'We must take Benny back,' said d.i.c.k. 'His mother will be so terribly worried.

Curly will eventually come out if he's got sense enough to remember the way - if not, well - it's just too bad! We daren't go wandering down the unroped paths in case we get lost. Come on, bring Benny, George.'

'Curly will come when he's ready,' George said, as she carried the little boy away from the entrance to the caves. 'But now your Mummy wants you, and your dinner's waiting.'

With Timmy jumping up delightedly beside her, she carried the small boy down the chalky path, talking to him. They were all so thankful to have found him that they felt quite cheerful, forgetting Jeff and Ray for a time. They teased little Benny, trying to make him forget his lost pet.

Mrs Thomas was overjoyed to see the small boy again. She cried over him as she took him into her arms. 'Oh, Benny, Benny - what a bad pair you are, you and your pigling.'

'He runned away,' said Benny, of course. He was set down at the table to have his dinner and began to eat very fast indeed because he was so hungry. Everyone sat and watched him, so glad to have him safe again that they hardly took their eyes off him while he gobbled his meal.

He finished at last. 'I'm going to look for Curly,' he announced as he got down from his chair.

'Oh, no, you're not,' said his mother. 'You're going to stay with me. I want you to help me to make some cakes. Curly will come home when he's ready.'

And in an hour's time, when Julian, d.i.c.k, Anne, George and Toby were busy at the messy job of cleaning out the duck-pond, Curly did come back. He trotted into the farmyard, making his usual funny little squeals, arid everyone looked round at once.

'CURLY! You have come back! Oh, you bad little pig!' cried George, and Timmy ran up to the pigling and sniffed him and licked him. The pig turned himself round to look for Benny - and Julian laughed.

'Someone's written something on him - in black! Come here, Curly, and let's see.'

Curly trotted over to him, and Julian examined the rather smudged black lettering.

'Can't make it out,' he said. 'Somebody's printed something on his pink little body - silly thing to do - but it will wash off.'

'Wait!' said d.i.c.k sharply, as Julian bent to get one of the rags they were using, to wash the pigling's body. 'WAIT, I say! Look - isn't that a J and a T and below those are letters that look like R and V - no, W, because half that letter has been rubbed off by heather or something.'

Now everyone was staring in excitement. 'J... T, and R... W!' said Toby in a breathless voice. Then it rose to a shout. 'They stand for JEFF THOMAS AND RAY WELLS. What does it mean - who put those letters there?'

'There are some more letters, smaller and rather smudged,' said Julian. 'Hold the pigling still, d.i.c.k. We must, we must make out what they are! It's some kind of message from Jeft and Ray. The pigling must have been where they are hidden!'

They all looked earnestly at the smudgy letters, which appeared to be five in number. They were almost unreadable - but d.i.c.k's sharp brain got hold of them at last.

'The word is CAVES!' he said. 'See - the first letter might be G or O or C - but the third one is certainly V and last is S. I'm sure it's CAVES - and that's where Curly went, we know.'

'Whew! That's where Jeff and Ray are hidden then,' said Julian. 'Quite near, after all - and we thought they had been taken away by car and hidden miles away!

Quick - where's your father, Toby?'

Mr Thomas was found and was shown Curly, with the smudgy black letters on his back. He was astounded. 'So Curly went wandering in the caves, did he - what a pig he is! Can't keep his nose out of anything! And somehow he went to where Jeff and Ray were. What a strange way to send a message - they could surely have tied one on to his tail, or round his neck - these letters are almost unreadable!' 'I nearly washed them off, thinking that somebody had played a silly joke on Curly,' said Julian. 'My word - if I had, we'd not have known where Jeff and Ray were. What shall we do now, sir? Go to the caves at once? Telephone the police?'

'Both!' said Mr Thomas. 'The police must know because they are searching everywhere, of course. Now - you start off to the caves - but take a ball of string with you, because Jeff and Ray won't have been hidden in any of the roped tunnels, where sightseers so often go, and without string you might not be able to find your way back down the unroped ones. You may find that you need to unwind the string in order to get back safely. And take Timmy. He'll be useful.'

'He certainly will!' said Julian. 'And we'll take the little pig, too, so that Timmy can smell him, and then smell the tracks Curly made as he wandered through the caves, and follow them! We shan't have to wander all about wondering where Jeff and Ray are then.'

