CHAPTER 8. THE QUEEN IN LONDON

‘Now tell us what happened to you,’ said Cyril to Jane, when he and the others had told her all about the Queen’s talk and the banquet, and the variety entertainment, carefully stopping short before the beginning of the dungeon part of the story.

‘It wasn’t much good going,’ said Jane, ‘if you didn’t even try to get the Amulet.’

‘We found out it was no go,’ said Cyril; ‘it’s not to be got in Babylon. It was lost before that. We’ll go to some other jolly friendly place, where everyone is kind and pleasant, and look for it there. Now tell us about your part.’

‘Oh,’ said Jane, ‘the Queen’s man with the smooth face—what was his name?’

‘Ritti-Marduk,’ said Cyril.

‘Yes,’ said Jane, ‘Ritti-Marduk, he came for me just after the Psammead had bitten the guard-of-the-gate’s wife’s little boy, and he took me to the Palace. And we had supper with the new little Queen from Egypt. She is a dear—not much older than you. She told me heaps about Egypt. And we played ball after supper. And then the Babylon Queen sent for me. I like her too. And she talked to the Psammead and I went to sleep. And then you woke me up. That’s all.’

The Psammead, roused from its sound sleep, told the same story.

‘But,’ it added, ‘what possessed you to tell that Queen that I could give wishes? I sometimes think you were born without even the most rudimentary imitation of brains.’

The children did not know the meaning of rudimentary, but it sounded a rude, insulting word.

‘I don’t see that we did any harm,’ said Cyril sulkily.

‘Oh, no,’ said the Psammead with withering irony, ‘not at all! Of course not! Quite the contrary! Exactly so! Only she happened to wish that she might soon find herself in your country. And soon may mean any moment.’

‘Then it’s your fault,’ said Robert, ‘because you might just as well have made “soon” mean some moment next year or next century.’

‘That’s where you, as so often happens, make the mistake,’ rejoined the Sand-fairy. ‘I couldn’t mean anything but what SHE meant by “soon”. It wasn’t my wish. And what SHE meant was the next time the King happens to go out lion hunting. So she’ll have a whole day, and perhaps two, to do as she wishes with. SHE doesn’t know about time only being a mode of thought.’

‘Well,’ said Cyril, with a sigh of resignation, ‘we must do what we can to give her a good time. She was jolly decent to us. I say, suppose we were to go to St James’s Park after dinner and feed those ducks that we never did feed. After all that Babylon and all those years ago, I feel as if I should like to see something REAL, and NOW. You’ll come, Psammead?’

‘Where’s my priceless woven basket of sacred rushes?’ asked the Psammead morosely. ‘I can’t go out with nothing on. And I won’t, what’s more.’

And then everybody remembered with pain that the bass bag had, in the hurry of departure from Babylon, not been remembered.

‘But it’s not so extra precious,’ said Robert hastily. ‘You can get them given to you for nothing if you buy fish in Farringdon Market.’

‘Oh,’ said the Psammead very crossly indeed, ‘so you presume on my sublime indifference to the things of this disgusting modern world, to fob me off with a travelling equipage that costs you nothing. Very well, I shall go to sand. Please don’t wake me.’

And it went then and there to sand, which, as you know, meant to bed. The boys went to St James’s Park to feed the ducks, but they went alone.

Anthea and Jane sat sewing all the afternoon. They cut off half a yard from each of their best green Liberty sashes. A towel cut in two formed a lining; and they sat and sewed and sewed and sewed. What they were making was a bag for the Psammead. Each worked at a half of the bag. jane’s half had four-leaved shamrocks embroidered on it. They were the only things she could do (because she had been taught how at school, and, fortunately, some of the silk she had been taught with was left over). And even so, Anthea had to draw the pattern for her. Anthea’s side of the bag had letters on it—worked hastily but affectionately in chain stitch. They were something like this:

PSAMS TRAVEL CAR

She would have put ‘travelling carriage’, but she made the letters too big, so there was no room. The bag was made INTO a bag with old Nurse’s sewing machine, and the strings of it were Anthea’s and Jane’s best red hair ribbons. At tea-time, when the boys had come home with a most unfavourable report of the St james’s Park ducks, Anthea ventured to awaken the Psammead, and to show it its new travelling bag.

