THE LIBRARY
OF
THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA
LOS ANGELES
GIFT OF
FREDERIC THOMAS BLANCHARD
FOR THE
ENGLISH READING ROOM
THK KIXJK OF THK WOULD
The Hook of Wonder
A Chronicle of Little Adventures
at the Edge of the World
The
Book of Wonder
A Chronicle of Little Adventures
at the Edge of the World
BY
Lord^unsany
With Illustrations by
S. H. SIME
BOSTON
JOHN W. LUCE & COMPANY
Acknowledgments
MY thanks are due to the Editor of
The Sketch for permission to reprint here
twelve of these tales, which as " Epi-
sodes from The Book of Wonder" were
printed in his columns. Many were
abbreviated to suit the exigencies of the
Paper and are here given in full.
I again offer my thanks to the Editor
of The Saturday Review for permission to
reprint tales, the two last in the book.
Preface
COME with me, ladies and gentlemen
who are in any wise weary of London:
come with me: and those that tire at all
of the world we know: for we have new
worlds here.
Contents
PAGE
THE BRIDE OF THE MAN-HORSE . . 1
DISTRESSING TALE OP THANGOBRIND THE
JEWELLER 11
THE HOUSE OP THE SPHINX ... 20
PROBABLE ADVENTURE OF THE THREE
LITERARY MEN 27
THE INJUDICIOUS PRAYERS OF POMBO THE
IDOLATER 36
THE LOOT OF BOMBASHARNA ... 45
MlSS CUBBIDGE AND THE DRAGON OF
ROMANCE 55
THE QUEST OF THE QUEEN'S TEARS . . 62
THE HOARD OF THE GIBBELINS ... 74
HOW NUTH WOULD HAVE PRACTISED HIS
ART UPON THE GNOLES ... 84
How ONE CAME, AS WAS FORETOLD, TO THE
CITY OF NEVER 95
THE CORONATION OF MR. THOMAS SHAP 105
CHU-BU AND SHEEMISH 115
THE WONDERFUL WINDOW . 124
List of Illustrations
THE EDGE OF THE WORLD . . Frontispiece
ZRETAZOOLA .... Facing page 1
THE OMINOUS COUGH ... 11
THE HOUSE OF THE SPHINX . . 20
"I WISH I KNEW MORE ABOUT
THE WAYS OF QUEENS" . . 54
HE FELT AS A MORSEL ... 71
THERE THE GIBBELINS LIVED AND
DISCREDITABLY FED ... 75
THE LEAN, HIGH HOUSE OF THE
GNOLES 94
THE CITY OP NEVER ... 100
THE CORONATION OF MR. THOMAS
SHAP 114
ZRETAZOOLA
The Bride of the
Man-Horse
jn the morning of his two
hundred and fiftieth year
Shepperalk the centaur went
to the golden coffer, wherein
the treasure of the centaurs
was, and taking from it the hoarded
amulet that his father, Jyshak, in the
years of his prime, had hammered from
mountain gold and set with opals bar-
tered from the gnomes, he put it upon
his wrist, and said no word, but walked
from his mother's cavern. And he took
with him too that clarion of the centaurs,
that famous silver horn, that in its time
had summoned to surrender seventeen
cities of Man, and for twenty years had
brayed at star-girt walls in the Siege of
Tholdenblarna, the citadel of the gods,
what time the centaurs waged their
The Bride of the
Man- Horse
The Book f Wonder
fabulous war and were not broken by any
force of arms, but retreated slowly in a
cloud of dust before the final miracle of
the gods that They brought in Their des-
perate need from Their ultimate armoury.
He took it and strode away, and his
mother only sighed and let him go.
She knew that to-day he would not
drink at the stream coming down from
the terraces of Varpa Niger, the inner
land of the mountains, that to-day he
would not wonder awhile at the sunset
and afterwards trot back to the cavern
again to sleep on rushes pulled by rivers
that know not Man. She knew that it
was with him as it had been of old with
his father, and with Goom the father of
Jyshak, and long ago with the gods.
Therefore she only sighed and let him go.
But he, coming out from the cavern
that was his home, went for the first time
over the little stream, and going round the
corner of the crags saw glittering beneath
him the mundane plain. And the wind of
the autumn that was gilding the world,
rushing up the slopes of the mountain,
The Bride of the
Man- Hone
The Book of Wonder
beat cold on his naked flanks. He raised
his head and snorted.
"I am a man-horse now! " he shouted
aloud; and leaping from crag to crag he
galloped by valley and chasm, by tor-
rent-bed and scar of avalanche, until he
came to the wandering leagues of the
plain, and left behind him for ever the
Athraminaurian mountains.
His goal was Zretazoola, the city of
Sombelene. What legend of Sombelene J s
inhuman beauty or of the wonder of
her mystery had ever floated over the
mundane plain to the fabulous cradle of
the centaurs' race, the Athraminaurian
mountains, I do not know. Yet in the
blood of man there is a tide, an old sea-
current rather, that is somehow akin to
the twilight, which brings him rumours
of beauty from however far away, as
driftwood is found at sea from islands
not yet discovered: and this spring-tide
or current that visits the blood of man
comes from the fabulous quarter of his
lineage, from the legendary, the old; it
takes him out to the woodlands, out to
3 The Bride of the
Man- Horse
the hills; he listens to ancient song. So
it may be that Shepperalk's fabulous
blood stirred in those lonely mountains
away at the edge of the world to rumours
that only the airy twilight knew and
only confided secretly to the bat, for
Shepperalk was more legendary even
than man. Certain it was that he
headed from the first for the city of
Zretazoola, where Sombelene in her
temple dwelt; though all the mundane
plain, its rivers and mountains, lay between
Shepperalk's home and the city he sought.
When first the feet of the centaur
touched the grass of that soft alluvial
earth he blew for joy upon the silver horn,
he pranced and caracoled, he gambolled
over the leagues; pace came to him like
a maiden with a lamp, a new and beauti-
ful wonder; the wind laughed as it
passed him. He put his head down low
to the scent of the flowers, he lifted it
up to be nearer the unseen stars, he
revelled through kingdoms, took rivers
in his stride; how shall I tell you, ye
that dwell in cities, how shall I tell
The Bride of the 4
Man- Horse
The Book of Wonder
you what he felt as he galloped? He
felt for strength like the towers of Bel-
Narana; for lightness like those gossa-
mer palaces that the fairy-spider builds
'twixt heaven and sea along the coasts
of Zith; for swiftness like some bird
racing up from the morning to sing in
some city's spires before daylight comes.
He was the sworn companion of the
wind. For joy he was as a song; the
lightnings of his legendary sires, the
earlier gods, began to mix with his blood;
his hooves thundered. He came to the
cities of men, and all men trembled, for
they remembered the ancient mythical
wars, and now they dreaded new battles
and feared for the race of man. Not by
Clio are these wars recorded, history
does not know them, but what of that?
Not all of us have sat at historians'
feet, but all have learned fable and
myth at their mothers' knees. And
there were none that did not fear strange
wars when they saw Shepperalk swerve
and leap along the public ways. So he
passed from city to city.
The Bride of the
Man- Horse
The Book f Wonder
By night he lay down unpanting in
the reeds of some marsh or a forest;
before dawn he rose triumphant, and
hugely drank of some river in the dark,
and splashing out of it would trot to
some high place to find the sunrise, and
to send echoing eastwards the exultant
greetings of his jubilant horn. And lo!
the sunrise coming up from the echoes,
and the plains new-lit by the day, and
the leagues spinning by like water flung
from a top, and that gay companion,
the loudly laughing wind, and men and
the fears of men and their little cities;
and, after that, great rivers and waste
spaces and huge new hills, and then new
lands beyond them, and more cities of
men, and always the old companion, the
glorious wind. Kingdom by kingdom
slipt by, and still his breath was even.
"It is a golden thing to gallop on good
turf in one's youth," said the young
man-horse, the centaur. "Ha, ha," said
the wind of the hills, and the winds of
the plain answered.
Bells pealed in frantic towers, wise
The Bride of the Q
Man- Horse
The Book f Wonder
men consulted parchments, astrologers
sought of the portent from the stars, the
aged made subtle prophecies. "Is he
not swift?" said the young. "How glad
he is," said children.
Night after night brought him sleep,
and day after day lit his gallop, till he
came to the lands of the Athalonian men
who live by the edges of the mundane
plain, and from them he came to the
lands of legend again such as those in
which he was cradled on the other side
of the world, and which fringe the marge
of the world and mix with the twilight.
And there a mighty thought came into
his untired heart, for he knew that he
neared Zretazoola now, the city of
Sombelene.
It was late in the day when he neared
it, and clouds coloured with evening
rolled low on the plain before him; he
galloped on into their golden mist, and
when it hid from his eyes the sight of
things, the dreams in his heart awoke
and romantically he pondered all those
rumours that used to come to him from
7 The Bride of the
Man- Horse
The Book of Wonder
Sombelene, because of the fellowship of
fabulous things. She dwelt (said eve-
ning secretly to the bat) in a little temple
by a lone lake-shore. A grove of cy-
presses screened her from the city, from
Zretazoola of the climbing ways. And
opposite her temple stood her tomb, her
sad lake-sepulchre with open door, lest
her amazing beauty and the centuries of
her youth should ever give rise to the
heresy among men that lovely Som-
belene was immortal : for only her beauty
and her lineage were divine.
Her father had been half centaur and
hah 7 god; her mother was the child of a
desert lion and that sphinx that watches
the pyramids; she was more mystical
than Woman.
Her beauty was as a dream, was as
a song; the one dream of a lifetime
dreamed on enchanted dews, the one
song sung to some city by a deathless
bird blown far from his native coasts by
storm in Paradise. Dawn after dawn on
mountains of romance or twilight after
twilight could never equal her beauty;
The Bride of the
ML an -Horse
772e Book f Wonder
all the glow-worms had not the secret
among them nor all the stars of night;
poets had never sung it nor evening
guessed its meaning; the morning envied
it, it was hidden from lovers.
She was unwed, unwooed.
The lions came not to woo her be-
cause they feared her strength, and the
gods dared not love her because they
knew she must die.
This was what evening had whispered
to the bat, this was the dream in the
heart of Shepperalk as he cantered blind
through the mist. And suddenly there at
his hooves in the dark of the plain ap-
peared the cleft in the legendary lands,
and Zretazoola sheltering in the cleft,
and sunning herself in the evening.
Swiftly and craftily he bounded down
by the upper end of the cleft, and enter-
ing Zretazoola by the outer gate which
looks out sheer on the stars, he galloped
suddenly down the narrow streets. Many
that rushed out on to balconies as he
went clattering by, many that put their
heads from glittering windows, are told
The Bride of the
Man- Horse
The Book of Wonder
of in olden song. Shepperalk did not
tarry to give greetings or to answer
challenges from martial towers, he was
down through the earthward gateway
like the thunderbolt of his sires, and,
like Leviathan who has leapt at an
eagle, he surged into the water between
temple and tomb.
He galloped with half-shut eyes up
the temple-steps, and, only seeing dimly
through his lashes, seized Sombelene by
the hair, undazzled as yet by her beauty,
and so haled her away; and, leaping
with her over the floorless chasm where
the waters of the lake fall unremembered
away into a hole in the world, took her
we know not where, to be her slave for
all those centuries that are allowed to
his race.
Three blasts he gave as he went upon
that silver horn that is the world-old
treasure of the centaurs. These were his
wedding bells.
The Bride of the \Q
Man- Horse
THE OMINOUS COUGH
Distressing Tale
of Thangobrind
the Jeweller
Thangobrind the jewel-
ler heard the ominous
cough, he turned at once
upon that narrow way. A
thief was he, of very high
repute, being patronised by the lofty and
elect, for he stole nothing smaller than
the Moomoo's egg, and in all his life
stole only four kinds of stone the ruby,
the diamond, the emerald, and the sap-
phire; and, as jewellers go, his honesty
was great. Now there was a Merchant
Prince who had come to Thangobrind
and had offered his daughter's soul for
the diamond that is larger than the
human head and was to be found on
the lap of the spider-idol, Hlo-hlo, in his
1 1 Distressing Tale of
Thangobrind the Jeweller
The Book of Wonder
temple of Moung-ga-ling; for he had
heard that Thangobrind was a thief to
be trusted.
Thangobrind oiled his body and
slipped out of his shop, and went secretly
through byways, and got as far as Snarp,
before anybody knew that he was out
on business again or missed his sword
from its place under the counter. Thence
he moved onl}- by night, hiding by day
and rubbing the edges of his sword,
which he called Mouse because it was
swift and nimble. The jeweller had
subtle methods of travelling; nobody saw
him cross the plains of Zid; nobody saw
him come to Mursk or Tlun. 0, but he
loved shadows! Once the moon peeping
out unexpectedly from a tempest had
betrayed an ordinary jeweller; not so
did it undo Thangobrind: the watchmen
only saw a crouching shape that snarled
and laughed: " 'Tis but a hyena," they
said. Once in the city of Ag one of the
guardians seized him, but Thangobrind
was oiled and slipped from his hand;
you scarcely heard his bare feet patter
Distressing Tale of J2
Thangobrind the Jeweller
The Book of Wonder
away. He knew that the Merchant
Prince awaited his return, his little eyes
open all night and glittering with greed;
he knew how his daughter lay chained
up and screaming night and day. Ah,
Thangobrind knew. And had he not
been out on business he had almost al-
lowed himself one or two little laughs.
But business was business, and the dia-
mond that he sought still lay on the
lap of Hlo-hlo, where it had been for
the last two million years since Hlo-hlo
created the world and gave unto it all
things except that precious stone called
Dead Man's Diamond. The jewel was
often stolen, but it had a knack of com-
ing back again to the lap of Hlo-hlo.
Thangobrind knew this, but he was no
common jeweller and hoped to outwit
Hlo-hlo, perceiving not the trend of am-
bition and lust and that they are vanity.
How nimbly he threaded his way
through the pits of Snood! now like a
botanist, scrutinising the ground; now
like a dancer, leaping from crumbling
edges, It was quite dark when he went
13 Distressing Tale of
Thangobrind the Jeweller
The Book of Wonder
by the towers of Tor, where archers shoot
ivory arrows at strangers lest any for-
eigner should alter their laws, which are
bad, but not to be altered by mere
aliens. At night they shoot by the sound
of the strangers' feet. 0, Thangobrind,
Thangobrind, was ever a jeweller like
you! He dragged two stones behind him
by long cords, and at these the archers
shot. Tempting indeed was the snare
that they set in Woth, the emeralds
loose-set in the city's gate; but Thango-
brind discerned the golden cord that
climbed the wall from each and the
weights that would topple upon him if
he touched one, and so he left them,
though he left them weeping, and at last
came to Theth. There all men worship
Hlo-hlo; though they are willing to be-
lieve in other gods, as missionaries attest,
but only as creatures of the chase for
the hunting of Hlo-hlo, who wears Their
halos, so these people say, on golden
hooks along his hunting-belt. And from
Theth he came to the city of Moung and
the temple of Moung-ga-ling, and entered
Distressing Tale of 14
Thannobrind the Jeweller
The Book f Wonder
and saw the spider-idol, Hlo-hlo, sitting
there with Dead Man's Diamond glitter-
ing on his lap, and looking for all the
world like a full moon, but a full moon
seen by a lunatic who had slept too long
in its rays, for there was in Dead Man's
Diamond a certain sinister look and a
boding of things to happen that are
better not mentioned here. The face of
the spider-idol was lit by that fatal
gem; there was no other light. In spite
of his shocking limbs and that demoniac
body, his face was serene and apparently
unconscious.
