The Book of Wonder by Edward J. M. D. Plunkett, Lord Dunsany
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Edward J. M. D. Plunkett, Lord Dunsany >> The Book of Wonder
No measure of wiser precaution could the elders of the nomads have
taken than to choose for their thief that very Slith, that identical
thief that (even as I write) in how many school-rooms governesses
teach stole a march on the King of Westalia. Yet the weight of the box
was such that others had to accompany him, and Sippy and Slorg were no
more agile thieves than may be found today among vendors of the
antique.
So over the shoulder of Mluna these three climbed next day and slept
as well as they might among its snows rather than risk a night in the
woods of the Dubious Land. And the morning came up radiant and the
birds were full of song, but the forest underneath and the waste
beyond it and the bare and ominous crags all wore the appearance of an
unuttered threat.
Though Slith had an experience of twenty years of theft, yet he said
little; only if one of the others made a stone roll with his foot, or,
later on in the forest, if one of them stepped on a twig, he whispered
sharply to them always the same words: "That is not business." He knew
that he could not make them better thieves during a two-days' journey,
and whatever doubts he had he interfered no further.
From the shoulder of Mluna they dropped into the clouds, and from the
clouds to the forest, to whose native beasts, as well the three
thieves knew, all flesh was meat, whether it were the flesh of fish or
man. There the thieves drew idolatrously from their pockets each one a
separate god and prayed for protection in the unfortunate wood, and
hoped therefrom for a threefold chance of escape, since if anything
should eat one of them it were certain to eat them all, and they
confided that the corollary might be true and all should escape if one
did. Whether one of these gods was propitious and awake, or whether
all of the three, or whether it was chance that brought them through
the forest unmouthed by detestable beasts, none knoweth; but certainly
neither the emissaries of the god that most they feared, nor the wrath
of the topical god of that ominous place, brought their doom to the
three adventurers there or then. And so it was that they came to
Rumbly Heath, in the heart of the Dubious Land, whose stormy hillocks
were the ground-swell and the after-wash of the earthquake lulled for
a while. Something so huge that it seemed unfair to man that it should
move so softly stalked splendidly by them, and only so barely did they
escape its notice that one word ran and echoed through their three
imaginations--"If--if--if." And when this danger was at last gone by
they moved cautiously on again and presently saw the little harmless
mipt, half fairy and half gnome, giving shrill, contented squeaks on
the edge of the world. And they edged away unseen, for they said that
the inquisitiveness of the mipt had become fabulous, and that,
harmless as he was, he had a bad way with secrets; yet they probably
loathed the way that he nuzzles dead white bones, and would not admit
their loathing; for it does not become adventurers to care who eats
their bones. Be this as it may, they edged away from the mipt, and
came almost at once to the wizened tree, the goal-post of their
adventure, and knew that beside them was the crack in the world and
the bridge from Bad to Worse, and that underneath them stood the rocky
house of the Owner of the Box.
This was their simple plan: to slip into the corridor in the upper
cliff; to run softly down it (of course with naked feet) under the
warning to travellers that is graven upon stone, which interpreters
take to be "It Is Better Not"; not to touch the berries that are there
for a purpose, on the right side going down; and so to come to the
guardian on his pedestal who had slept for a thousand years and should
be sleeping still; and go in through the open window. One man was to
wait outside by the crack in the World until the others came out with
the golden box, and, should they cry for help, he was to threaten at
once to unfasten the iron clamp that kept the crack together. When the
box was secured they were to travel all night and all the following
day, until the cloud-banks that wrapped the slopes of Mluna were well
between them and the Owner of the Box.