‘Humph,’ it said, sniffing a little contemptuously, yet at the same time affectionately, ‘it’s not so dusty.’

The Psammead seemed to pick up very easily the kind of things that people said nowadays. For a creature that had in its time associated with Megatheriums and Pterodactyls, its quickness was really wonderful.

‘It’s more worthy of me,’ it said, ‘than the kind of bag that’s given away with a pound of plaice. When do you propose to take me out in it?’

‘I should like a rest from taking you or us anywhere,’ said Cyril. But Jane said—

‘I want to go to Egypt. I did like that Egyptian Princess that came to marry the King in Babylon. She told me about the larks they have in Egypt. And the cats. Do let’s go there. And I told her what the bird things on the Amulet were like. And she said it was Egyptian writing.’

The others exchanged looks of silent rejoicing at the thought of their cleverness in having concealed from Jane the terrors they had suffered in the dungeon below the Euphrates.

‘Egypt’s so nice too,’ Jane went on, ‘because of Doctor Brewer’s Scripture History. I would like to go there when Joseph was dreaming those curious dreams, or when Moses was doing wonderful things with snakes and sticks.’

‘I don’t care about snakes,’ said Anthea shuddering.

‘Well, we needn’t be in at that part, but Babylon was lovely! We had cream and sweet, sticky stuff. And I expect Egypt’s the same.’

There was a good deal of discussion, but it all ended in everybody’s agreeing to Jane’s idea. And next morning directly after breakfast (which was kippers and very nice) the Psammead was invited to get into his travelling carriage.

The moment after it had done so, with stiff, furry reluctance, like that of a cat when you want to nurse it, and its ideas are not the same as yours, old Nurse came in.

‘Well, chickies,’ she said, ‘are you feeling very dull?’

‘Oh, no, Nurse dear,’ said Anthea; ‘we’re having a lovely time. We’re just going off to see some old ancient relics.’

‘Ah,’ said old Nurse, ‘the Royal Academy, I suppose? Don’t go wasting your money too reckless, that’s all.’

She cleared away the kipper bones and the tea-things, and when she had swept up the crumbs and removed the cloth, the Amulet was held up and the order given—just as Duchesses (and other people) give it to their coachmen.

‘To Egypt, please!’ said Anthea, when Cyril had uttered the wonderful Name of Power.

‘When Moses was there,’ added Jane.

And there, in the dingy Fitzroy Street dining-room, the Amulet grew big, and it was an arch, and through it they saw a blue, blue sky and a running river.

‘No, stop!’ said Cyril, and pulled down jane’s hand with the Amulet in it.

‘What silly cuckoos we all are,’ he said. ‘Of course we can’t go. We daren’t leave home for a single minute now, for fear that minute should be THE minute.’

‘What minute be WHAT minute?’ asked Jane impatiently, trying to get her hand away from Cyril.

‘The minute when the Queen of Babylon comes,’ said Cyril. And then everyone saw it.

For some days life flowed in a very slow, dusty, uneventful stream.

The children could never go out all at once, because they never knew when the King of Babylon would go out lion hunting and leave his Queen free to pay them that surprise visit to which she was, without doubt, eagerly looking forward.

So they took it in turns, two and two, to go out and to stay in.

The stay-at-homes would have been much duller than they were but for the new interest taken in them by the learned gentleman.

He called Anthea in one day to show her a beautiful necklace of purple and gold beads.

‘I saw one like that,’ she said, ‘in—’

‘In the British Museum, perhaps?’

‘I like to call the place where I saw it Babylon,’ said Anthea cautiously.

‘A pretty fancy,’ said the learned gentleman, ‘and quite correct too, because, as a matter of fact, these beads did come from Babylon.’ The other three were all out that day. The boys had been going to the Zoo, and Jane had said so plaintively, ‘I’m sure I am fonder of rhinoceroses than either of you are,’ that Anthea had told her to run along then. And she had run, catching the boys before that part of the road where Fitzroy Street suddenly becomes Fitzroy Square.

‘I think Babylon is most frightfully interesting,’ said Anthea. ‘I do have such interesting dreams about it—at least, not dreams exactly, but quite as wonderful.’

‘Do sit down and tell me,’ said he. So she sat down and told. And he asked her a lot of questions, and she answered them as well as she could.