A little fear came into the mind of
Thangobrind the jeweller, a passing
tremor no more ; business was business
and he hoped for the best. Thangobrind
offered honey to Hlo-hlo and prostrated
himself before him. Oh, he was cunning!
When the priests stole out of the dark-
ness to lap up the honey they were
stretched senseless on the temple floor,
for there was a drug in the honey that
was offered to Hlo-hlo. And Thango-
brind the jeweller picked Dead Man's
15 Distressing Tale of
Thangobrind the Jeweller
The Book f Wonder
Diamond up and put it on his shoulder
and trudged away from the shrine; and
Hlo-hlo the spider-idol said nothing at
all, but he laughed softly as the jeweller
shut the door. When the priests awoke
out of the grip of the drug that was
offered with the honey to Hlo-hlo, they
rushed to a little secret room with an
outlet on the stars and cast a horoscope
of the thief. Something that they saw
in the horoscope seemed to satisfy the
priests.
It was not like Thangobrind to go
back by the road by which he had come.
No, he went by another road, even
though it led to the narrow way, night-
house and spider-forest.
The city of Moung went towering up
behind him, balcony above balcony,
eclipsing half the stars, as he trudged
away with his diamond. He was not easy
as he trudged away. Though when a
soft pittcring as of velvet feet arose
behind him he refused to acknowledge
that it might be what he feared, yet the
instincts of his trade told him that it is
Distressing Tale of JQ
Thangobrind the Jeweller
The Book f
not well when any noise whatever follows
a diamond by night, and this was one
of the largest that had ever come to him
in the way of business. When he came
to the narrow way that leads to spider-
forest, Dead Man's Diamond feeling
cold and heavy, and the velvety footfall
seeming fearfully close, the jeweller
stopped and almost hesitated. He looked
behind him; there was nothing there.
He listened attentively; there was no
sound now. Then he thought of the
screams of the Merchant Prince's daugh-
ter, whose soul was the diamond's price,
and smiled and went stoutly on. There
watched him, apathetically, over the
narrow way, that grim and dubious
woman whose house is the Night. Than-
gobririd, hearing no longer the sound of
suspicious feet, felt easier now. He was
all but come to the end of the narrow
way, when the woman listlessly uttered
that ominous cough.
The cough was too full of meaning to
be disregarded. Thangobrind turned
round and saw at once what he feared.
17 Distressing Tele of
Thangobrind the Jeweller
The Book of Wonder
The spider-idol had not stayed at home.
The jeweller put his diamond gently
upon the ground and drew his sword
called Mouse. And then began that
famous fight upon the narrow way in
which the grim old woman whose house
was Night seemed to take so little inter-
est. To the spider-idol you saw at once
it was all a horrible joke. To the jeweller
it was grim earnest. He fought and
panted and was pushed back slowly
along the narrow way, but he wounded
Hlo-hlo all the while with terrible long
gashes all over his deep, soft body till
Mouse was slimy with blood. But at
last the persistent laughter of Hlo-hlo
was too much for the jeweller's nerves,
and, once more wounding his demoniac
foe, he sank aghast and exhausted by the
door of the house called Night at the
feet of the grim old woman, who having
uttered once that ominous cough inter-
fered no further with the course of
events. And there carried Thangobrind
the jeweller away those whose duty it
was, to the house where the two men
Distressing Tale of Jg
Thangobrind the Jeweller
The Book of Wonder
hang, and taking down from his hook
the left-hand one of the two, they put
that venturous jeweller in his place; so
that there fell on him the doom that he
feared, as all men know though it is so
long since, and there abated somewhat
the ire of the envious gods.
And the only daughter of the Mer-
chant Prince felt so little gratitude for
this great deliverance that she took to
respectability of a militant kind, and
became aggressively dull, and called her
home the English Riviera, and had
platitudes worked in worsted upon her
tea-cosy, and in the end never died, but
passed away at her residence.
19 Distressing Tale of
Thangobrind the Jeweller
The House of
the Sphinx
?hen I came to the House
of the Sphinx it was al-
| ready dark. They made
me eagerly welcome. And
I, in spite of the deed, was
glad of any shelter from bhat ominous
wood. I saw at once that there had
been a deed, although a cloak did all
that a cloak may do to conceal it. The
mere uneasiness of the welcome made
me suspect that cloak.
The Sphinx was moody and silent. I
had not come to pry into the secrets of
Eternity nor to investigate the Sphinx's
private life, and so had little to say and
few questions to ask; but to whatever I
did say she remained morosely indiffer-
ent. It was clear that either she sus-
pected me of being in search of the
secrets of one of her gods, or of being
The House of 20
the Sphinx
THE HOUSE OF THE SPHINX
The Book f Wonder
boldly inquisitive about her traffic with
Time, or else she was darkly absorbed
with brooding upon the deed.
I saw soon enough that there was
another than me to welcome; I saw it
from the hurried way that they glanced
from the door to the deed and back to
the door again. And it was clear that
the welcome was to be a bolted door.
But such bolts, and such a door! Rust
and decay and fungus had been there far
too long, and it was not a barrier any
longer that would keep out even a de-
termined wolf. And it seemed to be
something worse than a wolf that they
feared.
A little later on I gathered from what
they said that some imperious and
ghastly thing was looking for the Sphinx,
and that something that had happened
had made its arrival certain. It ap-
peared that they had slapped the Sphinx
to vex her out of her apathy in order
that she should pray to one of her gods,
whom she had littered in the house of
Time ; but her moody silence was invinci-
21 The House of
the Sphinx
The Book of Wonder
ble, and her apathy Oriental, ever
since the deed had happened. And when
they found that they could not make
her pray, there was nothing for them to
do but to pay little useless attentions to
the rusty lock of the door, and to look
at the deed and wonder, and even pre-
tend to hope, and to say that after all
it might not bring that destined thing
from the forest, which no one named.
It may be said I had chosen a grue-
some house, but not if I had described
the forest from which I came, and I
was in need of any spot wherein I could
rest my mind from the thought of it.
I wondered very much what thing
would come from the forest on account
of the deed; and having seen that forest
-as you, gentle reader, have not-- I
had the advantage of knowing that any-
thing might come. It was useless to ask
the Sphinx she seldom reveals things,
like her paramour Time (the gods take
after her), and while this mood was on
her, rebuff was certain. So I quietly
began to oil the lock of the door. And as
The House of 22
the Sphinx
The Book of Wonder
soon as they saw this simple act I won
their confidence. It was not that my
work was of any use it should have
been done long before; but they saw that
my interest was given for the moment
to the thing that they thought vital.
They clustered round me then. They
asked me what I thought of the door,
and whether I had seen better, and
whether I had seen worse; and I told
them about all the doors I knew, and
said that the doors of the baptistery in
Florence were better doors, and the
doors made by a certain firm of builders
in London were worse. And then I asked
them what it was that was coming after
the Sphinx because of the deed. And at
first they would not say, and I stopped
oiling the door; and then they said that
it was the arch-inquisitor of the forest,
who is investigator and avenger of all
silvestrian things; and from all that they
said about him it seemed to me that this
person was quite white, and was a kind
of madness that would settle down quite
blankly upon the place, a kind of mist
23 The House of
the Sphinx
The Book f Wonder
in which reason could not live; and it
was the fear of this that made them
fumble nervously at the lock of that
rotten door; but with the Sphinx it was
not so much fear as sheer prophecy.
The hope that they tried to hope was
well enough in its way, but I did not
share it; it was clear that the thing that
they feared was the corollary of the deed
- one saw that more by the resignation
upon the face of the Sphinx than by their
sorry anxiety for the door.
The wind soughed, and the great ta-
pers flared, and their obvious fear and the
silence of the Sphinx grew more than
ever a part of the atmosphere, and bats
went restlessly through the gloom of
the wind that beat the tapers low.
Then a few things screamed far off,
then a little nearer, and something was
coming towards us, laughing hideously.
I hastily gave a prod to the door that
they guarded; my finger sank right into
the mouldering wood there was not a
chance of holding it. I had not leisure
to observe their fright; I thought of the
The House of 24
the Sphinx
The Book of Wonder
back-door, for the forest was better than
this; only the Sphinx was absolutely
calm, her prophecy was made and she
seemed to have seen her doom, so that
no new thing could perturb her.
But by mouldering rungs of ladders
as old as Man, by slippery edges of the
dreaded abyss, with an ominous dizzi-
ness about my heart and a feeling of
horror in the soles of my feet, I clambered
from tower to tower till I found the door
that I sought; and it opened on to one
of the upper branches of a huge and
sombre pine, down which I climbed on
to the floor of the forest. And I was glad
to be back again in the forest from which
I had fled.
And the Sphinx in her menaced house
- I know not how she fared whether
she gazes for ever, disconsolate, at the
deed, remembering only in her smitten
mind, at which little boys now leer, that
she once knew well those things at which
man stands aghast; or whether in the end
she crept away, and clambering horribly
from abyss to abyss, came at last to
25 The House of
the Sphinx
The Book. f Wonder
higher things, and is wise and eternal
still. For who knows of madness whether
it is divine or whether it be of the pit?
The House of 26
the Sphinx
Probable Adventure
of the Three
Literary Men
?hen the nomads came to
El Lola they had no more
| songs, and the question of
stealing the golden box
| arose in all its magnitude.
On the one hand, many had sought the
golden box, the receptacle (as the Aethi-
opians know) of poems of fabulous value;
and their doom is still the common talk
of Arabia. On the other hand, it was
lonely to sit round the camp-fire by night
with no new songs.
It was the tribe of Heth that discussed
these things one evening upon the plains
below the peak of Mluna. Their native
land was the track across the world of
immemorial wanderers; and there was
27 Probable Adventure of the
Three Literary Men
The Book of Wonder
trouble among the elders of the nomads
because there were no new songs; while,
untouched by human trouble, untouched
as yet by the night that was hiding the
plains away, the peak of Mluna, calm in
the after-glow, looked on the Dubious
Land. And it was there on the plain upon
the known side of Mluna, just as the
evening star came mouse-like into view
and the flames of the camp-fire lifted
their lonely plumes uncheered by any
song that that rash scheme was hastily
planned by the nomads which the world
has named The Quest of the Golden
Box.
No measure of wiser precaution could
the elders of the nomads have taken than
to choose for their thief that very Slith,
that identical thief that (even as I write)
in how many school-rooms governesses
teach stole a march on the King of
Westalia. Yet the weight of the box was
such that others had to accompany him,
and Sippy and Slorg were no more agile
thieves than may be found today among
vendors of the antique.
Probable Adventure of the 28
Three Literary Men
The Book of Wonder
So over the shoulder of Mluna these
three climbed next day and slept as well
as they might among its snows rather
than risk a night in the woods of the
Dubious Land. And the morning came
up radiant and the birds were full of
song, but the forest underneath and the
waste beyond it and the bare and omi-
nous crags all wore the appearance of an
unuttered threat.
Though Slith had an experience of
twenty years of theft, yet he said little;
only if one of the others made a stone
roll with his foot, or, later on in the
forest, if one of them stepped on a twig,
he whispered sharply to them always the
same words: "That is not business."
He knew that he could not make them
better thieves during a two days' jour-
ney, and whatever doubts he had he
interfered no further.
From the shoulder of Mluna they
dropped into the clouds, and from the
clouds to the forest, to whose native
beasts, as well the three thieves knew,
all flesh was meat, whether it were the
29 Probable Adventure of the
Three Literary Men
The Book of Wonder
flesh of fish or man. There the thieves
drew idolatrously from their pockets
each one a separate god and prayed
for protection in the unfortunate wood,
and hoped therefrom for a threefold
chance of escape, since if anything should
eat one of them it were certain to eat
them all, and they confided that the corol-
lary might be true and all should escape
if one did. Whether one of these gods
was propitious and awake, or whether
all of the three, or whether it was chance
that brought them through the forest
unmouthed by detestable beasts, none
knoweth; but certainly neither the emis-
saries of the god that most they feared,
nor the wrath of the topical god of that
ominous place, brought their doom to
the three adventurers there or then. And
so it was that they came to Rumbly
Heath, in the heart of the Dubious Land,
whose stormy hillocks were the ground-
swell and the after-wash of the earth-
quake lulled for a while. Something so
huge that it seemed unfair to man that
it should move so softly stalked splen-
Probable Adventure of the 3Q
Three Literary Men
The Book of Wonder
didly by them, and only so barely did
they escape its notice that one word
rang and echoed through their three
imaginations "If if if." And
when this danger was at last gone by
they moved cautiously on again and
presently saw the little harmless mipt,
half fairy and half gnome, giving shrill
contented squeaks on the edge of the
world. And they edged away unseen,
for they said that the inquisitiveness of
the mipt had become fabulous, and that,
harmless as he was, he had a bad
way with secrets; yet they probably
loathed the way that he nuzzles dead
white bones, and would not admit their
loathing, for it does not become adven-
turers to care who eats their bones. Be
this as it may, they edged away from the
mipt, and came almost at once to the
wizened tree, the goal-post of their ad-
venture, and knew that beside them was
the crack in the world and the bridge
from Bad to Worse, and that under-
neath them stood the rocky house of
Owner of the Box.
31 Probable Adventure of the
Three Literary Men
The Book of Wonder
This was their simple plan : to slip into
the corridor in the upper cliff; to run
softly down it (of course with naked
feet) under the warning to travellers
that is graven upon stone, which inter-
preters take to be "It Is Better Not";
not to touch the berries that are there
for a purpose, on the right side going
down; and so to come to the guardian
on his pedestal who had slept for a
thousand years and should be sleeping
still; and go in through the open window.
One man was to wait outside by the
crack in the World until the others came
out with the golden box, and, should
they cry for help, he was to threaten at
once to unfasten the iron clamp that kept
the crack together. When the box was
secured they were to travel all night
and all the following day, until the
cloud-banks that wrapped the slopes of
Mluna were well between them and
Owner of the Box.
