Kitabı oku: «David Blaize and the Blue Door», sayfa 6

There was not a moment to lose, and without any attempt at concealing himself any more, he rushed across the gravel path, dodged a sentry, and ran down the bank to the edge of the lake. Since his Brigadier-General had fallen into the water (indeed, probably, in consequence of that), the fishes had put up their glass roof, and all over the lake below he saw the glimmer of their fires of red leaves.

‘Oh, let me in,’ he shouted, feeling like the pin-partridge on the ark. ‘My awful soldiers are going to hang and behead me.’

Already the sentries were close upon him, when a trap-door opened in the roof, and David jumped down into it. He heard it clang to behind him, and knew he was safe.

CHAPTER VII

It was neither cold nor wet below the glass roof of the lake, for, as David already knew, when you are completely in the water, from your head to your heels, you never think of saying ‘Oh, how wet it is!’ and it is only when a piece of you is wet, like when you are washing your hands, or a snowball goes down your neck, that you think of wetness. Certainly also it was not cold, because there were so many red-leaf fires burning. Up overhead the moon shone very brightly through what David knew was ice to the ordinary world, but which it was much more correct to call fish-glass, and it made the most lovely lights in it, just as if all the diamond tiaras and emerald and ruby necklaces had been mashed up in the fish-glass.

‘That’s something to know,’ he said to himself. ‘When there’s fish-glass on the lake, I shall make a hole in it and get underneath. What nonsense grown-up people talk! They all say it’s dangerous to get under the ice – fish-glass, but it was the only safe thing to do. I suppose I’d better call on some fish and thank them for rescuing me.’

He began walking towards one of the red fires round which there were a lot of fish collected, but they all looked so very uninterested and solemn (‘just as if they were hearing a sermon in church and not attending,’ thought David), that he decided that he would explore a little first, and turned quickly off in another direction. At once he felt he was not walking any more, for his feet had come off the ground, and he was lying flat a few feet from the floor. This sensation was rather like losing your balance, and he made a sort of wriggle with his feet in order to recover it again. But instead of recovering his footing, he merely darted off at a great speed in a perfectly unexpected direction.

‘Why, it’s a sort of mad flying in the water,’ he said to himself. ‘O-oh, I see, it’s swimming fish-fashion.’

This was a great discovery; he flicked his feet again, and plunged into a great thicket of water-trees that waved and swayed round him. Once more he kicked, but instead of darting forward again, he came to a dead stop, though he couldn’t understand how he had kicked differently from before. Another kick made him spin round, and once again he kicked as he had kicked the first time, and flew out into the open.

‘Take care where you’re going,’ said a thick, bored voice near him, and, turning round very cautiously lest he should fly off again, he saw an old brown trout, not looking at him exactly, but not looking anywhere else. One eye – the only one that David could see, in fact – seemed to be turned towards him rather than towards anything else, but it merely stared vacantly at him, as if it was painted there.

‘I beg your pardon,’ said David, ‘but I don’t seem to go where I want.’

The trout opened and shut its mouth once or twice without saying anything, and then it slewed round and turned its other eye upon him. Then it turned its back on him altogether, and took no further notice of him.

This was rather an unpromising beginning, but David was so eager to learn how to swim, fish-fashion, that he risked being snubbed.

‘Could you spare me the time just to show me the sort of way it goes?’ he asked.

‘You wave yourself,’ said the trout, ‘and then you go. The sooner you go, the better I shall be pleased.’

David waved himself, and ran into the trout’s tail.

‘Don’t do that,’ said the trout, not the least angrily, but in the same bored manner. ‘It’s bad manners to hit anybody’s tail. You’re a very ill-bred sort of creature.’

‘I’m very sorry,’ said David. ‘I didn’t mean to hit you.’

‘Then you did it without meaning,’ said the trout, with its back to him, ‘which is worse, because there’s no sense in it, if it doesn’t mean anything. I wish you would go away. Right away, I mean: none of your hanging about here. Get some low, coarse fish to teach you. I’m busy.’

