Danny the Champion of the World Read online

'There's another!' I cried.

  Thump! Thump!

  'Two more!' my father yelled.

  Thump!

  Thump! Thump! Thump!

  'Jeepers!' my father said.

  Thump! Thump! Thump! Thump!

  Thump! Thump!

  All around us the pheasants were starting to rain down out of the trees. We began rushing round madly in the dark, sweeping the ground with our torches.

  Thump! Thump! Thump! This lot fell almost on top of me. I was right under the tree as they came down and I found all three of them immediately -- two cocks and a hen. They were limp and warm, the feathers wonderfully soft in the hand.

  'Where shall I put them, Dad?' I called out.

  'Lay them here, Danny! Just pile them up here where it's light!'

  My father was standing on the edge of the clearing with the moonlight streaming down all over him and a great bunch of pheasants in each hand. His face was bright, his eyes big and bright and wonderful, and he was staring around him like a child who has just discovered that the whole world is made of chocolate.

  Thump!

  Thump! Thump!

  'It's too many!' I said.

  'It's beautiful!' he cried. He dumped the birds he was carrying and ran off to look for more.

  Thump! Thump! Thump! Thump!

  Thump!

  It was easy to find them now. There were one or two lying under every tree. I quickly collected six more, three in each hand, and ran back and dumped them with the others. Then six more. Then six more after that.

  And still they kept falling.

  My father was in a whirl of excitement now, dashing about like a mad ghost under the trees. I could see the beam of his torch waving round in the dark, and every time he found a bird he gave a little yelp of triumph.

  Thump! Thump! Thump!

  'Hey Danny!' he shouted.

  'Yes, I'm over here! What is it, Dad?'

  'What do you think the great Mr Victor Hazell would say if he could see this?'

  'Don't talk about it,' I said.

  For three or four minutes, the pheasants kept on falling. Then suddenly they stopped.

  'Keep searching!' my father shouted. 'There's plenty more on the ground!'

  'Dad,' I said, 'don't you think we ought to get out while the going's good?'

  'Never!' he shouted. 'Not on your life!'

  We went on searching. Between us we looked under every tree within a hundred yards of the clearing, north, south, east and west, and I think we found most of them in the end. At the collecting-point there was a pile of pheasants as big as a bonfire.

  'It's a miracle,' my father was saying. 'It's an absolute miracle.' He was staring at them in a kind of trance.

  'Shouldn't we just take about six each and get out quick?' I said.

  'I would like to count them, Danny'

  'Dad! Not now!'

  'I must count them.'

  'Can't we do that later?'

  'One...

  'Two...

  'Three...

  'Four...'

  He began counting them very carefully, picking up each bird in turn and laying it carefully to one side. The moon was directly overhead now, and the whole clearing was brilliantly lit up. I felt as though I was standing in the glare of powerful headlamps.

  'A hundred and seventeen... a hundred and eighteen... a hundred and nineteen ... one hundred and twenty!' he cried. 'It's an all-time record!' He looked happier than I had ever seen him in his life. 'The most my dad ever got was fifteen and he was drunk for a week afterwards!' he said. 'But this... this, my dear boy, is an all-time world record!'

  'I expect it is,' I said.

  'And you did it, Danny! The whole thing was your idea in the first place!'

  'I didn't do it, Dad.'

  'Oh yes you did! And you know what that makes you, my dear boy? It makes you the champion of the world!' He pulled up his sweater and unwound the two big cotton sacks from round his belly. 'Here's yours,' he said, handing one of them to me. 'Fill it up quick!'

  The light of the moon was so strong I could read the print across the front of the sack, J. W. CRUMP, it said, KESTON FLOUR MILLS, LONDON S.W. 17.

  'You don't think that keeper with the brown teeth is watching us this very moment from behind a tree?' I said.

  'No chance,' my father said. 'If he's anywhere he'll be down at the filling-station waiting to catch us coming home with the loot.'

  We started loading the pheasants into the sacks. They were soft and floppy-necked and the skin underneath the feathers was still warm.

  'We can't possibly carry this lot all the way home,' I said.

  'Of course not. There'll be a taxi waiting for us on the track outside the wood.'

  'A taxi! I said.

  'My dad always made use of a taxi on a big job,' he said.

  'Why a taxi, for heaven's sake?'

  'It's more secret, Danny. Nobody knows who's inside a taxi except the driver.'

  'Which driver?' I asked.

  'Charlie Kinch. He's only too glad to oblige.'

  'Does he know about poaching, too?'

  'Old Charlie Kinch? Of course he does. He's poached more pheasants in his time than we've sold gallons of petrol.'

  We finished loading the sacks and my father humped his on to his shoulders. I couldn't do that with mine. It was too heavy for me. 'Drag it,' my father said. 'Just drag it along the ground.' My sack had sixty birds inside it and it weighed a ton. But it slid quite easily over the dry leaves with me walking backwards and pulling it with both hands.

  We came to the edge of the wood and peered through the hedge on to the track. My father said 'Charlie boy' very softly, and the old man behind the wheel of the taxi poked his head out into the moonlight and gave us a sly toothless grin. We slid through the hedge, dragging the sacks after us along the ground.

  'Hello-hello-hello,' Charlie Kinch said. 'What's all this then?'

  17

  The Taxi

  Two minutes later we were safely inside the taxi and cruising slowly down the bumpy track towards the road.

  My father was bursting with pride and excitement. He kept leaning forward and tapping Charlie Kinch on the shoulder and saying, 'How about it, Charlie? How about this for a haul?' And Charlie kept glancing back pop-eyed at the huge bulging sacks. 'Cripes, man!' he kept saying. 'How did you do it?'

  'Danny did it!' my father said proudly. 'My son Danny is the champion of the world.'

  Then Charlie said, 'I reckon pheasants is going to be a bit scarce up at Mr Victor Hazell's opening-day shoot tomorrow, eh, Willum?'

  'I imagine they are, Charlie,' my father said. 'I imagine they are.'

  'All those fancy folk,' old Charlie said, 'driving in from miles around in their big shiny cars and there won't be a blinking bird anywhere for them to shoot!' Charlie Kinch started chuckling and chortling so much he nearly drove off the track.

  'Dad,' I said. 'What on earth are you going to do with all these pheasants?'

  'Share them out among our friends,' my father said. 'There's a dozen of them for Charlie here to start with. All right, Charlie?'

  'That suits me,' Charlie said.

  'Then there'll be a dozen for Doc Spencer. And another dozen for Enoch Samways...'

  'You don't mean Sergeant Samways?' I gasped.

  'Of course,' my father said. 'Enoch Samways is one of my very oldest friends.'

  'Enoch's a good boy,' Charlie Kinch said. 'He's a lovely lad.'

  Sergeant Enoch Samways, as I knew very well, was the village policeman. He was a huge, plump man with a bristly black moustache, and he strode up and down our High Street with the proud and measured tread of a man who knows he is in charge. The silver buttons on his uniform sparkled like diamonds and the mere sight of him frightened me so much I used to cross over to the other side of the street whenever he approached.

  'Enoch Samways likes a piece of roasted pheasant as much as the next man,' my father said.

  'I reckon he knows a thin