TALES OF WONDER

by Lord Dunsany

Preface

 Ebrington Barracks

 Aug. 16th 1916. 

I do not know where I may be when this preface is read. As I write itin August 1916, I am at Ebrington Barracks, Londonderry, recoveringfrom a slight wound. But it does not greatly matter where I am; mydreams are here before you amongst the following pages; and writing ina day when life is cheap, dreams seem to me all the dearer, the onlythings that survive. 

Just now the civilization of Europe seems almost to have ceased, andnothing seems to grow in her torn fields but death, yet this is onlyfor a while and dreams will come back again and bloom as of old, allthe more radiantly for this terrible ploughing, as the flowers willbloom again where the trenches are and the primroses shelter inshell-holes for many seasons, when weeping Liberty has come home toFlanders. 

To some of you in America this may seem an unnecessary and wastefulquarrel, as other people's quarrels often are; but it comes to thisthat though we are all killed there will be songs again, but if wewere to submit and so survive there could be neither songs nor dreams, nor any joyous free things any more. 

And do not regret the lives that are wasted amongst us, or the workthat the dead would have done, for war is no accident that man's carecould have averted, but is as natural, though not as regular, as thetides; as well regret the things that the tide has washed away, whichdestroys and cleanses and crumbles, and spares the minutest shells. 

And now I will write nothing further about our war, but offer youthese books of dreams from Europe as one throws things of value, ifonly to oneself, at the last moment out of a burning house. 

 DUNSANY. 

A Tale of London

"Come, " said the Sultan to his hasheesh-eater in the very furthestlands that know Bagdad, "dream to me now of London. "

And the hasheesh-eater made a low obeisance and seated himselfcross-legged upon a purple cushion broidered with golden poppies, onthe floor, beside an ivory bowl where the hasheesh was, and havingeaten liberally of the hasheesh blinked seven times and spoke thus:

"O Friend of God, know then that London is the desiderate town even ofall Earth's cities. Its houses are of ebony and cedar which they roofwith thin copper plates that the hand of Time turns green. They havegolden balconies in which amethysts are where they sit and watch thesunset. Musicians in the gloaming steal softly along the ways; unheardtheir feet fall on the white sea-sand with which those ways arestrewn, and in the darkness suddenly they play on dulcimers andinstruments with strings. Then are there murmurs in the balconiespraising their skill, then are there bracelets cast down to them forreward and golden necklaces and even pearls. 

"Indeed but the city is fair; there is by the sandy ways a paving allalabaster, and the lanterns along it are of chrysoprase, all nightlong they shine green, but of amethyst are the lanterns of thebalconies. 

"As the musicians go along the ways dancers gather about them anddance upon the alabaster pavings, for joy and not for hire. Sometimesa window opens far up in an ebony palace and a wreath is cast down toa dancer or orchids showered upon them. 

"Indeed of many cities have I dreamt but of none fairer, through manymarble metropolitan gates hasheesh has led me, but London is itssecret, the last gate of all; the ivory bowl has nothing more to show. And indeed even now the imps that crawl behind me and that will notlet me be are plucking me by the elbow and bidding my spirit return, for well they know that I have seen too much. 'No, not London, ' theysay; and therefore I will speak of some other city, a city of someless mysterious land, and anger not the imps with forbidden things. Iwill speak of Persepolis or famous Thebes. "

A shade of annoyance crossed the Sultan's face, a look of thunder thatyou had scarcely seen, but in those lands they watched his visagewell, and though his spirit was wandering far away and his eyes werebleared with hasheesh yet that storyteller there and then perceivedthe look that was death, and sent his spirit back at once to London asa man runs into his house when the thunder comes. 

"And therefore, " he continued, "in the desiderate city, in London, alltheir camels are pure white. Remarkable is the swiftness of theirhorses, that draw their chariots that are of ivory along those sandyways and that are of surpassing lightness, they have little bells ofsilver upon their horses' heads. O Friend of God, if you perceivedtheir merchants! The glory of their dresses in the noonday! They areno less gorgeous than those butterflies that float about theirstreets. They have overcloaks of green and vestments of azure, hugepurple flowers blaze on their overcloaks, the work of cunning needles, the centres of the flowers are of gold and the petals of purple. Alltheir hats are black--" ("No, no, " said the Sultan)--"but irises areset about the brims, and green plumes float above the crowns of them. 

"They have a river that is named the Thames, on it their ships go upwith violet sails bringing incense for the braziers that perfume thestreets, new songs exchanged for gold with alien tribes, raw silverfor the statues of their heroes, gold to make balconies where thewomen sit, great sapphires to reward their poets with, the secrets ofold cities and strange lands, the earning of the dwellers in farisles, emeralds, diamonds, and the hoards of the sea. And whenever aship comes into port and furls its violet sails and the news spreadsthrough London that she has come, then all the merchants go down tothe river to barter, and all day long the chariots whirl through thestreets, and the sound of their going is a mighty roar all day untilevening, their roar is even like--"

"Not so, " said the Sultan. 

"Truth is not hidden from the Friend of God, " replied thehasheesh-eater, "I have erred being drunken with the hasheesh, for inthe desiderate city, even in London, so thick upon the ways is thewhite sea-sand with which the city glimmers that no sound comes fromthe path of the charioteers, but they go softly like a lightsea-wind. " ("It is well, " said the Sultan. ) "They go softly down tothe port where the vessels are, and the merchandise in from the sea, amongst the wonders that the sailors show, on land by the high ships, and softly they go though swiftly at evening back to their homes. 

"O would that the Munificent, the Illustrious, the Friend of God, hadeven seen these things, had seen the jewellers with their emptybaskets, bargaining there by the ships, when the barrels of emeraldscame up from the hold. Or would that he had seen the fountains therein silver basins in the midst of the ways. I have seen small spiresupon their ebony houses and the spires were all of gold, birdsstrutted there upon the copper roofs from golden spire to spire thathave no equal for splendour in all the woods of the world. And overLondon the desiderate city the sky is so deep a blue that by thisalone the traveller may know where he has come, and may end hisfortunate journey. Nor yet for any colour of the sky is there toogreat heat in London, for along its ways a wind blows always from theSouth gently and cools the city. 

"Such, O Friend of God, is indeed the city of London, lying very faroff on the yonder side of Bagdad, without a peer for beauty orexcellence of its ways among the towns of the earth or cities of song;and even so, as I have told, its fortunate citizens dwell, with theirhearts ever devising beautiful things and from the beauty of their ownfair work that is more abundant around them every year, receiving newinspirations to work things more beautiful yet. "

"And is their government good?" the Sultan said. 

"It is most good, " said the hasheesh-eater, and fell backwards uponthe floor. 

He lay thus and was silent. And when the Sultan perceived he wouldspeak no more that night he smiled and lightly applauded. 

And there was envy in that palace, in lands beyond Bagdad, of all thatdwell in London. 

Thirteen at Table

In front of a spacious fireplace of the old kind, when the logs werewell alight, and men with pipes and glasses were gathered before it ingreat easeful chairs, and the wild weather outside and the comfortthat was within, and the season of the year--for it was Christmas--andthe hour of the night, all called for the weird or uncanny, then outspoke the ex-master of foxhounds and told this tale. 

I once had an odd experience too. It was when I had the Bromley andSydenham, the year I gave them up--as a matter of fact it was the lastday of the season. It was no use going on because there were no foxesleft in the county, and London was sweeping down on us. You could seeit from the kennels all along the skyline like a terrible army ingrey, and masses of villas every year came skirmishing down ourvalleys. Our coverts were mostly on the hills, and as the town camedown upon the valleys the foxes used to leave them and go right awayout of the county and they never returned. I think they went by nightand moved great distances. Well it was early April and we had drawnblank all day, and at the last draw of all, the very last of theseason, we found a fox. He left the covert with his back to London andits railways and villas and wire and slipped away towards the chalkcountry and open Kent. I felt as I once felt as a child on onesummer's day when I found a door in a garden where I played leftluckily ajar, and I pushed it open and the wide lands were before meand waving fields of corn. 

We settled down into a steady gallop and the fields began to drift byunder us, and a great wind arose full of fresh breath. We left theclay lands where the bracken grows and came to a valley at the edge ofthe chalk. As we went down into it we saw the fox go up the other sidelike a shadow that crosses the evening, and glide into a wood thatstood on the top. We saw a flash of primroses in the wood and we wereout the other side, hounds hunting perfectly and the fox still goingabsolutely straight. It began to dawn on me then that we were in for agreat hunt, I took a deep breath when I thought of it; the taste ofthe air of that perfect Spring afternoon as it came to one galloping, and the thought of a great run, were together like some old rare wine. Our faces now were to another valley, large fields led down to it, with easy hedges, at the bottom of it a bright blue stream wentsinging and a rambling village smoked, the sunlight on the oppositeslopes danced like a fairy; and all along the top old woods werefrowning, but they dreamed of Spring. The "field" had fallen of andwere far behind and my only human companion was James, my old firstwhip, who had a hound's instinct, and a personal animosity against afox that even embittered his speech. 

Across the valley the fox went as straight as a railway line, andagain we went without a check straight through the woods at the top. Iremember hearing men sing or shout as they walked home from work, andsometimes children whistled; the sounds came up from the village tothe woods at the top of the valley. After that we saw no morevillages, but valley after valley arose and fell before us as thoughwe were voyaging some strange and stormy sea, and all the way beforeus the fox went dead up-wind like the fabulous Flying Dutchman. Therewas no one in sight now but my first whip and me, we had both of usgot on to our second horses as we drew the last covert. 

Two or three times we checked in those great lonely valleys beyond thevillage, but I began to have inspirations, I felt a strange certaintywithin me that this fox was going on straight up-wind till he died oruntil night came and we could hunt no longer, so I reversed ordinarymethods and only cast straight ahead and always we picked up the scentagain at once. I believe that this fox was the last one left in thevilla-haunted lands and that he was prepared to leave them for remoteuplands far from men, that if we had come the following day he wouldnot have been there, and that we just happened to hit off his journey. 

Evening began to descend upon the valleys, still the hounds driftedon, like the lazy but unresting shadows of clouds upon a summer's day, we heard a shepherd calling to his dog, we saw two maidens movetowards a hidden farm, one of them singing softly; no other sounds, but ours, disturbed the leisure and the loneliness of haunts thatseemed not yet to have known the inventions of steam and gun-powder(even as China, they say, in some of her further mountains does notyet know that she has fought Japan). 

And now the day and our horses were wearing out, but that resolute foxheld on. I began to work out the run and to wonder where we were. Thelast landmark I had ever seen before must have been over five milesback and from there to the start was at least ten miles more. If onlywe could kill! Then the sun set. I wondered what chance we had ofkilling our fox. I looked at James' face as he rode beside me. He didnot seem to have lost any confidence yet his horse was as tired asmine. It was a good clear twilight and the scent was as strong asever, and the fences were easy enough, but those valleys were terriblytrying and they still rolled on and on. It looked as if the lightwould outlast all possible endurance both of the fox and the horses, if the scent held good and he did not go to ground, otherwise nightwould end it. For long we had seen no houses and no roads, only chalkslopes with the twilight on them, and here and there some sheep, andscattered copses darkening in the evening. At some moment I seemed torealise all at once that the light was spent and that darkness washovering, I looked at James, he was solemnly shaking his head. Suddenly in a little wooded valley we saw climb over the oaks thered-brown gables of a queer old house, at that instant I saw the foxscarcely heading by fifty yards. We blundered through a wood into fullsight of the house, but no avenue led up to it or even a path nor werethere any signs of wheel-marks anywhere. Already lights shone here andthere in windows. We were in a park, and a fine park, but unkemptbeyond credibility; brambles grew everywhere. It was too dark to seethe fox any more but we knew he was dead beat, the hounds were justbefore us, --and a four-foot railing of oak. I shouldn't have tried iton a fresh horse the beginning of a run, and here was a horse near hislast gasp. But what a run! an event standing out in a lifetime, andthe hounds close up on their fox, slipping into the darkness as Ihesitated. I decided to try it. My horse rose about eight inches andtook it fair with his breast, and the oak log flew into handfuls ofwet decay--it rotten with years. And then we were on a lawn and at thefar end of it the hounds were tumbling over their fox. Fox, hounds andlight were all done together at the of a twenty-mile point. We madesome noise then, but nobody came out of the queer old house. 

I felt pretty stiff as I walked round to the hall door with the maskand the brush while James went with the hounds and the two horses tolook for the stables. I rang a bell marvellously encrusted with rust, and after a long while the door opened a little way revealing a hallwith much old armour in it and the shabbiest butler that I have everknown. 

I asked him who lived there. Sir Richard Arlen. I explained that myhorse could go no further that night and that I wished to ask SirRichard Arlen for a bed for the night. 

"O, no one ever comes here, sir, " said the butler. 

I pointed out that I had come. 

"I don't think it would be possible, sir, " he said. 

This annoyed me and I asked to see Sir Richard, and insisted until hecame. Then I apologised and explained the situation. He looked onlyfifty, but a 'Varsity oar on the wall with the date of the earlyseventies, made him older than that; his face had something of the shylook of the hermit; he regretted that he had not room to put me up. Iwas sure that this was untrue, also I had to be put up there, therewas nowhere else within miles, so I almost insisted. Then to myastonishment he turned to the butler and they talked it over in anundertone. At last they seemed to think that they could manage it, though clearly with reluctance. It was by now seven o' clock and SirRichard told me he dined at half past seven. There was no question ofclothes for me other than those I stood in, as my host was shorter andbroader. He showed me presently to the drawing-room and there hereappeared before half past seven in evening dress and a whitewaistcoat. The drawing-room was large and contained old furniture butit was rather worn than venerable, an Aubusson carpet flapped aboutthe floor, the wind seemed momently to enter the room, and olddraughts haunted corners; the stealthy feet of rats that were never atrest indicated the extent of the ruin that time had wrought in thewainscot; somewhere far off a shutter flapped to and fro, theguttering candles were insufficient to light so large a room. Thegloom that these things suggested was quite in keeping with SirRichard's first remark to me after he entered the room: "I must tellyou, sir, that I have led a wicked life. O, a very wicked life. "

Such confidences from a man much older than oneself after one hasknown him for half an hour are so rare that any possible answer merelydoes not suggest itself. I said rather slowly, "O, really, " andchiefly to forestall another such remark I said "What a charming houseyou have. "

"Yes, " he said, "I have not left it for nearly forty years. Since Ileft the 'Varsity. One is young there, you know, and one hasopportunities; but I make no excuses, no excuses. " And the doorslipping its rusty latch, came drifting on the draught into the room, and the long carpet flapped and the hangings upon the walls, then thedraught fell rustling away and the door slammed to again. 

"Ah, Marianne, " he said, "we have a guest to-night. Mr. Linton. Thisis Marianne Gib. " And everything became clear to me. "Mad, " I said tomyself, for no one had entered the room. 

The rats ran up the length of the room behind the wainscotceaselessly, and the wind unlatched the door again and the folds ofthe carpet fluttered up to our feet and stopped there, for our weightheld it down. 

"Let me introduce Mr. Linton, " said my host--"Lady Mary Errinjer. "

The door slammed back again. I bowed politely. Even had I been invitedI should have humoured him, but it was the very least that anuninvited guest could do. 

This kind of thing happened eleven times, the rustling, and thefluttering of the carpet and the footsteps of the rats, and therestless door, and then the sad voice of my host introducing me tophantoms. Then for some while we waited while I struggled with thesituation; conversation flowed slowly. And again the draught cametrailing up the room, while the flaring candles filled it withhurrying shadows. "Ah, late again, Cicely, " said my host in his soft, mournful way. "Always late, Cicely. " Then I went down to dinner withthat man and his mind and the twelve phantoms that haunted it. I founda long table with fine old silver on it and places laid for fourteen. The butler was now in evening dress, there were fewer draughts in thedining-room, the scene was less gloomy there. "Will you sit next toRosalind at the other end, " Richard said to me. "She always takes thehead of the table, I wronged her most of all. " I said, "I shall bedelighted. "

I looked at the butler closely, but never did I see by any expressionof his face or by anything that he did any suggestion that he waitedupon less than fourteen people in the complete possession of all theirfaculties. Perhaps a dish appeared to be refused more often than takenbut every glass was equally filled with champagne. At first I foundlittle to say, but when Sir Richard speaking from the far end of thetable said, "You are tired, Mr. Linton, " I was reminded that I owedsomething to a host upon whom I had forced myself. It was excellentchampagne and with the help of a second glass I made the effort tobegin a conversation with a Miss Helen Errold for whom the place uponone side of me was laid. It came more easy to me very soon, Ifrequently paused in my monologue, like Mark Anthony, for a reply, andsometimes I turned and spoke to Miss Rosalind Smith. Sir Richard atthe other end talked sorrowfully on, he spoke as a condemned man mightspeak to his judge, and yet somewhat as a judge might speak to onethat he once condemned wrongly. My own mind began to turn to mournfulthings. I drank another glass of champagne, but I was still thirsty. Ifelt as if all the moisture in my body had been blown away over thedowns of Kent by the wind up which we had galloped. Still I was nottalking enough; my host was looking at me. I made another effort, after all I had something to talk about, a twenty-mile point is notoften seen in a lifetime, especially south of the Thames. I began todescribe the run to Rosalind Smith. I could see then that my host waspleased, the sad look in his face gave a kind of a flicker, like mistupon the mountains on a miserable day when a faint puff comes from thesea and the mist would lift if it could. And the butler refilled myglass very attentively. I asked her first if she hunted, and pausedand began my story. I told her where we had found the fox and how fastand straight he had gone, and how I had got through the village bykeeping to the road, while the little gardens and wire, and then theriver, had stopped the rest of the field. I told her the kind ofcountry that we crossed and how splendid it looked in the Spring, andhow mysterious the valleys were as soon as the twilight came, and whata glorious horse I had and how wonderfully he went. I was so fearfullythirsty after the great hunt that I had to stop for a moment now andthen, but I went on with my description of that famous run, for I hadwarmed to the subject, and after all there was nobody to tell of itbut me except my old whipper-in, and "the old fellow's probably drunkby now, " I thought. I described to her minutely the exact spot in therun at which it had come to me clearly that this was going to be thegreatest hunt in the whole history of Kent. Sometimes I forgotincidents that had happened as one well may in a run of twenty miles, and then I had to fill in the gaps by inventing. I was pleased to beable to make the party go off well by means of my conversation, andbesides that the lady to whom I was speaking was extremely pretty: Ido not mean in a flesh and blood kind of way but there were littleshadowy lines about the chair beside me that hinted at an unusuallygraceful figure when Miss Rosalind Smith was alive; and I began toperceive that what I first mistook for the smoke of guttering candlesand a table-cloth waving in the draught was in reality an extremelyanimated company who listened, and not without interest, to my storyof by far the greatest hunt that the world had ever known: indeed Itold them that I would confidently go further and predict that neverin the history of the world would there be such a run again. Only mythroat was terribly dry. And then as it seemed they wanted to hearmore about my horse. I had forgotten that I had come there on a horse, but when they reminded me it all came back; they looked so charmingleaning over the table intent upon what I said, that I told themeverything they wanted to know. Everything was going so pleasantly ifonly Sir Richard would cheer up. I heard his mournful voice every nowand then--these were very pleasant people if only he would take themthe right way. I could understand that he regretted his past, but theearly seventies seemed centuries away and I felt sure that hemisunderstood these ladies, they were not revengeful as he seemed tosuppose. I wanted to show him how cheerful they really were, and so Imade a joke and they an laughed at it, and then I chaffed them a bit, especially Rosalind, and nobody resented it in the very least. Andstill Sir Richard sat there with that unhappy look, like one that hasended weeping because it is vain and has not the consolation even oftears. 

We had been a long time there and many of the candles had burned out, but there was light enough. I was glad to have an audience for myexploit, and being happy myself I was determined Sir Richard shouldbe. I made more jokes and they still laughed good-naturedly; some ofthe jokes were a little broad perhaps but no harm was meant. Andthen--I do not wish to excuse myself--but I had had a harder day thanI ever had had before and without knowing it I must have beencompletely exhausted; in this state the champagne had found me, andwhat would have been harmless at any other time must somehow have gotthe better of me when quite tired out--anyhow I went too far, I madesome joke--I cannot in the least remember what--that suddenly seemedto offend them. I felt all at once a commotion in the air, I looked upand saw that they had all arisen from the table and were sweepingtowards the door: I had not time to open it but it blew open on awind, I could scarcely see what Sir Richard was doing because only twocandles were left, I think the rest blew out when the ladies suddenlyrose. I sprang up to apologise, to assure them--and then fatigueovercame me as it had overcome my horse at the last fence, I clutchedat the table but the cloth came away and then I fell. The fall, andthe darkness on the floor and the pent up fatigue of the day overcameme all three together. 

The sun shone over glittering fields and in at a bedroom window andthousands of birds were chanting to the Spring, and there I was in anold four-poster bed in a quaint old panelled bedroom, fully dressedand wearing long muddy boots; someone had taken my spurs and that wasall. For a moment I failed to realise and then it all came back, myenormity and the pressing need of an abject apology to Sir Richard. Ipulled an embroidered bell rope until the butler came. He came inperfectly cheerful and indescribably shabby. I asked him if SirRichard was up, and he said he had just gone down, and told me to myamazement that it was twelve o'clock. I asked to be shown in to SirRichard at once. He was in his smoking-room. "Good morning, " he saidcheerfully the moment I went in. I went directly to the matter inhand. "I fear that I insulted some ladies in your house--" I began. 