The Five set off at once, with Toby, too, all as excited as they could possibly be.

'Good old Jeff! Good old Ray!' Toby kept saying. 'We're coming! Hang on, we're coming!'

Chapter Twenty-one

AN EXCITING FINISH

Up the heathery hill panted the five children and Timmy. Julian carried the frightened little pig, who was not at all sure what was happening to him. He kicked and squealed but n.o.body took any notice of him - he would be of importance when they reached the caves, but not till then!

At last they reached the chalky roadway to the caves and pounded along it, the loose bits of chalk flying between their feet. They came to the entrance where the warning notice stood.

'Timmy!' called George as Julian put down the trembling little pig and held him tightly. 'Timmy - come here! Smell Curly - that's right - smell him all over - now follow, follow, follow! Smell where he went in the caves - and follow, Tim, follow!'

Timmy knew perfectly well what tracking meant and obediently smelt Curly thoroughly, and then put his nose to the ground to follow the scent of the pigling's footsteps. He soon picked it up, and began to run into the first cave. He stopped and looked back enquiringly. 'Go on, Tim, go on - I know this seems peculiar to you when we've got Curly here - but we want to know where he went!'

called George, afraid that Timmy might think it was just a silly game and give up.

Timmy put his nose to the ground again.

He came to the magnificent cave, full of the gleaming 'icicles', the stalact.i.tes and stalagmites, some of them looking like s.h.i.+ning pillars. Then into the next cave, which, with its glowing rainbow colours, had reminded Anne of a Fairyland cave.

Then through the next cave they went - and came to the forking of the ways.

'Here we are - at the three tunnels,' said George. 'I bet Timmy won't go down the usual roped one that all visitors would take....'

As she spoke the words Timmy, nose to ground, still following the scent of the pigling's footsteps, took the left-hand, unroped way - and everyone followed, torches s.h.i.+ning brightly.

'I thought so!' said George, and her voice began to echo round. 'Thought so, thought so, so, so...!'

'Do you remember those awful noises we heard the other day - that piercing whistling, and those howls?' said d.i.c.k. 'Well, I bet they were made by the bullies who dragged Jeff and Ray here! I expect they heard Timmy barking - he must have heard the men, probably, though we didn't - and they were scared in case we were coming. So they made those frightful noises to scare us off, and the echoes magnified them horribly.'

'Well, they certainly scared us away all right,' said Anne, remembering. 'Yes - it must have been those men - there aren't any awful noises today! My word, what a long, winding tunnel this is - and look, it's forking into two!'

'Timmy will know which way to take,' said George - and, of course he did. With his nose to the ground, he chose the left-hand one without any hesitation.

'You didn't really need to bring a ball of string, Julian,' said Toby. 'Timmy will easily be able to take us the right way back, won't he?'

'Yes,' said Julian. 'He's better than any unwinding ball of string! But without Tim we'd never find the way back - there are so many caves, and so many tunnels. We must be well into the heart of the hill now.'

Timmy suddenly stopped in his tracking, raised his head, and listened. Could he hear Jeff and Ray? He barked loudly - and from somewhere in the near distance came a shout. 'Hoy! Hoy! This way! This way!' 'It's Jeff!' shouted Toby, dancing in the dark tunnel with excitement. 'JEFF! CAN YOU HEAR ME? JEFF!'

And a voice came back at once. 'Hie, Toby! This way, this way!'

Timmy ran down the pa.s.sage and stopped. At first the children could not see why - and then they saw that the pa.s.sage came to an end there - a blank wall faced them just beyond Timmy - and yet Jeff's voice came quite clearly to them!

'Here we are, here!'

'Why - there's a hole in the floor of the tunnel just by Timmy!' cried Julian, s.h.i.+ning his torch on it. 'That's where Jeff and Ray are - down that hole. Hey, Cousin Jeff - are you down there?'

Julian shone his torch right through the hole - and there, lying on the floor of a cave below was Ray - and standing beside him, looking up eagerly, was Jeff!

'Thank G.o.d you've found us!' he said. 'Those fellows told us they were leaving us here and not coming back. Ray's got a twisted ankle - he can't stand on it. They pushed us down this hole without any warning, and he fell awkwardly. But with your help we can get him up.'