The door in the cliff was open. They passed without a murmur down the
cold steps, Slith leading them all the way. A glance of longing, no
more, each gave to the beautiful berries. The guardian upon his
pedestal was still asleep. Slorg climbed by a ladder, that Slith knew
where to find, to the iron clamp across the crack in the World, and
waited beside it with a chisel in his hand, listening closely for
anything untoward, while his friends slipped into the house; and no
sound came. And presently Slith and Sippy found the golden box:
everything seemed happening as they had planned, it only remained to
see if it was the right one and to escape with it from that dreadful
place. Under the shelter of the pedestal, so near to the guardian that
they could feel his warmth, which paradoxically had the effect of
chilling the blood of the boldest of them, they smashed the emerald
hasp and opened the golden box; and there they read by the light of
ingenious sparks which Slith knew how to contrive, and even this poor
light they hid with their bodies. What was their joy, even at that
perilous moment, as they lurked between the guardian and the abyss, to
find that the box contained fifteen peerless odes in the alcaic form,
five sonnets that were by far the most beautiful in the world, nine
ballads in the manner of Provence that had no equal in the treasuries
of man, a poem addressed to a moth in twenty-eight perfect stanzas, a
piece of blank verse of over a hundred lines on a level not yet known
to have been attained by man, as well as fifteen lyrics on which no
merchant would dare to set a price. They would have read them again,
for they gave happy tears to a man and memories of dear things done in
infancy, and brought sweet voices from far sepulchres; but Slith
pointed imperiously to the way by which they had come, and
extinguished the light; and Slorg and Sippy sighed, then took the box.
The guardian still slept the sleep that survived a thousand years.
As they came away they saw that indulgent chair close by the edge of
the World in which the Owner of the Box had lately sat reading
selfishly and alone the most beautiful songs and verses that poet ever
dreamed.
They came in silence to the foot of the stairs; and then it befell
that as they drew nearer safely, in the night's most secret hour, some
hand in an upper chamber lit a shocking light, lit it and made no
sound.
For a moment it might have been an ordinary light, fatal as even that
could very well be at such a moment as this; but when it began to
follow them like an eye and to grow redder and redder as it watched
them, then even optimism despaired.
And Sippy very unwisely attempted flight, and Slorg even as unwisely
tried to hide; but Slith, knowing well why that light was lit in that
secret chamber and _who_ it was that lit it, leaped over the edge of
the World and is falling from us still through the unreverberate
blackness of the abyss.
THE INJUDICIOUS PRAYERS OF POMBO THE IDOLATER
Pombo the idolater had prayed to Ammuz a simple prayer, a necessary
prayer, such as even an idol of ivory could very easily grant, and
Ammuz has not immediately granted it. Pombo had therefore prayed to
Tharma for the overthrow of Ammuz, an idol friendly to Tharma, and in
doing this offended against the etiquette of the gods. Tharma refused
to grant the little prayer. Pombo prayed frantically to all the gods
of idolatry, for though it was a simple matter, yet it was very
necessary to a man. And gods that were older than Ammuz rejected the
prayers of Pombo, and even gods that were younger and therefore of
greater repute. He prayed to them one by one, and they all refused to
hear him; nor at first did he think at all of the subtle, divine
etiquette against which he had offended. It occurred to him all at
once as he prayed to his fiftieth idol, a little green-jade god whom
the Chinese know, that all the idols were in league against him. When
Pombo discovered this he resented his birth bitterly, and made
lamentation and alleged that he was lost. He might have been seen then
in any part of London haunting curiosity-shops and places where they
sold idols of ivory or of stone, for he dwelt in London with others of
his race though he was born in Burmah among those who hold Ganges
holy. On drizzly evenings of November's worst his haggard face could
be seen in the glow of some shop pressed close against the glass,
where he would supplicate some calm, cross-legged idol till policemen
moved him on. And after closing hours back he would go to his dingy
room, in that part of our capital where English is seldom spoken, to
supplicate little idols of his own. And when Pombo's simple, necessary
prayer was equally refused by the idols of museums, auction-rooms,
shops, then he took counsel with himself and purchased incense and
burned it in a brazier before his own cheap little idols, and played
the while upon an instrument such as that wherewith men charm snakes.
And still the idols clung to their etiquette.
Whether Pombo knew about this etiquette and considered it frivolous in
the face of his need, or whether his need, now grown desperate,
unhinged his mind, I know not, but Pombo the idolater took a stick and
suddenly turned iconoclast.