The door in the cliff was open. They
passed without a murmur down the cold
steps, Slith leading them all the way.
Probable Adventure of the 32
Three Literary Men
The Book of Wonder
A glance of longing, no more, each gave
to the beautiful berries. The guardian
upon his pedestal was still asleep. Slorg
climbed by a ladder, that Slith knew
where to find, to the iron clamp across
the crack in the World, and waited be-
side it with a chisel in his hand, listen-
ing closely for anything untoward, while
his friends slipped into the house; and
no sound came. And presently Slith and
Sippy found the golden box: everything
seemed happening as they had planned,
it only remained to see if it was the
right one and to escape with it from that
dreadful place. Under the shelter of
the pedestal, so near to the guardian
that they could feel his warmth, which
paradoxically had the effect of chilling
the blood of the boldest of them, they
smashed the emerald hasp and opened
the golden box; and there they read by
the light of ingenious sparks which Slith
knew how to contrive, and even this
poor light they hid with their bodies.
What was their joy, even at that perilous
moment, as they lurked between the
33 Probable Adventure of the
Three Literary Men
The Book of Wonder
guardian and the abyss, to find that the
box contained fifteen peerless odes in the
alcaic form, five sonnets that were by
far the most beautiful in the world, nine
ballads in the manner of Provence that
had no equal in the treasuries of man, a
poem addressed to a moth in twenty-
eight perfect stanzas, a piece of blank
verse of over a hundred lines on a level
not yet known to have been attained by
man, as well as fifteen lyrics on which
no merchant would dare to set a price.
They would have read them again, for
they gave happy tears to a man and
memories of dear things done in infancy,
and brought sweet voices from far sepul-
chres; but Slith pointed imperiously to
the way by which they had come, and
extinguished the light; and Slorg and
Sippy sighed, then took the box.
The guardian still slept the sleep that
survived a thousand years.
As they came away they saw that
indulgent chair close by the edge of the
World in which Owner of the Box had
lately sat reading selfishly and alone the
Probable Adventure of the 34
Three Literary Men
The Book f Wonder
most beautiful songs and verses that
poet ever dreamed.
They came in silence to the foot of
the stairs; and then it befell that as they
drew near safety, in the night's most
secret hour, some hand in an upper
chamber lit a shocking light, lit it and
made no sound.
For a moment it might have been an
ordinary light, fatal as even that could
very well be at such a moment as this;
but when it began to follow them like
an eye and to grow redder and redder
as it watched them, then even optimism
despaired.
And Sippy very unwisely attempted
flight, and Slorg even as unwisely tried
to hide; but Slith, knowing well why
that light was lit in that secret upper
chamber and who it was that lit it, leaped
over the edge of the World and is falling
from us still through the unreverberate
blackness of the abyss.
35 Probable Adventure of the
Three Literary Men
The
Injudicious Prayers
ofPombo the Idolater
?ombo the idolater had
prayed to Ammuz a simple
| prayer, a necessary prayer,
^uch as even an idol of
| ivory could very easily
grant, and Ammuz had not immediately
granted it. Pombo had therefore prayed
to Tharma for the overthrow of Ammuz,
an idol friendly to Tharma, and in doing
this offended against the etiquette of
the gods. Tharma refused to grant the
little prayer. Pombo prayed frantically
to all the gods of idolatry, for though it
was a simple matter, yet it was very
necessary to a man. And gods that were
older than Ammuz rejected the prayers
of Pombo, and even gods that were
The Injudicious Prayers of 35
Pombo the Idolater
The Book of Wonder
younger and therefore of greater repute.
He prayed to them one by one, and they
all refused to hear him; nor at first did
he think at all of that subtle, divine eti-
quette against which he had offended.
It occurred to him all at once as he prayed
to his fiftieth idol, a little green-jade
god whom the Chinese know, that all the
idols were in league against him. When
Pombo discovered this he resented his
birth bitterly, and made lamentation and
alleged that he was lost. He might have
been seen then in any part of London
haunting curiosity-shops and places where
they sold idols of ivory or of stone, for
he dwelt in London with others of his
race though he was born in Burmah
among those who hold Ganges holy.
On drizzly evenings of November's worst
his haggard face could be seen in the
glow of some shop pressed close against
the glass, where he would supplicate some
calm cross-legged idol till policemen
moved him on. And after closing hours
back he would go to his dingy room, in
that part of our capital where English
37 The Injudicious Prayers of
Pombo the Idolater
The Book of Wonder
is seldom spoken, to supplicate little
idols of his own. And when Pombo's
simple, necessary prayer was equally
refused by the idols of museums, auction-
rooms, shops, then he took counsel with
himself and purchased incense and burned
it in a brazier before his own cheap
little idols, and played the while upon an
instrument such as that wherewith men
charm snakes. And still the idols clung
to their etiquette.
Whether Pombo knew about this eti-
quette and considered it frivolous in the
face of his need, or whether his need,
now grown desperate, unhinged his mind,
I know not, but Pombo the idolater took
a stick and suddenly turned iconoclast.
Pombo the iconoclast immediately left
his house, leaving his idols to be swept
away with the dust and so to mingle
with Man, and went to an arch-idolater
of repute who carved idols out of rare
stones, and put his case before him. The
arch-idolater who made idols of his own
rebuked Pombo in the name of Man for
having broken his idols "for hath not
The Injudicious Prayers of 38
Pombo the Idolater
The Book f Wonder
Man made them?" the arch-idolater
said; and concerning the idols themselves
he spoke long and learnedly, explaining
divine etiquette, and how Pombo had
offended, and how no idol in the world
would listen to Pombo's prayer. When
Pombo heard this he wept and made
bitter outcry, and cursed the gods of
ivory and the gods of jade, and the hand
of Man that made them, but most of all
he cursed their etiquette that had un-
done, as he said, an innocent man; so
that at last that arch-idolater, who made
idols of his own, stopped in his work
upon an idol of jasper for a king that
was weary of Wosh, and took compassion
on Pombo, and told him that though no
idol in the world w^ould listen to his
prayer, yet only a little way over the
edge of it a certain disreputable idol sat
who knew nothing of etiquette, and
granted prayers that no respectable god
would ever consent to hear. When Pombo
heard this he took two handfuls of the
arch-idolater's beard and kissed them
joyfully, and dried his tears and became
39 The Injudicious Prayers of
Pombo the Idolater
The Book of Wonder
his old impertinent self again. And he
that carved from jasper the usurper of
Wosh explained how in the village of
World's End, at the furthest end of Last
Street, there is a hole that you take to
be a well, close by the garden wall, but
that if you lower yourself by your hands
over the edge of the hole, and feel about
with your feet till they find a ledge, that
is the top step of a flight of stairs that
takes you down over the edge of the
World. "For all that men know, those
stairs may have a purpose and even a
bottom step," said the arch-idolater,
"but discussion about the lower flights
is idle." Then the teeth of Pombo chat-
tered, for he feared the darkness, but
he that made idols of his own explained
that those stairs were always lit by the'
faint blue gloaming in which the World
spins. "Then," he said, "you will go by
Lonely House and under the bridge that
leads from the House to Nowhere, and
whose purpose is not guessed; thence
past Maharrion, the god of flowers, and
his high-priest, who is neither bird nor
The Injudicious Prayers of 4Q
Pombo the Idolater
The Book f Wonder
cat; and so you will come to the little
idol Duth, the disreputable god that will
grant your prayer." And he went on
carving again at his idol of jasper for the
king who was weary of Wosh ; and Pombo
thanked him and went singing away, for
in his vernacular mind he thought that
"he had the gods."
It is a long journey from London to
World's End, and Pombo had no money
left, yet within five weeks he was strolling
along Last Street; but how he contrived
to get there I will not say, for it was not
entirely honest. And Pombo found the
well at the end of the garden beyond the
end house of Last Street, and many
thoughts ran through his mind as he
hung by his hands from the edge, but
chiefest of all those thoughts was one
that said the gods were laughing at him
through the mouth of the arch-idolater,
their prophet, and the thought beat in
his head till it ached like his wrists . . .
and then he found the step.
And Pombo walked downstairs.
There, sure enough, was the gloaming in
41 The Injudicious Prayers of
Pombo the Idolater
The Book of Wonder
which the world spins, and stars shone
far off in it faintly; there was nothing
before him as he went downstairs but
that strange blue waste of gloaming, with
its multitudes of stars, and comets plung-
ing through it on outward journeys and
comets returning home. And then he
saw the lights of the bridge to Nowhere,
and all of a sudden he was in the glare of
the shimmering parlour-window of Lonely
House; and he heard voices there pro-
nouncing words, and the voices were
nowise human, and but for his bitter
need he had screamed and fled. Halfway
between the voices and Maharrion, whom
he now saw standing out from the world,
covered in rainbow hales, he perceived
the weird grey beast that is neither cat
nor bird. As Pombo hesitated, chilly
with fear, he heard those voices grow
louder in Lonely House, and at that he
stealthily moved a few steps lower, and
then rushed past the beast. The beast
intently watched Maharrion hurling up
bubbles that are every one a season of
spring in unknown constellations, calling
The Injudicious Prayers of 42
Pombo the Idolater
The Book of Wonder
the swallows home to unimagined fields,
watched him without even turning to
look at Pombo, and saw him drop into
the Linlunlarna, the river that rises at
the edge of the World, the golden pollen
that sweetens the tide of the river and
is carried away from the World to be a
joy to the Stars. And there before
Pombo was the little disreputable god
who cares nothing for etiquette and will
answer prayers that are refused by all
the respectable idols. And whether the
view of him, at last, excited Pombo's
eagerness, or whether his need was
greater than he could bear that it drove
him so swiftly downstairs, or whether,
as is most likely, he ran too fast past the
beast, I do not know, and it does not
matter to Pombo; but at any rate he
could not stop, as he had designed, in
attitude of prayer at the feet of Duth,
but ran on past him down the narrowing
steps, clutching at smooth bare rocks
till he fell from the World as, when our
hearts miss a beat, we fall in dreams and
wake up with a dreadful jolt; but there
43 The Injudicious Prayers of
Pombo the Idolater
The Book of Wonder
was no waking up for Pombo, who still
fell on towards the incurious stars, and
his fate is even one with the fate of
Slith.
The Injudicious Prayers of 44
Pombo the Idolater
The Loot
of
'Bombasharna
Jhings had grown too hot
'for Shard, captain of
I pirates, on all the seas
'that he knew. The ports
| of Spain were closed to
him; they knew him in San Domingo;
men winked in Syracuse when he went
by; the two Kings of the Sicilies never
smiled within an hour of speaking of
him; there were huge rewards for his
head in every capital city, with pictures
of it for identification and all the pic-
tures were unflattering. Therefore Captain
Shard decided that the time had come
to tell his men the secret.
Riding off Teneriffe one night, he
called them all together. He generously
admitted that there were things in the
45
The Loot of
Bombasharna
The Book f
past that might require explanation:
the crowns that the Princes of Aragon
had sent to their nephews the Kings of
the two Americas had certainly never
reached their Most Sacred Majesties.
Where, men might ask, were the eyes of
Captain Stobbud? Who had been burn-
ing towns on the Patagonian seaboard?
Why should such a ship as theirs choose
pearls for cargo? Why so much blood on
the decks and so many guns? And where
was the Nancy, the Lark, or the Margaret
Belief Such questions as these, he urged,
might be asked by the inquisitive, and
if counsel for the defence should happen
to be a fool, and unacquainted with the
ways of the sea, they might become in-
volved in troublesome legal formulae.
And Bloody Bill, as they rudely called
Mr. Gagg, a member of the crew, looked
up at the sky, and said that it was a
windy night and looked like hanging.
And some of those present thoughtfully
stroked their necks while Captain Shard
unfolded to them his plan. He said the
time was come to quit the Desperate
The Loot of 4Q
Bombasharna
The Book of Wonder
Lark, for she was too well known to the
navies of four kingdoms, and a fifth was
getting to know her, and others had sus-
picions. (More cutters than even Captain
Shard suspected were already looking for
her jolly black flag with its neat skull-
and-crossbones in yellow.) There was a
little archipelago that he knew of on
the wrong side of the Sargasso Sea; there
were about thirty islands there, bare,
ordinary islands, but one of them floated.
He had noticed it years ago, and had
gone ashore and never told a soul, but
had quietly anchored it with the anchor
of his ship to the bottom of the sea,
which just there was profoundly deep,
and had made the thing the secret of his
life, determining to marry and settle
down there if it ever became impossible
to earn his livelihood in the usual way at
sea. When first he saw it it was drifting
slowly, with the wind in the tops of the
trees; but if the cable had not rusted
away, it should be still where he left it,
and they would make a rudder and hol-
low out cabins below, and at night they
47 The Loot of
Bombasharna
The Book of Wonder
would hoist sails to the trunks of the
trees and sail wherever they liked.
And all the pirates cheered, for they
wanted to set their feet on land again
somewhere where the hangman would
not come and jerk them off it at once;
and bold men though they were, it was
a strain seeing so many lights coming
their way at night. Even then . . . !
But it swerved away again and was lost
in the mist.
And Captain Shard said that they
would need to get provisions first, and
he, for one, intended to marry before he
settled down; and so they should have
one more fight before they left the ship,
and sack the sea-coast city Bombasharna
and take from it provisions for several
years, while he himself would marry the
Queen of the South. And again the
pirates cheered, for often they had seen
sea-coast Bombasharna, and had always
envied its opulence from the sea.
So they set all sail, and often altered
their course, and dodged and fled from
strange lights till dawn appeared, and
The Loot of 43
Bombasharna
The Book of Wonder
all day long fled southwards. And by
evening they saw the silver spires of
slender Bombasharna, a city that was
the glory of the coast. And in the midst
of it, far away though they were, they
saw the palace of the Queen of the
South; and it was so full of windows all
looking toward the sea, and they were
so full of light, both from the sunset
that was fading upon the water and from
candles that maids were lighting one by
one, that it looked far off like a pearl,
shimmering still in its haliotis shell, still
wet from the sea.
So Captain Shard and his pirates saw
it, at evening over the water, and thought
of rumours that said that Bombasharna
was the loveliest city of the coasts of
the world, and that its palace was lovelier
even than Bombasharna; but for the
Queen of the South rumour had no com-
parison. Then night came down and
hid the silver spires, and Shard slipped
on through the gathering darkness until
by midnight the piratic ship lay under
the seaward battlements,
49 The Loot of
Bombasharna
The Book of Wonder
And at the hour when sick men mostly
die, and sentries on lonely ramparts
stand to their arms, exactly half-an-hour
before dawn, Shard, with two rowing
boats and half his crew, with craftily
muffled oars, landed below the battle-
ments. They were through the gateway
of the palace itself before the alarm was
sounded, and as soon as they heard the
alarm Shard's gunners at sea opened
upon the town, and, before the sleepy
soldiery of Bombasharna knew whether
the danger was from the land or the sea,
Shard had successfully captured the
Queen of the South. They would have
looted all day that silver sea-coast city,
but there appeared with dawn suspicious
topsails just along the horizon. There-
fore the captain with his Queen went
down to the shore at once and hastily
re-embarked and sailed away with what
loot they had hurriedly got, and with
fewer men, for they had to fight a good
deal to get back to the boat. They
cursed all day the interference of those
ominous ships which steadily grew nearer.
