The Ghost at Doringkloof

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"We'll start a club," Pepper announced as soon as they had all assembled. "We'll call ourselves the Famous Five and even wear badges. You must have heard of the Famous Five?" he asked, looking round hopefully.

Blank faces greeted him. Neither Pete nor Rajit had the advantage of a mother who had grown up reading nothing but Enid Blyton books and still had her complete library from when she was a child.

"But the Famous Five were four children and a dog," said Lwazi, who had managed to read a couple of the stories at his previous school.

"None of us have a dog," Pete replied, sadly.

"What about Zitch?" Rajit suggested. Zitch was Jelly's black and tan Chihuahua.

"No chance," Pepper said. "Zitch does nothing but sleep all day on my sister's bed . . . and Jelly certainly wouldn't allow us to take it anywhere for an adventure. Besides, Zitch is more like a rat than a dog."

That decided it. They would have to be the Famous Four, without a dog. Nevertheless Jelly would be approached to design badges for them out of cardboard, with the letters FF embroidered in wool.

Having formed themselves into a club, the four set off in search of an adventure but quickly discovered that real adventures don't just happen as they do in books. They had to be made to happen.

Try as they might, however, the adventure just would not appear. Instead they settled for a tried and tested game - to fly their old B-52 bomber over the battlefields of Vietnam.

The B-52 was an old pine tree in the nearby park. It was ancient, much older even than the surrounding houses which were old enough. The tree-trunk had a girth so wide that two boys could only just stretch around it and touch fingers.

The lower branches were out of their reach, although the great chunks of gnarled bark provided a means to climb up. The task of ascending was also made easier by the fact that the tree leaned somewhat, the result of some enormous gust of wind sometime in the past, certainly beyond human memory.

Each of the boys had his favourite branch. Pepper, being the pilot, went to the top, or as high as he could possibly go. Rajit chose a safer branch lower down. Lwazi had found a perch almost on a level with Rajit's and the two were placed in charge of the machine guns and rockets.

Pete, however, lacked a head for heights and refused to climb beyond the level of the first branch. There was no alternative therefore but to make him the bomb operator, a duty he performed with great gusto and certainly with devastating noise.

The B-52 flew several attacks over Vietcong villages, with machine guns chattering, rockets hissing and bombs exploding with deadly force. It was not the type of adventure which usually happened in books but at least it was better than nothing.

Then something caught Pepper's eye. "Hang on, crew," he suddenly announced. "We're going to fly a mission over the Medusa's headquarters in 'Nam. Something's going on which needs investigation."

The B-52 banked in an arc of 180 degrees, achieved by Pepper turning in the tree so as to face in the opposite direction. He was high enough to peer over the tall Eugenia hedge bordering Mrs Rabe's garden.

It had long been their suspicion that the Medusa, as they preferred to call Jumbo's aunt, was supplying vital equipment to their enemy in North Vietnam, for which her house was periodically bombed. On this occasion, however, there appeared to be more activity than usual.

"What is happening over there?" Pepper muttered, half to himself.

Mrs Rabe was in the turret room of her house, a square structure which rose above the level of the surrounding roof. There appeared to be no way up except by means of a stairwell inside the building. The windows were all heavily barred, making the boys suspect that she kept all her prisoners there, feeding them bread and water while torturing them daily.

She was there now, bustling about in a frenzy of activity. The curtains were open (for the first time ever, Pepper reported) so that her movements could be watched as she moved backwards and forwards in feverish preparation.

"What's she doing?" Lwazi called to Pepper.

"Looks like she's getting the turret ready for something," Pepper observed. "Or for someone," he corrected himself. "Maybe another party of prisoners are due to arrive soon. We'll have to fly over there and attack the headquarters. To your stations men!"

And so the fighting began. Bullets and rockets whizzed and whined in the direction of the Medusa's headquarters. From his lower branch, Pete released a series of bombs which exploded noisily. So constant and intense was the attack that it even caught Mrs Rabe's attention.

She stopped what she was doing and stared in amazement through a prison window but she could see only Pepper, perched like a monkey in the topmost branches. The noise which drifted her way, however, made it clear that there were three other monkeys lower down, each showering a monstrous attack on her house.

She threw open the window and waved her fist at them as the bomber roared overhead. Pepper spotted the attack but it was already too late. A heat-seeking missile had thundered from its launch-pad and was heading in their direction.

"Watch out, men," Pepper called to the rest of the crew. "A SAM-3's on its way. We're going to be hit."

On the lower branch Pete groaned. He knew exactly what that meant. The bomber was due to be blown out of the sky, leaving the crew only two minutes to bail out and parachute to safety.

The parachute bay was the branch opposite the one on which he sat. Pepper had long worked out the rules governing the jump, which entailed swinging from the branch, with legs dangling some three metres above the ground. Each crewman had then to drop to the hard earth far below.

Only Pepper liked bailing out. The ground was like concrete and, if they failed to land properly, the shock from the impact could be very painful. In the excitement of the game, however, Rajit was prepared to jump and, on this occasion, so was Lwazi.

The bomb operator, however, had never plucked up the courage to bail out. Instead, he either sat on the branch for so long that the bomber crashed, killing all aboard, or he evacuated by climbing down the trunk, a route that was forbidden unless the aeroplane had landed.

Pepper sounded a massive explosion and immediately the evacuation began. The pilot reached the parachute bay first. Without hesitation he grasped the branch with both hands, let his body swing free and dropped, landing neatly on his feet. He then rolled over as he had seen real parachutists do on the television.

Lwazi and Rajit weren't quite as athletic as their captain and the fall jolted their legs badly. Pete, however, simply stood in the parachute bay, as he always did, plucking up the courage to jump - and failing, as he always did.

