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

with the summer dawn edging over the horizon, we broke off, to rest and eat. While we rested, Beanpole told us the reason for the men rushing out from the tavern to catch us the previous night: some of the local boys had been damaging the boats on the hard, and the sailors thought we were the culprits. A stroke of bad luck, though it had turned out well. He told us something about himself also. His parents had died when he was a baby; and his uncle and aunt owned the tavern. They seemed to have looked after him all right, but in a distant way, with not much affection or, at any rate, not much shown. I got the impression that they may even have been a little scared of him. This is not as silly as it sounds because there wasone thing that stood out about him: he had quite a tremendous brain.
    His speaking English, for instance: he had found an old book, giving instructions in the language, and taught himself. And the contraption on his face. His eyesight was poor, and he had worked it out that, since mariners’ telescopes helped sailors to see at a distance, a glass in front of each eye might enable him to see more clearly. He had messed about with lenses until he found some that did. There were other things he had tried, with less success, but you could see how they might have worked. He had noticed that hot air rises, and had filled a pig’s bladder with steam from a kettle and seen it go up to the ceiling. So he had tried making a big balloon out of oilskin and fixing it to a platform with a brazier under the opening, hoping it would rise into the sky; but nothing happened. Another idea that had not worked out had been for putting springs on the ends of stilts—he had broken a leg the previous year trying that one out.
    Lately he had been more and more uneasy about the prospect of being Capped, rightly guessing that it would put an end to his inventing things. I realized that it was not just Jack, and myself, and Henry, who had doubts about Capping. Probably everyone, or almost everyone, felt like that, but because adults were all on the side of the Tripods dared not say so. Beanpole said his balloon idea had come from this: a thought of himself drifting through the sky to strange lands, perhaps somewhere finding one where there were no Tripods. He had been interested in us because he had guessedwe came from north of the sea, and there were stories that the Tripods were fewer there.
    We came to a crossroads not long after restarting our journey, and I was once more made aware of our luck in finding him. I would have taken the road south, but he chose west.
    “Because of the …” What he said sounded like “Shmand-Fair.” “I do not know your name for it.”
    “What is it?” Henry asked.
    “It is too hard to explain, I think. You will see.”
    The Shmand-Fair started inside a town, but we skirted it and reached a small hill, topped with ruins, on the southern edge. Looking down we could see a track, on which were two parallel straight lines, gleaming in the sunshine, which ran from the town and disappeared in the far distance. The town end had an open space, where half a dozen objects looking like great boxes on wheels were linked together. As we watched, a dozen horses were harnessed in pairs and yoked to the nearest of the boxes. A man was mounted on the lead pair, and another on the second pair from the box. At a signal, the horses strained forward and the boxes began to move, slowly and then faster. When they were going quite fast, the eight horses in front broke free, and galloped obliquely away. The remaining four continued pulling the boxes on and past our vantage point. There were five boxes altogether. The two in front had openings in their sides, and we could see people sitting in them; the rest were closed.
    Beanpole explained that twelve horses were needed to start the wheels rolling along the lines, but once they were moving four were enough. The Shmand-Fair took goods and people south for a long