Pombo the iconoclast immediately left his house, leaving his idols to
be swept away with the dust and so to mingle with Man, and went to an
arch-idolater of repute who carved idols out of rare stones, and put
his case before him. The arch-idolater who made idols of his own
rebuked Pombo in the name of Man for having broken his idols--"for
hath not Man made them?" the arch-idolater said; and concerning the
idols themselves he spoke long and learnedly, explaining divine
etiquette, and how Pombo had offended, and how no idol in the world
would listen to Pombo's prayer. When Pombo heard this he wept and made
bitter outcry, and cursed the gods of ivory and the gods of jade, and
the hand of Man that made them, but most of all he cursed their
etiquette that had undone, as he said, an innocent man; so that at
last that arch-idolater, who made idols of his own, stopped in his
work upon an idol of jasper for a king that was weary of Wosh, and
took compassion on Pombo, and told him that though no idol in the
world would listen to his prayer, yet only a little way over the edge
of it a certain disreputable idol sat who knew nothing of etiquette,
and granted prayers that no respectable god would ever consent to
hear. When Pombo heard this he took two handfuls of the
arch-idolater's beard and kissed them joyfully, and dried his tears
and became his old impertinent self again. And he that carved from
jasper the usurper of Wosh explained how in the village of World's
End, at the furthest end of Last Street, there is a hole that you take
to be a well, close by the garden wall, but that if you lower yourself
by your hands over the edge of the hole, and feel about with your feet
till they find a ledge, that is the top step of a flight of stairs
that takes you down over the edge of the World. "For all that men
know, those stairs may have a purpose and even a bottom step," said
the arch-idolater, "but discussion about the lower flights is idle."
Then the teeth of Pombo chattered, for he feared the darkness, but he
that made idols of his own explained that those stairs were always lit
by the faint blue gloaming in which the World spins. "Then," he said,
"you will go by Lonely House and under the bridge that leads from the
House to Nowhere, and whose purpose is not guessed; thence past
Maharrion, the god of flowers, and his high-priest, who is neither
bird nor cat; and so you will come to the little idol Duth, the
disreputable god that will grant your prayer." And he went on carving
again at his idol of jasper for the king who was weary of Wosh; and
Pombo thanked him and went singing away, for in his vernacular mind he
thought that "he _had_ the gods."
It is a long journey from London to World's End, and Pombo had no
money left, and yet within five weeks he was strolling along Last
Street; but how he contrived to get there I will not say, for it was
not entirely honest. And Pombo found the well at the end of the garden
beyond the end house of Last Street, and many thoughts ran through his
mind as he hung by his hands from the edge, but chiefest of all those
thoughts was one that said the gods were laughing at him through the
mouth of the arch-idolater, their prophet, and the thought beat in his
head till it ached like his wrists ... and then he found the step.
And Pombo walked downstairs. There, sure enough, was the gloaming in
which the world spins, and the stars shone far off in it faintly;
there was nothing before him as he went downstairs but that strange
blue waste of gloaming, with its multitude of stars, and comets
plunging through it on outward journeys and comets returning home. And
then he saw the lights of the bridge to Nowhere, and all of a sudden
he was in the glare of the shimmering parlour-window of Lonely House;
and he heard voices there pronouncing words, and the voices were
nowise human, and but for his bitter need he had screamed and fled.
Halfway between the voices and Maharrion, whom he now saw standing out
from the world, covered in rainbow halos, he perceived the weird grey
beast that is neither cat nor bird. As Pombo hesitated, chilly with
fear, he heard those voices grow louder in Lonely House, and at that
he stealthily moved a few steps lower, and then rushed past the beast.
The beast intently watched Maharrion hurling up bubbles that are every
one a season of spring in unknown constellations, calling the swallows
home to unimagined fields, watched him without even turning to look at
Pombo, and saw him drop into the Linlunlarna, the river that rises at
the edge of the World, the golden pollen that sweetens the tide of the
river and is carried away from the World to be a joy to the Stars. And
there before Pombo was the little disreputable god who cares nothing
for etiquette and will answer prayers that are refused by all the
respectable idols. And whether the view of him, at last, excited
Pombo's eagerness, or whether his need was greater than he could bear
that it drove him so swiftly downstairs, or whether as is most likely,
he ran too fast past the beast, I do not know, and it does not matter
to Pombo; but at any rate he could not stop, as he had designed, in
attitude of prayer at the feet of Duth, but ran on past him down the
narrowing steps, clutching at smooth, bare rocks till he fell from the
World as, when our hearts miss a beat, we fall in dreams and wake up
with a dreadful jolt; but there was no waking up for Pombo, who still
fell on towards the incurious stars, and his fate is even one with the
fate of Slith.