David felt rather discouraged. He didn’t know what adventure might happen next, or how soon it might happen, and he wanted to learn how to swim fish-fashion before something else took place. But he felt he could not face any more dull eyes just yet, which looked at you as if you didn’t mean anything, and so he moved very cautiously away from this stupid old thing, for fear of butting it again, and began practising by himself. He found it was not so difficult as it seemed to be at first (which is the case with most things). The great point was to make up your mind first where you wanted to go to, and then look at the place and wave yourself, and he found that he usually went in that sort of direction, just as if there was something inside him that knew how to do it, if he only told it what he wanted. He passed a fish now and then, which took no notice whatever of him, and presently he found he was getting on so well that he wished to show off to somebody, so he returned in the direction of the trout that was so busy. There it was precisely as David had left it, doing nothing whatever except slowly opening and shutting its mouth, and staring at nothing at all. So David gave a tremendous kick in order to dash up to it in a real fish-boy-like manner, and, miscalculating his direction, ran violently into its nose.

‘Don’t go on doing that,’ said the trout. ‘You butt me here, and you butt me there, and you’ve got no self-control. It’s very boring of you. Better go away. You needn’t bother to come back any more, for ever. I shan’t miss you at all. I only wish you had missed me.’

‘I wish I had too,’ said David. ‘But I was getting on so nicely, and I wanted to show somebody.’

‘And you’re mudding everything up,’ said the trout. ‘So you’d better show somebody else, and not me. I don’t care what you do, or where you go, so long as you don’t do and go it here.’

David felt annoyed at this.

‘Are all trout as rude as you?’ he asked.

The trout opened its mouth two or three times, and each time David thought it was going to speak.

‘Yes,’ it said at length. ‘All.’

‘I should think you must get rather tired of each other’s company then,’ said David.

Again it seemed as if the trout was going to speak, and this time David counted that it opened and shut its mouth eleven times before it answered.

‘We are,’ it said. ‘We’re each of us tired of everybody else. But I’m most tired of you. I hate being interrupted when I’m busy, and I hate people running into my face. I never have liked it, and I don’t mean to begin now.’

‘Well, I’ve apologised for that,’ said David. ‘I can’t do more.’

This time the trout opened and shut its mouth only nine times before it answered.

‘Yes, you can,’ it said. ‘You can go away. I can’t think why you don’t.’

David was naturally a polite boy, but when any one was rude to him he could easily be rude back. He forgot all about his swimming fish-fashion.

‘I don’t believe you’re a bit busy,’ he said. ‘You haven’t done a thing since I was here before. You’ve just waved and stared.’

The trout looked at David with one eye, then moved his head and looked at him with the other.

‘That’s two things then,’ it said.

‘Yes, but that doesn’t make you busy,’ said David. ‘You couldn’t possibly be idler. That doesn’t count.’

A faint gleam of intelligence came into that foolish face.

‘I can count,’ said the trout. ‘One – two – four – three – nine and a half – a hundred. There!’

‘You’re quite wrong,’ said David. ‘It goes one – two – six – four. Let me see what does come after four?’ he added, suddenly forgetting how to count himself.

‘Nothing: that’s the end,’ said the trout. ‘You needn’t wait any longer. We’ve both finished. You may get down. Never mind about wiping your mouth or anything.’

‘One – two – six – fourteen,’ began David again, determined to get it right, when suddenly he was blown all sideways, as it were, by a tremendous draught of water, and the trout’s tail whisked by his face. As for the trout itself, that one swish of its tail had carried it ten yards away, and it was drifting back again with an enormous worm hanging out of its mouth. Its cheeks bulged with it, and its eyes stared so that David thought they would drop out. But in two or three gulps it managed to swallow the rest of the worm, and to David’s great surprise it looked almost pleasant and winked at him.

‘There!’ it said. ‘Now you know why I was so busy. I shall have a holiday for three minutes until I’m hungry again. Who are you, and what are you doing here, without being drowned? It’s all very irregular.’

‘I was a Field-Marshal last,’ began David, rather proudly.

‘What a stupid thing to be!’ said the trout, ‘especially as there aren’t any fields here. And who asked you to come to my lake?’

‘Nobody. I chose to come,’ said David.

‘Well, I choose next: I choose that you should go away. I believe you are a sort of caddis-worm, whom nobody likes.’

‘No, I’m not,’ said David. ‘I’m a boy.’

‘Then you can’t be a Field-Marshal. That’s one to me.’

‘Are we playing a game?’ he asked. ‘Is it a sort of happy families?’

‘No. Two to me. Go away. I’ve got to be busy again.’

‘What you mean by being busy,’ said David, ‘is that you want to eat something.’

The trout’s eye began to get glazed and vacant.

‘Worms!’ it said.

‘I believe that’s all you ever think about,’ said David.

The stupid mouth began opening and shutting, and David began counting, rather relieved to find that he could do so again. The seventh time it opened the trout said:

‘No, it isn’t.’

‘What else do you think about then?’ asked David.