'Jeff, oh, Jeff - I'm so glad we've found you!' yelled Toby, trying to look down into the hole with Julian. 'What's the best way to get you up? This entrance hole isn't very big.'

'If you can manage to pull me up, that's the first thing to do,' said Jeff, considering the matter. 'Then two of you boys can go down to Ray, and help him to stand, and I think I could haul him up. This is an awful place - no outlet except through that small hole up there, which was too high for me to jump up to - and Ray couldn't stand, of course, to help me!'

There was soon a great deal of acrobatic work on the part of Jeff, Julian and d.i.c.k!

The two boys managed to haul up Jeff by lying down on the floor above, and putting their arms and shoulders through the hole to drag him up! Toby and George had to hold on to their legs to prevent them from being pulled into the hole! And Anne had to hold the little pig, which did its best to try and get down the hole, too!

At last Jeff was up through the hole, and then the two boys, Julian and d.i.c.k, leapt down to Ray. He seemed rather dazed and Jeff said that he thought he had hurt his head as well as his leg when the men pushed them down the hole. Julian pulled him gently to his feet and then he and d.i.c.k lifted him until he could reach Jeff's swinging hands as he leaned down through the hole. Poor Ray was pulled up at last, and then up went Julian and d.i.c.k in the same way.

Timmy thought the whole procedure was most extraordinary, and produced volleys of excited barks, scaring the little pig almost out of its skin!

'Phew!' said Jeff, when at last Ray was up, and being helped by the others. 'I never thought we'd get out of there. Let's get away from this nightmare place as quickly as possible. What we want is a little fresh air and food - and water! Those brutes haven't been near us for what seems like weeks!'

They made their way back to the cave entrance, Timmy leading the way confidently, not even troubling to smell it. He never forgot a path once he had beep along it.

They came out into the bright June suns.h.i.+ne, and it was so very dazzling to the two men who had been so long in pitch-black darkness that they had to shade their eyes.

'Sit down a bit till you get used to it,' said Julian. 'And tell us how you wrote your message on the pig! Did he suddenly appear down the hole?'

Jeff laughed. 'Well,' he said, 'there we were down in that awful hole, Ray and I - with no watch to tell us the time, no means of knowing if it was night or day, or even if it was last Thursday or next Monday! And suddenly we heard a pitter- pattering noise - and the next thing we knew was that something had fallen down through the hole and landed on top of us! It began to squeal like billy-o, so we guessed it was a little pig - though why a pig should suddenly descend on us out of the dark tunnel above us we simply couldn't imagine!'

Everyone laughed, even Ray. 'Go on,' said d.i.c.k. 'What did you do?'

'Well, we felt the pig all over and knew it was a baby,' said Jeff, 'but it didn't occur to us for some time that we might use it as a messenger! That was Ray's bright idea!'

'We could hardly read your message,' said d.i.c.k. 'It was just touch and go that we made it out.'

'I dare say - but when you consider that we had been robbed of everything - even my silver pencil taken, and my old fountain pen - to say nothing of my money, my watch and my torch - and Ray's, too - and that it was pitch-dark in the hole, I'm sure you will agree that we didn't make a bad job of printing that message!' said Jeff.

'But what did you print it with if your pockets had been emptied?' asked George, in wonder. 'Well, Ray found a tiny bit of black chalk at the bottom of his trouser pocket,' said Jeff. 'It's chalk we use to mark out our air-routes, on big maps - and that was all we had to use! Ray held the pigling and I printed our initials and the word CAVES on his back. I couldn't see what I was doing in the dark, but I just hoped for the best. Then I stood up and tossed the poor little pig through the hole! It was a jolly good shot, I must say - I heard him scrambling on the edge, and then away he trotted, the finest little pig in the world!'

'What a tale!' said Julian. 'My word, you're lucky, Jeff, that the pigling came home all right! It's a wanderer, that pig, always running away. And to think that I nearly washed your message off his back before we read it.'

'Whew! It gives me the creeps to hear that,' said Jeff. 'Now tell me what happened when it was discovered that we'd disappeared from the airfield - wasn't there an uproar?'