THE LOOT OF BOMBASHARNA
Things had grown too hot for Shard, captain of pirates, on all the
seas that he knew. The ports of Spain were closed to him; they knew
him in San Domingo; men winked in Syracuse when he went by; the two
Kings of the Sicilies never smiled within an hour of speaking of him;
there were huge rewards for his head in every capital city, with
pictures of it for identification--_and all the pictures were
unflattering_. Therefore Captain Shard decided that the time had come
to tell his men the secret.
Riding off Teneriffe one night, he called them all together. He
generously admitted that there were things in the past that might
require explanation: the crowns that the Princes of Aragon had sent to
their nephews the Kings of the two Americas had certainly never
reached their Most Sacred Majesties. Where, men might ask, were the
eyes of Captain Stobbud? Who had been burning towns on the Patagonian
seaboard? Why should such a ship as theirs choose pearls for cargo?
Why so much blood on the decks and so many guns? And where was the
_Nancy_, the _Lark_, or the _Margaret Belle_? Such questions as these,
he urged, might be asked by the inquisitive, and if counsel for the
defence should happen to be a fool, and unacquainted with the ways of
the sea, they might become involved in troublesome legal formulae. And
Bloody Bill, as they rudely called Mr. Gagg, a member of the crew,
looked up at the sky, and said that it was a windy night and looked
like hanging. And some of those present thoughtfully stroked their
necks while Captain Shard unfolded to them his plan. He said the time
was come to quit the _Desperate Lark_, for she was too well known to
the navies of four kingdoms, and a fifth was getting to know her, and
others had suspicions. (More cutters than even Captain Shard suspected
were already looking for her jolly black flag with its neat
skull-and-crossbones in yellow.) There was a little archipelago that
he knew of on the wrong side of the Sargasso Sea; there were but
thirty islands there, bare, ordinary islands, but one of them floated.
He had noticed it years ago, and had gone ashore and never told a
soul, but had quietly anchored it with the anchor of his ship to the
bottom of the sea, which just there was profoundly deep, and had made
the thing the secret of his life, determining to marry and settle down
there if it ever became impossible to earn his livelihood in the usual
way at sea. When first he saw it, it was drifting slowly, with the
wind in the tops of the trees; but if the cable had not rusted away,
it should be still where he left it, and they would make a rudder and
hollow out cabins below, and at night they would hoist sails to the
trunks of the trees and sail wherever they liked.
And all the pirates cheered, for they wanted to set their feet on land
again somewhere where the hangman would not come and jerk them off it
at once; and bold men though they were, it was a strain seeing so many
lights coming their way at night. Even then...! But it swerved away
again and was lost in the mist.
And Captain Shard said that they would need to get provisions first,
and he, for one, intended to marry before he settled down; and so they
should have one more fight before they left the ship, and sack the
sea-coast city of Bombasharna and take from it provisions for several
years, while he himself would marry the Queen of the South. And again
the pirates cheered, for often they had seen seacoast Bombasharna, and
had always envied its opulence from the sea.
So they set all sail, and often altered their course, and dodged and
fled from strange lights till dawn appeared, and all day long fled
southwards. And by evening they saw the silver spires of slender
Bombasharna, a city that was the glory of the coast. And in the midst
of it, far away though they were, they saw the palace of the Queen of
the South; and it was so full of windows all looking toward the sea,
and they were so full of light, both from the sunset that was fading
upon the water and from candles that maids were lighting one by one,
that it looked far off like a pearl, shimmering still in its haliotis
shell, still wet from the sea.
So Captain Shard and his pirates saw it, at evening over the water,
and thought of rumours that said that Bombasharna was the loveliest
city of the coasts of the world, and that its palace was lovelier even
than Bombasharna; but for the Queen of the South rumour had no
comparison. Then night came down and hid the silver spires, and Shard
slipped on through the gathering darkness until by midnight the
piratic ship lay under the seaward battlements.