‘Worms,’ said the trout.

‘But that’s the same thing,’ said David.

This time the trout opened and shut its mouth so often without saying anything at all that David felt that there was no use in waiting any longer for it to speak. Even when it did speak, too, it was almost stupider than when it didn’t, and since he had come through the blue door he had met nobody so completely uninteresting. The groups round the fires looked just as hopeless, and he felt that he was only wasting his time. But he could not resist saying what he thought.

‘You’re much the stupidest thing I ever saw,’ he said. ‘I shall go away.’

‘That’s what I always wanted you to do,’ said the trout. ‘And mind you don’t come back.’

David wondered whether fish might not be a little brighter at the top end of the lake where the stream flowed into it, and he waved his way up there. But even swimming fish-fashion had ceased to amuse him, for he did not want to do anything that fishes did.

‘If I learned to swim like them,’ he said to himself, ‘I should grow like them perhaps, and that would be awful. I shall get out of the water altogether when I come to the end of the roof. They never put it up over the stream.’

By and by the roof got thinner, and when he came into the stream, he found, as he had expected, that there was no roof at all. He put his head up very cautiously for fear he was not far enough away from the camp, and that he might be pursued again, but found that a mist had come up, quite covering the lawn, though bugles were still sounding there, and he felt safe in landing on the far side of the stream, underneath the shelter of the bridge. The moonlight felt very warm and comfortable after the water, and the moment he stepped on to land he was quite dry again, if he had ever really been wet at all.

He had hardly taken his second foot out of the water when there was a great swirl in the stream behind him, and the head of a huge wicked pike snapped at his heel.

‘You little wretch,’ it said. ‘How dare you come into my lake? If I had only known about you a minute sooner, I’d have eaten you up.’

David bounded up the bank. He had never seen anything so ugly and cruel.

‘You beastly fish,’ he said. ‘If I had teeth like you, I should go to the dentist. I’m not frightened of you.’

He was terrified really, but when you are frightened, it is always comforting to say you’re not.

‘Yes, you are,’ said the pike, snapping his jaws, and shouldering his way up through the shallow water. ‘You daren’t come down into the stream again.’

‘I don’t want to come into your muddy stream,’ said David. ‘I should if I wanted to. And for that matter you daren’t come up here.’

‘Yes, I dare,’ said the pike, pushing farther up, till half his horrid body was out of the stream. ‘And I’m coming too.’

David really didn’t feel sure that he wasn’t, for since he had got through the blue door, he had found that animals and soldiers and flowers could do all sorts of things that you wouldn’t expect they were able to. So he made himself very dignified, and walked away from the stream, trying very hard not to hurry till he was out of sight of the pike.

‘Coward, coward,’ yelled the pike. ‘You wait till I catch you.’

David felt pretty safe now, for he knew that he must be able to run on land as fast as a pike, but he continued to walk away, along by the hedge, till he had put a considerable distance between himself and the stream. It was not quite proper for a bird-boy and a Field-Marshal to run away from a fish, but this was such an awful fish..

There were two signboards, he knew, in this field, one down by the river about fishing, and the other where there was a path across it, on which was the notice, ‘Trespassers will be prosecuted with the utmost rigour of the law.’ He did not mind about that notice since both the field and the notice belonged to his father, but when he came to the second signboard and looked up at it, he felt suddenly frozen with terror, and his teeth chattered like Mr. Funk the bather. For instead of the ordinary notice this was written up in large capitals:

TRESPASSERS WILL BE MARRIED

WITH THE UTMOST RIGOUR OF

THE LAW

‘Oh, what am I to do?’ thought poor David. ‘There’s a girl coming into it after all. I know she’ll spoil everything.’

He began running back towards the stream again, for he felt he would rather fight the pike than be married, but then he thought of those savage jaws and those dreadful teeth, and his legs simply would not take him any nearer the stream. They said ‘No!’ just as if they had spoken aloud. Between his mind that said that he had better face any danger sooner than be married, and his legs that said that they would go anywhere except towards the pike, he completely lost his head, and began running in circles round the field, saying to himself in a most determined voice:

‘I won’t be married, I won’t be eaten by the pike, I won’t be married to a pike, I won’t be eaten by anybody.’