The Loot of 50
Bombasharna
The Book of Wonder
There were six ships at first, and that
night they slipped away from all but
two; but all the next day those two were
still in sight, and each of them had more
guns than the Desperate Lark. All the
next night Shard dodged about the sea,
but the two ships separated and one
kept him in sight, and the next morning
it was alone with Shard on the sea, and
his archipelago was just in sight, the
secret of his life.
And Shard saw he must fight, and a
bad fight it was, and yet it suited Shard's
purpose, for he had more merry men
when the fight began than he needed for
his island. And they got it over before
any other ship came up; and Shard put
all adverse evidence out of the way, and
came that night to the islands near the
Sargasso Sea.
Long before it was light the survivors
of the crew were peering at the sea, and
when dawn came there was the island,
no bigger than two ships, straining hard
at its anchor, with the wind in the tops
of the trees.
51 The Loot of
Bombasharna
The Book of Wonder
And then they landed and dug cabins
below and raised the anchor out of the
deep sea, and soon they made the island
what they called shipshape. But the
Desperate Lark they sent away empty
under full sail to sea, where more nations
than Shard suspected were watching
for her, and where she was presently cap-
tured by an admiral of Spain, who, when
he found none of that famous crew on
board to hang by the neck from the yard-
arm, grew ill through disappointment.
And Shard on his island offered the
Queen of the South the choicest of the
old wines of Provence, and for adornment
gave her Indian jewels looted from gal-
leons with treasure for Madrid, and
spread a table where she dined in the
sun, while in some cabin below he bade
the least coarse of his mariners sing; yet
always she was morose and moody
towards him, and often at evening he
was heard to say that he wished he
knew more about the ways of Queens.
So they lived for years, the pirates mostly
gambling and drinking below, Captain
The Loot of 52
Bombasharna
The Book f Wonder
Shard trying to please the Queen of the
South, and she never wholly forgetting
Bombasharna. When they needed new
provisions they hoisted sails on the trees,
and as long as no ship came in sight they
scudded before the wind, with the water
rippling over the beach of the island;
but as soon as they sighted a ship the
sails came down, and they became an
ordinary uncharted rock.
They mostly moved by night; some-
times they hovered off sea-coast towns
as of old, sometimes they boldly entered
river-mouths, and even attached them-
selves for a while to the mainland,
whence they would plunder the neigh-
bourhood and escape again to sea. And
if a ship was wrecked on their island of
a night they said it was all to the good.
They grew very crafty in seamanship,
and cunning in what they did, for they
knew that any news of the Desperate
Lark's old crew would bring hangmen
from the interior running down to every
port.
And no one is known to have found
53 The Loot of
Bombasharna
Book of Wonder
them out or to have annexed their island;
but a rumour arose and passed from port
to port and every place where sailors
meet together, and even survives to this
day, of a dangerous uncharted rock any-
where between Plymouth and the Horn,
which would suddenly rise in the safest
track of ships, and upon which vessels
were supposed to have been wrecked,
leaving, strangely enough, no evidence
of their doom. There was a little specula-
tion about it at first, till it was silenced
by the chance remark of a man old with
wandering: "It is one of the mysteries
that haunt the sea."
And almost Captain Shard and the
Queen of the South lived happily ever
after, though still at evening those on
watch in the trees would see their captain
sit with a puzzled air or hear him mutter-
ing now and again in a discontented way:
"I wish I knew more about the ways of
Queens."
The Loot of 54
Bombasharna
__ I
I WISH I KNEW MOKE ABOUT THE WAYS OF QUEENS"
Miss Cubbidge
'Romance
This tale is told in the balconies of Belgrave Square and
among the towers of Pont Street; men sing it at evening
in the Brompton Road.
Httle upon her eighteenth
[birthday thought Miss
; Cubbidge, of Number 12A
I Prince of Wales' Square,
ithat before another year
had gone its way she would lose the sight
of that unshapely oblong that was so
long her home. And, had you told her
further that within that year all trace of
that so-called square, and of the day
when her father was elected by a thump-
55 Miss Cvbbidqe and the
Dragon of Romance
The Book f Wonder
ing majority to share in the guidance
of the destinies of the empire, should
utterly fade from her memory, she would
merely have said in that affected voice
of hers, "Go to!"
There was nothing about it in the
daily Press, the policy of her father's
party had no provision for it, there was
no hint of it in conversation at evening
parties to which Miss Cubbidge went:
there was nothing to warn her at all
that a loathsome dragon with golden
scales that rattled as he went should
have come up clean out of the prime of
romance and gone by night (so far as
we know) through Hammersmith, and
come to Ardle Mansions, and then have
turned to his left, which of course
brought him to Miss Cubbidge's father's
house.
There sat Miss Cubbidge at evening
on her balcony quite alone, waiting for
her father to be made a baronet. She
was wearing walking-boots and a hat
and a low-necked evening dress; for a
painter was but just now painting her
Miss Cubbidge and the 56
Dragon of Romance
The Book of Wonder
portrait and neither she nor the painter
saw anything odd in the strange combi-
nation. She did not notice the roar of
the dragon's golden scales, nor distin-
guish above the manifold lights of London
the small, red glare of his eyes. He sud-
denly lifted his head, a blaze of gold,
over the balcony; he did not appear a
yellow dragon then, for his glistening
scales reflected the beauty that London
puts upon her only at evening and night.
She screamed, but to no knight, nor
knew what knight to call on, nor guessed
where were the dragons' overthrowers
of far, rom Jitic days, nor what mightier
game they chased, or what wars they
waged; perchance they were busy even
then arming for Armageddon.
Out of the balcony of her father's
house in Prince of Wales' Square, the
painted dark-green balcony that grew
blacker every year, the dragon lifted
Miss Cubbidge and spread his rattling
wings, and London fell away like an old
fashion. And England fell away, and the
smoke of its factories, and the round
57 Miss Cubbidge and the
Dragon of Romance
The Book f Wonder
material world that goes humming round
the sun vexed and pursued by time,
until there appeared the eternal and
ancient lands of Romance lying low by
mystical seas.
You had not pictured Miss Cubbidge
stroking the golden head of one of the
dragons of song with one hand idly,
while with the other she sometimes
played with pearls brought up from
lonely places of the sea. They filled
huge haliotis shells with pearls and laid
them there beside her, they brought her
emeralds which she set to flash among
the tresses of her long black hair, they
brought her threaded sapphires for her
cloak: all this the princes of fable did
and the elves and the gnomes of myth.
And partly she still lived, and partly
she was one with long-ago and with those
sacred tales that nurses tell, when all
their children are good, and evening has
come, and the fire is burning well, and
the soft pat-pat of the snow-flakes on
the pane is like the furtive tread of
fearful things in old, enchanted woods.
Miss Cubbidge and the, 53
Dragon of
The Book f Wonder
If at first she missed those dainty novel-
ties among which she was reared, the
old, sufficient song of the mystical sea
singing of faery lore at first soothed and
at last consoled her. Even, she forgot
those advertisements of pills that are
so dear to England; even, she forgot
political cant and the things that one
discusses and the things that one does
not, and had perforce to content herself
with seeing sailing by huge golden-laden
galleons with treasure for Madrid, and
the merry skull-and-crossbones of the
pirateers, and the tiny nautilus setting
out to sea, and ships of heroes trafficking
in romance or of princes seeking for
enchanted isles.
It was not by chains that the dragon
kept her there, but by one of the spells
of old. To one to whom the facilities of
the daily Press had for so long been
accorded spells would have palled you
would have said and galleons after a
time and all things out-of-date. After
a time. But whether the centuries passed
her or whether the years or whether no
59 Miss Cubbidge and the
Dragon of Romance
The Book of Wonder
time at all, she did not know. If any-
thing indicated the passing of time it
was the rhythm of elfin horns blowing
upon the heights. If the centuries went
by her the spell that bound her gave her
also perennial youth, and kept alight
for ever the lantern by her side, and saved
from decay the marble palace facing the
mystical sea. And if no time went by
her there at all, her single moment on
those marvellous coasts was turned as
it were to a crystal reflecting a thousand
scenes. If it was all a dream, it was a
dream that knew no morning and no
fading away. The tide roamed on and
whispered of mystery and of myth, while
near that captive lady, asleep in his
marble tank the golden dragon dreamed :
and a little way out from the coast
all that the dragon dreamed showed
faintly in the mist that lay over the
sea. He never dreamed of any rescuing
knight. So long as he dreamed, it was
twilight; but when he came up nimbly
out of his tank night fell and starlight
glistened on the dripping, golden scales.
Miss Cubbidge and the QQ
Dragon of Romance
The Book f Wonder
There he and his captive either de-
feated Time or never encountered him
at all; while, in the world we know,
raged Roncesvalles or battles yet to be
- 1 know not to what part of the shore
of Romance he bore her. Perhaps she
became one of those princesses of whom
fable loves to tell, but let it suffice that
there she lived by the sea: and kings
ruled, and Demons ruled, and kings
came again, and many cities returned
to their native dust, and still she abided
there, and still her marble palace passed
not away nor the power that there was
in the dragon's spell.
And only once did there ever come to
her a message from the world that of
old she knew, it came in a pearly ship
across the mystical sea, it was from an
old school-friend that she had had in
Putney, merely a note, no more, in a
little, neat, round hand: it said, "It is
not Proper for you to be there alone."
61 Miss Cubbidge and the
Dragon of Romance
The Quest
of
the Queen's Tears
Jylvia, Queen of the Woods,
'in her woodland palace,
(held court, and made a
'mockery of her suitors.
|She would sing to them,
she said, she would give them banquets,
she would tell them tales of legendary
days, her jugglers should caper before
them, her armies salute them, her fools
crack jests with them and make whimsi-
cal quips, only she could not love them.
This was not the way, they said, to
treat princes in their splendour and
mysterious troubadours concealing kingly
names; it was not in accordance with
fable; myth had no precedent for it.
She should have thrown her glove, they
The Quest of the
Queen's Tears
62
The Book of Wonder
said, into some lion's den, she should
have asked for a score of venomous heads
of the serpents of Licantara, or demanded
the death of any notable dragon, or sent
them all upon some deadly quest, but
that she could not love them- ! It
was unheard of it had no parallel in
the annals of romance.
And then she said that if they must
needs have a quest she would offer her
hand to him who first should move her to
tears : and the quest should be called, for
reference in histories or song, the Quest of
the Queen's Tears, and he that achieved
them she would wed, be he only a petty
duke of lands unknown to romance.
And many were moved to anger, for
they hoped for some bloody quest; but
the old lords chamberlain said, as they
muttered among themselves in a far,
dark end of the chamber, that the quest
was hard and wise, for that if she could
ever weep she might also love. They had
known her all her childhood; she had
never sighed. Many men had she seen,
suitors and courtiers, and had never
63 The Quest of the
Queen's Tears
The Book f Wonder
turned her head after one went by. Her
beauty was as still sunsets of bitter even-
ings when all the world is frore, a wonder
and a chill. She was as a sun-stricken
mountain uplifted alone, all beautiful
with ice, a desolate and lonely radiance
late at evening far up beyond the com-
fortable world, not quite to be compan-
ioned by the stars, the doom of the
mountaineer.
If she could weep, they said, she could
love, they said.
And she smiled pleasantly on those
ardent princes, and troubadours conceal-
ing kingly names.
Then one by one they told, each suitor
prince the story of his love, with out-
stretched hands and kneeling on the
knee; and very sorry and pitiful were
the tales, so that often up in the galleries
some maid of the palace wept. And very
graciously she nodded her head like a
listless magnolia in the deeps of the
night moving idly to all the breezes its
glorious bloom.
And when the princes had told their
The Quest of the 54
Queen's Tears
The Book of Wonder
desperate loves and had departed away
with no other spoil than of their own
tears only, even then there came the
unknown troubadours and told their
tales in song, concealing their gracious
names.
And one there was, Ackronnion,
clothed with rags, on which was the dust
of roads, and underneath the rags was
war-scarred armour whereon were the
dints of blows; and when he stroked his
harp and sang his song, in gallery above
gallery maidens wept, and even the old
lords chamberlain whimpered among
themselves and thereafter laughed
through their tears and said: "It is
easy to make old people weep and to
bring idle tears from lazy girls; but he
will not set a-weeping the Queen of the
Woods."
And graciously she nodded, and he
was the last. And disconsolate went
away those dukes and princes, and trou-
badours in disguise. Yet Ackronnion
pondered as he went away.
King was he of Afarmah, Lool and Haf,
65 The Quest of the
Queen's Tears
The Book f Wonder
over-lord of Zeroora and hilly Chang,
and duke of the dukedoms of Molong
and Mlash, none of them unfamiliar
with romance or unknown or overlooked
in the making of myth. He pondered as
he went in his thin disguise.
Now by those that do not remember
their childhood, having other things to
do, be it understood that underneath
fairyland, which is, as all men know, at
the edge of the world, there dwelleth the
Gladsome Beast. A synonym he for joy.
It is known how the lark in its zenith,
children at play out-of-doors, good
witches and jolly old parents have all
been compared - and how aptly ! - - with
this very same Gladsome Beast. Only
one "crab" he has (if I may use slang
for a moment to make myself perfectly
clear), only one drawback, and that is
that in the gladness of his heart he spoils
the cabbages of the Old Man Who Looks
After Fairyland, and of course he eats
men.
It must further be understood that
whoever may obtain the tears of the
The Quest of the 66
Queen's Tears
The Book of Wonder
Gladsome Beast in a bowl, and become
drunken upon them, may move all per-
sons to shed tears of joy so long as he
remains inspired by the potion to sing or
to make music.
Now Ackronnion pondered in this
wise : that if he could obtain the tears of
the Gladsome Beast by means of his art,
withholding him from violence by the
spell of music, and if a friend should
slay the Gladsome Beast before his
weeping ceased for an end must come
to weeping even with men that so he
might get safe away with the tears, and
drink them before the Queen of the
Woods and move her to tears of joy.
