Search for the Sunlight -
Chapter 50
With the scrap yard behind them, the travellers slogged along the muddy track. It was raining heavier now than ever, and they had no idea where they were going.
Chilled to the heart and water logged, they rounded a narrow bend in the road and there, standing before them, completely blocking the way ahead, was a towering mound of solid black rock. Herbert gasped at the sheer scale of the obstruction.
“Oh dear, stuck again,” he sighed almost expectantly. He had become accustomed to obstacles of one sort or another being thrust in their way.
At a guess, Basil estimated the structure to be somewhere in the region of eight hundred feet high. Normally a challenge of this magnitude would have posed no real threat to a party of resourceful Treewoods, but in this instance there were other factors to be taken into account. For a start, the mound spanned from east to west as far as the eye could see and to complicate matters further, the slippery rock-face leaned forwards at an angle of about seventy degrees, which, by all accounts, would make it very difficult to climb.
Needless to say, Basil’s approximate dimensions did not go unchallenged.
Predictably, they weren’t accurate enough for the Constable. There were standards to be upheld and his wood police training insisted on precision, not guesswork. So it was that with the aid of a long straight stick, a protractor and a pair of well used ebony and brass dividers, he set about making a few calculations of his own.
Forty minutes later, in his customary, irritating matter-of-fact detective voice, he announced that the object in question was in fact only seven hundred and ninety eight feet high, and that the incline was precisely sixty eight and a half degrees.
Harry and Herbert looked at one another and shook their heads in despair.
Sherlock’s long-winded and complex calculations were so close to Basil’s guesstimate, that there was virtually nothing in it. But in the interests of maintaining good relations within the group, the brothers remained silent.
It was getting late now and, with the weather taking a turn for the worse, Basil suggested the set up camp under some overhanging rocks and consider their options in the morning.
Happy with this, and desperate for a brew, Harry prepared the twig burner and put the kettle on to boil.
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