So round and round he ran, though all the time there was nothing easier than to walk out of the gate and get away from the marriage-meadow altogether, for there was not a soul in sight nor any sound except that of the pike still calling ‘Coward! Coward!’ But David had quite lost his head, and such a simple thing as that never occurred to him at all. And then he saw that he wasn’t alone in the field, for there was a man in a hard hat and an ulster following him round and round. He was not running, but was sliding, and all the time he got nearer and nearer to David. All the time, too, David knew that he knew who it was, but he had forgotten, just as he had forgotten how to fly, or how to count when he was talking to that foolish trout. Nearer and nearer he crept, and David, looking round, saw that he was already extending a stiff wooden arm to catch him. When he saw that he was on the point of being caught, he recovered his wits and knew that all he had to do was to get away from the marriage-meadow at once. So, with redoubled speed, he bolted towards the side of the field nearest him, just outside which there stood a house with the door wide open. He didn’t care at all whether he was prosecuted for going into a house that wasn’t his own; all that mattered was to escape from this dreadful field where all trespassers were married.

In he rushed with the sliding figure close behind him, and the door banged to after them.

CHAPTER VIII

David was completely out of breath, and leaned against the wall to recover, while his pursuer did the same. He remembered who it was now.

‘Oh, it’s you, Noah!’ he panted. ‘I couldn’t remember who you were. Why did you run after me?’

Noah wiped his face with the edge of his ulster.

‘To catch you,’ said he. ‘What else should I run after you for? The point is: Why did you run away?’

David didn’t see why he should tell Noah that his legs had been running away from the pike, and his mind from being married. It had got nothing to do with Noah, and besides it was a slightly undignified confession.

‘I like running,’ he said. ‘I shall walk and run, and fly and swim, just as I choose.’

‘Hoity-toity!’ said Noah. ‘I expect that’ll be as she chooses.’

‘Whom do you mean by “she”?’ asked David quite cheerfully, for he had escaped from the awful meadow without being caught, and all risk of being married was over.

‘I can’t tell you yet,’ said Noah, ‘but you’ll soon know. I’m not certain who we have on our books this morning. Hark! There are the church-bells beginning. That’s for you.’

This all sounded rather mysterious, but he couldn’t ask Noah any more questions this moment, for he had gone inside a big cupboard in the wall, where he appeared to be dressing-up. While he was doing this, David had a look round the room. There was a row of chairs against the wall and a big open fire-place, and in the centre a table on which were all sorts of writing materials, a large book on which was printed ‘Female Register,’ and a bottle of water and a glass. At each corner of the room was a pillar that looked as if it didn’t support the roof exactly, but went through it. Somehow this made David feel a little uncomfortable, for it reminded him of the giraffe at the animals’ ball. Also he saw that on the top of the paper in the writing-case were printed the words ‘Registry Office.’ He did not know what it meant, but it and the pillars in the corners of the room made him feel uneasy, as he felt before a thunderstorm.

There was a sound of whispering in the cupboard, and he heard Noah’s voice say:

‘I go in first: wait till I call you. One of you announce me.’

There was a short pause, and David distinctly heard the noise of somebody eating. Then a rather hoarse voice said:

‘I’ll have finished in a moment. I call that a good bit of meat.’

David guessed that this must be Miss Bones, though he could not imagine what she was doing here. It sounded like Miss Bones’s voice, and it also sounded like the sort of thing that Miss Bones said. Then the same voice said, just as if its mouth was full:

‘The Registrar,’ and a rude swallowing sound followed.

Noah came out of the cupboard. He had got a wig on, and some false whiskers and a lawyer’s gown. He seemed to have taken off his stand, for instead of sliding he stalked along with a very important air.

‘Oh, is it charades?’ said David. ‘Have I got to guess? I bet you I guess. It’s – ’

‘Silence!’ said Noah very severely.

He came and sat down at the table, and began turning over the leaves of the book called ‘Female Register.’ Then he took a sip of water and spoke:

‘David Blaize, I believe,’ he said, ‘charged with trespass in the marriage-meadow. Speak up.’

‘I haven’t spoken at all yet,’ said David.

‘Then you’ve got nothing to say for yourself, I suppose?’ said Noah.

A brilliant idea struck David.

‘I’m not in the marriage-meadow now,’ he said. ‘How do you intend to prove I was there at all? It was only you who say you saw me, and you are only a person out of my own ark.’

Noah got up, and opened the door into the meadow. David could hear the pike still calling ‘Coward!’ He was coughing violently, having been so long in the air.

‘Pike!’ shouted Noah. ‘Come in, pike!’

David’s legs began to want to run somewhere.

‘No! shut the door,’ he said. ‘I was in the marriage-meadow, but I didn’t know.’