He sought out therefore a humble
knightly man who cared not for the
beauty of Sylvia, Queen of the Woods,
but had found a woodland maiden of his
own once long ago in summer. And the
man's name was Arrath, a subject of
Ackronnion, a knight-at-arms of the
spear-guard: and together they set out
through the fields of fable until they
came to Fairyland, a kingdom sunning
67 The Quest cf the
Queen's Tears
The Book of Wonder
itself (as all men know) for leagues along
the edges of the world. And by a strange
old pathway they came to the land they
sought, through a wind blowing up the
pathway sheer from space with a kind of
metallic taste from the roving stars.
Even so they came to the windy house of
thatch where dwells the Old Man Who
Looks After Fairyland sitting by parlour
windows that look away from the world.
He made them welcome in his star-ward
parlour, telling them tales of Space, and
when they named to him their perilous
quest he said it would be a charity to kill
the Gladsome Beast; for he was clearly
one of those that liked not its happy
ways. And then he took them out through
his back door, for the front door had no
pathway nor even a step from it the
old man used to empty his slops sheer on
to the Southern Cross and so they
came to the garden wherein his cabbages
were, and those flowers that only blow in
Fairyland, turning their faces always
towards the comet, and he pointed them
out the way to the place he called Under-
The Quest of the 68
Queen's Tears
The Book of Wonder
neath, where the Gladsome Beast had his
lair. Then they manoeuvred. Ackronnion
was to go by the way of the steps with
his harp and an agate bowl, while Arrath
went round by a crag on the other side.
Then the Old Man Who Looks After
Fairyland went back to his windy house,
muttering angrily as he passed his cab-
bages, for he did not love the ways of
the Gladsome Beast; and the two friends
parted on their separate ways.
Nothing perceived them but that omi-
nous crow glutted overlong already upon
the flesh of man.
The wind blew bleak from the stars.
At first there was dangerous climbing,
and then Ackronnion gained the smooth
broad steps that led from the edge to the
lair, and at that moment heard at the
top of the steps the continuous chuckles
of the Gladsome Beast.
He feared then that its mirth might
be insuperable, not to be saddened by
the most grievous song; nevertheless he
did not turn back then, but softly
climbed the stairs and, placing the agate
69 The Quest of the
Queen's Tears
The Book of Wonder
bowl upon a step, struck up the chaunt
called Dolorous. It told of desolate,
regretted things befallen happy cities
long since in the prime of the world. It
told of how the gods and beasts and men
had long ago loved beautiful companions,
and long ago in vain. It told of the
golden host of happy hopes, but not of
their achieving. It told how Love scorned
Death, but told of Death's laughter.
The contented chuckles of the Gladsome
Beast suddenly ceased in his lair. He
rose and shook himself. He was still
unhappy. Ackronnion still sang on the
chaunt called Dolorous. The Gladsome
Beast came mournfully up to him. Ack-
ronnion ceased not for the sake of his
panic, but still sang on. He sang of the
malignity of time. Two tears welled
large in the eyes of the Gladsome Beast.
Ackronnion moved the agate bowl to a
suitable spot with his foot. He sang of
autumn and of passing away. Then the
beast wept as the frore hills weep in the
thaw, and the tears splashed big into
the agate bowl. Ackronnion desperately
The Quest of the 7Q
Queen's Tears
HK FELT AS A MOKHEI,
The Book of Wonder
chaunted on; he told of the glad un-
noticed things men see and do not see
again, of sunlight beheld unheeded on
faces now withered away. The bowl was
full. Ackronnion was desperate: the
Beast was so close. Once he thought
that its mouth was watering! but it
was only the tears that had run on the
lips of the Beast. He felt as a morsel!
The Beast was ceasing to weep! He sang
of worlds that had disappointed the
gods. And all of a sudden, crash! and
the staunch spear of Arrath went home
behind the shoulder, and the tears and
the joyful ways of the Gladsome Beast
were ended and over for ever.
And carefully they carried the bowl of
tears away, leaving the body of the Glad-
some Beast as a change of diet for the
ominous crow; and going by the windy
house of thatch they said farewell to the
Old Man Who Looks After Fairyland,
who when he heard of the deed rubbed
his large hands together and mumbled
again and again, " And a very good thing,
too. My cabbages! My cabbages!"
71 The Quest of the
Queen's Tears
The Book of Wonder
And not long after Ackronnion sang
again in the sylvan palace of the Queen
of the Woods, having first drunk all the
tears in his agate bowl. And it was a
gala night, and all the court were there
and ambassadors from the lands of
legend and myth, and even some from
Terra Cognita.
And Ackronnion sang as he never sang
before, and will not sing again. O, but
dolorous, dolorous, are all the ways of
man, few and fierce are his days, and the
end trouble, and vain, vain his endeavour :
and woman who shall tell of it? -
her doom is written with man's by list-
less, careless gods with their faces to
other spheres.
Somewhat thus he began, and then
inspiration seized him, and all the trouble
in the beauty of his song may not be
set down by me: there was much glad-
ness in it, and all mingled with grief: it
was like the way of man: it was like our
destiny.
Sobs arose at his song, sighs came back
along echoes: seneschals, soldiers, sobbed,
The Quest of the 73
Queen's Tears
The Book f Wonder
and a clear cry made the maidens; like
rain the tears came down from gallery
to gallery.
All round the Queen of the Woods was
a storm of sobbing and sorrow.
But no, she would not weep,
73 The Quest of the
Queen's Tears
The Hoard of the
Gibbelins
he Gibbelins eat, as is well
known, nothing less good
than man. Their evil
tower is joined to Terra
Cognita, to the lands we
know, by a bridge. Their hoard is be-
yond reason; avarice has no use for it;
they have a separate cellar for emeralds
and a separate cellar for sapphires; they
have filled a hole with gold and dig it up
when they need it. And the only use
that is known for their ridiculous wealth
is to attract to their larder a continual
supply of food. In times of famine they
have even been known to scatter rubies
abroad, a little trail of them to some city
of Man, and sure enough their larders
would soon be full again.
Their tower stands on the other side of
74
The Hoard of the
Gibbelins
THERE THE GIBBELIXS LIVED AND DISCREDITABLY FED
The Boo^ of Wonder
that river known to Homer o poos
as he called it which surrounds the
world. And where the river is narrow and
fordable the tower was built by the
Gibbelins' gluttonous sires, for they liked
to see burglars rowing easily to their
steps. Some nourishment that common
soil has not the huge trees drained there
with their colossal roots from both banks
of the river.
There the Gibbelins lived and dis-
creditably fed.
Alderic, Knight of the Order of the City
and the Assault, hereditary Guardian of
the King's Peace of Mind, a man not
unremembered among the makers of
myth, pondered so long upon the Gib-
belins' hoard that by now he deemed it
his. Alas that I should say of so perilous
a venture, undertaken at dead of night
by a valorous man, that its motive was
sheer avarice ! Yet upon avarice only the
Gibbelins relied to keep their larders full,
and once in every hundred years sent
spies into the cities of men to see how
avarice did, and always the spies returned
75 The Hoard of the
Gibbelins
The Book, f Wonder
again to the tower saying that all was
well.
It may be thought that, as the years
went on and men came by fearful ends
on that tower's wall, fewer and fewer
would come to the Gibbelins' table: but
the Gibbelins found otherwise.
Not in the folly and frivolity of his
youth did Alderic come to the tower,
but he studied carefully for several years
the manner in which burglars met their
doom when they went in search of the
treasure that he considered his. In every
case they had entered by the door.
He consulted those who gave advice
on this quest; he noted every detail and
cheerfully paid their fees, and deter-
mined to do nothing that they advised,
for what were their clients now? No more
than examples of the savoury art, mere
half -forgotten memories of a meal; and
many, perhaps, no longer even that.
These were the requisites for the quest
that these men used to advise: a horse,
a boat, mail armour, and at least three
men-at-arms. Some said, "Blow the
The Hoard of the 7g
Gibbelins
The Book of Wonder
horn at the tower door"; others said,
"Do not touch it."
Alderic thus decided: he would take
no horse down to the river's edge, he
would not row along it in a boat, and he
would go alone and by way of the
Forest Unpassable.
How pass, you may say, by the un-
passable? This was his plan: there was
a dragon he knew of who if peasants'
prayers are heeded deserved to die, not
alone because of the number of maidens
he cruelly slew, but because he was bad
for the crops; he ravaged the very land
and was the bane of a dukedom.
Now Alderic determined to go up
against him. So he took horse and spear
and pricked till he met the dragon, and
the dragon came out against him breath-
ing bitter smoke. And to him Alderic
shouted, "Hath foul dragon ever slain
true knight?" And well the dragon knew
that this had never been, and he hung
his head and was silent, for he was
glutted with blood. "Then," said the
knight, "if thou would'st ever taste
77 The Hoard of the
Qibbelins
The Book f Wonder
maiden's blood again thou shalt be my
trusty steed, and if not, by this spear
there shall befall thee all that the trouba-
dours tell of the dooms of thy breed."
And the dragon did not open his raven-
ing mouth, nor rush upon the knight,
breathing out fire; for well he knew the
fate of those that did these things, but he
consented to the terms imposed, and swore
to the knight to become his trusty steed.
It was on a saddle upon this dragon's
back that Alderic afterwards sailed above
the unpassable forest, even above the
tops of those measureless trees, children
of wonder. But first he pondered that
subtle plan of his which was more pro-
found than merely to avoid all that had
been done before; and he commanded a
blacksmith, and the blacksmith made
him a pickaxe.
Now there was great rejoicing at the
rumour of Alderic's quest, for all folk
knew that he was a cautious man, and
they deemed that he would succeed and
enrich the world, and they rubbed their
hands in the cities at the thought of
TJie Hoard of the 78
Gibbelins
The Book of Wonder
largesse; and there was joy among all men
in Alderic's country, except perchance
among the lenders of money, who feared
they would soon be paid. And there was
rejoicing also because men hoped that
when the Gibbelins were robbed of their
hoard, they would shatter their high-
built bridge and break the golden chains
that bound them to the world, and drift
back, they and their tower, to the moon,
from which they had come and to which
they rightly belonged. There was little
love for the Gibbelins, though all men
envied their hoard.
So they all cheered, that day when he
mounted his dragon, as though he was
already a conqueror, and what pleased
them more than the good that they
hoped he would do to the world was that
he scattered gold as he rode away; for
he would not need it, he said, if he found
the Gibbelins' hoard, and he would not
need it more if he smoked on the Gibbe-
lins' table.
When they heard that he had rejected
the advice of those that gave it, some said
79 The Hoard of the
Gibbelins
The Book of Wonder
that the knight was mad, and others
said he was greater than those that gave
the advice, but none appreciated the
worth of his plan.
He reasoned thus: for centuries men
had been well advised and had gone by
the cleverest way, while the Gibbelins
came to expect them to come by boat and
to look for them at the door whenever
their larder was empty, even as a man
looketh for a snipe in the marsh; but how,
said Alderic, if a snipe should sit in the
top of a tree, and would men find him
there? Assuredly never! So Alderic de-
cided to swim the river and not to go by
the door, but to pick his way into the
tower through the stone. Moreover, it
was in his mind to work below the level
of the ocean, the river (as Homer knew)
that girdles the world, so that as soon
as he made a hole in the wall the water
should pour in, confounding the Gibbe-
lins, and flooding the cellars rumoured
to be twenty feet in depth, and therein
he would dive for emeralds as a diver
dives for pearls.
The Hoard of the 80
Gibbelins
The Book of Wonder
And on the day that I tell of he
galloped away from his home scattering
largesse of gold, as I have said, and passed
through many kingdoms, the dragon
snapping at maidens as he went, but
being unable to eat them because of the
bit in his mouth, and earning no gentler
reward than a spurthrust where he was
softest. And so they came to the swart
arboreal precipice of the unpassable for-
est. The dragon rose at it with a rattle
of wings. Many a farmer near the edge
of the world saw him up there where
yet the twilight lingered, a faint, black,
wavering line; and mistaking him for a
row of geese going inland from the ocean,
went into their houses cheerily rubbing
their hands and saying that winter was
coming, and that we should soon have
snow. Soon even there the twilight
faded away, and when they descended
at the edge of the world it was night and
the moon was shining. Ocean, the an-
cient river, narrow and shallow there,
flowed by and made no murmur. Whether
the Gibbelins banqueted or whether they
81 The Hoard of the
Gibbelins
The Book f Wonder
watched by the door, they also made no
murmur. And Alderic dismounted and
took his armour off, and saying one
prayer to his lady, swam with his pick-
axe. He did not part from his sword,
for fear that he met with a Gibbelin.
Landed the other side, he began to work
at once, and all went well with him.
Nothing put out its head from any
window, and all were lighted so that
nothing within could see him in the dark.
The blows of his pickaxe were dulled in
the deep walls. All night he worked, no
sound came to molest him, and at dawn
the last rock swerved and tumbled in-
wards, and the river poured in after.
Then Alderic took a stone, and went to
the bottom step, and hurled the stone
at the door; he heard the echoes roll
into the tower, then he ran back and
dived through the hole in the wall.
He was in the emerald-cellar. There
was no light in the lofty vault above
him, but, diving through twenty feet of
water, he felt the floor all rough with
emeralds, and open coffers full of them.
The Hoard of the 82
Gibbelin*
The Book of Wonder
By a faint ray of the moon he saw that
the water was green with them, and,
easily filling a satchel, he rose again to
the surface; and there were the Gibbe-
lins waist-deep in the water, with torches
in their hands! And, without saying a
word, or even smiling, they neatly hanged
him on the outer wall and the tale
is one of those that have not a happy
ending.
The Hoard of the
Gibbelins
How Nuth would
have 'Practised his
Art upon the Gnoles
Respite the advertisements
i of rival firms, it is prob-
able that every tradesman
4 knows that nobody in busi-
mess at the present time
has a position equal to that of Mr.
Nuth. To those outside the magic circle
of business, his name is scarcely known;
he does not need to advertise, he is con-
summate. He is superior even to modern
competition, and, whatever claims they
boast, his rivals know it. His terms are
moderate, so much cash down when the
goods are delivered, so much in black-
mail afterwards. He consults your con-
venience. His skill may be counted upon;
I have seen a shadow on a windy night
How Nuth would have Prac- 34
tised his Art upon the Gnoles
The Book f Wonder
move more noisily than Nuth, for Nuth
is a burglar by trade. Men have been
known to stay in country houses and to
send a dealer afterwards to bargain for
a piece of tapestry that they saw there
some article of furniture, some picture.
This is bad taste: but those whose cul-
ture is more elegant invariably send
Nuth a night or two after their visit.
He has a way with tapestry, you would
scarcely notice that the edges had been
cut. And often when I see some huge,
new house full of old furniture and por-
traits from other ages, I say to myself,
"These mouldering chairs, these full-
length ancestors and carved mahogany
are the produce of the incomparable
Nuth."