"You did indeed, " he said, "You did indeed. " And then he burst intotears and took me by the hand. "How can I ever thank you?" he said tome then. "We have been thirteen at table for thirty years and I neverdared to insult them because I had wronged them all, and now you havedone it and I know they will never dine here again. " And for a longtime he still held my hand, and then he gave it a grip and a kind of ashake which I took to mean "Goodbye" and I drew my hand away then andleft the house. And I found James in the stables with the hounds andasked him how he had fared, and James, who is a man of very few words, said he could not rightly remember, and I got my spurs from the butlerand climbed on to my horse and slowly we rode away from that queer oldhouse, and slowly we wended home, for the hounds were footsore buthappy and the horses were tired still. And when we recalled that thehunting season was ended we turned our faces to Spring and thought ofthe new things that try to replace the old. And that very year Iheard, and have often heard since, of dances and happier dinners atSir Richard Arlen's house. 

The City on Mallington Moor

Besides the old shepherd at Lingwold whose habits render himunreliable I am probably the only person that has ever seen the cityon Mallington Moor. 

I had decided one year to do no London season; partly because of theugliness of the things in the shops, partly because of the unresistedinvasions of German bands, partly perhaps because some pet parrots inthe oblong where I lived had learned to imitate cab-whistles; butchiefly because of late there had seized me in London a quiteunreasonable longing for large woods and waste spaces, while the verythought of little valleys underneath copses full of bracken andfoxgloves was a torment to me and every summer in London the longinggrew worse till the thing was becoming intolerable. So I took a stickand a knapsack and began walking northwards, starting at Tetheringtonand sleeping at inns, where one could get real salt, and the waiterspoke English and where one had a name instead of a number; and thoughthe tablecloth might be dirty the windows opened so that the air wasclean, where one had the excellent company of farmers and men of thewold, who could not be thoroughly vulgar, because they had not themoney to be so even if they had wished it. At first the novelty wasdelightful, and then one day in a queer old inn up Uthering way, beyond Lingwold, I heard for the first time the rumour of the citysaid to be on Mallington Moor. They spoke of it quite casually overtheir glasses of beer, two farmers at the inn. "They say the queerfolk be at Mallington with their city, " one farmer said. "Travellingthey seem to be, " said the other. And more came in then and the rumourspread. And then, such are the contradictions of our little likes anddislikes and all the whims that drive us, that I, who had come so farto avoid cities, had a great longing all of a sudden for throngs againand the great hives of Man, and then and there determined on thatbright Sunday morning to come to Mallington and there search for thecity that rumour spoke of so strangely. 

Mallington Moor, from all that they said of it, was hardly a likelyplace to find a thing by searching. It was a huge high moor, verybleak and desolate and altogether trackless. It seemed a lonely placefrom what they said. The Normans when they came had called it Mal Lieuand afterwards Mallintown and so it changed to Mallington. Though whata town can ever have had to do with a place so utterly desolate I donot know. And before that some say that the Saxons called it Baplas, which I believe to be a corruption of Bad Place. 

And beyond the mere rumour of a beautiful city all of white marble andwith a foreign look up on Mallington Moor, beyond this I could notget. None of them had seen it himself, "only heard of it like, " and myquestions, rather than stimulating conversation, would always stop itabruptly. I was no more fortunate on the road to Mallington until theTuesday, when I was quite near it; I had been walking two days fromthe inn where I had heard the rumour and could see the great hillsteep as a headland on which Mallington lay, standing up on theskyline: the hill was covered with grass, where anything grew at all, but Mallington Moor is all heather; it is just marked Moor on the map;nobody goes there and they do not trouble to name it. It was therewhere the gaunt hill first came into sight, by the roadside as Ienquired for the marble city of some labourers by the way, that I wasdirected, partly I think in derision, to the old shepherd of Lingwold. It appeared that he, following sometimes sheep that had strayed, andwandering far from Lingwold, came sometimes up to the edge ofMallington Moor, and that he would come back from these excursions andshout through the villages, raving of a city of white marble andgold-tipped minarets. And hearing me asking questions of this citythey had laughed and directed me to the shepherd of Lingwold. Onewell-meant warning they gave me as I went--the old man was notreliable. 

And late that evening I saw the thatches of Lingwold sheltering underthe edge of that huge hill that Atlas-like held up those miles of moorto the great winds and heaven. 

They knew less of the city in Lingwold than elsewhere but they knewthe whereabouts of the man I wanted, though they seemed a littleashamed of him. There was an inn in Lingwold that gave me shelter, whence in the morning, equipped with purchases, I set out to findtheir shepherd. And there he was on the edge of Mallington Moorstanding motionless, gazing stupidly at his sheep; his hands trembledcontinually and his eyes had a blear look, but he was quite sober, wherein all Lingwold had wronged him. 

And then and there I asked him of the city and he said he had neverheard tell of any such place. And I said, "Come, come, you must pullyourself together. " And he looked angrily at me; but when he saw medraw from amongst my purchases a full bottle of whiskey and a bigglass he became more friendly. As I poured out the whiskey I asked himagain about the marble city on Mallington Moor but he seemed quitehonestly to know nothing about it. The amount of whiskey he drank wasquite incredible, but I seldom express surprise and once more I askedhim the way to the wonderful city. His hand was steadier now and hiseyes more intelligent and he said that he had heard something of somesuch city, but his memory was evidently blurred and he was stillunable to give me useful directions. I consequently gave him anothertumbler, which he drank off like the first without any water, andalmost at once he was a different man. The trembling in his handsstopped altogether, his eye became as quick as a younger man's, heanswered my questions readily and frankly, and, what was moreimportant to me still, his old memory became alert and clear for evenminutest details. His gratitude to myself I need not mention, for Imake no pretence that I bought the bottle of whiskey that the oldshepherd enjoyed so much without at least some thought of my ownadvantage. Yet it was pleasant to reflect that it was due to me thathe had pulled himself together and steadied his shaking hand andcleared his mind, recovered his memory and his self-respect. He spoketo me quite clearly, no longer slurring his words; he had seen thecity first one moonlight night when he was lost in the mist on the bigmoor, he had wandered far in the mist, and when it lifted he saw thecity by moonlight. He had no food, but luckily had his flask. Therenever was such a city, not even in books. Travellers talked sometimesof Venice seen from the sea, there might be such a place or theremight not, but, whether or no, it was nothing to the city onMallington Moor. Men who read books had talked to him in his time, hundreds of books, but they never could tell of any city like this. Why, the place was all of marble, roads, walls and palaces, all purewhite marble, and the tops of the tall thin spires were entirely ofgold. And they were queer folk in the city even for foreigners. Andthere were camels, but I cut him short for I thought I could judge formyself, if there was such a place, and, if not, I was wasting my timeas well as a pint of good whiskey. So I got him to speak of the way, and after more circumlocution than I needed and more talk of the cityhe pointed to a tiny track on the black earth just beside us, a littletwisty way you could hardly see. 

I said the moor was trackless; untrodden of man or dog it certainlywas and seemed to have less to do with the ways of man than any wasteI have seen, but the track the old shepherd showed me, if track itwas, was no more than the track of a hare--an elf-path the old mancalled it, Heaven knows what he meant. And then before I left him heinsisted on giving me his flask with the queer strong rum itcontained. Whiskey brings out in some men melancholy, in somerejoicing, with him it was clearly generosity and he insisted until Itook his rum, though I did not mean to drink it. It was lonely upthere, he said, and bitter cold and the city hard to find, being setin a hollow, and I should need the rum, and he had never seen themarble city except on days when he had had his flask: he seemed toregard that rusted iron flask as a sort of mascot, and in the end Itook it. 

I followed that odd, faint track on the black earth under the heathertill I came to the big grey stone beyond the horizon, where the trackdivides into two, and I took the one to the left as the old man toldme. I knew by another stone that I saw far off that I had not lost myway, nor the old man lied. 

And just as I hoped to see the city's ramparts before the gloamingfell on that desolate place, I suddenly saw a long high wall ofwhiteness with pinnacles here and there thrown up above it, floatingtowards me silent and grim as a secret, and knew it for that evilthing the mist. The sun, though low, was shining on every sprig ofheather, the green and scarlet mosses were shining with it too, itseemed incredible that in three minutes' time all those colours wouldbe gone and nothing left all round but a grey darkness. I gave up hopeof finding the city that day, a broader path than mine could have beenquite easily lost. I hastily chose for my bed a thick patch ofheather, wrapped myself in a waterproof cloak, and lay down and mademyself comfortable. And then the mist came. It came like the carefulpulling of lace curtains, then like the drawing of grey blinds; itshut out the horizon to the north, then to the east and west; itturned the whole sky white and hid the moor; it came down on it like ametropolis, only utterly silent, silent and white as tombstones. 

And then I was glad of that strange strong rum, or whatever it was inthe flask that the shepherd gave me, for I did not think that the mistwould clear till night, and I feared the night would be cold. So Inearly emptied the flask; and, sooner than I expected, I fell asleep, for the first night out as a rule one does not sleep at once but iskept awake some while by the little winds and the unfamiliar sound ofthe things that wander at night, and that cry to one another far-offwith their queer, faint voices; one misses them afterwards when onegets to houses again. But I heard none of these sounds in the mistthat evening. 

And then I woke and found that the mist was gone and the sun was justdisappearing under the moor, and I knew that I had not slept for aslong as I thought. And I decided to go on while I could, for I thoughtthat I was not very far from the city. 

I went on and on along the twisty track, bits of the mist came downand filled the hollows but lifted again at once so that I saw my way. The twilight faded as I went, a star appeared, and I was able to seethe track no longer. I could go no further that night, yet before Ilay down to sleep I decided to go and look over the edge of a widedepression in the moor that I saw a little way off. So I left thetrack and walked a few hundred yards, and when I got to the edge thehollow was full of mist all white underneath me. Another star appearedand a cold wind arose, and with the wind the mist flapped away like acurtain. And there was the city. 

Nothing the shepherd had said was the least untrue or evenexaggerated. The poor old man had told the simple truth, there is nota city like it in the world. What he had called thin spires wereminarets, but the little domes on the top were clearly pure gold as hesaid. There were the marble terraces he described and the pure whitepalaces covered with carving and hundreds of minarets. The city wasobviously of the East and yet where there should have been crescentson the domes of the minarets there were golden suns with rays, andwherever one looked one saw things that obscured its origin. I walkeddown to it, and, passing through a wicket gate of gold in a low wallof white marble, I entered the city. The heather went right up to thecity's edge and beat against the marble wall whenever the wind blewit. Lights began to twinkle from high windows of blue glass as Iwalked up the white street, beautiful copper lanterns were lit up andlet down from balconies by silver chains, from doors ajar came thesound of voices singing, and then I saw the men. Their faces wererather grey than black, and they wore beautiful robes of coloured silkwith hems embroidered with gold and some with copper, and sometimespacing down the marble ways with golden baskets hung on each side ofthem I saw the camels of which the old shepherd spoke. 

The people had kindly faces, but, though they were evidently friendlyto strangers, I could not speak with them being ignorant of theirlanguage, nor were the sounds of the syllables they used like anylanguage I had ever heard: they sounded more like grouse. 

When I tried to ask them by signs whence they had come with their citythey would only point to the moon, which was bright and full and wasshining fiercely on those marble ways till the city danced in light. And now there began appearing one by one, slipping softly out throughwindows, men with stringed instruments in the balconies. They werestrange instruments with huge bulbs of wood, and they played softly onthem and very beautifully, and their queer voices softly sang to themusic weird dirges of the griefs of their native land wherever thatmay be. And far off in the heart of the city others were singing too, the sound of it came to me wherever I roamed, not loud enough todisturb my thoughts, but gently turning the mind to pleasant things. Slender carved arches of marble, as delicate almost as lace, crossedand re-crossed the ways wherever I went. There was none of that hurryof which foolish cities boast, nothing ugly or sordid so far as Icould see. I saw that it was a city of beauty and song. I wondered howthey had travelled with all that marble, how they had laid it down onMallington Moor, whence they had come and what their resources were, and determined to investigate closely next morning, for the oldshepherd had not troubled his head to think how the city came, he hadonly noted that the city was there (and of course no one believed him, though that is partly his fault for his dissolute ways). But at nightone can see little and I had walked all day, so I determined to find aplace to rest in. And just as I was wondering whether to ask forshelter of those silk-robed men by signs or whether to sleep outsidethe walls and enter again in the morning, I came to a great archway inone of the marble houses with two black curtains, embroidered belowwith gold, hanging across it. Over the archway were carved apparentlyin many tongues the words: "Here strangers rest. " In Greek, Latin andSpanish the sentence was repeated and there was writing also in thelanguage that you see on the walls of the great temples of Egypt, andArabic and what I took to be early Assyrian and one or two languages Ihad never seen. I entered through the curtains and found a tesselatedmarble court with golden braziers burning sleepy incense swinging bychains from the roof, all round the walls were comfortable mattresseslying upon the floor covered with cloths and silks. It must have beenten o'clock and I was tired. Outside the music still softly filled thestreets, a man had set a lantern down on the marble way, five or sixsat down round him, and he was sonorously telling them a story. Insidethere were some already asleep on the beds, in the middle of the widecourt under the braziers a woman dressed in blue was singing verygently, she did not move, but sung on and on, I never heard a songthat was so soothing. I lay down on one of the mattresses by the wall, which was all inlaid with mosaics, and pulled over me some of thecloths with their beautiful alien work, and almost immediately mythoughts seemed part of the song that the woman was singing in themidst of the court under the golden braziers that hung from the highroof, and the song turned them to dreams, and so I fell asleep. 

A small wind having arisen, I was awakened by a sprig of heather thatbeat continually against my face. It was morning on Mallington Moor, and the city was quite gone. 

Why the Milkman Shudders When He Perceives the Dawn

In the Hall of the Ancient Company of Milkmen round the greatfireplace at the end, when the winter logs are burning and all thecraft are assembled they tell to-day, as their grandfathers toldbefore them, why the milkman shudders when he perceives the dawn. 

When dawn comes creeping over the edges of hills, peers through thetree-trunks making wonderful shadows, touches the tops of tall columnsof smoke going up from awakening cottages in the valleys, and breaksall golden over Kentish fields, when going on tip-toe thence it comesto the walls of London and slips all shyly up those gloomy streets themilkman perceives it and shudders. 

A man may be a Milkman's Working Apprentice, may know what borax isand how to mix it, yet not for that is the story told to him. Thereare five men alone that tell that story, five men appointed by theMaster of the Company, by whom each place is filled as it fallsvacant, and if you do not hear it from one of them you hear the storyfrom no one and so can never know why the milkman shudders when heperceives the dawn. 

It is the way of one of these five men, greybeards all and milkmenfrom infancy, to rub his hands by the fire when the great logs burn, and to settle himself more easily in his chair, perhaps to sip somedrink far other than milk, then to look round to see that none arethere to whom it would not be fitting the tale should be told and, looking from face to face and seeing none but the men of the AncientCompany, and questioning mutely the rest of the five with his eyes, ifsome of the five be there, and receiving their permission, to coughand to tell the tale. And a great hush falls in the Hall of theAncient Company, and something about the shape of the roof and therafters makes the tale resonant all down the hall so that the youngesthears it far away from the fire and knows, and dreams of the day whenperhaps he will tell himself why the milkman shudders when heperceives the dawn. 

Not as one tells some casual fact is it told, nor is it commented onfrom man to man, but it is told by that great fire only and when theoccasion and the stillness of the room and the merit of the wine andthe profit of all seem to warrant it in the opinion of the fivedeputed men: then does one of them tell it, as I have said, notheralded by any master of ceremonies but as though it arose out of thewarmth of the fire before which his knotted hands would chance to be;not a thing learned by rote, but told differently by each teller, anddifferently according to his mood, yet never has one of them dared toalter its salient points, there is none so base among the Company ofMilkmen. The Company of Powderers for the Face know of this story andhave envied it, the Worthy Company of Chin-Barbers, and the Company ofWhiskerers; but none have heard it in the Milkmen's Hall, throughwhose wall no rumour of the secret goes, and though they have inventedtales of their own Antiquity mocks them. 

This mellow story was ripe with honourable years when milkmen worebeaver hats, its origin was still mysterious when smocks were thevogue, men asked one another when Stuarts were on the throne (and onlythe Ancient Company knew the answer) why the milkman shudders when heperceives the dawn. It is all for envy of this tale's reputation thatthe Company of Powderers for the Face have invented the tale that theytoo tell of an evening, "Why the Dog Barks when he hears the step ofthe Baker"; and because probably all men know that tale the Company ofthe Powderers for the Face have dared to consider it famous. Yet itlacks mystery and is not ancient, is not fortified with classicalallusion, has no secret lore, is common to all who care for an idletale, and shares with "The Wars of the Elves, " the Calf-butcher'stale, and "The Story of the Unicorn and the Rose, " which is the taleof the Company of Horse-drivers, their obvious inferiority. 

But unlike all these tales so new to time, and many another that thelast two centuries tell, the tale that the milkmen tell ripples wiselyon, so full of quotation from the profoundest writers, so full ofrecondite allusion, so deeply tinged with all the wisdom of man andinstructive with the experience of all times that they that hear it inthe Milkmen's Hall as they interpret allusion after allusion and traceobscure quotation lose idle curiosity and forget to question why themilkman shudders when he perceives the dawn. 

You also, O my reader, give not yourself up to curiosity. Consider ofhow many it is the bane. Would you to gratify this tear away themystery from the Milkmen's Hall and wrong the Ancient Company ofMilkmen? Would they if all the world knew it and it became a commonthing to tell that tale any more that they have told for the last fourhundred years? Rather a silence would settle upon their hall and auniversal regret for the ancient tale and the ancient winter evenings. And though curiosity were a proper consideration yet even then this isnot the proper place nor this the proper occasion for the Tale. Forthe proper place is only the Milkmen's Hall and the proper occasiononly when logs burn well and when wine has been deeply drunken, thenwhen the candles were burning well in long rows down to the dimness, down to the darkness and mystery that lie at the end of the hall, thenwere you one of the Company, and were I one of the five, would I risefrom my seat by the fireside and tell you with all the embellishmentsthat it has gleaned from the ages that story that is the heirloom ofthe milkmen. And the long candles would burn lower and lower andgutter and gutter away till they liquefied in their sockets, anddraughts would blow from the shadowy end of the hall stronger andstronger till the shadows came after them, and still I would hold youwith that treasured story, not by any wit of mine but all for the sakeof its glamour and the times out of which it came; one by one thecandles would flare and die and, when all were gone, by the light ofominous sparks when each milkman's face looks fearful to his fellow, you would know, as now you cannot, why the milkman shudders when heperceives the dawn. 

The Bad Old Woman in Black

The bad old woman in black ran down the street of the ox-butchers. 

Windows at once were opened high up in those crazy gables; heads werethrust out: it was she. Then there arose the counsel of anxiousvoices, calling sideways from window to window or across to oppositehouses. Why was she there with her sequins and bugles and old blackgown? Why had she left her dreaded house? On what fell errand shehasted?

They watched her lean, lithe figure, and the wind in that old blackdress, and soon she was gone from the cobbled street and under thetown's high gateway. She turned at once to her right and was hid fromthe view of the houses. Then they all ran down to their doors, andsmall groups formed on the pavement; there they took counsel together, the eldest speaking first. Of what they had seen they said nothing, for there was no doubt it was she; it was of the future they spoke, and the future only. 

In what notorious thing would her errand end? What gains had temptedher out from her fearful home? What brilliant but sinful scheme hadher genius planned? Above all, what future evil did this portend? Thusat first it was only questions. And then the old grey-beards spoke, each one to a little group; they had seen her out before, had knownher when she was younger, and had noted the evil things that hadfollowed her goings: the small groups listened well to their low andearnest voices. No one asked questions now or guessed at her infamouserrand, but listened only to the wise old men who knew the things thathad been, and who told the younger men of the dooms that had comebefore. 

Nobody knew how many times she had left her dreaded house; but theoldest recounted all the times that they knew, and the way she hadgone each time, and the doom that had followed her going; and twocould remember the earthquake that there was in the street of theshearers. 

So were there many tales of the times that were, told on the pavementnear the old green doors by the edge of the cobbled street, and theexperience that the aged men had bought with their white hairs mightbe had cheap by the young. But from all their experience only this wasclear, that never twice in their lives had she done the same infamousthing, and that the same calamity twice had never followed her goings. Therefore it seemed that means were doubtful and few for finding outwhat thing was about to befall; and an ominous feeling of gloom camedown on the street of the ox-butchers. And in the gloom grew fears ofthe very worst. This comfort they only had when they put their fearinto words--that the doom that followed her goings had never yet beenanticipated. One feared that with magic she meant to move the moon;and he would have dammed the high tide on the neighbouring coast, knowing that as the moon attracted the sea the sea must attract themoon, and hoping by his device to humble her spells. Another wouldhave fetched iron bars and clamped them across the street, rememberingthe earthquake there was in the street of the shearers. Another wouldhave honoured his household gods, the little cat-faced idols seatedabove his hearth, gods to whom magic was no unusual thing, and, havingpaid their fees and honoured them well, would have put the whole casebefore them. His scheme found favour with many, and yet at last wasrejected, for others ran indoors and brought out their gods, too, tobe honoured, till there was a herd of gods all seated there on thepavement; yet would they have honoured them and put their case beforethem but that a fat man ran up last of all, carefully holding under areverent arm his own two hound-faced gods, though he knew well--as, indeed, all men must--that they were notoriously at war with thelittle cat-faced idols. And although the animosities natural to faithhad all been lulled by the crisis, yet a look of anger had come intothe cat-like faces that no one dared disregard, and all perceived thatif they stayed a moment longer there would be flaming around them thejealousy of the gods; so each man hastily took his idols home, leavingthe fat man insisting that his hound-faced gods should be honoured. 

Then there were schemes again and voices raised in debate, and manynew dangers feared and new plans made. 

