“Well, it’s no good just standing here making long faces,” Commander Pott said decisively. “We must split up into two parties and hurry along under the cliffs to right and left, and hope that we’ll find a little bay somewhere where we can shelter for the night above high-water mark. Right? Well now, Jemima, you come with me along to the left, and Mimsie and Jeremy, run off to the right, and let’s hope we find a safe place, because otherwise we’ll just have to put to sea again, and none of us wants to spend the night out in the Channel. All right then, off we go!”
It was Jeremy, running on ahead of Mimsie, who found it. Round a big headland, tucked right in under the cliff so that you couldn’t see it from seawards, was the mouth of a cave! The sideways opening was quite big, about as big as garage doors, which was the first and most important comparison that came to Jeremy’s mind. He called Mimsie and together they went in, over the tide-line of seaweed and washed-up cans and bottles and bits of plastic bags and all the other junk that gets carried in on the tide. They could see that, farther in, the cave widened out and got bigger. But then it got a bit spooky and they both decided that the thing to do would be to bring CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANG in with her tremendous lights before they went any farther. So they ran back, scrambling and rattling over the beach, and shouted and called for Commander Pott and Jemima, who presently came back to where Jeremy and Mimsie waited beside CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANG, whose back wheels were already being dangerously approached by the rising tide.
When Commander Pott had heard what they had to say, they all climbed into the car, and with her usual two sneezes and two bangs, she turned and moved slowly, humping and bumping over the beach, towards the cave. At the noise of her great rumbling exhaust, the sea-gulls flew screeching out from the top of the cliff, and the vibration of her rumble even dislodged small pebbles and scraps of chalk that came tumbling down the gigantic high cliff and once or twice made them cover their heads with their hands and duck.
But they got to the hidden opening to the cave, all right, and Commander Pott turned the bonnet of the car into the opening. They nosed their way in, with a big bump, over the piled-up tide-line.
“This is perfect,” called Commander Pott. (He had to shout because of the great BOOM-BOOM-BOOM of the exhaust inside the cave.) “It’s dry as a bone!” And he switched on the big headlights.
Excitedly they all peered forward into the cave, which seemed to widen out as it burrowed into the cliff until it came to what looked like a corner. “Come on,” called Commander Pott. He put CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANG into low gear and they trundled forward over the pebbles, while the boom of the exhaust echoed back at them from the walls and the roof just over their heads.
They came to the corner, and round it, and now the cave opened out and became still bigger. There were the marks of pickaxes or chisels of some kind on the walls, which meant that humans had been at work making the cave broader, and there was a straight piece and then another corner and another, and CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANG rumbled and boomed on and Jeremy and Jemima (and their parents too for the matter of that) were breathless with excitement.
Suddenly Commander Pott called, “Look out!” and there was a great squeaking whoosh, and hundreds and hundreds of bats, disturbed by the noise of the car, swept out over their heads towards the entrance! But the children weren’t particularly frightened by them, because they knew they were only little harmless mice with wings. They had often seen them flitting about in the evening at home. And they knew, too, that it was all nonsense about bats getting tangled up in your hair (which is an old wives’ tale), because, as Commander Pott had explained to them, bats have the most wonderful built-in radar that works in their heads with the help of the tips of their big soft ears, making it almost impossible for them to collide with anything — as you can see for yourself by watching them dart about among the trees in your garden, diving now and then to catch flies so tiny that the human eye can hardly see them.
So the children just watched with curiosity as the bats poured out over their heads, and soon their squeaking disappeared and CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANG came to the next corner. Now they all realized that they were far from the entrance and deep, deep inside the cliff, and they wondered, all of them rather anxiously, what they would find as CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANG nosed carefully round the bend between the smooth chalk walls.
I must admit that what they found was such a shock that even CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANG’s exhaust gave a kind of trembly gulp. And Commander Pott himself, who was a brave man, gave quite a jump in the driving-seat and at once put on the brakes and switched off the engine, so that there was dead silence in the depths of the cave. As for Mimsie and Jeremy and Jemima, to be quite honest, they went all goose-pimply with fright and just stared and stared at the dreadful thing in front of them — a skeleton, a human skeleton that hung down from the ceiling and swayed softly in the small breeze that blew down the cave!