It may be urged against my use of the
word incomparable that in the burglary
business the name of Slith stands para-
mount and alone; and of this I am not
ignorant; but Slith is a classic, and lived
long ago, and knew nothing at all of
modern competition; besides which the
surprising nature of his doom has possibly
85 How Nuth would have Prac-
tised his Art upon the Gnoles
The Bool^ of Wonder
cast a glamour upon Slith that exagger-
ates in our eyes his undoubted merits.
It must not be thought that I am
any friend of Nuth's, on the contrary such
politics as I have are on the side of
Property; and he needs no words from
me, for his position is almost unique in
trade, being among the very few that
do not need to advertise.
At the time that my story begins Nuth
lived in a roomy house in Belgrave
Square: in his inimitable way he had
made friends with the caretaker. The
place suited Nuth, and, whenever any-
one came to inspect it before purchase,
the caretaker used to praise the house in
the words that Nuth had suggested.
"If it wasn't for the drains," she would
say, "it's the finest house in London,"
and when they pounced on this remark
and asked questions about the drains,
she would answer them that the drains
also were good, but not so good as the
house. They did not see Nuth when
they went over the rooms, but Nuth
was there.
How Nuth would have Prac-
tised his Art upon the Gnoles
The Book of Wonder
Here in a neat black dress on one
spring morning came an old woman
whose bonnet was lined with red, asking
for Mr. Nuth; and with her came her
large and awkward son. Mrs. Eggins,
the caretaker, glanced up the street,
and then she let them in, and left them
to wait in the drawing-room amongst
furniture all mysterious with sheets. For
a long while they waited, and then there
was a smell of pipe-tobacco, and there
was Nuth standing quite close to them.
"Lord," said the old woman whose
bonnet was lined with red, "you did
make me start." And then she saw
by his eyes that that was not the way
to speak to Mr. Nuth.
And at last Nuth spoke, and very
nervously the old woman explained that
her son was a likely lad, and had been
in business already but wanted to better
himself, and she wanted Mr. Nuth to
teach him a livelihood.
First of all Nuth wanted to see a
business reference, and when he was
shown one from a jeweller with whom
87 How Nuth would have Prac-
tised his Art upon the Gnoles
The Book of Wonder
he happened to be hand-in-glove the up-
shot of it was that he agreed to take
young Tonker (for this was the surname
of the likely lad) and to make him his
apprentice. And the old woman whose
bonnet was lined with red went back to
her little cottage in the country, and
every evening said to her old man,
"Tonker, we must fasten the shutters
of a night-time, for Tommy's a burglar
now."
The details of the likely lad's ap-
prenticeship I do not propose to give;
for those that are in the business know
those details already, and those that
are in other businesses care only for their
own, while men of leisure who have no
trade at all would fail to appreciate the
gradual degrees by which Tommy Tonker
came first to cross bare boards, covered
with little obstacles in the dark, without
making any sound, and then to go si-
lently up creaky stairs, and then to open
doors, and lastly to climb.
Let it suffice that the business pros-
pered greatly, while glowing reports of
How Nuth would have Prac- gg
(ised his Art upon the Gnoles
The Book of Wonder
Tommy Tonker's progress were sent
from time to time to the old woman
whose bonnet was lined with red in the
laborious handwriting of Nuth. Nuth
had given up lessons in writing very
early, for he seemed to have some preju-
dice against forgery, and therefore con-
sidered writing a waste of time. And
then there came the transaction with
Lord Castlenorman at his Surrey resi-
dence. Nuth selected a Saturday night,
for it chanced that Saturday was ob-
served as Sabbath in the family of Lord
Castlenorman, and by eleven o'clock the
whole house was quiet. Five minutes
before midnight Tommy Tonker, in-
structed by Mr. Nuth, who waited out-
side, came away with one pocketful of
rings and shirt-studs. It was quite a
light pocketful, but the jewellers in Paris
could not match it without sending spe-
cially to Africa, so that Lord Castlenor-
man had to borrow bone shirt-studs.
Not even rumour whispered the name
of Nuth. Were I to say that this turned
his head, there are those to whom the
89 How Nuth would have Prac-
tised his Art upon the Gnoley
The Book f Wonder
assertion would give pain, for his associ-
ates hold that his astute judgment was
unaffected by circumstance. I will say,
therefore, that it spurred his genius to
plan what no burglar had ever planned
before. It was nothing less than to burgle
the house of the gnoles. And this that
abstemious man unfolded to Tonker over
a cup of tea. Had Tonker not been nearly
insane with pride over their recent trans-
action, and had he not been blinded by a
veneration for Nuth, he would have
but I cry over spilt milk. He expostu-
lated respectfully: he said he would
rather not go; he said it was not fair,
he allowed himself to argue; and in the
end, one windy October morning with a
menace in the air found him and Nuth
drawing near to the dreadful wood.
Nuth, by weighing little emeralds
against pieces of common rock, had
ascertained the probable weight of those
house-ornaments that the gnoles are be-
lieved to possess in the narrow, lofty
house wherein they have dwelt from of
old. They decided to steal two emeralds
How Nuth would have Prac- QQ
tis-d his Art upon the Gnoles
The Book of Wonder
and to carry them between them on a
cloak; but if they should be too heavy
one must be dropped at once. Nuth
warned young Tonker against greed, and
explained that the emeralds were worth
less than cheese until they were safe
away from the dreadful wood.
Everything had been planned, and they
walked now in silence.
No track led up to the sinister gloom
of the trees, either of men or cattle; not
even a poacher had been there snaring
elves for over a hundred years. You did
not trespass twice in the dells of the
gnoles. And, apart from the things that
were done there, the trees themselves
were a warning, and did not wear the
wholesome look of those that we plant
ourselves.
The nearest village was some miles
away with the backs of all its houses
turned to the wood, and without one
window at all facing in that direction.
They did not speak of it there, and else-
where it is unheard of.
Into this wood stepped Nuth and
91 How Nuth would have Prac-
tised his Art upon the Gnoles
The Book f Wonder
Tommy Tonker. They had no firearms.
Tonker had asked for a pistol, but Nuth
replied that the sound of a shot " would
bring everything down on us," and no
more was said about it.
Into the wood they went all day,
deeper and deeper. They saw the skele-
ton of some early Georgian poacher
nailed to a door in an oak tree; sometimes
they saw a fairy scuttle away from them;
once Tonker stepped heavily on a hard,
dry stick, after which they both lay still
for twenty minutes. And the sunset
flared full of omens through the tree
trunks, and night fell, and they came by
fitful starlight, as Nuth had foreseen, to
that lean, high house where the gnoles so
secretly dwelt.
All was so silent by that unvalued
house that the faded courage of Tonker
flickered up, but to Nuth's experienced
sense it seemed too silent; and all the
while there was that look in the sky that
was worse than a spoken doom, so that
Nuth, as is often the case when men are
in doubt, had leisure to fear the worst,
How Nuth would have Prac- 92
(ised his Art upon the Gnoles
The Book of Wonder
Nevertheless he did not abandon the
business, but sent the likely lad with the
instruments of his trade by means of the
ladder to the old green casement. And
the moment that Tonker touched the
withered boards, the silence that, though
ominous, was earthly, became unearthly
like the touch of a ghoul. And Tonker
heard his breath offending against that
silence, and his heart was like mad drums
in a night attack, and a string of one of
his sandals went tap on a rung of a ladder,
and the leaves of the forest were mute,
and the breeze of the night was still; and
Tonker prayed that a mouse or a mole
might make any noise at all, but not a
creature stirred, even Nuth was still.
And then and there, while yet he was
undiscovered, the likely lad made up his
mind, as he should have done long before,
to leave those colossal emeralds where
they were and have nothing further to do
with the lean, high house of the gnoles,
but to quit this sinister wood in the nick
of time and retire from business at once
and buy a place in the country. Then he
93 How Nuth would have Prac-
tised his Art upon the Gnoles
The Book f Wonder
descended softly and beckoned to Nuth.
But the gnoles had watched him through
knavish holes that they bore in trunks of
the trees, and the unearthly silence gave
way, as it were with a grace, to the rapid
screams of Tonker as they picked him
up from behind screams that came
faster and faster until they were inco-
herent. And where they took him it is
not good to ask, and what they did with
him I shall not say.
Nuth looked on for a while from the
corner of the house with a mild surprise
on his face as he rubbed his chin, for the
trick of the holes in the trees was new to
him; then he stole nimbly away through
the dreadful wood.
"And did they catch Nuth?" you ask
me, gentle reader.
"Oh, no, my child" (for such a ques-
tion is childish). "Nobody ever catches
Nuth."
How Nuth would have Prae- 94
tised his Art upon the Gnoles
THE LEA\, HIGH HOUSE OF THE GXOLES
How
One came,
as was foretold,
to the City of Never
jhe child that played about
the terraces and gardens
in sight of the Surrey hills
! never knew that it was he
I that should come to the
Ultimate City, never knew that he should
see the Under Pits, the barbicans and
the holy minarets of the mightiest city
known. I think of him now as a child
with a little red watering-can going about
the gardens on a summer's day that lit
the warm south country, his imagination
delighted with all tales of quite little ad-
ventures, and all the while there was
reserved for him that feat at which men
wonder.
95 How One came to the
City of Never
The Book f Wonder
Looking in other directions, away from
the Surrey hills, through all his infancy
he saw that precipice that, wall above
wall and mountain above mountain,
stands at the edge of the World, and in
perpetual twilight alone with the Moon
and the Sun holds up the inconceivable
City of Never. To tread its streets he
was destined; prophecy knew it. He had
the magic halter, and a worn old rope it
was, an old wayfaring woman had given
it to him: it had the power to hold any
animal whose race had never known cap-
tivity, such as the unicorn, the hippogriff
Pegasus, dragons and wyverns; but with
a lion, giraffe, camel or horse it was use-
less.
How often we have seen that City of
Never, that marvel of the Nations! Not
when it is night in the World, and we
can see no further than the stars; not
when the sun is shining where we dwell,
dazzling our eyes; but when the sun has
set on some stormy days, all at once
repentant at evening, and those glitter-
ing cliffs reveal themselves which we
How One came to the 9(j
City of Never
The Book of Wonder
almost take to be clouds, and it is twi-
light with us as it is for ever with them,
then on their gleaming summits we
see those golden domes that overpeer the
edges of the World and seem to dance
with dignity and calm in that gentle light
of evening that is Wonder's native haunt.
Then does the City of Never, unvisited
and afar, look long at her sister the
World.
It had been prophesied that he should
come there. They knew it when the
pebbles were being made and before the
isles of coral were given unto the sea.
And thus the prophecy came unto fulfil-
ment and passed into history, and so at
length to Oblivion, out of which I drag
it as it goes floating by, into which I
shall one day tumble. The hippogriffs
dance before dawn in the upper air; long
before sunrise flashes upon our lawns
they go to glitter in light that has not
yet come to the World, and as the dawn
works up from the ragged hills and the
stars feel it they go slanting earthwards,
till sunlight touches the tops of the
97 How One came to the
City of Never
The Book f Wonder
tallest trees, and the hippogriffs alight
with a rattle of quills and fold their
wings and gallop and gambol away till
they come to some prosperous, wealthy,
detestable town, and they leap at once
from the fields and soar away from the
sight of it, pursued by the horrible smoke
of it until they come again to the pure
blue air.
He whom prophecy had named from
of old to come to the City of Never, went
down one midnight with his magic halter
to a lake-side where the hippogriffs
alighted at dawn, for the turf was soft
there and they could gallop far before
they came to a town, and there he waited
hidden near their hoofmarks. And the
stars paled a little and grew indistinct;
but there was no other sign as yet of
the dawn, when there appeared far up
in the deeps of night two little saffron
specks, then four and five: it was the
hippogriffs dancing and twirling around
in the sun. Another flock joined them,
there were twelve of them now; they
danced there, flashing their colours back
How One came to the QQ
City of Never
The Book f Wonder
to the sun, they descended in wide
curves slowly; trees down on earth re-
vealed against the sky, jet-black each
delicate twig; a star disappeared from a
cluster, now another; and dawn came on
like music, like a new song. Ducks shot
by to the lake from still dark fields of
corn, far voices uttered, a colour grew
upon water, and still the hippogriffs
gloried in the light, revelling up in the
sky; but when pigeons stirred on the
branches and the first small bird was
abroad, and little coots from the rushes
ventured to peer about, then there came
down on a sudden with a thunder of
feathers the hippogriffs, and, as they
landed from their celestial heights all
bathed with the day's first sunlight, the
man whose destiny it was from of old
to come to the City of Never, sprang up
and caught the last with the magic halter.
It plunged, but could not escape it, for
the hippogriffs are of the uncaptured
races, and magic has power over the
magical, so the man mounted it, and it
soared again for the heights whence it
Q9 How One came to the
City of Never
The Book f Wonder
had come, as a wounded beast goes home.
But when they came to the heights that
venturous rider saw huge and fair to the
left of him the destined City of Never,
and he beheld the towers of Lei and Lek,
Neerib and Akathooma, and the cliffs of
Toldenarba a-glistering in the twilight
like an alabaster statue of the Evening.
Towards them he wrenched the halter,
towards Toldenarba and the Under Pits;
the wings of the hippogriff roared as the
halter turned him. Of the Under Pits
who shall tell? Their mystery is secret.
It is held by some that they are the
sources of night, and that darkness pours
from them at evening upon the world;
while others hint that knowledge of these
might undo our civilization.
There watched him ceaselessly from the
Under Pits those eyes whose duty it is;
from further within and deeper, the bats
that dwell there arose when they saw
the surprise in the eyes; the sentinels on
the bulwarks beheld that stream of bats
and lifted up their spears as it were for
war. Nevertheless when they perceived
How One came to the 100
City of Never
THE CITY OF NEVER
The Book f Wonder
that that war for which they watched
was not now come upon them, they low-
ered their spears and suffered him to
enter, and he passed whirring through
the earthward gateway. Even so he came,
as foretold, to the City of Never perched
upon Toldenarba, and saw late twilight
on those pinnacles that know no other
light. All the domes were of copper, but
the spires on their summits were gold.
Little steps of onyx ran all this way and
that. With cobbled agates were its streets
a glory. Through small square panes of
rose-quartz the citizens looked from their
houses. To them as they looked abroad
the World far-off seemed happy. Clad
though that city was in one robe always,
in twilight, yet was its beauty worthy
of even so lovely a wonder : city and twi-
light both were peerless but for each
other. Built of a stone unknown in the
world we tread were its bastions, quarried
we know not where, but called by the
gnomes abyx, it so flashed back to the
twilight its glories, colour for colour, that
none can say of them where their boun-
101 How One came to the
City of Never
The Book f Wonder
dary is, and which the eternal twilight,
and which the City of Never; they are
the twin-born children, the fairest daugh-
ters of Wonder. Time had been there, but
not to work destruction; he had turned
to a fair, pale green the domes that were
made of copper, the rest he had left un-
touched, even he, the destroyer of cities,
by what bribe I know not averted.