But in the end they made no defence against danger, for they knew notwhat it would be, but wrote upon parchment as a warning, and in orderthat all might know: "_The bad old woman in black ran down the streetof the ox-butchers. _"

The Bird of the Difficult Eye

Observant men and women that know their Bond Street well willappreciate my astonishment when in a jewellers' shop I perceived thatnobody was furtively watching me. Not only this but when I even pickedup a little carved crystal to examine it no shop-assistants crowdedround me. I walked the whole length of the shop, still no one politelyfollowed. 

Seeing from this that some extraordinary revolution had occurred inthe jewelry business I went with my curiosity well aroused to a queerold person half demon and half man who has an idol-shop in a byway ofthe City and who keeps me informed of affairs at the Edge of theWorld. And briefly over a pinch of heather incense that he takes byway of snuff he gave me this tremendous information: that Mr. NeepyThang the son of Thangobrind had returned from the Edge of the Worldand was even now in London. 

The information may not appear tremendous to those unacquainted withthe source of jewelry; but when I say that the only thief employed byany West-end jeweller since famous Thangobrind's distressing doom isthis same Neepy Thang, and that for lightness of fingers and swiftnessof stockinged foot they have none better in Paris, it will beunderstood why the Bond Street jewellers no longer cared what becameof their old stock. 

There were big diamonds in London that summer and a few considerablesapphires. In certain astounding kingdoms behind the East strangesovereigns missed from their turbans the heirlooms of ancient wars, and here and there the keepers of crown jewels who had not heard thestockinged feet of Thang, were questioned and died slowly. 

And the jewellers gave a little dinner to Thang at the Hotel GreatMagnificent; the windows had not been opened for five years and therewas wine at a guinea a bottle that you could not tell from champagneand cigars at half a crown with a Havana label. Altogether it was asplendid evening for Thang. 

But I have to tell of a far sadder thing than a dinner at a hotel. Thepublic require jewelry and jewelry must be obtained. I have to tell ofNeepy Thang's last journey. 

That year the fashion was emeralds. A man named Green had recentlycrossed the Channel on a bicycle and the jewellers said that a greenstone would be particularly appropriate to commemorate the event andrecommended emeralds. 

Now a certain money-lender of Cheapside who had just been made a peerhad divided his gains into three equal parts; one for the purchase ofthe peerage, country house and park, and the twenty thousand pheasantsthat are absolutely essential, and one for the upkeep of the position, while the third he banked abroad, partly to cheat the nativetax-gatherer and partly because it seemed to him that the days of thePeerage were few and that he might at any moment be called upon tostart afresh elsewhere. In the upkeep of the position he includedjewelry for his wife and so it came about that Lord Castlenormanplaced an order with two well-known Bond-street jewellers namedMessrs. Grosvenor and Campbell to the extent of £100, 000 for a fewreliable emeralds. 

But the emeralds in stock were mostly small and shop-soiled and NeepyThang had to set out at once before he had had as much as a week inLondon. I will briefly sketch his project. Not many knew it, for wherethe form of business is blackmail the fewer creditors you have thebetter (which of course in various degrees applies at all times). 

On the shores of the risky seas of Shiroora Shan grows one tree onlyso that upon its branches if anywhere in the world there must buildits nest the Bird of the Difficult Eye. Neepy Thang had come by thisinformation, which was indeed the truth, that if the bird migrated toFairyland before the three eggs hatched out they would undoubtedly allturn into emeralds, while if they hatched out first it would be a badbusiness. 

When he had mentioned these eggs to Messrs. Grosvenor and Campbellthey had said, "The very thing": they were men of few words, inEnglish, for it was not their native tongue. 

So Neepy Thang set out. He bought the purple ticket at VictoriaStation. He went by Herne Hill, Bromley and Bickley and passed St. Mary Cray. At Eynsford he changed and taking a footpath along awinding valley went wandering into the hills. And at the top of a hillin a little wood, where all the anemones long since were over and theperfume of mint and thyme from outside came drifting in with Thang, hefound once more the familiar path, age-old and fair as wonder, thatleads to the Edge of the World. Little to him were its sacred memoriesthat are one with the secret of earth, for he was on business, andlittle would they be to me if I ever put them on paper. Let it sufficethat he went down that path going further and further from the fieldswe know, and all the way he muttered to himself, "What if the eggshatch out and it be a bad business!" The glamour that is at all timesupon those lonely lands that lie at the back of the chalky hills ofKent intensified as he went upon his journeys. Queerer and queerergrew the things that he saw by little World-End Path. Many a twilightdescended upon that journey with all their mysteries, many a blaze ofstars; many a morning came flaming up to a tinkle of silvern horns;till the outpost elves of Fairyland came in sight and the glitteringcrests of Fairyland's three mountains betokened the journey's end. Andso with painful steps (for the shores of the world are covered withhuge crystals) he came to the risky seas of Shiroora Shan and saw thempounding to gravel the wreckage of fallen stars, saw them and heardtheir roar, those shipless seas that between earth and the fairies'homes heave beneath some huge wind that is none of our four. And therein the darkness on the grizzly coast, for darkness was swoopingslantwise down the sky as though with some evil purpose, there stoodthat lonely, gnarled and deciduous tree. It was a bad place to befound in after dark, and night descended with multitudes of stars, beasts prowling in the blackness gluttered [See any dictionary, but invain. ] at Neepy Thang. And there on a lower branch within easy reachhe clearly saw the Bird of the Difficult Eye sitting upon the nest forwhich she is famous. Her face was towards those three inscrutablemountains, far-off on the other side of the risky seas, whose hiddenvalleys are Fairyland. Though not yet autumn in the fields we know, itwas close on midwinter here, the moment as Thang knew when those eggshatch out. Had he miscalculated and arrived a minute too late? Yet thebird was even now about to migrate, her pinions fluttered and her gazewas toward Fairyland. Thang hoped and muttered a prayer to those pagangods whose spite and vengeance he had most reason to fear. It seemsthat it was too late or a prayer too small to placate them, for thereand then the stroke of midwinter came and the eggs hatched out in theroar of Shiroora Shan or ever the bird was gone with her difficult eyeand it was a bad business indeed for Neepy Thang; I haven't the heartto tell you any more. 

"'Ere, " said Lord Castlenorman some few weeks later to Messrs. Grosvenor and Campbell, "you aren't 'arf taking your time about thoseemeralds. "

The Long Porter's Tale

There are things that are known only to the long porter of Tong TongTarrup as he sits and mumbles memories to himself in the littlebastion gateway. 

He remembers the war there was in the halls of the gnomes; and how thefairies came for the opals once, which Tong Tong Tarrup has; and theway that the giants went through the fields below, he watching fromhis gateway: he remembers quests that are even yet a wonder to thegods. Who dwells in those frozen houses on the high bare brink of theworld not even he has told me, and he is held to be garrulous. Amongthe elves, the only living things ever seen moving at that awfulaltitude where they quarry turquoise on Earth's highest crag, his nameis a byword for loquacity wherewith they mock the talkative. 

His favourite story if you offer him bash--the drug of which he isfondest, and for which he will give his service in war to the elvesagainst the goblins, or vice-versa if the goblins bring him more--hisfavourite story, when bodily soothed by the drug and mentally fiercelyexcited, tells of a quest undertaken ever so long ago for nothing moremarketable than an old woman's song. 

Picture him telling it. An old man, lean and bearded, and almostmonstrously long, that lolled in a city's gateway on a crag perhapsten miles high; the houses for the most part facing eastward, lit bythe sun and moon and the constellations we know, but one house on thepinnacle looking over the edge of the world and lit by the glimmer ofthose unearthly spaces where one long evening wears away the stars: mylittle offering of bash; a long forefinger that nipped it at once on astained and greedy thumb--all these are in the foreground of thepicture. In the background, the mystery of those silent houses and ofnot knowing who their denizens were, or what service they had at thehands of the long porter and what payment he had in return, andwhether he was mortal. 

Picture him in the gateway of this incredible town, having swallowedmy bash in silence, stretch his great length, lean back, and begin tospeak. 

It seems that one clear morning a hundred years ago, a visitor to TongTong Tarrup was climbing up from the world. He had already passedabove the snow and had set his foot on a step of the earthwardstairway that goes down from Tong Tong Tarrup on to the rocks, whenthe long porter saw him. And so painfully did he climb those easysteps that the grizzled man on watch had long to wonder whether or notthe stranger brought him bash, the drug that gives a meaning to thestars and seems to explain the twilight. And in the end there was nota scrap of bash, and the stranger had nothing better to offer thatgrizzled man than his mere story only. 

It seems that the stranger's name was Gerald Jones, and he alwayslived in London; but once as a child he had been on a Northern moor. It was so long ago that he did not remember how, only somehow or otherhe walked alone on the moor, and all the ling was in flower. There wasnothing in sight but ling and heather and bracken, except, far offnear the sunset, on indistinct hills, there were little vague patchesthat looked like the fields of men. With evening a mist crept up andhid the hills, and still he went walking on over the moor. And then hecame to the valley, a tiny valley in the midst of the moor, whosesides were incredibly steep. He lay down and looked at it through theroots of the ling. And a long, long way below him, in a garden by acottage, with hollyhocks all round her that were taller than herself, there sat an old woman on a wooden chair, singing in the evening. Andthe man had taken a fancy to the song and remembered it after inLondon, and whenever it came to his mind it made him think ofevenings--the kind you don't get in London--and he heard a soft windgoing idly over the moor and the bumble-bees in a hurry, and forgotthe noise of the traffic. And always, whenever he heard men speak ofTime, he grudged to Time most this song. Once afterwards he went tothat Northern moor again and found the tiny valley, but there was noold woman in the garden, and no one was singing a song. And eitherregret for the song that the old woman had sung, on a summer eveningtwenty years away and daily receding, troubled his mind, or else thewearisome work that he did in London, for he worked for a great firmthat was perfectly useless; and he grew old early, as men do incities. And at last, when melancholy brought only regret and theuselessness of his work gained round him with age, he decided toconsult a magician. So to a magician he went and told him histroubles, and particularly he told him how he had heard the song. "Andnow, " he said, "it is nowhere in the world. "

"Of course it is not in the world, " the magician said, "but over theEdge of the World you may easily find it. " And he told the man that hewas suffering from flux of time and recommended a day at the Edge ofthe World. Jones asked what part of the Edge of the World he should goto, and the magician had heard Tong Tong Tarrup well spoken of; so hepaid him, as is usual, in opals, and started at once on the journey. The ways to that town are winding; he took the ticket at VictoriaStation that they only give if they know you: he went past Bleth: hewent along the Hills of Neol-Hungar and came to the Gap of Poy. Allthese are in that part of the world that pertains to the fields weknow; but beyond the Gap of Poy on those ordinary plains, that soclosely resemble Sussex, one first meets the unlikely. A line ofcommon grey hills, the Hills of Sneg, may be seen at the edge of theplain from the Gap of Poy; it is there that the incredible begins, infrequently at first, but happening more and more as you go up thehills. For instance, descending once into Poy Plains, the first thingthat I saw was an ordinary shepherd watching a flock of ordinarysheep. I looked at them for some time and nothing happened, when, without a word, one of the sheep walked up to the shepherd andborrowed his pipe and smoked it--an incident that struck me asunlikely; but in the Hills of Sneg I met an honest politician. Overthese plains went Jones and over the Hills of Sneg, meeting at firstunlikely things, and then incredible things, till he came to the longslope beyond the hills that leads up to the Edge of the World, andwhere, as all guidebooks tell, anything may happen. You might at thefoot of this slope see here and there things that could conceivablyoccur in the fields we know; but soon these disappeared, and thetraveller saw nothing but fabulous beasts, browsing on flowers asastounding as themselves, and rocks so distorted that their shapes hadclearly a meaning, being too startling to be accidental. Even thetrees were shockingly unfamiliar, they had so much to say, and theyleant over to one another whenever they spoke and struck grotesqueattitudes and leered. Jones saw two fir-trees fighting. The effect ofthese scenes on his nerves was very severe; still he climbed on, andwas much cheered at last by the sight of a primrose, the only familiarthing he had seen for hours, but it whistled and skipped away. He sawthe unicorns in their secret valley. Then night in a sinister wayslipped over the sky, and there shone not only the stars, but lesserand greater moons, and he heard dragons rattling in the dark. 

With dawn there appeared above him among its amazing crags the town ofTong Tong Tarrup, with the light on its frozen stairs, a tiny clusterof houses far up in the sky. He was on the steep mountain now: greatmists were leaving it slowly, and revealing, as they trailed away, more and more astonishing things. Before the mist had all gone heheard quite near him, on what he had thought was bare mountain, thesound of a heavy galloping on turf. He had come to the plateau of thecentaurs. And all at once he saw them in the mist: there they were, the children of fable, five enormous centaurs. Had he paused onaccount of any astonishment he had not come so far: he strode on overthe plateau, and came quite near to the centaurs. It is never thecentaurs' wont to notice men; they pawed the ground and shouted to oneanother in Greek, but they said no word to him. Nevertheless theyturned and stared at him when he left them, and when he had crossedthe plateau and still went on, all five of them cantered after to theedge of their green land; for above the high green plateau of thecentaurs is nothing but naked mountains, and the last green thing thatis seen by the mountaineer as he travels to Tong Tong Tarrup is thegrass that the centaurs trample. He came into the snow fields that themountain wears like a cape, its head being bare above it, and stillclimbed on. The centaurs watched him with increasing wonder. 

Not even fabulous beasts were near him now, nor strange demoniactrees--nothing but snow and the clean bare crag above it on which wasTong Tong Tarrup. All day he climbed and evening found him above thesnow-line; and soon he came to the stairway cut in the rock and insight of that grizzled man, the long porter of Tong Tong Tarrup, sitting mumbling amazing memories to himself and expecting in vainfrom the stranger a gift of bash. 

It seems that as soon as the stranger arrived at the bastion gateway, tired though he was, he demanded lodgings at once that commanded agood view of the Edge of the World. But the long porter, that grizzledman, disappointed of his bash, demanded the stranger's story to add tohis memories before he would show him the way. And this is the story, if the long porter has told me the truth and if his memory is stillwhat it was. And when the story was told, the grizzled man arose, and, dangling his musical keys, went up through door after door and by manystairs and led the stranger to the top-most house, the highest roof inthe world, and in its parlour showed him the parlour window. There thetired stranger sat down in a chair and gazed out of the window sheerover the Edge of the World. The window was shut, and in its glitteringpanes the twilight of the World's Edge blazed and danced, partly likeglow-worms' lamps and partly like the sea; it went by rippling, fullof wonderful moons. But the traveller did not look at the wonderfulmoons. For from the abyss there grew with their roots in farconstellations a row of hollyhocks, and amongst them a small greengarden quivered and trembled as scenes tremble in water; higher up, ling in bloom was floating upon the twilight, more and more floated uptill all the twilight was purple; the little green garden low down washung in the midst of it. And the garden down below, and the ling allround it, seemed all to be trembling and drifting on a song. For thetwilight was full of a song that sang and rang along the edges of theWorld, and the green garden and the ling seemed to flicker and ripplewith it as the song rose and fell, and an old woman was singing itdown in the garden. A bumble-bee sailed across from over the Edge ofthe World. And the song that was lapping there against the coasts ofthe World, and to which the stars were dancing, was the same that hehad heard the old woman sing long since down in the valley in themidst of the Northern moor. 

But that grizzled man, the long porter, would not let the strangerstay, because he brought him no bash, and impatiently he shoulderedhim away, himself not troubling to glance through the World'soutermost window, for the lands that Time afflicts and the spaces thatTime knows not are all one to that grizzled man, and the bash that heeats more profoundly astounds his mind than anything man can show himeither in the World we know or over the Edge. And, bitterlyprotesting, the traveller went back and down again to the World. 

 . . . . . 

Accustomed as I am to the incredible from knowing the Edge of theWorld, the story presents difficulties to me. Yet it may be that thedevastation wrought by Time is merely local, and that outside thescope of his destruction old songs are still being sung by those thatwe deem dead. I try to hope so. And yet the more I investigate thestory that the long porter told me in the town of Tong Tong Tarrup themore plausible the alternative theory appears--that that grizzled manis a liar. 

The Loot of Loma

Coming back laden with the loot of Loma, the four tall men lookedearnestly to the right; to the left they durst not, for the precipicethere that had been with them so long went sickly down on to a bank ofclouds, and how much further below that only their fears could say. 

Loma lay smoking, a city of ruin, behind them, all its defenders dead;there was no one left to pursue them, and yet their Indian instinctstold them that all was scarcely well. They had gone three days alongthat narrow ledge: mountain quite smooth, incredible, above them, andprecipice as smooth and as far below. It was chilly there in themountains; at night a stream or a wind in the gloom of the chasm belowthem went like a whisper; the stillness of all things else began towear the nerve--an enemy's howl would have braced them; they began towish their perilous path were wider, they began to wish that they hadnot sacked Loma. 

Had that path been any wider the sacking of Loma must indeed have beenharder for them, for the citizens must have fortified the city butthat the awful narrowness of that ten-league pass of the hills hadmade their crag-surrounded city secure. And at last an Indian hadsaid, "Come, let us sack it. " Grimly they laughed in the wigwams. Onlythe eagles, they said, had ever seen it, its hoard of emeralds and itsgolden gods; and one had said he would reach it, and they answered, "Only the eagles. "

It was Laughing Face who said it, and who gathered thirty braves andled them into Loma with their tomahawks and their bows; there wereonly four left now, but they had the loot of Loma on a mule. They hadfour golden gods, a hundred emeralds, fifty-two rubies, a large silvergong, two sticks of malachite with amethyst handles for holdingincense at religious feasts, four beakers one foot high, each carvedfrom a rose-quartz crystal; a little coffer carved out of twodiamonds, and (had they but known it) the written curse of a priest. It was written on parchment in an unknown tongue, and had been slippedin with the loot by a dying hand. 

From either end of that narrow, terrible ledge the third night wasclosing in; it was dropping down on them from the heights of themountain and slipping up to them out of the abyss, the third nightsince Loma blazed and they had left it. Three more days of trampingshould bring them in triumph home, and yet their instincts said thatall was scarcely well. We who sit at home and draw the blinds and shutthe shutters as soon as night appears, who gather round the fire whenthe wind is wild, who pray at regular seasons and in familiar shrines, know little of the demoniac look of night when it is filled withcurses of false, infuriated gods. Such a night was this. Though in theheights the fleecy clouds were idle, yet the wind was stirringmournfully in the abyss and moaning as it stirred, unhappily at firstand full of sorrow; but as day turned away from that awful path a verydefinite menace entered its voice which fast grew louder and louder, and night came on with a long howl. Shadows repeatedly passed over thestars, and then a mist fell swiftly, as though there were somethingsuddenly to be done and utterly to be hidden, as in very truth therewas. 

And in the chill of that mist the four tall men prayed to theirtotems, the whimsical wooden figures that stood so far away, watchingthe pleasant wigwams; the firelight even now would be dancing overtheir faces, while there would come to their ears delectable tales ofwar. They halted upon the pass and prayed, and waited for any sign. For a man's totem may be in the likeness perhaps of an otter, and aman may pray, and if his totem be placable and watching over his man anoise may be heard at once like the noise that the otter makes, thoughit be but a stone that falls on another stone; and the noise is asign. The four men's totems that stood so far away were in thelikeness of the coney, the bear, the heron, and the lizard. Theywaited, and no sign came. With all the noises of the wind in theabyss, no noise was like the thump that the coney makes, nor thebear's growl, nor the heron's screech, nor the rustle of the lizard inthe reeds. 

It seemed that the wind was saying something over and over again, andthat that thing was evil. They prayed again to their totems, and nosign came. And then they knew that there was some power that nightthat was prevailing against the pleasant carvings on painted poles ofwood with the firelight on their faces so far away. Now it was clearthat the wind was saying something, some very, very dreadful thing ina tongue that they did not know. They listened, but they could nottell what it said. Nobody could have said from seeing their faces howmuch the four tall men desired the wigwams again, desired thecamp-fire and the tales of war and the benignant totems that listenedand smiled in the dusk: nobody could have seen how well they knew thatthis was no common night or wholesome mist. 

When at last no answer came nor any sign from their totems, theypulled out of the bag those golden gods that Loma gave not up exceptin flames and when all her men were dead. They had large ruby eyes andemerald tongues. They set them down upon that mountain pass, thecross-legged idols with their emerald tongues; and having placedbetween them a few decent yards, as it seemed meet there should bebetween gods and men, they bowed them down and prayed in theirdesperate straits in that dank, ominous night to the gods they hadwronged, for it seemed that there was a vengeance upon the hills andthat they would scarce escape, as the wind knew well. And the godslaughed, all four, and wagged their emerald tongues; the Indians sawthem, though the night had fallen and though the mist was low. Thefour tall men leaped up at once from their knees and would have leftthe gods upon the pass but that they feared some hunter of their tribemight one day find them and say of Laughing Face, "He fled and leftbehind his golden gods, " and sell the gold and come with his wealth tothe wigwams and be greater than Laughing Face and his three men. Andthen they would have cast the gods away, down the abyss, with theireyes and their emerald tongues, but they knew that enough already theyhad wronged Loma's gods, and feared that vengeance enough was waitingthem on the hills. So they packed them back in the bag on thefrightened mule, the bag that held the curse they knew nothing of, andso pushed on into the menacing night. Till midnight they plodded onand would not sleep; grimmer and grimmer grew the look of the night, and the wind more full of meaning, and the mule knew and trembled, andit seemed that the wind knew, too, as did the instincts of those fourtall men, though they could not reason it out, try how they would. 

And though the squaws waited long where the pass winds out of themountains, near where the wigwams are upon the plains, the wigwams andthe totems and the fire, and though they watched by day, and for manynights uttered familiar calls, still did they never see those fourtall men emerge out of the mountains any more, even though they prayedto their totems upon their painted poles; but the curse in themystical writing that they had unknown in their bag worked there onthat lonely pass six leagues from the ruins of Loma, and nobody cantell us what it was. 

