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 trotted over the bridge … and stepped carefully over the Gumbletrap, which failed to catch a single Gumble.
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