Nevertheless they often wept in Never
for change and passing away, mourning
catastrophes in other worlds, and they
built temples sometimes to ruined stars
that had fallen flaming down from the
Milky Way, giving them worship still
when by us long since forgotten. Other
temples they have who knows to what
divinities?
And he that was destined alone of
men to come to the City of Never was
well content to behold it as he trotted
down its agate street, with the wings of
his hippogriff furled, seeing at either side
of him marvel on marvel of which even
China is ignorant. Then as he neared
the city's further rampart by which no
How One came to the 1Q2
City of Never
The Boo^ of Wonder
inhabitant stirred, and looked in a direc-
tion to which no houses faced with any
rose-pink windows, he suddenly saw far-
off, dwarfing the mountains, an even
greater city. Whether that city was
built upon the twilight or whether it rose
from the coasts of some other world he
did not know. He saw it dominate the
City of Never, and strove to reach it;
but at this unmeasured home of unknown
colossi the hippogriff shied franticaUy,
and neither the magic halter nor any-
thing that he did could make the monster
face it. At last, from the City of Never 's
lonely outskirts where no inhabitants
walked, the rider turned slowly earth-
wards, he knew now why all the windows
faced this way the denizens of the
twilight gazed at the world and not at a
greater than them. Then from the last
step of the earthward stairway, like lead
past the Under Pits and down the glit-
tering face of Toldenarba, down from
the overshadowed glories of the gold-
tipped City of Never and out of perpetual
twilight, swooped the man on his winged
103 How One came to the
City of Never
The Book of Wonder
monster: the wind that slept at the time
leaped up like a dog at their onrush, it
uttered a cry and ran past them. Down
on the World it was morning; night was
roaming away with his cloak trailed be-
hind him, white mists turned over and
over as he went, the orb was grey but it
glittered, lights blinked surprisingly in
early windows, forth over wet, dim fields
went cows from their houses: even in
this hour touched the fields again the
feet of the hippogriff. And the moment
that the man dismounted and took off
his magic halter the hippogriff flew slant-
ing away with a whirr, going back to some
airy dancing-place of his people.
And he that surmounted glittering
Toldenarba and came alone of men to
the City of Never has his name and his
fame among nations; but he and the
people of that twilit city well know two
things unguessed by other men, they that
there is a city fairer than theirs, and
he a deed unaccomplished.
How One came to the JQ4
City of Never
The Coronation of
Mr. Thomas Shap
t was the occupation of
Mr. Thomas Shap to per-
suade customers that the
goods were genuine and of
an excellent quality, and
that as regards the price their unspoken
will was consulted. And in order to carry
on this occupation he went by train very
early every morning some few miles
nearer to the City from the suburb in
which he slept. This was the use to which
he put his life.
From the moment when he first per-
ceived (not as one reads a thing in a book,
but as truths are revealed to one's in-
stinct) the very beastliness of his occu-
pation, and of the house that he slept
in, its shape, make and pretensions, and
of even the clothes that he wore; from
105 The Coronation of
Mr. Thomas Shap
The Book f Wonder
that moment lie withdrew his dreams
from it, his fancies, his ambitions, every-
thing in fact except that ponderable Mr.
Shap that dressed in a frock-coat, bought
tickets and handled money and could in
turn be handled by the statistician. The
priest's share in Mr. Shap, the share of
the poet, never caught the early train
to the City at all.
He used to take little flights with his
fancy at first, dwelt all day in his dreamy
way on fields and rivers lying in the sun-
light where it strikes the world more
brilliantly further South. And then he
began to imagine butterflies there; after
that, silken people and the temples they
built to their gods.
They noticed that he was silent, and
even absent at times, but they found no
fault with his behaviour with customers,
to whom he remained as plausible as of
old. So he dreamed for a year, and his
fancy gained strength as he dreamed.
He still read halfpenny papers in the
train, still discussed the passing day's
ephemeral topic, still voted at elections,
The Coronation of ~[QQ
Mr. Thomas Shap
The Book of Wonder
though he no longer did these things
with the whole Shap his soul was no
longer in them.
He had had a pleasant year, his imagi-
nation was all new to him still, and it
had often discovered beautiful things
away where it went, southeast at the
edge of the twilight. And he had a
matter-of-fact and logical mind, so that
he often said, "Why should I pay my
twopence at the electric theatre when I
can see all sorts of things quite easily
without?" Whatever he did was logical
before anything else, and those that
knew him always spoke of Shap as "a
sound, sane, level-headed man."
On far the most important day of his
life he went as usual to town by the
early train to sell plausible articles to
customers, while the spiritual Shap
roamed off to fanciful lands. As he
walked from the station, dreamy but
wide awake, it suddenly struck him that
the real Shap was not the one walking
to Business in black and ugly clothes,
but he who roamed along a jungle's
107 The Coronation of
Mr. Thomas Shap
The Book of Wonder
edge near the ramparts of an old and
Eastern city that rose up sheer from the
sand, and against which the desert lapped
with one eternal wave. He used to fancy
the name of that city was Larkar. "After
all, the fancy is as real as the body," he
said with perfect logic. It was a danger-
ous theory.
For that other life that he led he real-
ized, as in Business, the importance and
value of method. He did not let his
fancy roam too far until it perfectly knew
its first surroundings. Particularly he
avoided the jungle he was not afraid
to meet a tiger there (after all it was not
real), but stranger things might crouch
there. Slowly he built up Larkar: ram-
part by rampart, towers for archers,
gateway of brass, and all. And then
one day he argued, and quite rightly,
that all the silk-clad people in its
streets, their camels, their wares that
came from Inkustahn, the city itself,
were all the things of his will and
then he made himself King. He smiled
after that when people did not raise
The Coronation of JQ8
Mr. Thomas Shop
The Book of Wonder
their hats to him in the street, as
he walked from the station to Business;
but he was sufficiently practical to recog-
nize that it was better not to talk of this
to those that only knew him as Mr. Shap.
Now that he was King in the city of
Larkar and in all the desert that lay to
the East and North he sent his fancy to
wander further afield. He took the regi-
ments of his camel-guard and went jing-
ling out of Larkar, with little silver bells
under the camels' chins, and came to
other cities far-off on the yellow sand,
with clear white walls and towers, up-
lifting themselves in the sun. Through
their gates he passed with his three silken
regiments, the light-blue regiment of the
camel-guard being upon his right and the
green regiment riding at his left, the lilac
regiment going on before. When he had
gone through the streets of any city and
observed the ways of its people, and had
seen the way that the sunlight struck its
towers, he would proclaim himself King
there, and then ride on in fancy. So he
passed from city to city and from land
109 The Coronation of
Mr. Thomas Shop
The Book f Wonder
to land. Clear-sighted though Mr. Shap
was, I think he overlooked the lust of
aggrandizement to which kings have so
often been victims: and so it was that
when the first few cities had opened their
gleaming gates and he saw peoples pros-
trate before his camel, and spearmen
cheering along countless balconies, and
priests come out to do him reverence,
he that had never had even the lowliest
authority in the familiar world became
unwisely insatiate. He let his fancy ride
at inordinate speed, he forsook method,
scarce was he king of a land but he
yearned to extend his borders; so he
journeyed deeper and deeper into the
wholly unknown. The concentration
that he gave to this inordinate progress
through countries of which history is
ignorant and cities so fantastic in their
bulwarks that, though their inhabitants
were human, yet the foe that they feared
seemed something less or more; the
amazement with which he beheld gates
and towers unknown even to art, and
furtive people thronging intricate ways
The Coronation of \IQ
Mr. Thomas Shap
The Book of Wonder
to acclaim him as their sovereign; all
these things began to affect his capacity
for Business. He knew as well as any
that his fancy could not rule these beauti-
ful lands unless that other Shap, however
unimportant, were well sheltered and fed:
and shelter and food meant money, and
money, Business. His was more like the
mistake of some gambler with cunning
schemes who overlooks human greed.
One day his fancy, riding in the morning,
came to a city gorgeous as the sunrise,
in whose opalescent wall were gates of
gold, so huge that a river poured between
the bars, floating in, when the gates were
opened, large galleons under sail. Thence
there came dancing out a company with
instruments, and made a melody all
round the wall; that morning Mr. Shap,
the bodily Shap in London, forgot the
train to town.
Until a year ago he had never imagined
at all; it is not to be wondered at that all
these things now newly seen by his fancy
should play tricks at first with the memory
of even so sane a man. He gave up read-
in The Coronation of
Mr. Thomas Shap
The Book f Wonder
ing the papers altogether, he lost all in-
terest in politics, he cared less and less
for things that were going on around him.
This unfortunate missing of the morning
train even occurred again, and the firm
spoke to him severely about it. But he
had his consolation. Were not Arathrion
and Argun Zeerith and all the level
coasts of Oora his? And even as the firm
found fault with him his fancy watched
the yaks on weary journeys, slow specks
against the snow-fields, bringing tribute;
and saw the green eyes of the mountain
men who had looked at him strangely in
the city of Nith when he had entered it
by the desert door. Yet his logic did not
forsake him; he knew well that his strange
subjects did not exist, but he was prouder
of having created them with his brain,
than merely of ruling them only; thus in
his pride he felt himself something more
great than a king, he did not dare to
think what! He went into the temple of
the city of Zorra and stood some time
there alone: all the priests kneeled to
him when he came away.
The Coronation of 112
Mr. Thomas Shop
The Book of Wonder
He cared less and less for the things
we care about, for the affairs of Shap, a
business-man in London. He began to
despise the man with a royal contempt.
One day when he sat in Sowla, the city
of the Thuls, throned on one amethyst,
he decided, and it was proclaimed on the
moment by silver trumpets all along the
land, that he would be crowned as king
over all the lands of Wonder.
By that old temple where the Thuls
were worshipped, year in, year out, for
over a thousand years, they pitched pa-
vilions in the open air. The trees that
blew there threw out radiant scents un-
known in any countries that know the
map; the stars blazed fiercely for that
famous occasion. A fountain hurled up,
clattering, ceaselessly into the air arm-
fuls on armfuls of diamonds, a deep hush
waited for the golden trumpets, the holy
coronation night was come. At the top
of those old, worn steps, going down we
know not whither, stood the king in the
emerald-and-amethyst cloak, the ancient
garb of the Thuls; beside him lay that
113 The Coronation of
Mr. Thomas Shop
The Book of Wonder
Sphinx that for the last few weeks had
advised him in his affairs.
Slowly, with music when the trumpets
sounded, came up towards him from we
know not where, one-hundred-and-twenty
archbishops, twenty angels and two arch-
angels, with that terrific crown, the dia-
dem of the Thuls. They knew as they
came up to him that promotion awaited
them all because of this night's work.
Silent, majestic, the king awaited them.
The doctors downstairs were sitting
over their supper, the warders softly
slipped from room to room, and when in
that cosy dormitory of Hanwell they saw
the king still standing erect and royal,
his face resolute, they came up to him
and addressed him: "Go to bed," they
said "pretty bed." So he lay down
and soon was fast asleep: the great day
was over.
The Coronation of H4
Mr. Thomas Shap
THK CORONATION OF Mu. THOMAS SHAP
Chu-Eu andSheemish
t was the custom on Tues-
days in the temple of Chu-
bu for the priests to enter at
evening and chant, " There
is none but Chu-bu."
And all the people rejoiced and cried
out, " There is none but Chu-bu." And
honey was offered to Chu-bu, and maize
and fat. Thus was he magnified.
Chu-bu was an idol of some antiquity,
as may be seen from the colour of the
wood. He had been carved out of ma-
hogany, and after he was carved he had
been polished. Then they had set him
up on the diorite pedestal with the
brazier in front of it for burning spices
and the flat gold plates for fat. Thus
they worshipped Chu-bu.
He must have been there for over a
hundred years when one day the priests
came in with another idol into the temple
115
Chu-bu and
Sheemish
The Book f Wonder
of Chu-bu, and set it up on a pedestal
near Chu-bu's and sang, "There is also
Sheemish."
And all the people rejoiced and cried
out, " There is also Sheemish."
Sheemish was palpably a modern idol,
and although the wood was stained with
a dark-red dye, you could see that he
had only just been carved. And honey
was offered to Sheemish as well as Chu-bu,
and also maize and fat.
The fury of Chu-bu knew no time-
limit; he was furious all that night, and
next day he was furious still. The situa-
tion called for immediate miracles. To
devastate the city with a pestilence and
kill all his priests was scarcely within his
power, therefore he wisely concentrated
such divine powers as he had in command-
ing a little earthquake. "Thus/' thought
Chu-bu, "will I reassert myself as the
only god, and men shall spit upon
Sheemish."
Chu-bu willed it and willed it and still
no earthquake came, when suddenly he
was aw r are that the hated Sheemish was
Chu-bu and
Sheemish
The Book f Wonder
daring to attempt a miracle too. He
ceased to busy himself about the earth-
quake and listened, or shall I say felt,
for what Sheemish was thinking; for gods
are aware of what passes in the mind by
a sense that is other than any of our five.
Sheemish was trying to make an earth-
quake too.
The new god's motive was probably to
assert himself. I doubt if Chu-bu under-
stood or cared for his motive, it was
sufficient for an idol already aflame with
jealousy that his detestable rival was on
the verge of a miracle. All the power of
Chu-bu veered round at once and set dead
against an earthquake, even a little one.
It was thus in the temple of Chu-bu for
some time, and then no earthquake came.
To be a god and to fail to achieve a
miracle is a despairing sensation; it is as
though among men one should determine
upon a hearty sneeze and as though no
sneeze should come; it is as though one
should try to swim in heavy boots or
remember a name that is utterly forgot-
ten: all these pains were Sheemish's.
Chu-bu and
Sheemish
The Book f Wonder
And upon Tuesday the priests came in,
and the people, and they did worship
Chu-bu and offered fat to him, saying,
"0 Chu-bu who made everything," and
then the priests sang, " There is also
Sheemish," and again the people rejoiced
and cried out, " There is also Sheemish";
and Chu-bu was put to shame and spake
not for three days.
Now there were holy birds in the
temple of Chu-bu, and when the third
day was come and the night thereof, it
was as it were revealed to the mind of
Chu-bu, that there was dirt upon the
head of Sheemish.
And Chu-bu spake unto Sheemish as
speak the gods, moving no lips nor yet
disturbing the silence, saying, " There is
dirt upon thy head, Sheemish." All
night long he muttered again and again,
" There is dirt upon Sheemish's head."
And when it was dawn and voices were
heard far off, Chu-bu became exultant
with Earth's awakening things, and cried
out till the sun was high, "Dirt, dirt,
dirt, upon the head of Sheemish," and
Chu-bu and
Sheemish
The Book of Wonder
at noon he said, "So Sheemish would be a
god." Thus was Sheemish confounded.