The Secret of the Sea

In an ill-lit ancient tavern that I know, are many tales of the sea;but not without the wine of Gorgondy, that I had of a private bargainfrom the gnomes, was the tale laid bare for which I had waited of anevening for the greater part of a year. 

I knew my man and listened to his stories, sitting amid the bluster ofhis oaths; I plied him with rum and whiskey and mixed drinks, butthere never came the tale for which I sought, and as a last resort Iwent to the Huthneth Mountains and bargained there all night with thechiefs of the gnomes. 

When I came to the ancient tavern and entered the low-roofed room, bringing the hoard of the gnomes in a bottle of hammered iron, my manhad not yet arrived. The sailors laughed at my old iron bottle, but Isat down and waited; had I opened it then they would have wept andsung. I was well content to wait, for I knew my man had the story, andit was such a one as had profoundly stirred the incredulity of thefaithless. 

He entered and greeted me, and sat down and called for brandy. He wasa hard man to turn from his purpose, and, uncorking my iron bottle, Isought to dissuade him from brandy for fear that when the brandy, bithis throat he should refuse to leave it for any other wine. He liftedhis head and said deep and dreadful things of any man that should dareto speak against brandy. 

I swore that I said nothing against brandy but added that it was oftengiven to children, while Gorgondy was only drunk by men of suchdepravity that they had abandoned sin because all the usual vices hadcome to seem genteel. When he asked if Gorgondy was a bad wine todrink I said that it was so bad that if a man sipped it that was theone touch that made damnation certain. Then he asked me what I had inthe iron bottle, and I said it was Gorgondy; and then he shouted forthe largest tumbler in that ill-lit ancient tavern, and stood up andshook his fist at me when it came, and swore, and told me to fill itwith the wine that I got on that bitter night from the treasure houseof the gnomes. 

As he drank it he told me that he had met men who had spoken againstwine, and that they had mentioned Heaven; and therefore he would notgo there--no, not he; and that once he had sent one of them to Hell, but when he got there he would turn him out, and he had no use formilksops. 

Over the second tumbler he was thoughtful, but still he said no wordof the tale he knew, until I feared that it would never be heard. Butwhen the third glass of that terrific wine had burned its way down hisgullet, and vindicated the wickedness of the gnomes, his reticencewithered like a leaf in the fire, and he bellowed out the secret. 

I had long known that there is in ships a will or way of their own, and had even suspected that when sailors die or abandon their ships atsea, a derelict, being left to her own devices, may seek her own ends;but I had never dreamed by night, or fancied during the day, that theships had a god that they worshipped, or that they secretly slippedaway to a temple in the sea. 

Over the fourth glass of the wine that the gnomes so sinfully brew buthave kept so wisely from man, until the bargain that I had with theirelders all through that autumn night, the sailor told me the story. Ido not tell it as he told it to me because of the oaths that were init; nor is it from delicacy that I refrain from writing these oathsverbatim, but merely because the horror they caused in me at the timetroubles me still whenever I put them on paper, and I continue toshudder until I have blotted them out. Therefore, I tell the story inmy own words, which, if they possess a certain decency that was not inthe mouth of that sailor, unfortunately do not smack, as his did, ofrum and blood and the sea. 

You would take a ship to be a dead thing like a table, as dead as bitsof iron and canvas and wood. That is because you always live on shore, and have never seen the sea, and drink milk. Milk is a more accurseddrink than water. 

What with the captain and what with the man at the wheel, and whatwith the crew, a ship has no fair chance of showing a will of her own. 

There is only one moment in the history of ships, that carry crews onboard, when they act by their own free will. This moment comes whenall the crew are drunk. As the last man falls drunk on to the deck, the ship is free of man, and immediately slips away. She slips away atonce on a new course and is never one yard out in a hundred miles. 

It was like this one night with the Sea-Fancy. Bill Smiles was therehimself, and can vouch for it. Bill Smiles has never told this talebefore for fear that anyone should call him a liar. Nobody dislikesbeing hung as much as Bill Smiles would, but he won't be called aliar. I tell the tale as I heard it, relevancies and irrelevancies, though in my more decent words; and as I made no doubts of the truthof it then, I hardly like to now; others can please themselves. 

It is not often that the whole of a crew is drunk. The crew of theSea-Fancy was no drunkener than others. It happened like this. 

The captain was always drunk. One day a fancy he had that some spiderswere plotting against him, or a sudden bleeding he had from both hisears, made him think that drinking might be bad for his health. Nextday he signed the pledge. He was sober all that morning and all theafternoon, but at evening he saw a sailor drinking a a glass of beer, and a fit of madness seized him, and he said things that seemed bad toBill Smiles. And next morning he made all of them take the pledge. 

For two days nobody had a drop to drink, unless you count water, andon the third morning the captain was quite drunk It stood to reasonthey all had a glass or two then, except the man at the wheel; andtowards evening the man at the wheel could bear it no longer, andseems to have had his glass like all the rest, for the ship's coursewobbled a bit and made a circle or two. Then all of a sudden she wentoff south by east under full canvas till midnight, and never alteredher course. And at midnight she came to the wide wet courts of theTemple in the Sea. 

People who think that Mr. Smiles is drunk often make a great mistake. And people are not the only ones that have made that mistake. Once aship made it, and a lot of ships. It's a mistake to think that oldBill Smiles is drunk just because he can't move. 

Midnight and moonlight and the Temple in the Sea Bill Smiles clearlyremembers, and all the derelicts in the world were there, the oldabandoned ships. The figureheads were nodding to themselves andblinking at the image. The image was a woman of white marble on apedestal in the outer court of the Temple of the Sea: she was clearlythe love of all the man-deserted ships, or the goddess to whom theyprayed their heathen prayers. And as Bill Smiles was watching them, the lips of the figureheads moved; they all began to pray. But all atonce their lips were closed with a snap when they saw that there weremen on the Sea-Fancy. They all came crowding up and nodded and noddedand nodded to see if all were drunk, and that's when they made theirmistake about old Bill Smiles, although he couldn't move. They wouldhave given up the treasuries of the gulfs sooner than let men hear theprayers they said or guess their love for the goddess. It is theintimate secret of the sea. 

The sailor paused. And, in my eagerness to hear what lyrical orblasphemous thing those figureheads prayed by moonlight at midnight inthe sea to the woman of marble who was a goddess to ships, I pressedon the sailor more of my Gorgondy wine that the gnomes so wickedlybrew. 

I should never have done it; but there he was sitting silent while thesecret was almost mine. He took it moodily and drank a glass; and withthe other glasses that he had had he fell a prey to the villainy ofthe gnomes who brew this unbridled wine to no good end. His bodyleaned forward slowly, then fell on to the table, his face beingsideways and full of a wicked smile, and, saying very clearly the oneword, "Hell, " he became silent for ever with the secret he had fromthe sea. 

How Ali Came to the Black Country

Shooshan the barber went to Shep the maker of teeth to discuss thestate of England. They agreed that it was time to send for Ali. 

So Shooshan stepped late that night from the little shop near FleetStreet and made his way back again to his house in the ends of Londonand sent at once the message that brought Ali. 

And Ali came, mostly on foot, from the country of Persia, and it tookhim a year to come; but when he came he was welcome. 

And Shep told Ali what was the matter with England and Shooshan sworethat it was so, and Ali looking out of the window of the little shopnear Fleet Street beheld the ways of London and audibly blessed KingSolomon and his seal. 

When Shep and Shooshan heard the names of King Solomon and his sealboth asked, as they had scarcely dared before, if Ali had it. Alipatted a little bundle of silks that he drew from his inner raiment. It was there. 

Now concerning the movements and courses of the stars and theinfluence on them of spirits of Earth and devils this age has beenrightly named by some The Second Age of Ignorance. But Ali knew. Andby watching nightly, for seven nights in Bagdad, the way of certainstars he had found out the dwelling place of Him they Needed. 

Guided by Ali all three set forth for the Midlands. And by thereverence that was manifest in the faces of Shep and Shooshan towardsthe person of Ali, some knew what Ali carried, while others said thatit was the tablets of the Law, others the name of God, and others thathe must have a lot of money about him. So they passed Slod and Apton. 

And at last they came to the town for which Ali sought, that spot overwhich he had seen the shy stars wheel and swerve away from theirorbits, being troubled. Verily when they came there were no stars, though it was midnight. And Ali said that it was the appointed place. In harems in Persia in the evening when the tales go round it is stilltold how Ali and Shep and Shooshan came to the Black country. 

When it was dawn they looked upon the country and saw how it waswithout doubt the appointed place, even as Ali had said, for the earthhad been taken out of pits and burned and left lying in heaps, andthere were many factories, and they stood over the town and as it wererejoiced. And with one voice Shep and Shooshan gave praise to Ali. 

And Ali said that the great ones of the place must needs be gatheredtogether, and to this end Shep and Shooshan went into the town andthere spoke craftily. For they said that Ali had of his wisdomcontrived as it were a patent and a novelty which should greatlybenefit England. And when they heard how he sought nothing for hisnovelty save only to benefit mankind they consented to speak with Aliand see his novelty. And they came forth and met Ali. 

And Ali spake and said unto them: "O lords of this place; in the bookthat all men know it is written how that a fisherman casting his netinto the sea drew up a bottle of brass, and when he took the stopperfrom the bottle a dreadful genie of horrible aspect rose from thebottle, as it were like a smoke, even to darkening the sky, whereatthe fisherman. . . " And the great ones of that place said: "We haveheard the story. " And Ali said: "What became of that genie after hewas safely thrown back into the sea is not properly spoken of by anysave those that pursue the study of demons and not with certainty byany man, but that the stopper that bore the ineffable seal and bearsit to this day became separate from the bottle is among those thingsthat man may know. " And when there was doubt among the great ones Alidrew forth his bundle and one by one removed those many silks till theseal stood revealed; and some of them knew it for the seal and othersknew it not. 

And they looked curiously at it and listened to Ali, and Ali said:

"Having heard how evil is the case of England, how a smoke hasdarkened the country, and in places (as men say) the grass is black, and how even yet your factories multiply, and haste and noise havebecome such that men have no time for song, I have therefore come atthe bidding of my good friend Shooshan, barber of London, and of Shep, a maker of teeth, to make things well with you. "

And they said: "But where is your patent and your novelty?"

And Ali said: "Have I not here the stopper and on it, as good menknow, the ineffable seal? Now I have learned in Persia how that yourtrains that make the haste, and hurry men to and fro, and yourfactories and the digging of your pits and all the things that areevil are everyone of them caused and brought about by steam. "

"Is it not so?" said Shooshan. 

"It is even so, " said Shep. 

"Now it is clear, " said Ali, "that the chief devil that vexes Englandand has done all this harm, who herds men into cities and will not letthem rest, is even the devil Steam. "

Then the great ones would have rebuked him but one said: "No, let ushear him, perhaps his patent may improve on steam. "

And to them hearkening Ali went on thus: "O Lords of this place, letthere be made a bottle of strong steel, for I have no bottle with mystopper, and this being done let all the factories, trains, digging ofpits, and all evil things soever that may be done by steam be stoppedfor seven days, and the men that tend them shall go free, but thesteel bottle for my stopper I will leave open in a likely place. Nowthat chief devil, Steam, finding no factories to enter into, nor notrains, sirens nor pits prepared for him, and being curious andaccustomed to steel pots, will verily enter one night into the bottlethat you shall make for my stopper, and I shall spring forth from myhiding with my stopper and fasten him down with the ineffable sealwhich is the seal of King Solomon and deliver him up to you that youcast him into the sea. "

And the great ones answered Ali and they said: "But what should wegain if we lose our prosperity and be no longer rich?"

And Ali said: "When we have cast this devil into the sea there willcome back again the woods and ferns and all the beautiful things thatthe world hath, the little leaping hares shall be seen at play, thereshall be music on the hills again, and at twilight ease and quiet andafter the twilight stars. "

And "Verily, " said Shooshan, "there shall be the dance again. "

"Aye, " said Shep, "there shall be the country dance. "

But the great ones spake and said, denying Ali: "We will make no suchbottle for your stopper nor stop our healthy factories or good trains, nor cease from our digging of pits nor do anything that you desire, for an interference with steam would strike at the roots of thatprosperity that you see so plentifully all around us. "

Thus they dismissed Ali there and then from that place where the earthwas torn up and burnt, being taken out of pits, and where factoriesblazed all night with a demoniac glare; and they dismissed with himboth Shooshan, the barber, and Shep, the maker of teeth: so that aweek later Ali started from Calais on his long walk back to Persia. 

And all this happened thirty years ago, and Shep is an old man now andShooshan older, and many mouths have bit with the teeth of Shep (forhe has a knack of getting them back whenever his customers die), andthey have written again to Ali away in the country of Persia withthese words, saying:

"O Ali. The devil has indeed begotten a devil, even that spiritPetrol. And the young devil waxeth, and increaseth in lustihood and isten years old and becoming like to his father. Come therefore and helpus with the ineffable seal. For there is none like Ali. "

And Ali turns where his slaves scatter rose-leaves, letting the letterfall, and deeply draws from his hookah a puff of the scented smoke, right down into his lungs, and sighs it forth and smiles, and lollinground on to his other elbow speaks comfortably and says, "And shall aman go twice to the help of a dog?"

And with these words he thinks no more of England but ponders againthe inscrutable ways of God. 

The Bureau d'Echange de Maux

I often think of the Bureau d'Echange de Maux and the wondrously evilold man that sate therein. It stood in a little street that there isin Paris, its doorway made of three brown beams of wood, the top oneoverlapping the others like the Greek letter _pi_, all the restpainted green, a house far lower and narrower than its neighbours andinfinitely stranger, a thing to take one's fancy. And over the doorwayon the old brown beam in faded yellow letters this legend ran, BureauUniversel d'Echanges de Maux. 

I entered at once and accosted the listless man that lolled on a stoolby his counter. I demanded the wherefore of his wonderful house, whatevil wares he exchanged, with many other things that I wished to know, for curiosity led me; and indeed had it not I had gone at once fromthat shop, for there was so evil a look in that fattened man, in thehang of his fallen cheeks and his sinful eye, that you would have saidhe had had dealings with Hell and won the advantage by sheerwickedness. 

Such a man was mine host; but above all the evil of him lay in hiseyes, which lay so still, so apathetic, that you would have sworn thathe was drugged or dead; like lizards motionless on a wall they lay, then suddenly they darted, and all his cunning flamed up and revealeditself in what one moment before seemed no more than a sleepy andordinary wicked old man. And this was the object and trade of thatpeculiar shop, the Bureau Universel d'Echange de Maux: you paid twentyfrancs, which the old man proceeded to take from me, for admission tothe bureau and then had the right to exchange any evil or misfortunewith anyone on the premises for some evil or misfortune that he "couldafford, " as the old man put it. 

There were four or five men in the dingy ends of that low-ceilingedroom who gesticulated and muttered softly in twos as men who make abargain, and now and then more came in, and the eyes of the flabbyowner of the house leaped up at them as they entered, seemed to knowtheir errands at once and each one's peculiar need, and fell backagain into somnolence, receiving his twenty francs in an almostlifeless hand and biting the coin as though in pure absence of mind. 

"Some of my clients, " he told me. So amazing to me was the trade ofthis extraordinary shop that I engaged the old man in conversation, repulsive though he was, and from his garrulity I gathered thesefacts. He spoke in perfect English though his utterance was somewhatthick and heavy; no language seemed to come amiss to him. He had beenin business a great many years, how many he would not say, and was farolder than he looked. All kinds of people did business in his shop. What they exchanged with each other he did not care except that it hadto be evils, he was not empowered to carry on any other kind ofbusiness. 

There was no evil, he told me, that was not negotiable there; no evilthe old man knew had ever been taken away in despair from his shop. Aman might have to wait and come back again next day, and next day andthe day after, paying twenty francs each time, but the old man had theaddresses of all his clients and shrewdly knew their needs, and soonthe right two met and eagerly exchanged their commodities. "Commodities" was the old man's terrible word, said with a gruesomesmack of his heavy lips, for he took a pride in his business and evilsto him were goods. 

I learned from him in ten minutes very much of human nature, more thanI have ever learned from any other man; I learned from him that aman's own evil is to him the worst thing there is or ever could be, and that an evil so unbalances all men's minds that they always seekfor extremes in that small grim shop. A woman that had no children hadexchanged with an impoverished half-maddened creature with twelve. Onone occasion a man had exchanged wisdom for folly. 

"Why on earth did he do that?" I said. 

"None of my business, " the old man answered in his heavy indolent way. He merely took his twenty francs from each and ratified the agreementin the little room at the back opening out of the shop where hisclients do business. Apparently the man that had parted with wisdomhad left the shop upon the tips of his toes with a happy thoughfoolish expression all over his face, but the other went thoughtfullyaway wearing a troubled and very puzzled look. Almost always it seemedthey did business in opposite evils. 

But the thing that puzzled me most in all my talks with that unwieldyman, the thing that puzzles me still, is that none that had once donebusiness in that shop ever returned again; a man might come day afterday for many weeks, but once do business and he never returned; somuch the old man told me, but when I asked him why, he only mutteredthat he did not know. 

It was to discover the wherefore of this strange thing and for noother reason at all that I determined myself to do business sooner orlater in the little room at the back of that mysterious shop. Idetermined to exchange some very trivial evil for some evil equallyslight, to seek for myself an advantage so very small as scarcely togive Fate as it were a grip, for I deeply distrusted these bargains, knowing well that man has never yet benefited by the marvellous andthat the more miraculous his advantage appears to be the more securelyand tightly do the gods or the witches catch him. In a few days more Iwas going back to England and I was beginning to fear that I should besea-sick: this fear of sea-sickness, not the actual malady but onlythe mere fear of it, I decided to exchange for a suitably little evil. I did not know with whom I should be dealing, who in reality was thehead of the firm (one never does when shopping) but I decided thatneither Jew nor Devil could make very much on so small a bargain asthat. 

I told the old man my project, and he scoffed at the smallness of mycommodity trying to urge me to some darker bargain, but could not moveme from my purpose. And then he told me tales with a somewhat boastfulair of the big business, the great bargains that had passed throughhis hands. A man had once run in there to try and exchange death, hehad swallowed poison by accident and had only twelve hours to live. That sinister old man had been able to oblige him. A client waswilling to exchange the commodity. 

"But what did he give in exchange for death?" I said. 

"Life, " said that grim old man with a furtive chuckle. 

"It must have been a horrible life, " I said. 

"That was not my affair, " the proprietor said, lazily rattlingtogether as he spoke a little pocketful of twenty-franc pieces. 

Strange business I watched in that shop for the next few days, theexchange of odd commodities, and heard strange mutterings in cornersamongst couples who presently rose and went to the back room, the oldman following to ratify. 

Twice a day for a week I paid my twenty francs, watching life with itsgreat needs and its little needs morning and afternoon spread outbefore me in all its wonderful variety. 

And one day I met a comfortable man with only a little need, he seemedto have the very evil I wanted. He always feared the lift was going tobreak. I knew too much of hydraulics to fear things as silly as that, but it was not my business to cure his ridiculous fear. Very few wordswere needed to convince him that mine was the evil for him, he nevercrossed the sea, and I on the other hand could always walk upstairs, and I also felt at the time, as many must feel in that shop, that soabsurd a fear could never trouble me. And yet at times it is almostthe curse of my life. When we both had signed the parchment in thespidery back room and the old man had signed and ratified (for whichwe had to pay him fifty francs each) I went back to my hotel, andthere I saw the deadly thing in the basement. They asked me if I wouldgo upstairs in the lift, from force of habit I risked it, and I heldmy breath all the way and clenched my hands. Nothing will induce me totry such a journey again. I would sooner go up to my room in aballoon. And why? Because if a balloon goes wrong you have a chance, it may spread out into a parachute after it has burst, it may catch ina tree, a hundred and one things may happen, but if the lift fallsdown its shaft you are done. As for sea-sickness I shall never be sickagain, I cannot tell you why except that I know that it is so. 

And the shop in which I made this remarkable bargain, the shop towhich none return when their business is done: I set out for it nextday. Blindfold I could have found my way to the unfashionable quarterout of which a mean street runs, where you take the alley at the end, whence runs the cul de sac where the queer shop stood. A shop withpillars, fluted and painted red, stands on its near side, its otherneighbour is a low-class jeweller's with little silver brooches in thewindow. In such incongruous company stood the shop with beams with itswalls painted green. 

In half an hour I found the cul de sac to which I had gone twice a dayfor the last week, I found the shop with the ugly painted pillars andthe jeweller that sold brooches, but the green house with the threebeams was gone. 

Pulled down, you will say, although in a single night. That can neverbe the answer to the mystery, for the house of the fluted pillarspainted on plaster and the low-class jeweller's shop with its silverbrooches (all of which I could identify one by one) were standing sideby side. 

A Story of Land and Sea

It is written in the first Book of Wonder how Captain Shard of the badship Desperate Lark, having looted the sea-coast city Bombasharna, retired from active life; and resigning piracy to younger men, withthe good will of the North and South Atlantic, settled down with acaptured queen on his floating island. 

Sometimes he sank a ship for the sake of old times but he no longerhovered along the trade-routes; and timid merchants watched for othermen. 

It was not age that caused him to leave his romantic profession; norunworthiness of its traditions, nor gun-shot wound, nor drink; butgrim necessity and force majeure. Five navies were after him. How hegave them the slip one day in the Mediterranean, how he fought withthe Arabs, how a ship's broadside was heard in Lat. 23 N. Long. 4 E. For the first time and the last, with other things unknown toAdmiralties, I shall proceed to tell. 

He had had his fling, had Shard, captain of pirates, and all his merrymen wore pearls in their ear-rings; and now the English fleet wasafter him under full sail along the coast of Spain with a good Northwind behind them. They were not gaining much on Shard's rakish craft, the bad ship Desperate Lark, yet they were closer than was to hisliking, and they interfered with business. 