‘Go away, pike,’ said Noah, and shut the door. ‘Very well, then, that’s proved,’ he said. ‘The next thing to do is to see who’s on the books.’

He turned over the leaves.

‘Very small selection to-day,’ he said to David, ‘but some very pleasant clients among them. The names are as follows:

‘Number one, giraffe.’

‘Here,’ said a silly whisper from the top storey.

‘You’ve got to come in,’ said Noah.

The pillars at the corners of the room stirred uneasily, and David saw what they really were. Then there came a sound from upstairs as if banisters were breaking, and the mild surprised-looking face came down the chimney, upside-down, and covered with soot.

‘That’s all I can do at present unless I begin to walk,’ she whispered. ‘Why, it’s that boy again. I am surprised. May I jump?’

‘No, certainly not,’ said Noah. ‘Stop quite still, or you shan’t be married.’

The giraffe winked at David, and extended her neck a little, till her mouth was close to his ear.

‘Can you grow again?’ she asked. ‘If you can’t, it’s all rather ridiculous. You would always be in the cellar, and I in the attic. We should never meet, which would be so sad for you.’

‘Silence,’ said Noah. ‘Number two, Miss Bones, the butcher’s daughter.’

‘Here,’ said Miss Bones, coming out of the cupboard.

She had got something that looked like an ox-tail, and was munching it. She sat down on one of the chairs by the wall, and pointed with the end of the ox-tail at David.

‘Is that it?’ she said in a tone of disgust. ‘Why, he’s a mere upstart. None of us know him.’

David felt furious at this.

‘If you don’t take care, I shall collect you,’ he said.

‘Silence,’ said Noah. ‘Number three, Miss Muffet.’

There was a rustling in the cupboard, and out came Miss Muffet.

‘Well, I never!’ she said. ‘If it isn’t the cheeky little rascal who tried to keep my kind good spider from me last night, thinking he was a pike. But as I’m on the books, I suppose there’s no help for it.’

‘That’s all,’ said Noah, closing the book with such a bang that Miss Bones dropped her ox-tail. ‘Now, David Blaize, it’s for you to choose.’

‘But I don’t choose any of them,’ said David, in a sort of agony. ‘I’m sure they’re all delightful, but I don’t want to be married. I didn’t come here for that; nobody understands. My house wouldn’t hold a giraffe to begin with – ’

‘Build another storey,’ whispered the giraffe in his ear, ‘and you can probably grow. You did before. I don’t mind marrying you.’

‘But I mind marrying you very much,’ said David. ‘You can’t do anything but whisper and waltz.’

‘No, but I can learn,’ whispered the giraffe. ‘I was always considered the cleverest of the family.’

‘Then they must have been a very stupid family,’ said David.

‘Hush!’ said Noah severely.

‘I shan’t hush,’ said David.

The giraffe began to cry.

‘I thought you had such a kind face,’ she whispered, ‘but you don’t seem to care for me. If you only built a storey or two on to your house, and took out the staircase, and grew a great deal, we might be quite happy. You must be patient and grow.’

‘Oh, shut up,’ said Miss Bones, seizing the water-bottle on the table. She drank out of the mouth of it in a very rude manner, and spilt a quantity of it. ‘He doesn’t want you, and you don’t want him, and you’re only shamming. But what’s the matter with me?’

David turned on her.

‘The matter with you is,’ he said, ‘that you’re always eating raw meat. I’d sooner be eaten by the pike than see you eat all day and night.’

Miss Bones put the ox-tail into her mouth again.

‘So that’s that,’ she mumbled. ‘There’s no accounting for tastes.’

Miss Muffet cleared her throat and coughed, holding her hand up to her mouth in the most genteel way.

‘That leaves me,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to be married, as I told you before. But if you’ll beg my dear spider’s pardon, and he says there’s room for you on the tuffet, I’ll forgive you, and you may sleep in the bathing-machine. There! And you can ride the stuffed horse whenever you like.’

The registrar had been drawing pictures of David on the blotting-paper.

‘When I have counted ten,’ he said. ‘You’ve got to choose. If you don’t, I shall choose for you. What’s that?’ he added, looking up at the window.

A large mild face was pressed against the glass, and there was the cow outside, moving her mouth round and round, and breathing so heavily against the window that it was almost impossible to see out. Then the glass gave way under the pressure of her nose, and she put her head into the room.

‘Moo! Put my name down,’ she said. ‘I’m incognito, so call me a porter.’

‘You’re too late for this morning,’ said Noah.

‘No, I’m not,’ said the cow.