It was probably only seconds, but it seemed like minutes, that they just sat and stared. And the empty eyeholes in the skull stared back at them, and CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANG’s big lights showed up each separate bone and the rope that hung down from the roof of the cave and was tied tightly round the skeleton’s neck.
Commander Pott spoke first, and it was good to hear his strong, human voice. “This is ridiculous,” he said scornfully. “It’s nothing but a scarecrow. There are secrets in this cave and someone wants to keep them secret and frighten people away. I vote for going on. What do you all say?”
Mimsie said doubtfully, “If you think it’s all right, darling.”
And Jemima said, in a rather trembly voice, “After all, it’s only a lot of old bones.”
And Jeremy said, pretending to forget all about the skeleton, “It would be an awful bore to have to reverse the whole way back again. Besides, it’ll be jolly exciting to find out the secret of the cave.”
And Commander Pott said, “That’s the spirit!” (Which wasn’t a very good choice of words with the ghostly skeleton swaying there in front of them!)
“Now we’ll just have to push against his knees, so don’t be worried by his feet dragging across the car,” and he started the engine and moved slowly forward.
Well, as you can imagine, it wasn’t very pleasant pushing against the dangling skeleton, feeling its feet scraping over the bonnet of the car and up over the windscreen and flopping down almost into Mimsie’s lap and then over the front seat and scraping between Jeremy and Jemima. But they squashed up against the sides of the seats to avoid being touched by the bony toes, and with a last rattle on the boot, they had left the skeleton behind. Only the silly Jeremy and Jemima would look back, and I must admit that they both gave quite a gasp to see the back of the skeleton swaying to and fro and all lit up by the red tail-lights of CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANG! Then it really did look at its very spookiest, and they quickly swivelled round and gazed firmly ahead.
Now there was no more sand and pebbles on the floor but just beaten-down earth, and there was quite a slope upwards as the cave wound on and on, but you can imagine that the whole family was absolutely agog to discover where the cave led to and what they were going to see round each bend.
Suddenly Commander Pott seemed to listen carefully, and again he stopped the car and switched off the engine. And now they could all hear what he had heard — a frightening, eerie moaning that rose and fell and rose and fell and sent shivers down the spine.
“What’s that?” they all asked, trying to keep their voices calm.
Commander Pott leant forward and undipped the spotlight beside the windscreen. It was one of the useful spotlights you can use at night as inspection lights and to read high-up road-signs. He shone the light carefully up and along the roof of the cave until the beam came to a sort of contraption strung with shiny copper wires that was fixed into the chalk.
Commander Pott laughed. “That’s an old trick,” he said cheerfully. “Someone really does want to scare people away from the cave. That’s a musical instrument called an Aeolian harp. It’s much the same as an ordinary harp, only the strings or wires are much thinner, so that even this small breeze blowing along them can make the strings sound this sort of moaning noise. It can get really spooky when the breeze varies and blows hard and soft in turns. I’ve seen them used before this — in ruined castles in Germany, to give the tourists a fright. Well, it hasn’t given these tourists a fright, has it?”
And the others all said, “Oh, no. Rather not,” a bit doubtfully, and Commander Pott started up the engine and on they went again, hoping that that was the end of the nasty surprises and wondering all the more who it was who was trying to guard the secret of the cave and what, for the matter of that, the secret could be!
Round the next two bends they crawled carefully along, with the thunder of CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANG’s exhaust echoing on ahead of them. And then, all of a sudden, on a perfectly straight stretch of cave, CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANG stopped dead!
“Well, that’s funny,” said Commander Pott, examining the dials in front of him. “We’re a bit low on petrol, but there’s still five gallons. Oil pressure all right, engine temperature a bit high, but not more than it should be going up this sloping tunnel in third gear,” and he got out to open the bonnet and have a look at the engine. He walked round to the front of the car and suddenly stopped. “So that’s it!” he said softly. “She saw the trap!”
“What trap?” they all called, leaning out to see.
Commander Pott pointed to a very thin trip-wire stretched knee-high from wall to wall across the cave.