For a day and a night they had chased him, when off Cape St. Vincentat about six a. M. Shard took that step that decided his retirementfrom active life, he turned for the Mediterranean. Had he held onSouthwards down the African coast it is doubtful whether in face ofthe interference of England, Russia, France, Denmark and Spain, hecould have made piracy pay; but in turning for the Mediterranean hetook what we may call the penultimate step of his life which meant forhim settling down. There were three great courses of action inventedby Shard in his youth, upon which he pondered by day and brooded bynight, consolations in all his dangers, secret even from his men, three means of escape as he hoped from any peril that might meet himon the sea. One of these was the floating island that the Book ofWonder tells of, another was so fantastic that we may doubt if eventhe brilliant audacity of Shard could ever have found it practicable, at least he never tried it so far as is known in that tavern by thesea in which I glean my news, and the third he determined on carryingout as he turned that morning for the Mediterranean. True he might yethave practised piracy in spite of the step that he took, a littlelater when the seas grew quiet, but that penultimate step was likethat small house in the country that the business man has his eye on, like some snug investment put away for old age, there are certainfinal courses in men's lives which after taking they never go back tobusiness. 

He turned then for the Mediterranean with the English fleet behindhim, and his men wondered. 

What madness was this, --muttered Bill the Boatswain in Old Frank'sonly ear, with the French fleet waiting in the Gulf of Lyons and theSpaniards all the way between Sardinia and Tunis: for they knew theSpaniards' ways. And they made a deputation and waited upon CaptainShard, all of them sober and wearing their costly clothes, and theysaid that the Mediterranean was a trap, and all he said was that theNorth wind should hold. And the crew said they were done. 

So they entered the Mediterranean and the English fleet came up andclosed the straits. And Shard went tacking along the Moroccan coastwith a dozen frigates behind him. And the North wind grew in strength. And not till evening did he speak to his crew, and then he gatheredthem all together except the man at the helm, and politely asked themto come down to the hold. And there he showed them six immense steelaxles and a dozen low iron wheels of enormous width which none hadseen before; and he told his crew how all unknown to the world hiskeel had been specially fitted for these same axles and wheels, andhow he meant soon to sail to the wide Atlantic again, though not bythe way of the straits. And when they heard the name of the Atlanticall his merry men cheered, for they looked on the Atlantic as a widesafe sea. 

And night came down and Captain Shard sent for his diver. With the seagetting up it was hard work for the diver, but by midnight things weredone to Shard's satisfaction, and the diver said that of all the jobshe had done--but finding no apt comparison, and being in need of adrink, silence fell on him and soon sleep, and his comrades carriedhim away to his hammock. All the next day the chase went on with theEnglish well in sight, for Shard had lost time overnight with hiswheels and axles, and the danger of meeting the Spaniards increasedevery hour; and evening came when every minute seemed dangerous, yetthey still went tacking on towards the East where they knew theSpaniards must be. 

And at last they sighted their topsails right ahead, and still Shardwent on. It was a close thing, but night was coming on, and the UnionJack which he hoisted helped Shard with the Spaniards for the last fewanxious minutes, though it seemed to anger the English, but as Shardsaid, "There's no pleasing everyone, " and then the twilight shiveredinto darkness. 

"Hard to starboard, " said Captain Shard. 

The North wind which had risen all day was now blowing a gale. I donot know what part of the coast Shard steered for, but Shard knew, forthe coasts of the world were to him what Margate is to some of us. 

At a place where the desert rolling up from mystery and from death, yea, from the heart of Africa, emerges upon the sea, no less grandthan her, no less terrible, even there they sighted the land quiteclose, almost in darkness. Shard ordered every man to the hinder partof the ship and all the ballast too; and soon the Desperate Lark, herprow a little high out of the water, doing her eighteen knots beforethe wind, struck a sandy beach and shuddered, she heeled over alittle, then righted herself, and slowly headed into the interior ofAfrica. 

The men would have given three cheers, but after the first Shardsilenced them and, steering the ship himself, he made them a shortspeech while the broad wheels pounded slowly over the African sand, doing barely five knots in a gale. The perils of the sea he said hadbeen greatly exaggerated. Ships had been sailing the sea for hundredsof years and at sea you knew what to do, but on land this wasdifferent. They were on land now and they were not to forget it. Atsea you might make as much noise as you pleased and no harm was done, but on land anything might happen. One of the perils of the land thathe instanced was that of hanging. For every hundred men that they hungon land, he said, not more than twenty would be hung at sea. The menwere to sleep at their guns. They would not go far that night; for therisk of being wrecked at night was another danger peculiar to theland, while at sea you might sail from set of sun till dawn: yet itwas essential to get out of sight of the sea for if anyone knew theywere there they'd have cavalry after them. And he had sent backSmerdrak (a young lieutenant of pirates) to cover their tracks wherethey came up from the sea. And the merry men vigorously nodded theirheads though they did not dare to cheer, and presently Smerdrak camerunning up and they threw him a rope by the stern. And when they haddone fifteen knots they anchored, and Captain Shard gathered his menabout him and, standing by the land-wheel in the bows, under the largeand clear Algerian stars, he explained his system of steering. Therewas not much to be said for it, he had with considerable ingenuitydetached and pivoted the portion of the keel that held the leadingaxle and could move it by chains which were controlled from theland-wheel, thus the front pair of wheels could be deflected at will, but only very slightly, and they afterwards found that in a hundredyards they could only turn their ship four yards from her course. Butlet not captains of comfortable battleships, or owners even of yachts, criticise too harshly a man who was not of their time and who knew notmodern contrivances; it should be remembered also that Shard was nolonger at sea. His steering may have been clumsy but he did what hecould. 

When the use and limitations of his land-wheel had been made clear tohis men, Shard bade them all turn in except those on watch. Longbefore dawn he woke them and by the very first gleam of light they gottheir ship under way, so that when those two fleets that had made sosure of Shard closed in like a great crescent on the Algerian coastthere was no sign to see of the Desperate Lark either on sea or land;and the flags of the Admiral's ship broke out into a hearty Englishoath. 

The gale blew for three days and, Shard using more sail by daylight, they scudded over the sands at little less than ten knots, though onthe report of rough water ahead (as the lookout man called rocks, lowhills or uneven surface before he adapted himself to his newsurroundings) the rate was much decreased. Those were long summer daysand Shard who was anxious while the wind held good to outpace therumour of his own appearance sailed for nineteen hours a day, lying toat ten in the evening and hoisting sail again at three a. M. When itfirst began to be light. 

In those three days he did five hundred miles; then the wind droppedto a breeze though it still blew from the North, and for a week theydid no more than two knots an hour. The merry men began to murmurthen. Luck had distinctly favoured Shard at first for it sent him atten knots through the only populous districts well ahead of crowdsexcept those who chose to run, and the cavalry were away on a localraid. As for the runners they soon dropped off when Shard pointed hiscannon though he did not dare to fire, up there near the coast; formuch as he jeered at the intelligence of the English and SpanishAdmirals in not suspecting his manoeuvre, the only one as he said thatwas possible in the circumstances, yet he knew that cannon had anobvious sound which would give his secret away to the weakest mind. Certainly luck had befriended him, and when it did so no longer hemade out of the occasion all that could be made; for instance whilethe wind held good he had never missed opportunities to revictual, ifhe passed by a village its pigs and poultry were his, and whenever hepassed by water he filled his tanks to the brim, and now that he couldonly do two knots he sailed all night with a man and a lantern beforehim: thus in that week he did close on four hundred miles whileanother man would have anchored at night and have missed five or sixhours out of the twenty-four. Yet his men murmured. Did he think thewind would last for ever, they said. And Shard only smoked. It wasclear that he was thinking, and thinking hard. "But what is hethinking about?" said Bill to Bad Jack. And Bad Jack answered: "He maythink as hard as he likes but thinking won't get us out of the Saharaif this wind were to drop. "

And towards the end of that week Shard went to his chart-room and laida new course for his ship a little to the East and towardscultivation. And one day towards evening they sighted a village, andtwilight came and the wind dropped altogether. Then the murmurs of themerry men grew to oaths and nearly to mutiny. "Where were they now?"they asked, and were they being treated like poor honest men?

Shard quieted them by asking what they wished to do themselves andwhen no one had any better plan than going to the villagers and sayingthat they had been blown out of their course by a storm, Shardunfolded his scheme to them. Long ago he had heard how they drovecarts with oxen in Africa, oxen were very numerous in these partswherever there was any cultivation, and for this reason when the windhad begun to drop he had laid his course for the village: that nightthe moment it was dark they were to drive off fifty yoke of oxen; bymidnight they must all be yoked to the bows and then away they wouldgo at a good round gallop. 

So fine a plan as this astonished the men and they all apologised fortheir want of faith in Shard, shaking hands with him every one andspitting on their hands before they did so in token of good will. 

The raid that night succeeded admirably, but ingenious as Shard was onland, and a past-master at sea, yet it must be admitted that lack ofexperience in this class of seamanship led him to make a mistake, aslight one it is true, and one that a little practice would haveprevented altogether: the oxen could not gallop. Shard swore at them, threatened them with his pistol, said they should have no food, andall to no avail: that night and as long as they pulled the bad shipDesperate Lark they did one knot an hour and no more. Shard's failureslike everything that came his way were used as stones in the edificeof his future success, he went at once to his chart-room and workedout all his calculations anew. 

The matter of the oxen's pace made pursuit impossible to avoid. Shardtherefore countermanded his order to his lieutenant to cover thetracks in the sand, and the Desperate Lark plodded on into the Saharaon her new course trusting to her guns. 

The village was not a large one and the little crowd that was sightedastern next morning disappeared after the first shot from the cannonin the stern. At first Shard made the oxen wear rough iron bits, another of his mistakes, and strong bits too. "For if they run away, "he had said, "we might as well be driving before a gale and there's nosaying where we'd find ourselves, " but after a day or two he foundthat the bits were no good and, like the practical man he was, immediately corrected his mistake. 

And now the crew sang merry songs all day bringing out mandolins andclarionets and cheering Captain Shard. All were jolly except thecaptain himself whose face was moody and perplexed; he alone expectedto hear more of those villagers; and the oxen were drinking up thewater every day, he alone feared that there was no more to be had, anda very unpleasant fear that is when your ship is becalmed in a desert. For over a week they went on like this doing ten knots a day and themusic and singing got on the captain's nerves, but he dared not tellhis men what the trouble was. And then one day the oxen drank up thelast of the water. And Lieutenant Smerdrak came and reported the fact. 

"Give them rum, " said Shard, and he cursed the oxen. "What is goodenough for me, " he said, "should be good enough for them, " and heswore that they should have rum. 

"Aye, aye, sir, " said the young lieutenant of pirates. 

Shard should not be judged by the orders he gave that day, for nearlya fortnight he had watched the doom that was coming slowly towardshim, discipline cut him off from anyone that might have shared hisfear and discussed it, and all the while he had had to navigate hisship, which even at sea is an arduous responsibility. These things hadfretted the calm of that clear judgment that had once baffled fivenavies. Therefore he cursed the oxen and ordered them rum, andSmerdrak had said "Aye, aye, sir, " and gone below. 

Towards sunset Shard was standing on the poop, thinking of death; itwould not come to him by thirst; mutiny first, he thought. The oxenwere refusing rum for the last time, and the men were beginning to eyeCaptain Shard in a very ominous way, not muttering, but each manlooking at him with a sidelong look of the eye as though there wereonly one thought among them all that had no need of words. A score ofgeese like a long letter "V" were crossing the evening sky, theyslanted their necks and all went twisting downwards somewhere aboutthe horizon. Captain Shard rushed to his chart-room, and presently themen came in at the door with Old Frank in front looking awkward andtwisting his cap in his hand. 

"What is it?" said Shard as though nothing were wrong. 

Then Old Frank said what he had come to say: "We want to know what yoube going to do. "

And the men nodded grimly. 

"Get water for the oxen, " said Captain Shard, "as the swine won't haverum, and they'll have to work for it, the lazy beasts. Up anchor!"

And at the word water a look came into their faces like when somewanderer suddenly thinks of home. 

"Water!" they said. 

"Why not?" said Captain Shard. And none of them ever knew that but forthose geese, that slanted their necks and suddenly twisted downwards, they would have found no water that night nor ever after, and theSahara would have taken them as she has taken so many and shall takeso many more. All that night they followed their new course: at dawnthey found an oasis and the oxen drank. 

And here, on this green acre or so with its palm-trees and its well, beleaguered by thousands of miles of desert and holding out throughthe ages, here they decided to stay: for those who have been withoutwater for a while in one of Africa's deserts come to have for thatsimple fluid such a regard as you, O reader, might not easily credit. And here each man chose a site where he would build his hut, andsettle down, and marry perhaps, and even forget the sea; when CaptainShard having filled his tanks and barrels peremptorily ordered them toweigh anchor. There was much dissatisfaction, even some grumbling, butwhen a man has twice saved his fellows from death by the sheerfreshness of his mind they come to have a respect for his judgmentthat is not shaken by trifles. It must be remembered that in theaffair of the dropping of the wind and again when they ran out ofwater these men were at their wits' end: so was Shard on the lastoccasion, but that they did not know. All this Shard knew, and hechose this occasion to strengthen the reputation that he had in theminds of the men of that bad ship by explaining to them his motives, which usually he kept secret. The oasis he said must be a port of callfor all the travellers within hundreds of miles: how many men did yousee gathered together in any part of the world where there was a dropof whiskey to be had! And water here was rarer than whiskey in decentcountries and, such was the peculiarity of the Arabs, even moreprecious. Another thing he pointed out to them, the Arabs were asingularly inquisitive people and if they came upon a ship in thedesert they would probably talk about it; and the world having awickedly malicious tongue would never construe in its proper lighttheir difference with the English and Spanish fleets, but would merelyside with the strong against the weak. 

And the men sighed, and sang the capstan song and hoisted the anchorand yoked the oxen up, and away they went doing their steady knot, which nothing could increase. It may be thought strange that with allsail furled in dead calm and while the oxen rested they should havecast anchor at all. But custom is not easily overcome and longsurvives its use. Rather enquire how many such useless customs weourselves preserve: the flaps for instance to pull up the tops ofhunting-boots though the tops no longer pull up, the bows on ourevening shoes that neither tie nor untie. They said they felt saferthat way and there was an end of it. 

Shard lay a course of South by West and they did ten knots that day, the next day they did seven or eight and Shard hove to. Here heintended to stop, they had huge supplies of fodder on board for theoxen, for his men he had a pig or so, plenty of poultry, several sacksof biscuits and ninety-eight oxen (for two were already eaten), andthey were only twenty miles from water. Here he said they would staytill folks forgot their past, someone would invent something or somenew thing would turn up to take folks' minds off them and the ships hehad sunk: he forgot that there are men who are well paid to remember. 

Half way between him and the oasis he established a little depot wherehe buried his water-barrels. As soon as a barrel was empty he senthalf a dozen men to roll it by turns to the depot. This they would doat night, keeping hid by day, and next night they would push on to theoasis, fill the barrel and roll it back. Thus only ten miles away hesoon had a store of water, unknown to the thirstiest native of Africa, from which he could safely replenish his tanks at will. He allowed hismen to sing and even within reason to light fires. Those were jollynights while the rum held out; sometimes they saw gazelles watchingthem curiously, sometimes a lion went by over the sand, the sound ofhis roar added to their sense of the security of their ship; all roundthem level, immense lay the Sahara: "This is better than an Englishprison, " said Captain Shard. 

And still the dead calm lasted, not even the sand whispered at nightto little winds; and when the rum gave out and it looked like trouble, Shard reminded them what little use it had been to them when it wasall they had and the oxen wouldn't look at it. 

And the days wore on with singing, and even dancing at times, and atnights round a cautious fire in a hollow of sand with only one man onwatch they told tales of the sea. It was all a relief after arduouswatches and sleeping by the guns, a rest to strained nerves and eyes;and all agreed, for all that they missed their rum, that the bestplace for a ship like theirs was the land. 

This was in Latitude 23 North, Longitude 4 East, where, as I havesaid, a ship's broadside was heard for the first time and the last. Ithappened this way. 

They had been there several weeks and had eaten perhaps ten or a dozenoxen and all that while there had been no breath of wind and they hadseen no one: when one morning about two bells when the crew were atbreakfast the lookout man reported cavalry on the port side. Shard whohad already surrounded his ship with sharpened stakes ordered all hismen on board, the young trumpeter who prided himself on having pickedup the ways of the land, sounded "Prepare to receive cavalry". Shardsent a few men below with pikes to the lower port-holes, two morealoft with muskets, the rest to the guns, he changed the "grape" or"canister" with which the guns were loaded in case of surprise, forshot, cleared the decks, drew in ladders, and before the cavalry camewithin range everything was ready for them. The oxen were always yokedin order that Shard could manoeuvre his ship at a moment's notice. 

When first sighted the cavalry were trotting but they were coming onnow at a slow canter. Arabs in white robes on good horses. Shardestimated that there were two or three hundred of them. At sixty yardsShard opened with one gun, he had had the distance measured, but hadnever practised for fear of being heard at the oasis: the shot wenthigh. The next one fell short and ricochetted over the Arabs' heads. Shard had the range then and by the time the ten remaining guns of hisbroadside were given the same elevation as that of his second gun theArabs had come to the spot where the last shot pitched. The broadsidehit the horses, mostly low, and ricochetted on amongst them; onecannon-ball striking a rock at the horses' feet shattered it and sentfragments flying amongst the Arabs with the peculiar scream of thingsset free by projectiles from their motionless harmless state, and thecannon-ball went on with them with a great howl, this shot alonekilled three men. 

"Very satisfactory, " said Shard rubbing his chin. "Load with grape, "he added sharply. 

The broadside did not stop the Arabs nor even reduce their speed butthey crowded in closer together as though for company in their time ofdanger, which they should not have done. They were four hundred yardsoff now, three hundred and fifty; and then the muskets began, for thetwo men in the crow's-nest had thirty loaded muskets besides a fewpistols, the muskets all stood round them leaning against the rail;they picked them up and fired them one by one. Every shot told, butstill the Arabs came on. They were galloping now. It took some time toload the guns in those days. Three hundred yards, two hundred andfifty, men dropping all the way, two hundred yards; Old Frank for allhis one ear had terrible eyes; it was pistols now, they had fired alltheir muskets; a hundred and fifty; Shard had marked the fifties withlittle white stones. Old Frank and Bad Jack up aloft felt prettyuneasy when they saw the Arabs had come to that little white stone, they both missed their shots. 

"All ready?" said Captain Shard. 

"Aye, aye, sir, " said Smerdrak. 

"Right, " said Captain Shard raising a finger. 

A hundred and fifty yards is a bad range at which to be caught bygrape (or "case" as we call it now), the gunners can hardly miss andthe charge has time to spread. Shard estimated afterwards that he gotthirty Arabs by that broadside alone and as many horses. 

There were close on two hundred of them still on their horses, yet thebroadside of grape had unsettled them, they surged round the ship butseemed doubtful what to do. They carried swords and scimitars in theirhands, though most had strange long muskets slung behind them, a fewunslung them and began firing wildly. They could not reach Shard'smerry men with their swords. Had it not been for that broadside thattook them when it did they might have climbed up from their horses andcarried the bad ship by sheer force of numbers, but they would havehad to have been very steady, and the broadside spoiled all that. Their best course was to have concentrated all their efforts insetting fire to the ship but this they did not attempt. Part of themswarmed all round the ship brandishing their swords and looking vainlyfor an easy entrance; perhaps they expected a door, they were notsea-faring people; but their leaders were evidently set on driving offthe oxen not dreaming that the Desperate Lark had other means oftravelling. And this to some extent they succeeded in doing. Thirtythey drove off, cutting the traces, twenty they killed on the spotwith their scimitars though the bow gun caught them twice as they didtheir work, and ten more were unluckily killed by Shard's bow gun. Before they could fire a third time from the bows they all gallopedaway, firing back at the oxen with their muskets and killing threemore, and what troubled Shard more than the loss of his oxen was theway that they manoeuvred, galloping off just when the bow gun wasready and riding off by the port bow where the broadside could not getthem, which seemed to him to show more knowledge of guns than theycould have learned on that bright morning. What, thought Shard tohimself, if they should bring big guns against the Desperate Lark! Andthe mere thought of it made him rail at Fate. But the merry men allcheered when they rode away. Shard had only twenty-two oxen left, andthen a score or so of the Arabs dismounted while the rest rode furtheron leading their horses. And the dismounted men lay down on the portbow behind some rocks two hundred yards away and began to shoot at theoxen. Shard had just enough of them left to manoeuvre his ship with aneffort and he turned his ship a few points to the starboard so as toget a broadside at the rocks. But grape was of no use here as the onlyway he could get an Arab was by hitting one of the rocks with shotbehind which an Arab was lying, and the rocks were not easy to hitexcept by chance, and as often as he manoeuvred his ship the Arabschanged their ground. This went on all day while the mounted Arabshovered out of range watching what Shard would do; and all the whilethe oxen were growing fewer, so good a mark were they, until only tenwere left, and the ship could manoeuvre no longer. But then they allrode off. 