‘You are,’ said Noah angrily. ‘Don’t interrupt. One – two – three – four – ’

The cow breathed heavily into the room.

‘Why, it’s the boy who went Anywhere,’ she said, seeing David. ‘I never thought the express called here, dearie.’

David ran across to that kind, mild creature.

‘Oh, do knock the whole place down,’ he said. ‘They want to marry me, and it’s all so beastly. Butt at it, as you did at my luggage.’

‘Five – six,’ said Noah.

‘All right, dearie,’ said the cow, shaking bits of broken glass from her ears. ‘You just get behind the door, and I’ll see to them all. But you must promise not to go milking me again.’

‘Never, never,’ shrieked David. ‘But be quick; he’s counted six already.’

‘Seven – eight,’ said Noah.

The cow backed into the village street, and David saw her tail fly up with a spring. She put her head down, and came galloping towards the house, and he ran behind the door.

‘Nine – ten!’ said Noah. ‘Choose, or be chosen for.’

At that moment the cow’s head crashed into the wall below the window. Miss Muffet gave one faint scream, and said, ‘Spider, dear!’ Miss Bones whirled her ox-tail round her head like a sling, and, intending to hit the cow, hit Noah the most awful slap on his false whiskers, which fell off. The giraffe’s head went up the chimney with a pop and a shower of soot descended into the room.

‘Now, run, dearie,’ said the cow to David. ‘Run for your life. The whole lot of them will be after you.’

David had no thought but to get back to the blue door, and into his bedroom again, and as the shortest way was across the marriage-meadow, and over the bridge, and up the garden path, and in at the garden door, and up the stairs, and past the game-cupboard, he no longer cared what enemies he might meet on his way. The pike might have come up into the meadow, and the soldiers might be on the lawn, but nothing mattered except to get back to the blue door by the shortest possible route.

All the adventure of being a Field-Marshal was nothing to this.

So out he ran, and there, on the threshold, was the pike, which had flopped its way all across the meadow when Noah called it, and it gave a fearful snap at David, and pulled off one of his shoes. The other stuck in a piece of marshy land near the bridge, but he didn’t stop for that, and just ran and ran.

Behind him he heard a noise growing louder every minute: there were lions roaring and elephants trumpeting, and marbles rolling, and sounds of gimlets and hammers that showed the happy families were on his track, and whistles from engines, and bells ringing as if the whole village had caught fire, or was just going to have dinner; and when he came to the bridge, he heard bugles and drums in the camp, and the fat voice of the Brigadier-General giving orders. The stupid trout had put its head through the ice, and was shouting, ‘Here he comes,’ and a machine-gun began peppering away, and a huge cannon-ball flew by him. Mixed up in this he heard the canter of the spider, and the parrot sneezing, and the hoarse voice of Miss Bones shrieking ‘My papa will make cutlets of him, and I’ll eat him.’

Then from the elms there came a sound of cawing, and from the bushes a sound of twittering, and chirping from the long garden wall. He had never heard so much bird-noise, even at the meeting of the flying committee.

‘It’s the birds,’ thought David. ‘If they’re against me, I’m done!’

For one moment he stood quite still, feeling that it was no use to go on if the birds, too, were his enemies. But then he heard a whistle of wings close above him, and a voice said:

‘Fly in their faces, and confuse them. There’s a trout down there, kingfisher, giving the alarm. Go and peck him.’

David wasted no more time, except to call out, ‘Thanks awfully, birds,’ and ran on up the garden-path. He could see jays settling on the tents, and woodpeckers tapping to see if they had come to the right place, and on he ran till he came to the garden door. It was open, and he rushed up the stairs, and felt his way past the game-cupboard, for it was quite dark here, and turned the corner into the nursery passage where the flame-cats had danced.

But now there were no flame-cats here, unless one tiny glimmer of light on the wall was the remains of one, and he had to grope his way – and, oh, how long it seemed – to the end of the passage, where he remembered that the blue door was. He had left the key hanging up on a nail beside it, but now he could not remember which side it was, and as he groped for it, he knocked down the bottle which had something to do with the electric light. As it gurgled away on the floor, he remembered that he had shaken it, to shock the flame-cats and made them stop dancing, and now he felt for it at his feet, meaning to shake it, and get the electric light to flare out again, so that he might find the key of the blue door. But the stopper had come out, and it was empty, and when he shook it nothing whatever happened.

Meantime the pursuit had got much nearer, and he could hear that a lion or two, and some soldiers had come to the garden door.