'Rather! You knew your planes were stolen, didn't you?' said d.i.c.k.

'I guessed that, when I heard two planes take off, just as some great thugs were hauling us up the hill,' said Jeff. 'I heard a dog barking as we were being kicked and dragged up - was it Timmy? I did hope he would come to our rescue.'

'Oh, yes - that must have been the time when he began to bark that night of the storm!' said George, remembering. 'So it was you and those thugs we heard - oh, what a pity he didn't know it!'

'Those two stolen planes crashed into the sea during the storm, Jeff,' said Toby.

'The pilots weren't found.'

'Oh,' said Jeff and was silent for a moment. 'I shall miss my dear old bus - well let's hope I get another plane - and Ray, too. Ray! How do you feel now? Can you hobble along again or not?'

'Yes - if the boys can help me as they did just now,' said Ray, who was already looking much better since he had been in the open air. 'Let's get along.'

It was very slow going - but fortunately the police met them half-way, on their way to the caves! Mr Thomas had telephoned them and they had come along immediately. They took Ray in hand, and the little party made better progress.

'Put that pig down, Anne, you must be tired of carrying it,' said d.i.c.k. 'You look like Alice in Wonderland. She carried a pig, too!'

Anne laughed. 'I think it's gone to sleep, just like Alice's pig!' she said. And so it had! They were all very thankful when at last they arrived at Billyc.o.c.k Farm. What a welcome they had from Mrs Thomas, her husband and Benny. The little boy dragged his pigling from Anne's arms and hugged it. 'You runned away, you're bad, you runned fast!' he scolded, and set it down. It immediately scampered over to the barn, with Benny in pursuit, and Anne went to fetch them back.

'Now we'll all have tea - I've got it ready, hoping that everyone would be back in time from their extraordinary adventures!' said Mrs Thomas. 'I know Jeff and Ray must be starved - you look quite thin in the face, Jeff.'

They all sat round the big table, Toby next to his hero, Cousin Jeff. They gazed with pleasure at the food there - surely never, never had there been such a spread before!

'Mother!' said Toby, his eyes gleaming. 'Mother, this isn't a meal - it's a BANQUET! Jeff - what will you have?'

'Everything!' said Jeff. 'Some of every single thing. I'll start with two boiled eggs, three slices of ham, two thick pieces of bread and b.u.t.ter, and some of that wonderful salad. My word, it's almost worth being down that hole for ages, to end up with a feast like this!'

It was a most hilarious tea, and for once Benny sat at the table throughout the whole meal, and didn't slip from his chair to go and find Curly. Why didn't they have parties like this every day? Why, even his father was there, roaring with laughter! What a pity the two policemen hadn't been able to stop to tea, too - Benny had a lot of questions to ask policemen! Where was Timmy? Yes, he was under the table - Benny could feel him with his foot. And, yes, Binky was there, too, just by Toby.

He slid his hand down with a large piece of cake in it, and immediately it was taken gently from his hand by a hairy mouth - Timmy was having a wonderful time, too!

Everyone was sorry when the grand meal was over. Jeff and Ray now had to report to the airfield, and Mr Thomas offered to take them in his car. The children went to see them off.

'It will seem awfully dull now, up in our camp on the hill-side,' said d.i.c.k. 'So many things have happened in the last few days - and now nothing will happen at all!'

'Rubbis.h.!.+' said Jeff. 'I promise you something will happen - something grand!'

'What?' asked everyone eagerly. 'I shall see that you're all given a free flight in a plane as soon as possible - perhaps tomorrow,' said Jeff. 'And - I shall pilot it! Now then - anyone want to loop the loop with me?'

What shouts and squeals from everyone! Jeff made a face and put his hands to his ears.

'Me too, me too - and Curly!' came Benny's little high voice.

'Where is Curly?' said Jeff, looking out of the car. 'I really must shake hooves with him - he's been a wonderful friend to me and Ray! Wherever is he?'

'I don't know,' said Benny, looking all round. 'He must have...'

'Runned away!' chorused everyone, and Timmy barked at the sudden shout. He put his paws up on the car and licked Jeff's hand.

'Thanks, old boy,' said Jeff. 'We couldn't have done without you either! So long, everybody - see you tomorrow - and then whoooops! - up in the clouds we'll go!'