The merry men were delighted, they calculated that one way and anotherthey had unhorsed a hundred Arabs and on board there had been no morethan one man wounded: Bad Jack had been hit in the wrist; probably bya bullet meant for the men at the guns, for the Arabs were firinghigh. They had captured a horse and had found quaint weapons on thebodies of the dead Arabs and an interesting kind of tobacco. It wasevening now and they talked over the fight, made jokes about theirluckier shots, smoked their new tobacco and sang; altogether it wasthe jolliest evening they'd had. But Shard alone on the quarter-deckpaced to and fro pondering, brooding and wondering. He had chopped offBad Jack's wounded hand and given him a hook out of store, for captaindoes doctor upon these occasions and Shard, who was ready for mostthings, kept half a dozen or so of neat new limbs, and of course achopper. Bad Jack had gone below swearing a little and said he'd liedown for a bit, the men were smoking and singing on the sand, andShard was there alone. The thought that troubled Shard was: what wouldthe Arabs do? They did not look like men to go away for nothing. Andat back of all his thoughts was one that reiterated guns, guns, guns. He argued with himself that they could not drag them all that way onthe sand, that the Desperate Lark was not worth it, that they hadgiven it up. Yet he knew in his heart that that was what they woulddo. He knew there were fortified towns in Africa, and as for its beingworth it, he knew that there was no pleasant thing left now to thosedefeated men except revenge, and if the Desperate Lark had come overthe sand why not guns? He knew that the ship could never hold outagainst guns and cavalry, a week perhaps, two weeks, even three: whatdifference did it make how long it was, and the men sang:

 Away we go, Oho, Oho, Oho, A drop of rum for you and me And the world's as round as the letter O And round it runs the sea. 

A melancholy settled down on Shard. 

About sunset Lieutenant Smerdrak came up for orders. Shard ordered atrench to be dug along the port side of the ship. The men wanted tosing and grumbled at having to dig, especially as Shard nevermentioned his fear of guns, but he fingered his pistols and in the endShard had his way. No one on board could shoot like Captain Shard. That is often the way with captains of pirate ships, it is a difficultposition to hold. Discipline is essential to those that have the rightto fly the skull-and-cross-bones, and Shard was the man to enforce it. It was starlight by the time the trench was dug to the captain'ssatisfaction and the men that it was to protect when the worst came tothe worst swore all the time as they dug. And when it was finishedthey clamoured to make a feast on some of the killed oxen, and thisShard let them do. And they lit a huge fire for the first time, burning abundant scrub, they thinking that Arabs daren't return, Shardknowing that concealment was now useless. All that night they feastedand sang, and Shard sat up in his chart-room making his plans. 

When morning came they rigged up the cutter as they called thecaptured horse and told off her crew. As there were only two men thatcould ride at all these became the crew of the cutter. Spanish Dickand Bill the Boatswain were the two. 

Shard's orders were that turn and turn about they should take commandof the cutter and cruise about five miles off to the North East allthe day but at night they were to come in. And they fitted the horseup with a flagstaff in front of the saddle so that they could signalfrom her, and carried an anchor behind for fear she should run away. 

And as soon as Spanish Dick had ridden off Shard sent some men to rollall the barrels back from the depot where they were buried in thesand, with orders to watch the cutter all the time and, if shesignalled, to return as fast as they could. 

They buried the Arabs that day, removing their water-bottles and anyprovisions they had, and that night they got all the water-barrels in, and for days nothing happened. One event of extraordinary importancedid indeed occur, the wind got up one day, but it was due South, andas the oasis lay to the North of them and beyond that they might pickup the camel track Shard decided to stay where he was. If it hadlooked to him like lasting Shard might have hoisted sail but it itdropped at evening as he knew it would, and in any case it was not thewind he wanted. And more days went by, two weeks without a breeze. Thedead oxen would not keep and they had had to kill three more, therewere only seven left now. 

Never before had the men been so long without rum. And Captain Shardhad doubled the watch besides making two more men sleep at the guns. They had tired of their simple games, and most of their songs, andtheir tales that were never true were no longer new. And then one daythe monotony of the desert came down upon them. 

There is a fascination in the Sahara, a day there is delightful, aweek is pleasant, a fortnight is a matter of opinion, but it wasrunning into months. The men were perfectly polite but the boatswainwanted to know when Shard thought of moving on. It was an unreasonablequestion to ask of the captain of any ship in a dead calm in a desert, but Shard said he would set a course and let him know in a day or two. And a day or two went by over the monotony of the Sahara, who formonotony is unequalled by all the parts of the earth. Great marshescannot equal it, nor plains of grass nor the sea, the Sahara alonelies unaltered by the seasons, she has no altering surface, no flowersto fade or grow, year in year out she is changeless for hundreds andhundreds of miles. And the boatswain came again and took off his capand asked Captain Shard to be so kind as to tell them about his newcourse. Shard said he meant to stay until they had eaten three more ofthe oxen as they could only take three of them in the hold, there wereonly six left now. But what if there was no wind, the boatswain said. And at that moment the faintest breeze from the North ruffled theboatswain's forelock as he stood with his cap in his hand. 

"Don't talk about the wind to _me_, " said Captain Shard: and Bill wasa little frightened for Shard's mother had been a gipsy. 

But it was only a breeze astray, a trick of the Sahara. And anotherweek went by and they ate two more oxen. 

They obeyed Captain Shard ostentatiously now but they wore ominouslooks. Bill came again and Shard answered him in Romany. 

Things were like this one hot Sahara morning when the cuttersignalled. The lookout man told Shard and Shard read the message, "Cavalry astern" it read, and then a little later she signalled, "Withguns. "

"Ah, " said Captain Shard. 

One ray of hope Shard had; the flags on the cutter fluttered. For thefirst time for five weeks a light breeze blew from the North, verylight, you hardly felt it. Spanish Dick rode in and anchored his horseto starboard and the cavalry came on slowly from the port. 

Not till the afternoon did they come in sight, and all the while thatlittle breeze was blowing. 

"One knot, " said Shard at noon. "Two knots, " he said at six bells andstill it grew and the Arabs trotted nearer. By five o'clock the merrymen of the bad ship Desperate Lark could make out twelve longold-fashioned guns on low wheeled carts dragged by horses and whatlooked like lighter guns carried on camels. The wind was blowing alittle stronger now. "Shall we hoist sail, sir?" said Bill. 

"Not yet, " said Shard. 

By six o'clock the Arabs were just outside the range of cannon andthere they halted. Then followed an anxious hour or so, but the Arabscame no nearer. They evidently meant to wait till dark to bring theirguns up. Probably they intended to dig a gun epaulment from which theycould safely pound away at the ship. 

"We could do three knots, " said Shard half to himself as he waswalking up and down his quarter-deck with very fast short paces. Andthen the sun set and they heard the Arabs praying and Shard's merrymen cursed at the top of their voices to show that they were as goodmen as they. 

The Arabs had come no nearer, waiting for night. They did not know howShard was longing for it too, he was gritting his teeth and sighingfor it, he even would have prayed, but that he feared that it mightremind Heaven of him and his merry men. 

Night came and the stars. "Hoist sail, " said Shard. The men sprang totheir places, they had had enough of that silent lonely spot. Theytook the oxen on board and let the great sails down, and like a lovercoming from over sea, long dreamed of, long expected, like a lostfriend seen again after many years, the North wind came into thepirates' sails. And before Shard could stop it a ringing English cheerwent away to the wondering Arabs. 

They started off at three knots and soon they might have done four butShard would not risk it at night. All night the wind held good, anddoing three knots from ten to four they were far out of sight of theArabs when daylight came. And then Shard hoisted more sail and theydid four knots and by eight bells they were doing four and a half. Thespirits of those volatile men rose high, and discipline becameperfect. So long as there was wind in the sails and water in the tanksCaptain Shard felt safe at least from mutiny. Great men can only beoverthrown while their fortunes are at their lowest. Having failed todepose Shard when his plans were open to criticism and he himselfscarce knew what to do next it was hardly likely they could do it now;and whatever we think of his past and his way of living we cannot denythat Shard was among the great men of the world. 

Of defeat by the Arabs he did not feel so sure. It was useless to tryto cover his tracks even if he had had time, the Arab cavalry couldhave picked them up anywhere. And he was afraid of their camels withthose light guns on board, he had heard they could do seven knots andkeep it up most of the day and if as much as one shot struck themainmast. . . And Shard taking his mind off useless fears worked out onhis chart when the Arabs were likely to overtake them. He told his menthat the wind would hold good for a week, and, gipsy or no, hecertainly knew as much about the wind as is good for a sailor to know. 

Alone in his chart-room he worked it out like this, mark two hours tothe good for surprise and finding the tracks and delay in starting, say three hours if the guns were mounted in their epaulments, then theArabs should start at seven. Supposing the camels go twelve hours aday at seven knots they would do eighty-four knots a day, while Sharddoing three knots from ten to four, and four knots the rest of thetime, was doing ninety and actually gaining. But when it came to it hewouldn't risk more than two knots at night while the enemy were out ofsight, for he rightly regarded anything more than that as dangerouswhen sailing on land at night, so he too did eighty-four knots a day. It was a pretty race. I have not troubled to see if Shard added up hisfigures wrongly or if he under-rated the pace of camels, but whateverit was the Arabs gained slightly, for on the fourth day Spanish Jack, five knots astern on what they called the cutter, sighted the camels avery long way off and signalled the fact to Shard. They had left theircavalry behind as Shard supposed they would. The wind held good, theyhad still two oxen left and could always eat their "cutter", and theyhad a fair, though not ample, supply of water, but the appearance ofthe Arabs was a blow to Shard for it showed him that there was nogetting away from them, and of all things he dreaded guns. He madelight of it to the men: said they would sink the lot before they hadbeen in action half an hour: yet he feared that once the guns came upit was only a question of time before his rigging was cut or hissteering gear disabled. 

One point the Desperate Lark scored over the Arabs and a very good onetoo, darkness fell just before they could have sighted her and nowShard used the lantern ahead as he dared not do on the first nightwhen the Arabs were close, and with the help of it managed to do threeknots. The Arabs encamped in the evening and the Desperate Lark gainedtwenty knots. But the next evening they appeared again and this timethey saw the sails of the Desperate Lark. 

On the sixth day they were close. On the seventh they were closer. Andthen, a line of verdure across their bows, Shard saw the Niger River. 

Whether he knew that for a thousand miles it rolled its course throughforest, whether he even knew that it was there at all; what his planswere, or whether he lived from day to day like a man whose days arenumbered he never told his men. Nor can I get an indication on thispoint from the talk that I hear from sailors in their cups in acertain tavern I know of. His face was expressionless, his mouth shut, and he held his ship to her course. That evening they were up to theedge of the tree trunks and the Arabs camped and waited ten knotsastern and the wind had sunk a little. 

There Shard anchored a little before sunset and landed at once. Atfirst he explored the forest a little on foot. Then he sent forSpanish Dick. They had slung the cutter on board some days ago whenthey found she could not keep up. Shard could not ride but he sent forSpanish Dick and told him he must take him as a passenger. So SpanishDick slung him in front of the saddle "before the mast" as Shardcalled it, for they still carried a mast on the front of the saddle, and away they galloped together. "Rough weather, " said Shard, but hesurveyed the forest as he went and the long and short of it was hefound a place where the forest was less than half a mile thick and theDesperate Lark might get through: but twenty trees must be cut. Shardmarked the trees himself, sent Spanish Dick right back to watch theArabs and turned the whole of his crew on to those twenty trees. Itwas a frightful risk, the Desperate Lark was empty, with an enemy nomore than ten knots astern, but it was a moment for bold measures andShard took the chance of being left without his ship in the heart ofAfrica in the hope of being repaid by escaping altogether. 

The men worked all night on those twenty trees, those that had no axesbored with bradawls and blasted, and then relieved those that had. 

Shard was indefatigable, he went from tree to tree showing exactlywhat way every one was to fall, and what was to be done with them whenthey were down. Some had to be cut down because their branches wouldget in the way of the masts, others because their trunks would be inthe way of the wheels; in the case of the last the stumps had to bemade smooth and low with saws and perhaps a bit of the trunk sawn offand rolled away. This was the hardest work they had. And they were alllarge trees, on the other hand had they been small there would havebeen many more of them and they could not have sailed in and out, sometimes for hundreds of yards, without cutting any at all: and allthis Shard calculated on doing if only there was time. 

The light before dawn came and it looked as if they would never do itat all. And then dawn came and it was all done but one tree, the hardpart of the work had all been done in the night and a sort of finalrush cleared everything up except that one huge tree. And then thecutter signalled the Arabs were moving. At dawn they had prayed, andnow they had struck their camp. Shard at once ordered all his men tothe ship except ten whom he left at the tree, they had some way to goand the Arabs had been moving some ten minutes before they got there. Shard took in the cutter which wasted five minutes, hoisted sailshort-handed and that took five minutes more, and slowly got underway. 

The wind was dropping still and by the time the Desperate Lark hadcome to the edge of that part of the forest through which Shard hadlaid his course the Arabs were no more than five knots away. He hadsailed East half a mile, which he ought to have done overnight so asto be ready, but he could not spare time or thought or men away fromthose twenty trees. Then Shard turned into the forest and the Arabswere dead astern. They hurried when they saw the Desperate Lark enterthe forest. 

"Doing ten knots, " said Shard as he watched them from the deck. TheDesperate Lark was doing no more than a knot and a half for the windwas weak under the lee of the trees. Yet all went well for a while. The big tree had just come down some way ahead, and the ten men weresawing bits off the trunk. 

And then Shard saw a branch that he had not marked on the chart, itwould just catch the top of the mainmast. He anchored at once and senta hand aloft who sawed it half way through and did the rest with apistol, and now the Arabs were only three knots astern. For a quarterof a mile Shard steered them through the forest till they came to theten men and that bad big tree, another foot had yet to come off onecorner of the stump for the wheels had to pass over it. Shard turnedall hands on to the stump and it was then that the Arabs came withinshot. But they had to unpack their gun. And before they had it mountedShard was away. If they had charged things might have been different. When they saw the Desperate Lark under way again the Arabs came on towithin three hundred yards and there they mounted two guns. Shardwatched them along his stern gun but would not fire. They were sixhundred yards away before the Arabs could fire and then they fired toosoon and both guns missed. And Shard and his merry men saw clear wateronly ten fathoms ahead. Then Shard loaded his stern gun with canisterinstead of shot and at the same moment the Arabs charged on theircamels; they came galloping down through the forest waving longlances. Shard left the steering to Smerdrak and stood by the sterngun, the Arabs were within fifty yards and still Shard did not fire;he had most of his men in the stern with muskets beside him. Thoselances carried on camels were altogether different from swords in thehands of horsemen, they could reach the men on deck. The men could seethe horrible barbs on the lanceheads, they were almost at their faceswhen Shard fired, and at the same moment the Desperate Lark with herdry and suncracked keel in air on the high bank of the Niger fellforward like a diver. The gun went off through the tree-tops, a wavecame over the bows and swept the stern, the Desperate Lark wriggledand righted herself, she was back in her element. 

The merry men looked at the wet decks and at their dripping clothes. "Water, " they said almost wonderingly. 

The Arabs followed a little way through the forest but when they sawthat they had to face a broadside instead of one stern gun andperceived that a ship afloat is less vulnerable to cavalry even thanwhen on shore, they abandoned ideas of revenge, and comfortedthemselves with a text out of their sacred book which tells how inother days and other places our enemies shall suffer even as wedesire. 

For a thousand miles with the flow of the Niger and the help ofoccasional winds, the Desperate Lark moved seawards. At first hesweeps East a little and then Southwards, till you come to Akassa andthe open sea. 

I will not tell you how they caught fish and ducks, raided a villagehere and there and at last came to Akassa, for I have said muchalready of Captain Shard. Imagine them drawing nearer and nearer thesea, bad men all, and yet with a feeling for something where we feelfor our king, our country or our home, a feeling for something thatburned in them not less ardently than our feelings in us, and thatsomething the sea. Imagine them nearing it till sea birds appeared andthey fancied they felt sea breezes and all sang songs again that theyhad not sung for weeks. Imagine them heaving at last on the saltAtlantic again. 

I have said much already of Captain Shard and I fear lest I shallweary you, O my reader, if I tell you any more of so bad a man. I tooat the top of a tower all alone am weary. 

And yet it is right that such a tale should be told. A journey almostdue South from near Algiers to Akassa in a ship that we should call nomore than a yacht. Let it be a stimulus to younger men. 

 Guarantee To The Reader

Since writing down for your benefit, O my reader, all this long talethat I heard in the tavern by the sea I have travelled in Algeria andTunisia as well as in the Desert. Much that I saw in those countriesseems to throw doubt on the tale that the sailor told me. To beginwith the Desert does not come within hundreds of miles of the coastand there are more mountains to cross than you would suppose, theAtlas mountains in particular. It is just possible Shard might havegot through by El Cantara, following the camel road which is manycenturies old; or he may have gone by Algiers and Bou Saada andthrough the mountain pass El Finita Dem, though that is a bad enoughway for camels to go (let alone bullocks with a ship) for which reasonthe Arabs call it Finita Dem--the Path of Blood. 

I should not have ventured to give this story the publicity of printhad the sailor been sober when he told it, for fear that he I shouldhave deceived you, O my reader; but this was never the case with himas I took good care to ensure: "in vino veritas" is a sound oldproverb, and I never had cause to doubt his word unless that proverblies. 

If it should prove that he has deceived me, let it pass; but if he hasbeen the means of deceiving you there are little things about him thatI know, the common gossip of that ancient tavern whose leadedbottle-glass windows watch the sea, which I will tell at once to everyjudge of my acquaintance, and it will be a pretty race to see which ofthem will hang him. 

Meanwhile, O my reader, believe the story, resting assured that if youare taken in the thing shall be a matter for the hangman. 

A Tale of the Equator

He who is Sultan so remote to the East that his dominions were deemedfabulous in Babylon, whose name is a by-word for distance today in thestreets of Bagdad, whose capital bearded travellers invoke by name inthe gate at evening to gather hearers to their tales when the smoke oftobacco arises, dice rattle and taverns shine; even he in that verycity made mandate, and said: "Let there be brought hither all mylearned men that they may come before me and rejoice my heart withlearning. "

Men ran and clarions sounded, and it was so that there came before theSultan all of his learned men. And many were found wanting. But ofthose that were able to say acceptable things, ever after to be namedThe Fortunate, one said that to the South of the Earth lay a Land--said Land was crowned with lotus--where it was summer in our winterdays and where it was winter in summer. 

And when the Sultan of those most distant lands knew that the Creatorof All had contrived a device so vastly to his delight his merrimentknew no bounds. On a sudden he spake and said, and this was the gistof his saying, that upon that line of boundary or limit that dividedthe North from the South a palace be made, where in the Northerncourts should summer be, while in the South was winter; so should hemove from court to court according to his mood, and dally with thesummer in the morning and spend the noon with snow. So the Sultan'spoets were sent for and bade to tell of that city, foreseeing itssplendour far away to the South and in the future of time; and somewere found fortunate. And of those that were found fortunate and werecrowned with flowers none earned more easily the Sultan's smile (onwhich long days depended) than he that foreseeing the city spake of itthus:

"In seven years and seven days, O Prop of Heaven, shall thy buildersbuild it, thy palace that is neither North nor South, where neithersummer nor winter is sole lord of the hours. White I see it, veryvast, as a city, very fair, as a woman, Earth's wonder, with manywindows, with thy princesses peering out at twilight; yea, I beholdthe bliss of the gold balconies, and hear a rustling down longgalleries and the doves' coo upon its sculptured eaves. O Prop ofHeaven, would that so fair a city were built by thine ancient sires, the children of the sun, that so might all men see it even today, andnot the poets only, whose vision sees it so far away to the South andin the future of time. 

"O King of the Years, it shall stand midmost on that line thatdivideth equally the North from the South and that parteth the seasonsasunder as with a screen. On the Northern side when summer is in theNorth thy silken guards shall pace by dazzling walls while thyspearsmen clad in furs go round the South. But at the hour of noon inthe midmost day of the year thy chamberlain shall go down from hishigh place and into the midmost court, and men with trumpets shall godown behind him, and he shall utter a great cry at noon, and the menwith trumpets shall cause their trumpets to blare, and the spearsmenclad in furs shall march to the North and thy silken guard shall taketheir place in the South, and summer shall leave the North and go tothe South, and all the swallows shall rise and follow after. And alonein thine inner courts shall no change be, for they shall lie narrowlyalong that line that parteth the seasons in sunder and divideth theNorth from the South, and thy long gardens shall lie under them. 

"And in thy gardens shall spring always be, for spring lies ever atthe marge of summer; and autumn also shall always tint thy gardens, for autumn always flares at winter's edge, and those gardens shall lieapart between winter and summer. And there shall be orchards in thygarden, too, with all the burden of autumn on their boughs and all theblossom of spring. 

"Yea, I behold this palace, for we see future things; I see its whitewall shine in the huge glare of midsummer, and the lizards lying alongit motionless in the sun, and men asleep in the noonday, and thebutterflies floating by, and birds of radiant plumage chasingmarvellous moths; far off the forest and great orchids glorying there, and iridescent insects dancing round in the light. I see the wall uponthe other side; the snow has come upon the battlements, the icicleshave fringed them like frozen beards, a wild wind blowing out oflonely places and crying to the cold fields as it blows has sent thesnowdrifts higher than the buttresses; they that look out throughwindows on that side of thy palace see the wild geese flying low andall the birds of the winter, going by swift in packs beat low by thebitter wind, and the clouds above them are black, for it is midwinterthere; while in thine other courts the fountains tinkle, falling onmarble warmed by the fire of the summer sun. 

"Such, O King of the Years, shall thy palace be, and its name shall beErlathdronion, Earth's Wonder; and thy wisdom shall bid thinearchitects build at once, that all may see what as yet the poets seeonly, and that prophecy be fulfilled. "

And when the poet ceased the Sultan spake, and said, as all menhearkened with bent heads:

"It will be unnecessary for my builders to build this palace, Erlathdronion, Earth's Wonder, for in hearing thee we have drunkalready its pleasures. "

And the poet went forth from the Presence and dreamed a new thing. 

 . . . . . 

A Narrow Escape

It was underground. 

In that dank cavern down below Belgrave Square the walls weredripping. But what was that to the magician? It was secrecy that heneeded, not dryness. There he pondered upon the trend of events, shaped destinies and concocted magical brews. 

