CHAPTER XVI.

DISCOVERED BY THE EAST WIND

“I will drop them here!” growled the Clerk of the Weather. “They’re not worth carrying further--wretched brats!” And so saying, he dropped them down beside a pyramid--the Pyramid of Gizeh.

“I don’t think they’ll pester me again,” he chuckled. “And when the East Wind finds them littering up his favourite resting place he’ll bury them deep beneath the sand!”

Laughing, he went on his way, and left Coppertop, Tibbs and Kiddiwee lying in the shadow of the Pyramid.

Before long the East Wind came--as was his time-long custom--to rest beside the Pyramid.

He was weary and hot with blowing over the burning desert, and was not in the best of temper. He had just arrived from India, having blown a plague from Shah Land into the Ruby Sea, and he felt that he fully deserved a snooze beside his favourite Pyramid.

But what was this?

Nestling against its base, in the very spot where he himself would sit, he beheld three small forms.

Who had dared to place them there, in his private snuggery?

“Some frivolous breeze has blown this rubbish here!” cried the East Wind, angrily. “But they shall not trouble me long! I will heave up the sand about them and bury them deep--and then sit thereon!”

He had just commenced to blow up the sand into little swirls and eddies, when he was interrupted by a voice saying--

“Oh, no you don’t, my friend! Oh, no you don’t!”

The East Wind paused, and looked round in astonishment. But he could see no one.

“I am a kind of fairy god-father to those three ‘little bits of rubbish,’” continued the voice, “and anyone who harms them will have to reckon with me!”

The East Wind grew slightly nervous. And the voice went on, “If you take MY advice----”

“Who,” burst out the East Wind, “is going to take your advice when they can’t even _see_ you? Who are you?” he added, feeling nervous and irritated.

“Mr. Atom, at your service!” laughed the gallant little person. “And, if you lay a finger on these children, I shall just----”

“In that case, I’m off!” cried the East Wind, without even waiting to hear just exactly what Mr. Atom would do, for he was a great coward, and frightened of anything that he couldn’t see or understand.

And away he flew, back to India, in a very bad mood.

“H’m! I’m rather sorry I frightened him away like that,” remarked Mr. Atom; “he may have had the December day that Coppertop is in search of. They’d better rouse up in double-quick time, and follow the rascal back to India.”

“Wake up! Wake up!! WAKE UP!!!” He cried to the sleeping children.

To Tibbs and Kiddiwee he caused his voice to sound like the song of golden larks in the Far-away-beyond.

And to Coppertop it sounded like the crowing of her pet bantam in the farmyard at home.

“I thought that would do the trick!” laughed Mr. Atom, as he watched the effect of his magic upon the children.

“I think they will be all right now, bless ’em,” and the kindly little person disappeared.

At the sound of his voice each child roused up with a happy smile.

“Gracious! I thought I heard----” began Coppertop.

“’Es, so did I!” exclaimed Kiddiwee.

“I say, this is jolly funny! Where on earth are we?” cried Tibbs. And the three bewildered children sat up on the sand and gazed around them, trying vainly to make out where they were, and how they got there.

“Heavens! Why, we’ve got to the Pyramids, somehow!” exclaimed Coppertop, staggering to her feet and gazing up helplessly at the huge stone monument towering above them. “Isn’t it simply tremendous?”

“Let’s climb it!” exclaimed Tibbs.

“We couldn’t, why each step’s as big as I am. And besides----”

“Well?”

“I distinctly heard my little bantam crow!” and Coppertop set her lips firmly.

“’Es, and I heard the Golden Larks--I did!” cried Kiddiwee, his little face glowing with excitement.

“Well, so did I; but that’s no reason why we shouldn’t climb the Pyramid. Come on!”

“No,” said Coppertop, and she meant it. “That crowing was a kind of mysterious warning!”

“Oh, rot!” interrupted Tibbs, but he looked slightly uncomfortable all the same.

“Yes, it was! I shall be dreadfully angry if you say it’s ‘rot.’ It’s a warning that time is getting short, and I’ve simply got to find that old December day as fast as ever I can.”

“Look!” cried Kiddiwee. “What funny sand!”

The others looked, and saw, to their surprise, that letters were being written on the sand, as though by some great invisible finger. Spelling it letter by letter, it read--

FOLLOW THE EAST WIND TO INDIA: HE SAYS A PRAYER AT THE TAJ MAHAL EACH MORN.

“Now, then, you see! I was right!” cried Coppertop, as soon as she had breath to speak. “There’s something very, very mysterious about all this. I wonder what the third thing will be.”

“Why should there be a ‘third thing’? Girls are always so superstitious!” said Tibbs. He felt decidedly uncomfortable, and did not like mysterious things in any shape or form.

“I don’t know, but there always is,” answered Coppertop gravely. “I wonder why the East Wind prays at the Taj Mahal? It’s the grave of an old Indian Queen-woman called Nur Mahal--which means Light of the Harem. Daddy told me all about it.”

“Where is it?” asked Tibbs.

“At Agra,” replied Coppertop. “And I’ve seen it. It’s simply gorgeous!”

“Well, if we’ve to go to India, let’s start. It’s a jolly long way. Come on, Kiddiwee.”

“But however am I to go?” cried Coppertop. “My wings are gone!”

“I forgot that!” said Tibbs, ashamed of his thoughtlessness. “Couldn’t we carry you?”

“It would take ages that way,” she replied.

And they sat down on the sand again to think the matter over.

“If the old Big Bed hadn’t been shipwrecked, we might have sailed over the sand on that.”

“Or if we could find some camels,” suggested Tibbs; “they call them the ‘ships of the desert,’ you know.”

“Miss Smiler is a camel,” said Coppertop, fingering the little bronze animal that hung on a chain round her neck. “But she’s so very small, I don’t suppose she’d do.”

“That little thing!” laughed Tibbs. “Lor, no!”

“You’ve no business to laugh at her, anyway,” pouted Coppertop. “Daddy gave her to me, and she’s a very dear little person,” and, so saying, she took the little bronze camel from the chain and kissed it.

No sooner had she done this, than it began to grow.

“Oh, look!” she cried. “How perfectly wonderful! It’s coming to life! It’s turning into a real one!”

And so it was.

It raised its head, and looked round in a calm and dignified way, opening its languid eyes a little wider, and then--catching sight of the children--smiled broadly.

“What a duckie little thing!” exclaimed Coppertop. “Oh, do look! It’s simply screaming with laughter now!”

“Oh, crikey!” laughed Tibbs. “It’s a lively little beggar!”

“Yes. It’s tiggling so!” giggled Coppertop. “I can hardly hold it!”

For Miss Smiler was now racing round and round her hand as fast as her legs would carry her.

“She’ll grow to any size we want her, I believe,” said Coppertop.

“Ough!” exclaimed Kiddiwee; “I’d like her as big as a real one, I would!”

“Hush!” warned his sister; “don’t let her hear you say that! She IS a real one, or, at least, she thinks she is. And she’d be terrifikly angry and hurt if she thought that you thought that she wasn’t--see?”

“’Es, but IS she?” whispered Kiddiwee.

“Yes--perhaps,” she whispered back.

“I’d like her as big as this old Pyramid,” she added, aloud. “And then she would go at a simply huge rate!”