And with Tuesday one came and
washed his head with rose-water, and he
was worshipped again when they sang
" There is also Sheemish." And yet was
Chu-bu content, for he said, "The head
of Sheemish has been defiled," and again,
"His head was defiled, it is enough."
And one evening lo! there was dirt on
the head of Chu-bu also, and the thing
was perceived of Sheemish.
It is not with the gods as it is with
men. We are angry one with another and
turn from our anger again, but the wrath
of the gods is enduring. Chu-bu remem-
bered and Sheemish did not forget.
They spake as we do not speak, in silence
yet heard of each other, nor were their
thoughts as our thoughts. We should
not judge them by merely human stand-
ards. All night long they spake and all
night said these words only: " Dirty
Chu-bu," "Dirty Sheemish." "Dirty
Chu-bu," "Dirty Sheemish," all night
long, Their wrath had not tired at dawn,
Chu-bu and
Sheemish
The Book of Wonder
and neither had wearied of his accusa-
tion. And gradually Chu-bu came to
realize that he was nothing more than the
equal of Sheemish. All gods are jealous,
but this equality with the upstart Sheem-
ish, a thing of painted wood a hundred
years newer than Chu-bu, and this wor-
ship given to Sheemish in Chu-bu's own
temple, were particularly bitter. Chu-bu
was jealous even for a god; and when
Tuesday came again, the third day of
Sheemish's worship, Chu-bu could bear
it no longer. He felt that his anger must
be revealed at all costs, and he returned
with all the vehemence of his will to
achieving a little earthquake. The wor-
shippers had just gone from his temple
when Chu-bu settled his will to attain
this miracle, now and then his medita-
tions were disturbed by the now familiar
dictum, "Dirty Chu-bu," but Chu-bu
willed ferociously, not even stopping to
say what he longed to say and had al-
ready said nine hundred times, and pres-
ently even these interruptions ceased.
They ceased because Sheemish had
Chu-bu and 120
Sheemish
The Book of Wonder
returned to a project that he had never
definitely abandoned, the desire to assert
himself and exalt himself over Chu-bu
by performing a miracle, and the district
being volcanic he had chosen a little
earthquake as the miracle most easily
accomplished by a small god.
Now an earthquake that is commanded
by two gods has double the chance of
fulfilment than when it is willed by one,
and an incalculably greater chance than
when two gods are pulling different ways;
as, to take the case of older and greater
gods, when the sun and the moon pull in
the same direction we have the biggest
tides.
Chu-bu knew nothing of the theory of
tides, and was too much occupied with
his miracle to notice what Sheemish was
doing. And suddenly the miracle was
an accomplished thing.
It was a very local earthquake, for
there are other gods than Chu-bu or
even Sheemish, and it was only a little
one as the gods had willed, but it loos-
ened some monoliths in a colonnade that
121 Chu-bu and
Sheemish
The Book f
supported one side of the temple and the
whole of one wall fell in, and the low huts
of the people of that city were shaken a
little and some of their doors were jammed
so that they would not open; it was
enough, and for a moment it seemed that
it was all; neither Chu-bu nor Sheemish
commanded there should be more, but
they had set in motion an old law older
than Chu-bu, the law of gravity that
that colonnade had held back for a hun-
dred years, and the temple of Chu-bu
quivered and then stood still, swayed
once and was overthrown, on the heads
of Chu-bu and Sheemish.
No one rebuilt it, for nobody dared
go near such terrible gods. Some said
that Chu-bu wrought the miracle, but
some said Sheemish, and thereof schism
was born; the weakly amiable, alarmed
by the bitterness of rival sects, sought
compromise and said that both had
wrought it, but no one guessed the truth
that the thing was done in rivalry.
And a saying arose, and both sects
held this belief in common, that whoso
Chu-bu and 122
Sheemish
The Book of Wonder
toucheth Chu-bu shall die or whoso
looketh upon Sheemish.
That is how Chu-bu came into my
possession when I travelled once beyond
the Hills of Ting. I found him in the
fallen temple of Chu-bu with his hands
and toes sticking up out of the rubbish,
lying upon his back, and in that attitude
just as I found him I keep him to this
day on my mantelpiece, as he is less
liable to be upset that way. Sheemish
was broken, so I left him where he was.
And there is something so helpless
about Chu-bu with his fat hands stuck
up in the air that sometimes I am moved
out of compassion to bow down to him
and pray, saying, "0 Chu-bu, thou that
made everything, help thy servant."
Chu-bu cannot do much, though once
I am sure that at a game of bridge he
sent me the ace of trumps after I had
not held a card worth having for the
whole of the evening. And chance could
have done as much as that for me, but I
do not tell this to Chu-bu.
123 Chu-bu and
Sheemish
The TVonderful
Window
jhe old man in the Oriental-
looking robe was being
I moved on by the police, and
1 it was this that attracted to
[him and the parcel under
his arm the attention of Mr. Sladden,
whose livelihood was earned in the em-
porium of Messrs. Mergin and Chater,
that is to say in their establishment.
Mr. Sladden had the reputation of
being the silliest young man in Business;
a touch of romance a mere suggestion
of it would send his eyes gazing away
as though the walls of the emporium
were of gossamer and London itself a
myth, instead of attending to customers.
Merely the fact that the dirty piece
of paper that wrapped the old man's
parcel was covered with Arabic writing
Wonderful Window
124
The Book f Wonder
was enough to give Mr. Sladden the idea
of romance, and he followed until the
little crowd fell off and the stranger
stopped by the kerb and unwrapped his
parcel and prepared to sell the thing that
was inside it. It was a little window in
old wood with small panes set in lead;
it was not much more than a foot in
breadth and was under two feet long.
Mr. Sladden had never before seen a
window sold in the street, so he asked
the price of it.
" Its price is all you possess," said
the old man.
"Where did you get it?" said Mr.
Sladden, for it was a strange window.
"I gave all that I possessed for it in
the streets of Baghdad."
"Did you possess much?" said Mr.
Sladden.
"I had all that I wanted," he said,
"except this window."
"It must be a good window," said the
young man.
"It is a magical window," said the old
one.
125 The
Wonderful Window
The Book f Wonder
"I have only ten shillings on me, but
I have fifteen-and-six at home."
The old man thought for a while.
"Then twenty-five-and-sixpence is the
price of the window," he said.
It was only when the bargain was
completed and the ten shillings paid and
the strange old man was coming for his
fifteen-and-six and to fit the magical
window into his only room that it oc-
curred to Mr. Sladden's mind that he
did not want a window. And then they
were at the door of the house in which he
rented a room, and it seemed too late to
explain.
The stranger demanded privacy while
he fitted up the window, so Mr. Sladden
remained outside the door at the top of
a little flight of creaky stairs. He heard
no sound of hammering.
And presently the strange old man
came out with his faded yellow robe and
bis great beard, and his eyes on far-off
places. "It is finished," he said, and he
and the young man parted. And whether
he remained a spot of colour and an
The 126
Wonderful Window
The Book of Wonder
anachronism in London, or whether he
ever came again to Baghdad, and what
dark hands kept on the circulation of his
twenty-five-and-six, Mr. Sladden never
knew.
Mr. Sladden entered the bare-boarded
room in which he slept and spent all his
indoor hours between closing-time and
the hour at which Messrs. Mergin and
Chater commenced. To the Penates of
so dingy a room his neat frock-coat must
have been a continual wonder. Mr.
Sladden took it off and folded it care-
fully; and there was the old man's win-
dow rather high up in the wall. There
had been no window in that wall hitherto,
nor any ornament at all but a small cup-
board, so when Mr. Sladden had put his
frock-coat safely away he glanced through
his new window. It was where his cup-
board had been in which he kept his tea-
things: they were all standing on the
table now. When Mr. Sladden glanced
through his new window it was late in a
summer's evening; the butterflies some
while ago would have closed their wings,
127 The
Wonderful Window
The Book of Wonder
though the bat would scarcely yet be
drifting abroad but this was in Lon-
don: the shops were shut and street-lamps
not yet lighted.
Mr. Sladden rubbed his eyes, then
rubbed the window, and still he saw a
sky of blazing blue, and far, far down
beneath him, so that no sound came up
from it or smoke of chimneys, a mediaeval
city set with towers. Brown roofs and
cobbled streets, and then white walls and
buttresses, and beyond them bright green
fields and tiny streams. On the towers
archers lolled, and along the waUs were
pikemen, and now and then a wagon
went down some old-world street and
lumbered through the gateway and out
to the country, and now and then a
wagon drew up to the city from the mist
that was rolling with evening over the
fields. Sometimes folk put their heads
out of lattice windows, sometimes some
idle troubadour seemed to sing, and no-
body hurried or troubled about anything.
Airy and dizzy though the distance was,
for Mr. Sladden seemed higher above the
The 128
Wonderful Window
The Book f Wonder
city than any cathedral gargoyle, yet
one clear detail he obtained as a clue:
the banners floating from every tower
over the idle archers had little golden
dragons all over a pure white field.
He heard motor-buses roar by his other
window, he heard the newsboys howling.
Mr. Sladden grew dreamier than ever
after that on the premises, in the estab-
lishment, of Messrs. Mergin and Chater.
But in one matter he was wise and wake-
ful: he made continuous and careful
inquiries about golden dragons on a
white flag, and talked to no one of his
wonderful window. He came to know
the flags of every king in Europe, he
even dabbled in history, he made in-
quiries at shops that understood heraldry,
but nowhere could he learn any trace of
little dragons or on a field argent. And
when it seemed that for him alone those
golden dragons had fluttered he came
to love them as an exile in some desert
might love the lilies of his home or as a
sick man might love swallows when he
cannot easily live to another spring.
129 The
Wonderful Window
The Bool^ of Wonder
As soon as Messrs. Mergin and Chater
closed, Mr. Sladden used to go back to
his dingy room and gaze through the
wonderful window until it grew dark in
the city and the guard would go with a
lantern round the ramparts and the
night came up like velvet, full of strange
stars. Another clue he tried to obtain
one night by jotting down the shapes of
the constellations, but this led him no
further, for they were unlike any that
shone upon either hemisphere.
Each day as soon as he woke he went
first to the wonderful window, and there
was the city, diminutive in the distance,
all shining in the morning, and the golden
dragons dancing in the sun, and the
archers stretching themselves or swinging
their arms on the tops of the windy
towers. The window would not open, so
that he never heard the songs that the
troubadours sang down there beneath
gilded balconies; he did not even hear
the belfries' chimes, though he saw the
jackdaws routed every hour from their
homes. And the first thing that he always
The 130
Wonderful Window
The Book of Wonder
did was to cast his eye round all the little
towers that rose up from the ramparts
to see that the little golden dragons were
flying there on their flags. And when he
saw them flaunting themselves on white
folds from every tower against the mar-
vellous deep blue of the sky he dressed
contentedly, and, taking one last look,
went off to his work with a glory in his
mind. It would have been difficult for
the customers of Messrs. Mergin and
Chater to guess the precise ambition of
Mr. Sladden as he walked before them in
his neat frock-coat : it was that he might
be a man-at-arms or an archer in order
to fight for the little golden dragons that
flew on a white flag for an unknown king
in an inaccessible city. At first Mr.
Sladden used to walk round and round
the mean street that he lived in, but he
gained no clue from that; and soon he
noticed that quite different winds blew
below his wonderful window from those
that blew on the other side of the house.
In August the evenings began to grow
shorter: this was the very remark that
131 The
Wonderful Window
The Book f Wonder
the other employes made to him at the
emporium, so that he almost feared that
they suspected his secret, and he had
much less time for the wonderful window,
for lights were few down there and they
blinked out early.
One morning late in August, just be-
fore he went to Business, Mr. Sladden
saw a company of pikemen running down
the cobbled road towards the gateway of
the mediaeval city Golden Dragon City
he used to call it alone in his own mind,
but he never spoke of it to anyone. The
next thing that he noticed was that the
archers on the towers were talking a
good deal together and were handling
round bundles of arrows in addition to
the quivers which they wore. Heads
were thrust out of windows more than
usual, a woman ran out and called some
children indoors, a knight rode down the
street, and then more pikemen appeared
along the walls, and all the jackdaws
were in the air. In the street no trouba-
dour sang. Mr. Sladden took one look
along the towers to see that the flags
The 132
Wonderful Window
The Book of Wonder
were flying, and all the golden dragons
were streaming in the wind. Then he
had to go to Business. He took a 'bus
back that evening and ran upstairs.
Nothing seemed to be happening in
Golden Dragon City except a crowd in
the cobbled street that led down to the
gateway; the archers seemed to be reclin-
ing as usual lazily in their towers, then a
white flag went down with all its golden
dragons; he did not see at first that all
the archers were dead. The crowd was
pouring towards him, towards the precipi-
tous wall from which he looked, men
with a white flag covered with golden
dragons were moving backwards slowly,
men with another flag were pressing them,
a flag on which there was one huge red
bear. Another banner went down upon
a tower. Then he saw it all: the golden
dragons were being beaten his little
golden dragons. The men of the bear
were coming under the window; what-
ever he threw from that height would
fall with terrific force : fire-irons, coal, his
clock, whatever he had he would fight
133 The
Wonderful Window
The Book of Wonder
for his little golden dragons yet. A flame
broke out from one of the towers and
licked the feet of a reclining archer; he
did not stir. And now the alien standard
was out of sight directly underneath.
Mr. Sladden broke the panes of the won-
derful window and wrenched away with a
poker the lead that held them. Just as
the glass broke he saw a banner covered
with golden dragons fluttering still, and
then as he drew back to hurl the poker
there came to him the scent of mysterious
spices, and there was nothing there, not
even the daylight, for behind the frag-
ments of the wonderful window was
nothing but that smaU cupboard in which
he kept his tea-things.
And though Mr. Sladden is older now
and knows more of the world, and even
has a Business of his own, he has never
been able to buy such another window,
and has not ever since, either from books
or men, heard any rumour at all of
Golden Dragon City,
The 134
Wonderful Window
Epilogue
Here the fourteenth Episode of the
Book of Wonder endeth and here the
relating of the Chronicles of Little Ad-
ventures at the Edge of the World. I
take farewell of my readers. But it may
be we shall even meet again, for it is
still to be told how the gnomes robbed
the fairies, and of the vengeance that
the fairies took, and how even the gods
themselves were troubled thereby in
their sleep; and how the King of Ool
insulted the troubadours, thinking him-
self safe among his scores of archers and
hundreds of halberdiers, and how the
troubadours stole to his towers by night,
and under his battlements by the light
of the moon made that king ridiculous
for ever in song. But for this I must first
return to the Edge of the World. Behold,
the caravans start.
*VnC
367 60 6