For the last few years the serenity of his ponderings had beendisturbed by the noise of the motor-bus; while to his keen ears therecame the earthquake-rumble, far off, of the train in the tube, goingdown Sloane Street; and when he heard of the world above his head wasnot to its credit. 

He decided one evening over his evil pipe, down there in his dankchamber, that London had lived long enough, had abused itsopportunities, had gone too far, in fine, with its civilisation. Andso he decided to wreck it. 

Therefore he beckoned up his acolyte from the weedy end of the cavern, and, "Bring me, " he said, "the heart of the toad that dwelleth inArabia and by the mountains of Bethany. " The acolyte slipped away bythe hidden door, leaving that grim old man with his frightful pipe, and whither he went who knows but the gipsy people, or by what path hereturned; but within a year he stood in the cavern again, slippingsecretly in by the trap while the old man smoked, and he brought withhim a little fleshy thing that rotted in a casket of pure gold. 

"What is it?" the old man croaked. 

"It is, " said the acolyte, "the heart of the toad that dwelt once inArabia and by the mountains of Bethany. "

The old man's crooked fingers closed on it, and he blessed the acolytewith his rasping voice and claw-like hand uplifted; the motor-busrumbled above on its endless journey; far off the train shook SloaneStreet. 

"Come, " said the old magician, "it is time. " And there and then theyleft the weedy cavern, the acolyte carrying cauldron, gold poker andall things needful, and went abroad in the light. And very wonderfulthe old man looked in his silks. 

Their goal was the outskirts of London; the old man strode in frontand the acolyte ran behind him, and there was something magical in theold man's stride alone, without his wonderful dress, the cauldron andwand, the hurrying acolyte and the small gold poker. 

Little boys jeered till they caught the old man's eye. So there wenton through London this strange procession of two, too swift for any tofollow. Things seemed worse up there than they did in the cavern, andthe further they got on their way towards London's outskirts the worseLondon got. "It is time, " said the old man, "surely. "

And so they came at last to London's edge and a small hill watching itwith a mournful look. It was so mean that the acolyte longed for thecavern, dank though it was and full of terrible sayings that the oldman said when he slept. 

They climbed the hill and put the cauldron down, and put there in thenecessary things, and lit a fire of herbs that no chemist will sellnor decent gardener grow, and stirred the cauldron with the goldenpoker. The magician retired a little apart and muttered, then hestrode back to the cauldron and, all being ready, suddenly opened thecasket and let the fleshy thing fall in to boil. 

Then he made spells, then he flung up his arms; the fumes from thecauldron entering in at his mind he said raging things that he had notknown before and runes that were dreadful (the acolyte screamed);there he cursed London from fog to loam-pit, from zenith to the abyss, motor-bus, factory, shop, parliament, people. "Let them all perish, "he said, "and London pass away, tram lines and bricks and pavement, the usurpers too long of the fields, let them all pass away and thewild hares come back, blackberry and briar-rose. "

"Let it pass, " he said, "pass now, pass utterly. "

In the momentary silence the old man coughed, then waited with eagereyes; and the long long hum of London hummed as it always has sincefirst the reed-huts were set up by the river, changing its note attimes but always humming, louder now than it was in years gone by, buthumming night and day though its voice be cracked with age; so ithummed on. 

And the old man turned him round to his trembling acolyte and terriblysaid as he sank into the earth: "YOU HAVE NOT BROUGHT ME THE HEARTOF THE TOAD THAT DWELLETH IN ARABIA NOR BY THE MOUNTAINS OFBETHANY!"

The Watch-tower

I sat one April in Provence on a small hill above an ancient town thatGoth and Vandal as yet have forborne to "bring up to date. "

On the hill was an old worn castle with a watch-tower, and a well withnarrow steps and water in it still. 

The watch-tower, staring South with neglected windows, faced a broadvalley full of the pleasant twilight and the hum of evening things: itsaw the fires of wanderers blink from the hills, beyond them the longforest black with pines, one star appearing, and darkness settlingslowly down on Var. 

Sitting there listening to the green frogs croaking, hearing farvoices clearly but all transmuted by evening, watching the windows inthe little town glimmering one by one, and seeing the gloaming dwindlesolemnly into night, a great many things fell from mind that seemimportant by day, and evening in their place planted strange fancies. 

Little winds had arisen and were whispering to and fro, it grew cold, and I was about to descend the hill, when I heard a voice behind mesaying, "Beware, beware. "

So much the voice appeared a part of the evening that I did not turnround at first; it was like voices that one hears in sleep and thinksto be of one's dream. And the word was monotonously repeated, inFrench. 

When I turned round I saw an old man with a horn. He had a white beardmarvellously long, and still went on saying slowly, "Beware, beware. "He had clearly just come from the tower by which he stood, though Ihad heard no footfall. Had a man come stealthily upon me at such anhour and in so lonesome a place I had certainly felt surprised; but Isaw almost at once that he was a spirit, and he seemed with hisuncouth horn and his long white beard and that noiseless step of histo be so native to that time and place that I spoke to him as one doesto some fellow-traveller who asks you if you mind having the windowup. 

I asked him what there was to beware of. 

"Of what should a town beware, " he said, "but the Saracens?"

"Saracens?" I said. 

"Yes, Saracens, Saracens, " he answered and brandished his horn. 

"And who are you?" I said. 

"I, I am the spirit of the tower, " he said. 

When I asked him how he came by so human an aspect and was so unlikethe material tower beside him he told me that the lives of all thewatchers who had ever held the horn in the tower there had gone tomake the spirit of the tower. "It takes a hundred lives, " he said. "None hold the horn of late and men neglect the tower. When the wallsare in ill repair the Saracens come: it was ever so. "

"The Saracens don't come nowadays, " I said. 

But he was gazing past me watching, and did not seem to heed me. 

"They will run down those hills, " he said, pointing away to the South, "out of the woods about nightfall, and I shall blow my horn. Thepeople will all come up from the town to the tower again; but theloopholes are in very ill repair. "

"We never hear of the Saracens now, " I said. 

"Hear of the Saracens!" the old spirit said. "Hear of the Saracens!They slip one evening out of that forest, in the long white robes thatthey wear, and I blow my horn. That is the first that anyone everhears of the Saracens. "

"I mean, " I said, "that they never come at all. They cannot come andmen fear other things. " For I thought the old spirit might rest if heknew that the Saracens can never come again. But he said, "There isnothing in the world to fear but the Saracens. Nothing else matters. How can men fear other things?"

Then I explained, so that he might have rest, and told him how allEurope, and in particular France, had terrible engines of war, both onland and sea; and how the Saracens had not these terrible engineseither on sea or land, and so could by no means cross theMediterranean or escape destruction on shore even though they shouldcome there. I alluded to the European railways that could move armiesnight and day faster than horses could gallop. And when as well as Icould I had explained all, he answered, "In time all these things passaway and then there will still be the Saracens. "

And then I said, "There has not been a Saracen either in France orSpain for over four hundred years. "

And he said, "The Saracens! You do not know their cunning. That wasever the way of the Saracens. They do not come for a while, no notthey, for a long while, and then one day they come. "

And peering southwards, but not seeing clearly because of the risingmist, he silently moved to his tower and up its broken steps. 

How Plash-Goo Came to the Land of None's Desire

In a thatched cottage of enormous size, so vast that we might considerit a palace, but only a cottage in the style of its building, itstimbers and the nature of its interior, there lived Plash-Goo. 

Plash-Goo was of the children of the giants, whose sire was Uph. Andthe lineage of Uph had dwindled in bulk for the last five hundredyears, till the giants were now no more than fifteen foot high; butUph ate elephants which he caught with his hands. 

Now on the tops of the mountains above the house of Plash-Goo, forPlash-Goo lived in the plains, there dwelt the dwarf whose name wasLrippity-Kang. And the dwarf used to walk at evening on the edge ofthe tops of the mountains, and would walk up and down along it, andwas squat and ugly and hairy, and was plainly seen of Plash-Goo. 

And for many weeks the giant had suffered the sight of him, but atlength grew irked at the sight (as men are by little things), andcould not sleep of a night and lost his taste for pigs. And at lastthere came the day, as anyone might have known, when Plash-Gooshouldered his club and went up to look for the dwarf. 

And the dwarf though briefly squat was broader than may be dreamed, beyond all breadth of man, and stronger than men may know; strength inits very essence dwelt in that little frame, as a spark in the heartof a flint: but to Plash-Goo he was no more than mis-shapen, beardedand squat, a thing that dared to defy all natural laws by being morebroad than long. 

When Plash-Goo came to the mountain he cast his chimahalk down (for sohe named the club of his heart's desire) lest the dwarf should defyhim with nimbleness; and stepped towards Lrippity-Kang with grippinghands, who stopped in his mountainous walk without a word, and swunground his hideous breadth to confront Plash-Goo. Already thenPlash-Goo in the deeps of his mind had seen himself seize the dwarf inone large hand and hurl him with his beard and his hated breadth sheerdown the precipice that dropped away from that very place to the landof None's Desire. Yet it was otherwise that Fate would have it. Forthe dwarf parried with his little arms the grip of those monstroushands, and gradually working along the enormous limbs came at lengthto the giant's body where by dwarfish cunning he obtained a grip; andturning Plash-Goo about, as a spider does some great fly, till hislittle grip was suitable to his purpose, he suddenly lifted the giantover his head. Slowly at first, by the edge of that precipice whosebase sheer distance hid, he swung his giant victim round his head, butsoon faster and faster; and at last when Plash-Goo was streaming roundthe hated breadth of the dwarf and the no less hated beard wasflapping in the wind, Lrippity-Kang let go. Plash-Goo shot over theedge and for some way further, out towards Space, like a stone; thenhe began to fall. It was long before he believed and truly knew thatthis was really he that fell from this mountain, for we do notassociate such dooms with ourselves; but when he had fallen for somewhile through the evening and saw below him, where there had beennothing to see, or began to see, the glimmer of tiny fields, then hisoptimism departed; till later on when the fields were greener andlarger he saw that this was indeed (and growing now terribly nearer)that very land to which he had destined the dwarf. 

At last he saw it unmistakable, close, with its grim houses and itsdreadful ways, and its green fields shining in the light of theevening. His cloak was streaming from him in whistling shreds. 

So Plash-Goo came to the Land of None's Desire. 

The Three Sailors' Gambit

Sitting some years ago in the ancient tavern at Over, one afternoon inSpring, I was waiting, as was my custom, for something strange tohappen. In this I was not always disappointed for the very curiousleaded panes of that tavern, facing the sea, let a light into thelow-ceilinged room so mysterious, particularly at evening, that itsomehow seemed to affect the events within. Be that as it may, I haveseen strange things in that tavern and heard stranger things told. 

And as I sat there three sailors entered the tavern, just back, asthey said, from sea, and come with sunburned skins from a very longvoyage to the South; and one of them had a board and chessmen underhis arm, and they were complaining that they could find no one whoknew how to play chess. This was the year that the Tournament was inEngland. And a little dark man at a table in a corner of the room, drinking sugar and water, asked them why they wished to play chess;and they said they would play any man for a pound. They opened theirbox of chessmen then, a cheap and nasty set, and the man refused toplay with such uncouth pieces, and the sailors suggested that perhapshe could find better ones; and in the end he went round to hislodgings near by and brought his own, and then they sat down to playfor a pound a side. It was a consultation game on the part of thesailors, they said that all three must play. 

Well, the little dark man turned out to be Stavlokratz. 

Of course he was fabulously poor, and the sovereign meant more to himthan it did to the sailors, but he didn't seem keen to play, it wasthe sailors that insisted; he had made the badness of the sailors'chessmen an excuse for not playing at all, but the sailors hadoverruled that, and then he told them straight out who he was, and thesailors had never heard of Stavlokratz. 

Well, no more was said after that. Stavlokratz said no more, eitherbecause he did not wish to boast or because he was huffed that theydid not know who he was. And I saw no reason to enlighten the sailorsabout him; if he took their pound they had brought it upon themselves, and my boundless admiration for his genius made me feel that hedeserved whatever might come his way. He had not asked to play, theyhad named the stakes, he had warned them, and gave them the firstmove; there was nothing unfair about Stavlokratz. 

I had never seen Stavlokratz before, but I had played over nearlyevery one of his games in the World Championship for the last three orfour years; he was always of course the model chosen by students. Onlyyoung chess-players can appreciate my delight at seeing him play firsthand. 

Well, the sailors used to lower their heads almost as low as the tableand mutter together before every move, but they muttered so low thatyou could not hear what they planned. 

They lost three pawns almost straight off, then a knight, and shortlyafter a bishop; they were playing in fact the famous Three Sailors'Gambit. 

Stavlokratz was playing with the easy confidence that they say wasusual with him, when suddenly at about the thirteenth move I saw himlook surprised; he leaned forward and looked at the board and then atthe sailors, but he learned nothing from their vacant faces; he lookedback at the board again. 

He moved more deliberately after that; the sailors lost two morepawns, Stavlokratz had lost nothing as yet. He looked at me I thoughtalmost irritably, as though something would happen that he wished Iwas not there to see. I believed at first that he had qualms abouttaking the sailors' pound, until it dawned on me that he might losethe game; I saw that possibility in his face, not on the board, forthe game had become almost incomprehensible to me. I cannot describemy astonishment. And a few moves later Stavlokratz resigned. 

The sailors showed no more elation than if they had won some game withgreasy cards, playing amongst themselves. 

Stavlokratz asked them where they got their opening. "We kind ofthought of it, " said one. "It just come into our heads like, " saidanother. He asked them questions about the ports they had touched at. He evidently thought as I did myself that they had learned theirextraordinary gambit, perhaps in some old dependancy of Spain, fromsome young master of chess whose fame had not reached Europe. He wasvery eager to find out who this man could be, for neither of usimagined that those sailors had invented it, nor would anyone who hadseen them. But he got no information from the sailors. 

Stavlokratz could very ill afford the loss of a pound. He offered toplay them again for the same stakes. The sailors began to set up thewhite pieces. Stavlokratz pointed out that it was his turn for thefirst move. The sailors agreed but continued to set up the whitepieces and sat with the white before them waiting for him to move. Itwas a trivial incident, but it revealed to Stavlokratz and myself thatnone of these sailors was aware that white always moves first. 

Stavlokratz played them on his own opening, reasoning of course thatas they had never heard of Stavlokratz they would not know of hisopening; and with probably a very good hope of getting back his poundhe played the fifth variation with its tricky seventh move, at leastso he intended, but it turned to a variation unknown to the studentsof Stavlokratz. 

Throughout this game I watched the sailors closely, and I became sure, as only an attentive watcher can be, that the one on their left, JimBunion, did not even know the moves. 

When I had made up my mind about this I watched only the other two, Adam Bailey and Bill Sloggs, trying to make out which was the mastermind; and for a long while I could not. And then I heard Adam Baileymutter six words, the only words I heard throughout the game, of alltheir consultations, "No, him with the horse's head. " And I decidedthat Adam Bailey did not know what a knight was, though of course hemight have been explaining things to Bill Sloggs, but it did not soundlike that; so that left Bill Sloggs. I watched Bill Sloggs after thatwith a certain wonder; he was no more intellectual than the others tolook at, though rather more forceful perhaps. Poor old Stavlokratz wasbeaten again. 

Well, in the end I paid for Stavlokratz, and tried to get a game withBill Sloggs alone, but this he would not agree to, it must be allthree or none: and then I went back with Stavlokratz to his lodgings. He very kindly gave me a game: of course it did not last long but I amprouder of having been beaten by Stavlokratz than of any game that Ihave ever won. And then we talked for an hour about the sailors, andneither of us could make head or tail of them. I told him what I hadnoticed about Jim Bunion and Adam Bailey, and he agreed with me thatBill Sloggs was the man, though as to how he had come by that gambitor that variation of Stavlokratz's own opening he had no theory. 

I had the sailors' address which was that tavern as much as anywhere, and they were to be there all evening. As evening drew in I went backto the tavern, and found there still the three sailors. And I offeredBill Sloggs two pounds for a game with him alone and he refused, butin the end he played me for a drink. And then I found that he had notheard of the "en passant" rule, and believed that the fact of checkingthe king prevented him from castling, and did not know that a playercan have two or more queens on the board at the same time if he queenshis pawns, or that a pawn could ever become a knight; and he made asmany of the stock mistakes as he had time for in a short game, which Iwon. I thought that I should have got at the secret then, but hismates who had sat scowling all the while in the corner came up andinterfered. It was a breach of their compact apparently for one toplay by himself, at any rate they seemed angry. So I left the tavernthen and came back again next day, and the next day and the day after, and often saw the sailors, but none were in a communicative mood. Ihad got Stavlokratz to keep away, and they could get no one to playchess with at a pound a side, and I would not play with them unlessthey told me the secret. 

And then one evening I found Jim Bunion drunk, yet not so drunk as hewished, for the two pounds were spent; and I gave him very nearly atumbler of whiskey, or what passed for whiskey in that tavern at Over, and he told me the secret at once. I had given the others some whiskeyto keep them quiet, and later on in the evening they must have goneout, but Jim Bunion stayed with me by a little table leaning across itand talking low, right into my face, his breath smelling all the whileof what passed for whiskey. 

The wind was blowing outside as it does on bad nights in November, coming up with moans from the South, towards which the tavern facedwith all its leaded panes, so that none but I was able to hear hisvoice as Jim Bunion gave up his secret. They had sailed for years, hetold me, with Bill Snyth; and on their last voyage home Bill Snyth haddied. And he was buried at sea. Just the other side of the line theyburied him, and his pals divided his kit, and these three got hiscrystal that only they knew he had, which Bill got one night in Cuba. They played chess with the crystal. 

And he was going on to tell me about that night in Cuba when Bill hadbought the crystal from the stranger, how some folks might think theyhad seen thunderstorms, but let them go and listen to that one thatthundered in Cuba when Bill was buying his crystal and they'd findthat they didn't know what thunder was. But then I interrupted him, unfortunately perhaps, for it broke the thread of his tale and set himrambling a while, and cursing other people and talking of other lands, China, Port Said and Spain: but I brought him back to Cuba again inthe end. I asked him how they could play chess with a crystal; and hesaid that you looked at the board and looked at the crystal, and therewas the game in the crystal the same as it was on the board, with allthe odd little pieces looking just the same though smaller, horses'heads and whatnots; and as soon as the other man moved the move cameout in the crystal, and then your move appeared after it, and all youhad to do was to make it on the board. If you didn't make the movethat you saw in the crystal things got very bad in it, everythinghorribly mixed and moving about rapidly, and scowling and making thesame move over and over again, and the crystal getting cloudier andcloudier; it was best to take one's eyes away from it then, or onedreamt about it afterwards, and the foul little pieces came and cursedyou in your sleep and moved about all night with their crooked moves. 

I thought then that, drunk though he was, he was not telling thetruth, and I promised to show him to people who played chess all theirlives so that he and his mates could get a pound whenever they liked, and I promised not to reveal his secret even to Stavlokratz, if onlyhe would tell me all the truth; and this promise I have kept till longafter the three sailors have lost their secret. I told him straightout that I did not believe in the crystal. Well, Jim Bunion leanedforward then, even further across the table, and swore he had seen theman from whom Bill had bought the crystal and that he was one to whomanything was possible. To begin with his hair was villainously dark, and his features were unmistakable even down there in the South, andhe could play chess with his eyes shut, and even then he could beatanyone in Cuba. But there was more than this, there was the bargain hemade with Bill that told one who he was. He sold that crystal for BillSnyth's soul. 

Jim Bunion leaning over the table with his breath in my face noddedhis head several times and was silent. 

I began to question him then. Did they play chess as far away as Cuba?He said they all did. Was it conceivable that any man would make sucha bargain as Snyth made? Wasn't the trick well known? Wasn't it inhundreds of books? And if he couldn't read books mustn't he have heardfrom sailors that it is the Devil's commonest dodge to get souls fromsilly people?

Jim Bunion had leant back in his own chair quietly smiling at myquestions but when I mentioned silly people he leaned forward again, and thrust his face close to mine and asked me several times if Icalled Bill Snyth silly. It seemed that these three sailors thought agreat deal of Bill Snyth and it made Jim Bunion angry to hear anythingsaid against him. I hastened to say that the bargain seemed sillythough not of course the man who made it; for the sailor was almostthreatening, and no wonder for the whiskey in that dim tavern wouldmadden a nun. 

When I said that the bargain seemed silly he smiled again, and then hethundered his fist down on the table and said that no one had ever yetgot the best of Bill Snyth and that that was the worst bargain forhimself that the Devil ever made, and that from all he had read orheard of the Devil he had never been so badly had before as the nightwhen he met Bill Snyth at the inn in the thunderstorm in Cuba, forBill Snyth already had the damndest soul at sea; Bill was a goodfellow, but his soul was damned right enough, so he got the crystalfor nothing. 

Yes, he was there and saw it all himself, Bill Snyth in the Spanishinn and the candles flaring, and the Devil walking in and out of therain, and then the bargain between those two old hands, and the Devilgoing out into the lightning, and the thunderstorm raging on, and BillSnyth sitting chuckling to himself between the bursts of the thunder. 

But I had more questions to ask and interrupted this reminiscence. Whydid they all three always play together? And a look of something likefear came over Jim Bunion's face; and at first he would not speak. Andthen he said to me that it was like this; they had not paid for thatcrystal, but got it as their share of Bill Snyth's kit. If they hadpaid for it or given something in exchange to Bill Snyth that wouldhave been all right, but they couldn't do that now because Bill wasdead, and they were not sure if the old bargain might not hold good. And Hell must be a large and lonely place, and to go there alone mustbe bad, and so the three agreed that they would all stick together, and use the crystal all three or not at all, unless one died, and thenthe two would use it and the one that was gone would wait for them. And the last of the three to go would take the crystal with him, ormaybe the crystal would bring him. They didn't think, they said, theywere the kind of men for Heaven, and he hoped they knew their placebetter than that, but they didn't fancy the notion of Hell alone, ifHell it had to be. It was all right for Bill Snyth, he was afraid ofnothing. He had known perhaps five men that were not afraid of death, but Bill Snyth was not afraid of Hell. He died with a smile on hisface like a child in its sleep; it was drink killed poor Bill Snyth. 

