Read Online The White Mountains (The Tripods) by John Christopher - Free Book Online

cloaked in his own wild dreams and fancies.
    Henry said, “I wonder …”
    Hearing his voice was a small relief. I said, “What?”
    “The window. If I gave you a leg up …”
    I did not believe they would have imprisoned us in a place we could break out of so easily, but it was something to do. Henry knelt by the wall, and I stood on his shoulders in my stockinged feet. There was a twinge of pain in my ankle, but I disregarded it. He raised up slowly, while I kept my hands against the wall and reached for the window bars. I got hold at last, first of one and then another. I heaved and pushed, but they were firmly bedded in stone, top and bottom. Henry shifted under me, and I called down:
    “It’s no good.”
    “Try again. If you …”
    He broke off, and I heard what he had heard: the scrape of a key against the sides of the lock. I jumped down, and stood watching the darker rectangle of the door. Slowly it creaked open. There was light beyond, a lamp held up, and the light gleamed on small circles of glass. It was the boy who had watched us from the stairs.
    Then he spoke and, to my greater astonishment, in English.
    “Do not make a noise,” he said. “I will help you.”
    Silently we followed him up the stairs, the old timbers creaking under us, and across the bar room. He drew the bolts very carefully, but they sounded hideously loud. At last the door was open. I whispered, “Thank you. We …”
    He thrust his head forward, the contraption on his nose looking even more ludicrous, and said, “You wish to go to the boat? I can still help.”
    “Not to a boat. South.”
    “South? From the town, into land? Not to the sea?”
    “Yes,” I said, “inland.”
    “I can help there also.” He blew out the lamp, and set it down inside the door. “I will show you.”
    The moonlight was still bright on the waterfront and the gently bobbing masts of the boats in the harbor, but in places the stars were hidden by cloud, and a breeze was getting up from the sea. He started along the way Captain Curtis had said, but before long led us into an alley. We went up steps, and the alley twisted and turned. It was so narrow that moonlight did not penetrate; there was barely enough light to see our way.
    Later there was a road, then another alley, and a road again. The road widened, houses thinned on either side, and at last we reached a place where there was a bright meadow, dotted with the dark shapes of cows. He stopped beside a grassy bank.
    “This goes south,” he said.
    I said, “Will you get into trouble? Will they know it was you that let us out?”
    He shrugged, his head bobbing. “It does not matter.” He said it like “mat-air.” “Will you tell me why you wish to go into land?” He corrected himself: “In-land?”
    I hesitated only for a moment. “We have heard of a place, in the south, where there are no Cappings, and no Tripods.”
    “Cappings?” he repeated. “Tripods?” He touched his head, and said a word in his own language. “The great ones, with three legs—they are Tripods? A place without them? Is it possible? Everyone puts on—the Cap?—and the Tripods go everywhere.”
    “Perhaps not in the mountains.”
    He nodded. “And there are mountains in the south. Where one could hide, if no more. Is that where you go? Is it possible that I can come?”
    I looked at Henry, but it scarcely needed confirmation. Someone whom we already knew to be resourceful, who knew the country and the language. It was almost too good to be true.
    “Can you come as you are?” I asked him. “Going back would be risky.”
    “I am ready now.” He put a hand out, first to me and then to Henry. “My name—I am Zhan-pole.”
    He looked odd and solemn standing there, tall and thin, with that strange metal-and-glass thing on his face. Henry laughed.
    “More like Beanpole!”
    He stared at Henry inquiringly for a moment. Then he laughed, too.

We tramped through the night, covering ten or twelve miles before,