“Good work, team!” he panted as he piled it into a sizeable dam. “It’s holding! That should keep us dry for a moment longer. Now, follow me out through the side-wall. And hurry! There’s not a moment to lose!”
The water was trickling into the burrow fast, even down some of the side-passages. As soon as the kits broke out of the chamber, they found themselves in bone-chilling water almost up to their bellies. The shock of it made Mimi cry out. “Prrrr! It’s biting me!”
“Keep close and keep moving!” ordered Uncle and he began to call “Ki-ko! Preeep!” at intervals. He wanted to let Radiant know that he was safe and not too far away.
“Do hurry, old thing!” came her faint and muffled reply. “The babies are getting awfully chilly!”
“Just as I feared, what-what!” muttered Uncle. “They’ll catch their deaths if we don’t get them to a warm place, sharpish. Stick to me like ticks, now, kits! On we go!”
It was clear to him that the rescue party would need to avoid the flooded passageways and cut a fresh side-tunnel into the nursery chamber.
He mustered his most commanding voice and cried out: “Stay together to stay alive, the Really Mads!” The mob motto blazed for the kits in the darkness like a trumpet call. It stirred their blood and lifted their tails and spirits.
Uncle was right to move sharpish. The temperature in the stormy Upworld had dropped close to freezing. The babies would never survive that kind of cold, simple as that. He and the kits set to work with a will to cut a fresh tunnel, but it was painfully hard going. Much of the air had been driven out of the burrow by the gushing water and soon they were all gasping for breath.
“Heave!” urged Uncle. It was touch and go, but – with just moments to spare – they made it! They broke through the side of the nursery chamber just as the first fingers of water reached in through the main door. In a trice the rising water got them in its icy grip, squeezing out of everyone what little breath they had.
Some meerkats would have turned tail and saved themselves, but not Uncle Fearless. His orders came fast and clear. “Mind out, my dear!” he called to Radiant. “I must pull down the ceiling and get up into Number Five Escape Tunnel, if I can. Kits, stand back and do as your queen says!” With that he began to tunnel as he had never tunnelled before.
“Tally-ho! Stiffen the sinews and all that!” answered Radiant pluckily, though she was full of dread. “Kits! Help me with the wrigglers. I can only manage Zora.”
With Uncle scrabbling furiously, sand and stones splashed down like an avalanche. Skeema, Mimi and Little Dream clamped their teeth into the scruffs of the mewing babies’ necks. It was all they could do to keep their tiny heads above the rising tide.
There was no shaft of light to show that Uncle had broken through to Number Five Escape Tunnel, but suddenly there was a welcome blast of life-giving air and a shout of triumph.
“Phew! Relief! No sign of water here! Up you come, my darlings!” called Fearless as he reached down to grab Radiant and little Zora in his powerful jaws.
Having hauled his wife and one daughter to safety, he turned to the task of pulling up the older kits, each with a littl’un in their teeth. “Move along now, keep moving, quick, quick!” he urged each sodden kit as he lifted them out of the swirling water. “The whole burrow could cave in at any moment!”
Exhausted and shuddering, the Really Mads and their precious bundles staggered along Number Five Escape Tunnel as fast as they could. They moved steadily, up and up the slope towards the entrance to one of the many emergency boltholes.
“We’re n-not going to the Upworld before s-suntime, are we?” asked Little Dream nervously, his teeth chattering. He wasn’t just thinking of the terrible cold out there. He was worried about all the unseen enemies waiting to pounce in the darkness.
“Don’t worry, laddie!” called Uncle. He knew they must stay underground until the sun came out of its hiding place to warm them. His aim was to find a safe, dry hollow or chamber just under the surface where the mob could shelter from the wet. If they could only manage that, they could share the last of their body heat with the almost lifeless newborns.
They struggled on for what seemed an age. Suddenly, a shrill voice stopped them dead.
“Halt! Who goes there?”
Fearless grunted with relief. As challenges go, it was a nervous one and straight away he was sure that it came from a male ground-squirrel. Meerkats and ground-squirrels often share living quarters, but this one had never had visitors. He thought of this remote end of Far Burrow as his own private property. No wonder he was quaking with fright.
“Stand easy!” barked Uncle, gasping for breath. “No danger. Fearless here. King. Really Mads. Bit of an emergency. Flooded out. Babies. Got a soaking. Cold. Can you help?”
“Did someone say babies? Meerkat babies? In danger?” came an anxious female voice. “Of course we can help! Eeeep! Emergency drill, squirrels! Gather! Gather to Mother!”
And before the tired-out Nearly Mads could say Warm-up, they found themselves wrapped in the middle of a gloriously welcome hot and furry bundle…
…of neighbours.
The welcome group-hug put life and warmth back into the Really Mads. And once the ground-squirrels were sure that their visitors were fit to move on, they led them among tangled roots and rocky soil to an empty dugout where there was no sign of any flooding. It smelled as if it might once have been a shelter for a porcupine. There, lying among crunchy bits of beetle-shell, melon skins, tubers and the chewed bones of something far from fresh, at last they managed to get a little well-earned sleep.
It was hunger that eventually woke everyone and set the babies mewing for milk.
“Yikes!” squealed Radiant as the hungriest of the babies started his breakfast. “I say, steady on, Trouble, dear! Your teeth are jolly sharp.”
“Ha ha!” chuckled Fearless proudly. “That’s my boy! We chose just the right name for him, didn’t we, my darling? I always said that one would be Trouble, eh, what! Nice to see a hearty appetite! Just like his bold papa’s. I was just the same when I was a little squirmer, wasn’t I, my Trubbly-Wubble – tickle-tickle!”
“Hey, I’m starving too!” said Skeema, feeling rather left out.
“Me too!” added Little Dream.
“And me, me! Don’t forget Mimi!” wailed their sister. As if anyone could.
Uncle roused himself. “I’d better take a peep outside, Radiant, my fluff,” he said, stretching. “You rest here while the kits and I check that the coast is clear. We’ll find you something wriggly to keep you going. Then once we’ve all had a good breakfast,” Uncle went on, with a sad note in his voice, “I think we shall have to start looking for a new home.”
“Oh,