This was why I had beaten Bill Sloggs; Sloggs had the crystal on himwhile we played, but would not use it; these sailors seemed to fearloneliness as some people fear being hurt; he was the only one of thethree who could play chess at all, he had learnt it in order to beable to answer questions and keep up their pretence, but he had learntit badly, as I found. I never saw the crystal, they never showed it toanyone; but Jim Bunion told me that night that it was about the sizethat the thick end of a hen's egg would be if it were round. And thenhe fell asleep. 

There were many more questions that I would have asked him but I couldnot wake him up. I even pulled the table away so that he fell to thefloor, but he slept on, and all the tavern was dark but for one candleburning; and it was then that I noticed for the first time that theother two sailors had gone, no one remained at all but Jim Bunion andI and the sinister barman of that curious inn, and he too was asleep. 

When I saw that it was impossible to wake the sailor I went out intothe night. Next day Jim Bunion would talk of it no more; and when Iwent back to Stavlokratz I found him already putting on paper histheory about the sailors, which became accepted by chess-players, thatone of them had been taught their curious gambit and that the othertwo between them had learnt all the defensive openings as well asgeneral play. Though who taught them no one could say, in spite ofenquiries made afterwards all along the Southern Pacific. 

I never learnt any more details from any of the three sailors, theywere always too drunk to speak or else not drunk enough to becommunicative. I seem just to have taken Jim Bunion at the flood. ButI kept my promise, it was I that introduced them to the Tournament, and a pretty mess they made of established reputations. And so theykept on for months, never losing a game and always playing for theirpound a side. I used to follow them wherever they went merely to watchtheir play. They were more marvellous than Stavlokratz even in hisyouth. 

But then they took to liberties such as giving their queen whenplaying first-class players. And in the end one day when all threewere drunk they played the best player in England with only a row ofpawns. They won the game all right. But the ball broke to pieces. Inever smelt such a stench in all my life. 

The three sailors took it stoically enough, they signed on todifferent ships and went back again to the sea, and the world of chesslost sight, for ever I trust, of the most remarkable players it everknew, who would have altogether spoiled the game. 

The Exiles Club

It was an evening party; and something someone had said to me hadstarted me talking about a subject that to me is full of fascination, the subject of old religions, forsaken gods. The truth (for allreligions have some of it), the wisdom, the beauty, of the religionsof countries to which I travel have not the same appeal for me; forone only notices in them their tyranny and intolerance and the abjectservitude that they claim from thought; but when a dynasty has beendethroned in heaven and goes forgotten and outcast even among men, one's eyes no longer dazzled by its power find something very wistfulin the faces of fallen gods suppliant to be remembered, somethingalmost tearfully beautiful, like a long warm summer twilight fadinggently away after some day memorable in the story of earthly wars. Between what Zeus, for instance, has been once and the half-rememberedtale he is today there lies a space so great that there is no changeof fortune known to man whereby we may measure the height down whichhe has fallen. And it is the same with many another god at whom oncethe ages trembled and the twentieth century treats as an old wives'tale. The fortitude that such a fall demands is surely more thanhuman. 

Some such things as these I was saying, and being upon a subject thatmuch attracts me I possibly spoke too loudly, certainly I was notaware that standing close behind me was no less a person than theex-King of Eritivaria, the thirty islands of the East, or I would havemoderated my voice and moved away a little to give him more room. Iwas not aware of his presence until his satellite, one who had fallenwith him into exile but still revolved about him, told me that hismaster desired to know me; and so to my surprise I was presentedthough neither of them even knew my name. And that was how I came tobe invited by the ex-King to dine at his club. 

At the time I could only account for his wishing to know me bysupposing that he found in his own exiled condition some likeness tothe fallen fortunes of the gods of whom I talked unwitting of hispresence; but now I know that it was not of himself he was thinkingwhen he asked me to dine at that club. 

The club would have been the most imposing building in any street inLondon, but in that obscure mean quarter of London in which they hadbuilt it it appeared unduly enormous. Lifting right up above thosegrotesque houses and built in that Greek style that we call Georgian, there was something Olympian about it. To my host an unfashionablestreet could have meant nothing, through all his youth wherever he hadgone had become fashionable the moment he went there; words like theEast End could have had no meaning to him. 

Whoever built that house had enormous wealth and cared nothing forfashion, perhaps despised it. As I stood gazing at the magnificentupper windows draped with great curtains, indistinct in the evening, on which huge shadows flickered my host attracted my attention fromthe doorway, and so I went in and met for the second time the ex-Kingof Eritivaria. 

In front of us a stairway of rare marble led upwards, he took methrough a side-door and downstairs and we came to a banqueting-hall ofgreat magnificence. A long table ran up the middle of it, laid forquite twenty people, and I noticed the peculiarity that instead ofchairs there were thrones for everyone except me, who was the onlyguest and for whom there was an ordinary chair. My host explained tome when we all sat down that everyone who belonged to that club was byrights a king. 

In fact none was permitted, he told me, to belong to the club untilhis claim to a kingdom made out in writing had been examined andallowed by those whose duty it was. The whim of a populace or thecandidate's own misrule were never considered by the investigators, nothing counted with them but heredity and lawful descent from kings, all else was ignored. At that table there were those who had oncereigned themselves, others lawfully claimed descent from kings thatthe world had forgotten, the kingdoms claimed by some had even changedtheir names. Hatzgurh, the mountain kingdom, is almost regarded asmythical. 

I have seldom seen greater splendour than that long hall providedbelow the level of the street. No doubt by day it was a little sombre, as all basements are, but at night with its great crystal chandeliers, and the glitter of heirlooms that had gone into exile, it surpassedthe splendour of palaces that have only one king. They had come toLondon suddenly most of those kings, or their fathers before them, orforefathers; some had come away from their kingdoms by night, in alight sleigh, flogging the horses, or had galloped clear with morningover the border, some had trudged roads for days from their capital indisguise, yet many had had time just as they left to snatch up somesmall thing without price in markets, for the sake of old times asthey said, but quite as much, I thought, with an eye to the future. And there these treasures glittered on that long table in thebanqueting-hall of the basement of that strange club. Merely to seethem was much, but to hear their story that their owners told was togo back in fancy to epic times on the romantic border of fable andfact, where the heroes of history fought with the gods of myth. Thefamous silver horses of Gilgianza were there climbing their sheermountain, which they did by miraculous means before the time of theGoths. It was not a large piece of silver but its workmanshipoutrivalled the skill of the bees. 

A yellow Emperor had brought out of the East a piece of thatincomparable porcelain that had made his dynasty famous though alltheir deeds are forgotten, it had the exact shade of the right purple. 

And there was a little golden statuette of a dragon stealing a diamondfrom a lady, the dragon had the diamond in his claws, large and of thefirst water. There had been a kingdom whose whole constitution andhistory were founded on the legend, from which alone its kings hadclaimed their right to the scepter, that a dragon stole a diamond froma lady. When its last king left that country, because his favoritegeneral used a peculiar formation under the fire of artillery, hebrought with him the little ancient image that no longer proved him aking outside that singular club. 

There was the pair of amethyst cups of the turbaned King of Foo, theone that he drank from himself, and the one that he gave to hisenemies, eye could not tell which was which. 

All these things the ex-King of Eritivaria showed me, telling me amarvelous tale of each; of his own he had brought nothing, except themascot that used once to sit on the top of the water tube of hisfavorite motor. 

I have not outlined a tenth of the splendour of that table, I hadmeant to come again and examine each piece of plate and make notes ofits history; had I known that this was the last time I should wish toenter that club I should have looked at its treasures moreattentively, but now as the wine went round and the exiles began totalk I took my eyes from the table and listened to strange tales oftheir former state. 

He that has seen better times has usually a poor tale to tell, somemean and trivial thing has been his undoing, but they that dined inthat basement had mostly fallen like oaks on nights of abnormaltempest, had fallen mightily and shaken a nation. Those who had notbeen kings themselves, but claimed through an exiled ancestor, hadstories to tell of even grander disaster, history seeming to havemellowed their dynasty's fate as moss grows over an oak a great whilefallen. There were no jealousies there as so often there are amongkings, rivalry must have ceased with the loss of their navies andarmies, and they showed no bitterness against those that had turnedthem out, one speaking of the error of his Prime Minister by which hehad lost his throne as "poor old Friedrich's Heaven-sent gift oftactlessness. "

They gossiped pleasantly of many things, the tittle-tattle we all hadto know when we were learning history, and many a wonderful story Imight have heard, many a side light on mysterious wars had I not madeuse of one unfortunate word. That word was "upstairs. "

The ex-King of Eritivaria having pointed out to me those unparalleledheirlooms to which I have alluded, and many more besides, hospitablyasked me if there was anything else that I would care to see, he meantthe pieces of plate that they had in the cupboards, the curiouslygraven swords of other princes, historic jewels, legendary seals, butI who had had a glimpse of their marvelous staircase, whose balustradeI believed to be solid gold and wondering why in such a stately housethey chose to dine in the basement, mentioned the word "upstairs. " Aprofound hush came down on the whole assembly, the hush that mightgreet levity in a cathedral. 

"Upstairs!" he gasped. "We cannot go upstairs. "

I perceived that what I had said was an ill-chosen thing. I tried toexcuse myself but knew not how. 

"Of course, " I muttered, "members may not take guests upstairs. "

"Members!" he said to me. "We are not the members!"

There was such reproof in his voice that I said no more, I looked athim questioningly, perhaps my lips moved, I may have said "What areyou?" A great surprise had come on me at their attitude. 

"We are the waiters, " he said. 

That I could not have known, here at last was honest ignorance that Ihad no need to be ashamed of, the very opulence of their table deniedit. 

"Then who are the members?" I asked. 

Such a hush fell at that question, such a hush of genuine awe, thatall of a sudden a wild thought entered my head, a thought strange andfantastic and terrible. I gripped my host by the wrist and hushed myvoice. 

"Are they too exiles?" I asked. 

Twice as he looked in my face he gravely nodded his head. 

I left that club very swiftly indeed, never to see it again, scarcelypausing to say farewell to those menial kings, and as I left the doora great window opened far up at the top of the house and a flash oflightning streamed from it and killed a dog. 

The Three Infernal Jokes

This is the story that the desolate man told to me on the lonelyHighland road one autumn evening with winter coming on and the stagsroaring. 

The saddening twilight, the mountain already black, the dreadfulmelancholy of the stags' voices, his friendless mournful face, allseemed to be of some most sorrowful play staged in that valley by anoutcast god, a lonely play of which the hills were part and he theonly actor. 

For long we watched each other drawing out of the solitudes of thoseforsaken spaces. Then when we met he spoke. 

"I will tell you a thing that will make you die of laughter. I willkeep it to myself no longer. But first I must tell you how I came byit. "

I do not give the story in his words with all his woeful interjectionsand the misery of his frantic self-reproaches for I would not conveyunnecessarily to my readers that atmosphere of sadness that was aboutall he said and that seemed to go with him where-ever he moved. 

It seems that he had been a member of a club, a West-end club hecalled it, a respectable but quite inferior affair, probably in theCity: agents belonged to it, fire insurance mostly, but life insuranceand motor-agents too, it was in fact a touts' club. It seems that afew of them one evening, forgetting for a moment their encyclopediasand non-stop tyres, were talking loudly over a card-table when thegame had ended about their personal virtues, and a very little manwith waxed moustaches who disliked the taste of wine was boastingheartily of his temperance. It was then that he who told this mournfulstory, drawn on by the boasts of others, leaned forward a little overthe green baize into the light of the two guttering candles andrevealed, no doubt a little shyly, his own extraordinary virtue. Onewoman was to him as ugly as another. 

And the silenced boasters rose and went home to bed leaving him allalone, as he supposed, with his unequalled virtue. And yet he was notalone, for when the rest had gone there arose a member out of a deeparm-chair at the dark end of the room and walked across to him, a manwhose occupation he did not know and only now suspects. 

"You have, " said the stranger, "a surpassing virtue. "

"I have no possible use for it, " my poor friend replied. 

"Then doubtless you would sell it cheap, " said the stranger. 

Something in the man's manner or appearance made the desolate tellerof this mournful tale feel his own inferiority, which probably madehim feel acutely shy, so that his mind abased itself as an Orientaldoes his body in the presence of a superior, or perhaps he was sleepy, or merely a little drunk. Whatever it was he only mumbled, "O yes, "instead of contradicting so mad a remark. And the stranger led the wayto the room where the telephone was. 

"I think you will find my firm will give a good price for it, " hesaid: and without more ado he began with a pair of pincers to cut thewire of the telephone and the receiver. The old waiter who lookedafter the club they had left shuffling round the other room puttingthings away for the night. 

"Whatever are you doing of?" said my friend. 

"This way, " said the stranger. Along a passage they went and away tothe back of the club and there the stranger leaned out of a window andfastened the severed wires to the lightning conductor. My friend hasno doubt of that, a broad ribbon of copper, half an inch wide, perhapswider, running down from the roof to the earth. 

"Hell, " said the stranger with his mouth to the telephone; thensilence for a while with his ear to the receiver, leaning out of thewindow. And then my friend heard his poor virtue being several timesrepeated, and then words like Yes and No. 

"They offer you three jokes, " said the stranger, "which shall make allwho hear them simply die of laughter. "

I think my friend was reluctant then to have anything more to do withit, he wanted to go home; he said he didn't want jokes. 

"They think very highly of your virtue, " I said the stranger. And atthat, odd as it seems, my friend wavered, for logically if theythought highly of the goods they should have paid a higher price. 

"O all right, " he said. The extraordinary document that the agent drewfrom his pocket ran something like this:

"I . . . . . In consideration of three new jokes received from Mr. Montagu-Montague, hereinafter to be called the agent, and warranted tobe as by him stated and described, do assign to him, yield, abrogateand give up all recognitions, emoluments, perquisites or rewards dueto me Here or Elsewhere on account of the following virtue, to wit andthat is to say . . . . . That all women are to me equally ugly. " Thelast eight words being filled in in ink by Mr. Montagu-Montague. 

My poor friend duly signed it. "These are the jokes, " said the agent. They were boldly written on three slips of paper. "They don't seemvery funny, " said the other when he had read them. "You are immune, "said Mr. Montagu-Montague, "but anyone else who hears them will simplydie of laughter: that we guarantee. "

An American firm had bought at the price of waste paper a hundredthousand copies of The Dictionary of Electricity written whenelectricity was new, --and it had turned out that even at the time itsauthor had not rightly grasped his subject, --the firm had paid£10, 000 to a respectable English paper (no other in fact thanthe Briton) for the use of its name, and to obtain orders for TheBriton Dictionary of Electricity was the occupation of my unfortunatefriend. He seems to have had a way with him. Apparently he knew by aglance at a man, or a look round at his garden, whether to recommendthe book as "an absolutely up-to-date achievement, the finest thing ofits kind in the world of modern science" or as "at once quaint andimperfect, a thing to buy and to keep as a tribute to those dear oldtimes that are gone. " So he went on with this quaint though usualbusiness, putting aside the memory of that night as an occasion onwhich he had "somewhat exceeded" as they say in circles where a spadeis called neither a spade nor an agricultural implement but is nevermentioned at all, being altogether too vulgar. And then one night heput on his suit of dress clothes and found the three jokes in thepocket. That was perhaps a shock. He seems to have thought it overcarefully then, and the end of it was he gave a dinner at the club totwenty of the members. The dinner would do no harm he thought--mighteven help the business, and if the joke came off he would be a wittyfellow, and two jokes still up his sleeve. 

Whom he invited or how the dinner went I do not know for he began tospeak rapidly and came straight to the point, as a stick that nears acataract suddenly goes faster and faster. The dinner was duly served, the port went round, the twenty men were smoking, two waitersloitered, when he after carefully reading the best of the jokes toldit down the table. They laughed. One man accidentally inhaled hiscigar smoke and spluttered, the two waiters overheard and titteredbehind their hands, one man, a bit of a raconteur himself, quiteclearly wished not to laugh, but his veins swelled dangerously intrying to keep it back, and in the end he laughed too. The joke hadsucceeded; my friend smiled at the thought; he wished to say littledeprecating things to the man on his right; but the laughter did notstop and the waiters would not be silent. He waited, and waitedwondering; the laughter went roaring on, distinctly louder now, andthe waiters as loud as any. It had gone on for three or four minuteswhen this frightful thought leaped up all at once in his mind: _it wasforced laughter!_ However could anything have induced him to tell sofoolish a joke? He saw its absurdity as in revelation; and the more hethought of it as these people laughed at him, even the waiters too, the more he felt that he could never lift up his head with his brothertouts again. And still the laughter went roaring and choking on. Hewas very angry. There was not much use in having a friend, he thought, if one silly joke could not be overlooked; he had fed them too. Andthen he felt that he had no friends at all, and his anger faded away, and a great unhappiness came down on him, and he got quietly up andslunk from the room and slipped away from the club. Poor man, hescarcely had the heart next morning even to glance at the papers, butyou did not need to glance at them, big type was bandied about thatday as though it were common type, the words of the headlines staredat you; and the headlines said:--Twenty-Two Dead Men at a Club. 

Yes, he saw it then: the laughter had not stopped, some had probablyburst blood vessels, some must have choked, some succumbed to nausea, heart-failure must have mercifully taken some, and they were hisfriends after all, and none had escaped, not I even the waiters. Itwas that infernal joke. 

He thought out swiftly, and remembers clear as a nightmare, the driveto Victoria Station, the boat-train to Dover and going disguised tothe boat: and on the boat pleasantly smiling, almost obsequious, twoconstables that wished to speak for a moment with Mr. Watkyn-Jones. That was his name. 

In a third-class carriage with handcuffs on his wrists, with forcedconversation when any, he returned between his captors to Victoria tobe tried for murder at the High Court of Bow. 

At the trial he was defended by a young barrister of considerableability who had gone into the Cabinet in order to enhance his forensicreputation. And he was ably defended. It is no exaggeration to saythat the speech for the defence showed it to be usual, even naturaland right, to give a dinner to twenty men and to slip away withoutever saying a word, leaving all, with the waiters, dead. That was theimpression left in the minds of the jury. And Mr. Watkyn-Jones felthimself practically free, with all the advantages of his awfulexperience, and his two jokes intact. But lawyers are stillexperimenting with the new act which allows a prisoner to giveevidence. They do not like to make no use of it for fear they may bethought not to know of the act, and a lawyer who is not in touch withthe very latest laws is soon regarded as not being up to date and hemay drop as much as £50, 000 a year in fees. And therefore thoughit always hangs their clients they hardly like to neglect it. 

Mr. Watkyn-Jones was put in the witness box. There he told the simpletruth, and a very poor affair it seemed after the impassioned andbeautiful things that were uttered by the counsel for the defence. Menand women had wept when they heard that. They did not weep when theyheard Watkyn-Jones. Some tittered. It no longer seemed a right andnatural thing to leave one's guests all dead and to fly the country. Where was Justice, they asked, if anyone could do that? And when hisstory was told the judge rather happily asked if he could make him dieof laughter too. And what was the joke? For in so grave a place as aCourt of Justice no fatal effects need be feared. And hesitatingly theprisoner pulled from his pocket the three slips of paper: andperceived for the first time that the one on which the first and bestjoke had been written had become quite blank. Yet he could rememberit, and only too clearly. And he told it from memory to the Court. 

"An Irishman once on being asked by his master to buy a morning papersaid in his usual witty way, 'Arrah and begorrah and I will be afterwishing you the top of the morning. '"

No joke sounds quite so good the second time it is told, it seems tolose something of its essence, but Watkyn-Jones was not prepared forthe awful stillness with which this one was received; nobody smiled;and it had killed twenty-two men. The joke was bad, devilish bad;counsel for the defence was frowning, and an usher was looking in alittle bag for something the judge wanted. And at this moment, asthough from far away, without his wishing it, there entered theprisoner's head, and shone there and would not go, this old badproverb: "As well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb. " The jury seemedto be just about to retire. "I have another joke, " said Watkyn-Jones, and then and there he read from the second slip of paper. He watchedthe paper curiously to see if it would go blank, occupying his mindwith so slight a thing as men in dire distress very often do, and thewords were almost immediately expunged, swept swiftly as if by a hand, and he saw the paper before him as blank as the first. And they werelaughing this time, judge, jury, counsel for the prosecution, audienceand all, and the grim men that watched him upon either side. There wasno mistake about this joke. 

He did not stay to see the end, and walked out with his eyes fixed onthe ground, unable to bear a glance to the right or left. And sincethen he has wandered, avoiding ports and roaming lonely places. Twoyears have known him on the Highland roads, often hungry, alwaysfriendless, always changing his district, wandering lonely on with hisdeadly joke. 

Sometimes for a moment he will enter inns, driven by cold and hunger, and hear men in the evening telling jokes and even challenging him;but he sits desolate and silent, lest his only weapon should escapefrom him and his last joke spread mourning in a hundred cots. Hisbeard has grown and turned grey and is mixed with moss and weeds, sothat no one, I think, not even the police, would recognise him now forthat dapper tout that sold The Briton Dictionary of Electricity insuch a different land. 

He paused, his story told, and then his lip quivered as though hewould say more, and I believe he intended then and there to yield uphis deadly joke on that Highland road and to go forth then with histhree blank slips of paper, perhaps to a felon's cell, with one moremurder added to his crimes, but harmless at last to man. I thereforehurried on, and only heard him mumbling sadly behind me, standingbowed and broken, all alone in the twilight, perhaps telling over andover even then the last infernal joke. 

 THE END