Aunt Effie's Ark Read Online Free Page B

reached Jessie, it said, “Pork chops and apple sauce.” Being the youngest, Jessie was used to getting strange messages passed on. By that time, too, Hubert was climbing over the top of the hill. Jessie leaned out and saw the front three-quarters of Hubert disappear with Peter, Marie, Daisy, Colleen, Alwyn, Bryce, Jack, Ann, Jazz, Jane, Isaac, David, and Victor as they started going down the other side. The back part of Hubert with Casey, Lizzie, Jared, and Jessie was still climbing uphill.
    Casey, who had been holding on with her arms around Victor’s waist, had to let go as Hubert’s front half bent and disappeared over the top of the hill. Jessie laughed and told Jared who leaned out to look and slipped. He grabbed Jessie and Lizzie who slipped, too, and Lizzie grabbed Casey. Casey had nobody to grab hold of. She screamed but – since they were going down the other side – the big kids couldn’t hear.
    At the bottom of the hill, Hubert fell into a hole in the snow, and we had to get off so he could climb out. We climbed a strainer post and got on again. Peter looked down at the hole, shook his head, and said something to Marie.
    â€œBetter not tell the others,” said Marie, but Alwyn who had sharp ears had already repeated Peter’s words. “It’s one of the footprints of the wild beast that ate the foolish sheep.” We looked down at the hole in the snow that Hubert had fallen into. It was the footprint of a wolf’s paw so big we felt dizzy.
    Hubert galloped across the creek. We pulled up our feet, but they still got wet and our toes started to freeze.
    â€œIf you wore shoes and stockings as I do,” said Daisy, “your toes would be as warm as toast!”
    â€œAs warm as toast,” repeated Alwyn although his toes were blue.
    Covered in snow, the house and barn looked like a white hill with chimneys sticking out the top. Seeing us coming, the kitchen chimney puffed a smoke ring from the maire backlog which never went out. We all cheered.
    â€œShhh!” Marie was too late. Away to blazes up the back of the farm the wild beast heard us and howled, “Ooowhooooo!”
    â€œStop, Alwyn!” cried Marie, but Alwyn could never stop himself teasing animals and grown-ups. “ Ooowhooooo !” he howled back.
    â€œOOOWHOOOOO!” howled the wild beast – much closer and sounding hungry. Peter unlocked the door, and we scrambled inside Aunt Effie’s enormous kitchen . There wasn’t time to take Hubert to the barn, sowe took him inside with us.
    And just then Becky shrieked, “Where’s Casey, Lizzie, Jared, and Jessie?”
    We all looked at Victor because he sat in front of Casey on Hubert. “I looked round and saw them as we came to the top of the hill,” he said. “When I looked back again, Hubert’s front half was coming down this side, and they were still coming up the other side on his back half, so I couldn’t see them any longer.”
    â€œDidn’t you feel Casey let go?” Daisy asked.
    â€œOf course, but then we reached the bottom of the hill and saw the tracks of the wild beast,” Victor cried. Daisy made it sound like his fault.
    â€œWe must rescue them!” Marie rushed upstairs to Aunt Effie’s bedroom and came down carrying two suits of armour, the helmet with a bullet-hole, a brass blunderbuss, and a bloodstained halberd. She and Peter each put on a suit of armour, and they dropped the helmet with the bullet-hole over Hubert’s head. He looked pretty scary, like the painting of Ned Kelly by Mr Nolan that Mrs Jones hung in the girls’ dunny at school.
    Marie loaded the blunderbuss with nikau berries which everyone knows are harder than bullets. Peter wanted to take Daisy because she had a carrying voice and could call the little ones, but she was too busy having hysterics.
    It was lucky Aunt Effie had shown us how to rig sheerlegs to hold a block high in the