The Wombles to the Rescue by Elisabeth Beresford Page A

suddenly remembered a bit in the newspaper he had read about ‘floating oil rigs out to their destination’. The destination of this particular rig was only a question of yards away, but no matter how hard and fast he and Tomsk swam, carrying the rig between them, it would sink (because of the iron bars) within feet of the shore.
    â€˜Drat!’ said Wellington and made the furious face which meant he was really thinking furiously. Tomsk watched him respectfully. ‘Hold on a tick,’ said Wellington and scuttled off the bank in the direction of the burrow.
    Tomsk, who really had been working extremely hard and was therefore quite tired, decided that he might have a bit of a rest in among the dripping bushes and ferns. He settled himself in comfortably, folded his paws across his stomach and sighed contentedly.
    That Wellington might be rather a small sort of Womble and was not good at games at all – look at that time when they’d tried a round of golf some while ago – but he was awfully good at Thinking. And Thinking was something which Tomsk found quite difficult to get to grips with. He didn’t have to think when he hit a tennis ball, or did a perfect running three-quarter turn and flip dive, or learnt to ski almost up to championship standards in a couple of hours. He did all those sort of things without . . .
    Tomsk’s pleasant thoughts were interrupted as his sharp ears caught the sound of a twig snapping and then a faint thud of feet followed by the ghost of a worried sigh. Inch by inch Tomsk raised himself out of the bracken and saw a small, tubby, grey-white figure wearing an apron and a battered straw hat trotting down the slope towards the Mere. It was Cousin Botany. That mysterious, lonely sort of Womble who seemed to live in a world of his own.
    Botany was certainly being most mysterious at the moment, as he was actually wading into the water until it reached his knees and then, from out of his apron pocket, he produced a sort of tube, one end of which he put up to his eye and the other he directed to the surface of the water.
    An inquisitive duck came swimming up to see what was happening and the ripples that it made sloshed against the end of the tube and made Botany glance up.
    â€˜Stupid bird,’ he said crossly and, wiping the end of the tube on the bib of his apron, he returned to the path looking more thoughtful than ever, and if anything, sadder and more worried than he had done before. It was a very funny sort of way to behave and Tomsk lay back quietly for he felt that probably Cousin Botany didn’t want to talk to anybody at the moment. Not that he often appeared to want to talk to anyone. It was all very strange and Tomsk was still thinking about it in a muzzy sort of way when Wellington came crashing back with two enormous pieces of white polystyrene under his arms and a great grin on his face.
    â€˜Floats,’ he said breathlessly. ‘And I’ll tell you what else we need, only I couldn’t carry it as well. A bucket.’
    â€˜A bucket! What for? I say, Wellington, I saw . . .’
    â€˜A bucket for the oil, of course. I say, Tomsk, this is jolly exciting, isn’t it? I mean finding oil in the bottom of Queen’s Mere. Great Uncle Bulgaria and Tobermory and everybody’ll be ever so pleased. Get a move on and get a bucket, there’s a good Womble. My specs have misted over . . .’
    â€˜OK, but look here, Wellington, I saw . . .’
    But Wellington, who was getting quite carried away by his own marvellous ideas, only waved an impatient paw, so Tomsk gave up trying to explain about Cousin Botany and went running as fast as he could (which was very fast indeed with his elbows into his side and his chin up) back to the burrow. In record-breaking time he was back with a bucket, just as Wellington had managed to get the rig balanced on the two pieces of polystyrene.
    â€˜Great,’ said Wellington. ‘The oil