And at the hour when sick men mostly die, and sentries on lonely
ramparts stand to arms, exactly half-an-hour before dawn, Shard, with
two rowing boats and half his crew, with craftily muffled oars, landed
below the battlements. They were through the gateway of the palace
itself before the alarm was sounded, and as soon as they heard the
alarm Shard's gunners at sea opened upon the town, and before the
sleepy soldiery of Bombasharna knew whether the danger was from the
land or the sea, Shard had successfully captured the Queen of the
South. They would have looted all day that silver sea-coast city, but
there appeared with dawn suspicious topsails just along the horizon.
Therefore the captain with his Queen went down to the shore at once
and hastily re-embarked and sailed away with what loot they had
hurridly got, and with fewer men, for they had to fight a good deal to
get back to the boat. They cursed all day the interference of those
ominous ships which steadily grew nearer. There were six ships at
first, and that night they slipped away from all but two; but all the
next day those two were still in sight, and each of them had more guns
than the _Desperate Lark_. All the next night Shard dodged about the
sea, but the two ships separated and one kept him in sight, and the
next morning it was alone with Shard on the sea, and his archipelago
was just in sight, the secret of his life.
And Shard saw he must fight, and a bad fight it was, and yet it suited
Shard's purpose, for he had more merry men when the fight began than
he needed for his island. And they got it over before any other ship
came up; and Shard put all adverse evidence out of the way, and came
that night to the islands near the Sargasso Sea.
Long before it was light the survivors of the crew were peering at the
sea, and when dawn came there was the island, no bigger than two
ships, straining hard at its anchor, with the wind in the tops of the
trees.
And then they landed and dug cabins below and raised the anchor out of
the deep sea, and soon they made the island what they called
shipshape. But the _Desperate Lark_ they sent away empty under full
sail to sea, where more nations than Shard suspected were watching for
her, and where she was presently captured by an admiral of Spain, who,
when he found none of that infamous crew on board to hang by the neck
from the yard-arm, grew ill through disappointment.
And Shard on his island offered the Queen of the South the choicest of
the old wines of Provence, and for adornment gave her Indian jewels
looted from galleons with treasure for Madrid, and spread a table
where she dined in the sun, while in some cabin below he bade the
least coarse of his mariners sing; yet always she was morose and moody
towards him, and often at evening he was heard to say that he wished
he knew more about the ways of Queens. So they lived for years, the
pirates mostly gambling and drinking below, Captain Shard trying to
please the Queen of the South, and she never wholly forgetting
Bombasharna. When they needed new provisions they hoisted sails on the
trees, and as long as no ship came in sight they scudded before the
wind, with the water rippling over the beach of the island; but as
soon as they sighted a ship the sails came down, and they became an
ordinary uncharted rock.
They mostly moved by night; sometimes they hovered off sea-coast towns
as of old, sometimes they boldly entered river-mouths, and even
attached themselves for a while to the mainland, whence they would
plunder the neighbourhood and escape again to sea. And if a ship was
wrecked on their island of a night they said it was all to the good.
They grew very crafty in seamanship, and cunning in what they did, for
they knew that any news of the _Desperate Lark_'s old crew would bring
hangmen from the interior running down to every port.
And no one is known to have found them out or to have annexed their
island; but a rumour arose and passed from port to port and every
place where sailors meet together, and even survives to this day, of a
dangerous uncharted rock anywhere between Plymouth and the Horn, which
would suddenly rise in the safest track of ships, and upon which
vessels were supposed to have been wrecked, leaving, strangely enough,
no evidence of their doom. There was a little speculation about it at
first, till it was silenced by the chance remark of a man old with
wandering: "It is one of the mysteries that haunt the sea."
And almost Captain Shard and the Queen of the South lived happily ever
after, though still at evening those on watch in the trees would see
their captain sit with a puzzled air or hear him mutter now and again
in a discontented way: "I wish I knew more about the ways of Queens."
MISS CUBBIDGE AND THE DRAGON OF ROMANCE
This tale is told in the balconies of Belgrave Square and among the
towers of Pont Street; men sing it at evening in the Brompton Road.
Little upon her eighteenth birthday thought Miss Cubbidge, of Number
12A Prince of Wales' Square, that before another year had gone its way
she would lose the sight of that unshapely oblong that was so long her
home. And, had you told her further that within that year all trace of
that so-called square, and of the day when her father was elected by a
thumping majority to share in the guidance of the destinies of the
empire, should utterly fade from her memory, she would merely have
said in that affected voice of hers, "Go to!"