He scratched his head and walked up and down the wire, looking at the ground in front in case there was a trapdoor to catch people in, and looking at the walls and the roof to see if there was some big rock or a concealed weapon waiting to drop on their heads as soon as they touched the wire. They saw him kneel down and examine where the wire joined the wall, and he finally stood up and said, “Aha! The devils! I’ve got it!” Then he walked back to the car and got out a pair of pliers and some rubber gloves he always carried for dealing with faults in CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANG’s electrical system.
“What is it?” they asked rather anxiously, because by now the whole adventure was getting almost too exciting. Commander Pott said cheerfully, “Oh, nothing much. They’re only trying to electrocute trespassers and explorers who get this far into their cave. Probably not actually kill them. Just give them a powerful shock to frighten them away. But it wouldn’t have been funny if our front bumpers had touched the wire. Might easily have short-circuited the whole of CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANG’s electrical system as well as giving us all a nasty shock.” He looked puzzled. “Funny the way CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANG saw the wire and stopped just in time. There really is something almost magical about this car.”
(Well, of course, Jeremy and Jemima weren’t in the least surprised. They knew CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANG was a magical car. Just look at the way she could fly like an aeroplane and skim across the sea like a speed-boat. And anyway, hadn’t they had their suspicions on the very first day, when they had noticed that the registration number GEN II could be read two ways? Do you see what they saw in the letters and numbers?)
Commander Pott put on his rubber gloves (electricity can’t go through rubber) and gave one short snip at the wire, and sure enough, as the pliers cut through, there was a bright-blue flash and a shower of sparks and the two halves of the wire fell dead.
And now, when Commander Pott got back into the driving seat and pressed the starter, CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANG’s engine at once roared into life again. On they went, climbing still up the wide tunnel of the cave with the big headlights searching ahead for more dangers, and I must say that Jeremy and Jemima in the back seat were quite trembly with excitement at where in heaven’s name this underground adventure was going to end.
Round the bends they went, on and on into the depths of the chalk cliff, and the odometer showed that they had now come a whole mile inland from the sea. The air was cold and damp, and the breeze, which got stronger and stronger, blew the cobwebs to and fro high up in the roof and made Jeremy and Jemima huddle up together to keep warm.
And then, round a particularly sharp bend, they were suddenly faced with a blank wall of chalk that completely closed the cave. They had come to the end — or at any rate, they seemed to have come to the end — of the long cave!
But Commander Pott got out of the car and walked carefully forward, looking at the ground and the walls and then examining, inch by inch, the chalk wall that blocked the cave. He seemed to find something that excited him very much, and he came back to the car and announced, “It’s not a wall. It’s some kind of a door, a sort of secret trapdoor. We must find the catch that opens it. Come on, everyone. We must just search every inch of the ground and the walls for it. It’ll be something very clever, I expect, and well hidden, so tell me if you find even the tiniest clue.”
So, inch by inch, the family, working in the bright glare from CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANG’s headlights, began examining what seemed to be a solid wall of chalk blocking the cave — just as if the original cave-diggers had decided they couldn’t be bothered to burrow any farther. The only clue, which Commander Pott found very early on, was that there was the tiniest crack that wandered, zig-zagging, down the middle of the wall. It might have been natural, just a fault in the chalk surface, but again it might not, because through the crack a sharp draught was blowing from the other side.
Jemima had chosen to grub about in the right-hand corner, where the wall met the side wall of the cave. There were a lot of bits of flint embedded in the chalk. (There had been the whole way along the walls and roof of the cave, just like you find in the chalk of any chalk cliff. Some of them are fossils. It’s often worth digging them out to see.) Jemima found a jagged piece of flint almost as big as a football. Some instinct made her tug at it and go on tugging until it suddenly came away in her hand, so that she almost fell over backwards. She bent down and peered into the hole the flint had left in the chalk and at once she gave a squawk of excitement and called, “Daddy, come quickly!” And when Commander Pott knelt down beside her, he saw what she had seen — an electric-light switch!
“By golly, you’re a clever girl, Jemima! I do believe you’ve found the secret.” He called to the other two. “Stand back, everyone. I’m going to press down this switch. Heaven only knows what’ll happen. Ready?” And he pressed down the switch.
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