’ they sniggered. ‘It’s a very good size to be, don’t you think?’
Unfortunately, Bottersnikes are objectionable whatever their size. They were not in the least grateful. All they said was: ‘If it hadn’t been for you Gumbles we’d never have got in that hole in the first place,’ and they found that although they were too small to grab the Gumbles properly they could pick the jam tins up and throw them over the Gumbles, making prisoners of them; this they did, shouting, ‘Got you!’ as usual, and then they sat hard on the tins and waited for the wind to dry them out, so that they would grow again.
That was how things were when Willigumble came along.
‘O, grasshoppers!’ said Willi. Now he would have to do the rescuing, on his own.
‘I wish I could have tinks,’ he said. But Tinkingumble was the only tinker.
The Bottersnikes thought they may as well make some noise while they were growing up, and they shouted at the radio to play a tune. No one was big enough to reach the knob to switch it on, however, and the King growled, in what was supposed to be his deepest woof but was really only a tweet: ‘Just like that idiot Smiggles. He don’t dream right and what he do dream don’t work.’
That gave Willigumble his big idea, though it did not come with a tink. He nipped over the bridge and, keeping out of sight, crept to the back of the radio. A moment later a piping, squeaky voice came out of it: ‘Hem! Exercises for small people, to make them bigger! Are you ready, everyone?’
‘Just what we want!’ said Smiggles, very pleased with his radio and himself.
The radio made them wriggle and bend, waggle their ears and tie knots in their tails, but the Bottersnikes did all their growing exercises sitting down and just would not get off the jam tins.
At last the radio said: ‘Now, you’ll have grown an inch! Stand up, everyone, and try to touch the sky with the tops of your heads, and see how much you’ve grown.’
This the Bottersnikes could not resist doing. As they stood up to see how much they’d grown the jam tins behind them tipped over and the prisoner Gumbles escaped silently to the bush.
‘Close your eyes, everyone!’ the radio said hurriedly, ‘and listen carefully. Here’s a brand new exercise that will make you grow two inches. Sit on the ground with your tails between your legs. Now put your feet behind your ears. Roll forward slowly until you can pick up the ends of your tails in your teeth —’
The Bottersnikes tried to do this complicated growing exercise and scorched their feet severely on their red-hot ears. The radio gave a snort and a giggle then, and went off the air for good. Little Willigumble crawled out from the valves and things and — late as usual — rushed off to find his friends.
There was a fat, important Bottersnike called Chank. He was one of those who usually had two Gumbles to tidy up and keep him comfortable — that is, when the Bottersnikes had the Gumbles; but at the time that Chank began his adventures they had no Gumbles at all, not even Willi. Every morning they looked hopefully in their jam tins but the Gumbles were never there. They wanted the Gumbles back very badly because the middles of their scaly backs were all itchy and their wiry tails needed brushing. Their ears were red nearly all the time.
This Bottersnike named Chank liked to think that he was very brave and clever. His secret dream was that he should be the King of the Bottersnikes because he knew he was braver, and was sure he had more brains, than the real King.
One of the clever things he had done was to find an old straw hat amongst the rubbish. He called it his roof, and he wore it when it rained with his ears sticking out of two holes at the top. When it rained the other Bottersnikes had to crawl under their pots and pans and things (the King would get in his car) and stay there until it stopped, or they would shrink; but Chank would put his roof on and waddle about if he wanted to. It didn’t matter about his ears sticking out. A Bottersnike is always angry when it rains and his ears get so hot the rain just sizzles off them.
Chank was very proud of his roof. He boasted like anything about it and would put it on whether it was raining or not, just to show off. He decided to put it on today to remind the others how clever he was. It wasn’t raining but it was very windy; the gusts of wind were blowing loose paper about the rubbish heaps and rushing through the branches of the trees like giants in a hurry, and as Chank lifted his roof over his head the wind caught it and blew it clean away. It sailed away on the rush of the wind, over the rubbish heaps, and away to the bush.
‘Aow!’ screamed Chank. ‘My roof! My beautiful roof!’
The other Bottersnikes made their nose noises, which meant that they were laughing.
‘It ain’t funny!’ Chank raged. ‘It’ll have to be brought back this instant.’ He looked in his jam tins to see if his Gumbles were there, and they weren’t, so he kicked the jam tins savagely and hurt his toe.
‘Hey, Glob! Snorg! Be good ’snikes and go and find it for me,’ he said. ‘I’d go myself only I’ve hurt my toe.’
‘All right,’ said Glob, but he didn’t move from the carpet sweeper he was sitting on.
‘Go on, then,’ shouted Chank.
‘I have found it,’ Glob said. ‘It’s stuck in that tree, about ten miles away.’ They looked where he was pointing and could just see it caught in the branches of a big white gum; it wasn’t ten miles really but it looked as far as that to a fat Bottersnike with short legs.
‘Now all you’ve got to do,’ said Snorg, ‘is to go and get it. Ain’t you pleased?’
‘Or you could wait till the wind changed and blew it back,’ said Glob helpfully.
‘What’ll I do if it rains?’ wailed Chank.
‘Never mind, Chank. We’ll lend you a jam tin,’ they said, and snuffled their noses loudly.
This was too much! Very red in the ears, Chank shouted: ‘Who’d want you to help anyway? You two ain’t got enough brains to fill a peashooter — nincompoop Bottersnikes, that’s what you are!’
He grabbed his favourite jam tin