Eventually, after several miraculous escapes which were designed to give the bomb operator more time, the B-52 plunged into the Vietnamese jungle and exploded. The sheer heat from the flames prevented any attempt at a rescue. There were no survivors.

The three friends gathered solemnly at the wreckage of the aircraft and sang a requiem to honour their fallen comrade. The dead bomb operator, in the meantime, began the painstaking climb from the tree, hoping that the game would end soon so he could join them in yet another adventure.

A thought, however, had crossed the mind of their valiant captain. Once again the Medusa, using a mixture of cunning and underhand magic, had somehow managed to defeat them. They would have to think of a plan to get their revenge - but what?

"What we've got to do," Pepper explained soon after they had returned to his garden, "is to find our way through to the Medusa's headquarters. The houses on this block will be her territory. We must crawl through all three gardens without being seen and only then can we say we've done it."

"But what if Mrs Rabe catches us?" Rajit protested. "Then we're in for it."

"She mustn't see us," Pepper explained simply. "And remember - the Medusa's eyes are the thing - if she even looks at you, you're done for."

The four moved to a narrow hole in the hedge, hearts beating fiercely. (None had quite noticed how Pete had miraculously resurrected from the dead.)

"I'll go first and you follow," said Pepper. "Remember to remain crouched at all times. And don't be seen! Ready?"

They nodded nervously and Pepper disappeared through the hedge like a cat, with hardly a movement of the branches to indicate where he had gone. "Clear!" he whispered and one by one the boys followed.

They emerged behind a tool shed. To their right was a garden, abundant with ripening vegetables. They would slink along the outer boundary, to take refuge behind a heap of builder's sand. That was the easy part but thereafter it was open lawn with only a single tree in the centre. Its trunk was narrow, however, and could hide only one at a time.

Pepper made the jump quickly and was soon crouching at the far hedge. He beckoned for someone to follow. Lwazi went second and sprinted to the tree. Once there, however, he found himself stranded. Someone was in the kitchen, shuffling backwards and forwards past the open door.

He remained motionless, not knowing what to do. The minutes ticked away. Only when Pepper began to gesture furiously, his patience running out, did Lwazi chance it.

"We'll never get through if you take so long," whispered Pepper as Lwazi ducked in behind him.

Pete and Rajit raced across the lawn, unaware of the possible presence of some enemy in the kitchen. They were safe, however, and a gap in the hedge brought them into the second garden.

Rajit suddenly clutched Pepper's arm. "Look!" he said.

There, on a sunny patch of grass, lay a large Ridgeback dog, stretched out and sleeping solidly. The late afternoon light made him seem more yellow than usual.

"We mustn't make a noise," Pepper whispered. "Vietcong dogs are very alert."

They eased forward on hands and knees, scarcely daring to breath lest the dog awoke and came to investigate. Luckily there were plenty of shrubs to shroud their movement. They were making rapid progress when suddenly, all around them, a fine spray of water jetted from some unseen hose.

The boys, believing that someone must be watering the garden, crouched on the damp ground, their noses close to the dirt.

"What'll we do?" whispered Lwazi.

"Wait!" Pepper hissed. "As long as they haven't seen us, we're safe."

It was some minutes before they realised that an automatic sprinkler system was the cause of their discomfort but by then they were drenched. They stood up at last and what a sorry sight they were, thoroughly soaked and streaked with mud.

"What am I to tell my ma?" Pete groaned as he surveyed his filthy clothes. "She's likely to thrash the pants off me."

Pepper and Rajit both sympathised. Regular bruises on Pete's legs revealed his frequent beatings with a coat-hanger. Yet they could do nothing for him except perhaps to help him clean up later.

"The next garden is the crucial one, men," said Pepper, returning to the task in hand. "If the Medusa sees us, it's tickets for everyone."

The Medusa's orchard was large but tidy, offering little place to hide. Crossing it would not be easy, yet the world depended on them and, more importantly, their own lives rested on the success of their venture. The boys began inching forward one behind the other, lying almost flat on the damp soil. Periodically Pepper paused to survey the scene but he saw nothing.

"Our luck's in, men," he announced at last. "The Medusa's nowhere in sight. We can run for the gate."

He was wrong. The Medusa had finished her work in the tower and was now sitting in her ancient rocking chair on the verandah, where she could keep an eye on all who passed in the street. There was no way that the boys could cross the garden without being seen.

As they ran there arose a sudden roar, like nothing they had ever heard, and the Medusa rose into view above the low verandah wall. The adventure exploded into a moment of panic.

"Scatter, men!" Pepper shouted, his legs already at full stretch. "And don't look in her direction or . . . or her face will turn you to stone!"

His friends needed no second urging. They sprinted as if the very devil was after them and paused only when they were well inside Pepper's property. There they collapsed, their hearts racing.

"Well done, men," Pepper gasped. "We did it. We beat the Medusa. All is safe."

He was wrong again. The Medusa was even then on the phone, lodging a complaint against the Intrepid Four. Soon the Lady President was demanding an interview with the famous captain of the B-52, sending out Pepper's sister as her ambassador.

"Mom wants to see you," Jelly said. "At once!"

She looked around, then caught sight of their appearance. "Just look at you!" she exclaimed. "And, urrggh! What's that disgusting smell?"

It was only then that they became aware of it. Each checked his own clothing but the source was eventually traced to Pete. He had somehow survived the explosion of a land-mine left behind by the Vietcong dog. The contents of the mine, however, were smeared across his muddy shorts.

"Oh sheez," he exclaimed in utter dismay. "I'd better beat it before my ma gets home and sees me." He left immediately and at a trot, but everyone knew that Pete would be very sore that night.