‘Wonderful—wonderful!’ he said at last. ‘One’s heard of thought-transference, but I never thought I had any power of that sort. Yet it must be that, and very bad for YOU, I should think. Doesn’t your head ache very much?’

He suddenly put a cold, thin hand on her forehead.

‘No thank you, not at all,’ said she.

‘I assure you it is not done intentionally,’ he went on. ‘Of course I know a good deal about Babylon, and I unconsciously communicate it to you; you’ve heard of thought-reading, but some of the things you say, I don’t understand; they never enter my head, and yet they’re so astoundingly probable.’

‘It’s all right,’ said Anthea reassuringly. ‘I understand. And don’t worry. It’s all quite simple really.’

It was not quite so simple when Anthea, having heard the others come in, went down, and before she had had time to ask how they had liked the Zoo, heard a noise outside, compared to which the wild beasts’ noises were gentle as singing birds.

‘Good gracious!’ cried Anthea, ‘what’s that?’

The loud hum of many voices came through the open window. Words could be distinguished.

‘’Ere’s a guy!’

‘This ain’t November. That ain’t no guy. It’s a ballet lady, that’s what it is.’

‘Not it—it’s a bloomin’ looney, I tell you.’

Then came a clear voice that they knew.

‘Retire, slaves!’ it said.

‘What’s she a saying of?’ cried a dozen voices. ‘Some blamed foreign lingo,’ one voice replied.

The children rushed to the door. A crowd was on the road and pavement.

In the middle of the crowd, plainly to be seen from the top of the steps, were the beautiful face and bright veil of the Babylonian Queen.

‘Jimminy!’ cried Robert, and ran down the steps, ‘here she is!’

‘Here!’ he cried, ‘look out—let the lady pass. She’s a friend of ours, coming to see us.’

‘Nice friend for a respectable house,’ snorted a fat woman with marrows on a handcart.

All the same the crowd made way a little. The Queen met Robert on the pavement, and Cyril joined them, the Psammead bag still on his arm.

‘Here,’ he whispered; ‘here’s the Psammead; you can get wishes.’

‘I wish you’d come in a different dress, if you HAD to come,’ said Robert; ‘but it’s no use my wishing anything.’

‘No,’ said the Queen. ‘I wish I was dressed—no, I don’t—I wish THEY were dressed properly, then they wouldn’t be so silly.’

The Psammead blew itself out till the bag was a very tight fit for it; and suddenly every man, woman, and child in that crowd felt that it had not enough clothes on. For, of course, the Queen’s idea of proper dress was the dress that had been proper for the working-classes 3,000 years ago in Babylon—and there was not much of it.

‘Lawky me!’ said the marrow-selling woman, ‘whatever could a-took me to come out this figure?’ and she wheeled her cart away very quickly indeed.

‘Someone’s made a pretty guy of you—talk of guys,’ said a man who sold bootlaces.

‘Well, don’t you talk,’ said the man next to him. ‘Look at your own silly legs; and where’s your boots?’

‘I never come out like this, I’ll take my sacred,’ said the bootlace-seller. ‘I wasn’t quite myself last night, I’ll own, but not to dress up like a circus.’

The crowd was all talking at once, and getting rather angry. But no one seemed to think of blaming the Queen.

Anthea bounded down the steps and pulled her up; the others followed, and the door was shut. ‘Blowed if I can make it out!’ they heard. ‘I’m off home, I am.’

And the crowd, coming slowly to the same mind, dispersed, followed by another crowd of persons who were not dressed in what the Queen thought was the proper way.

‘We shall have the police here directly,’ said Anthea in the tones of despair. ‘Oh, why did you come dressed like that?’

The Queen leaned against the arm of the horse-hair sofa.

‘How else can a queen dress I should like to know?’ she questioned.

‘Our Queen wears things like other people,’ said Cyril.

‘Well, I don’t. And I must say,’ she remarked in an injured tone, ‘that you don’t seem very glad to see me now I HAVE come. But perhaps it’s the surprise that makes you behave like this. Yet you ought to be used to surprises. The way you vanished! I shall never forget it. The best magic I’ve ever seen. How did you do it?’

‘Oh, never mind about that now,’ said Robert. ‘You see you’ve gone and upset all those people, and I expect they’ll fetch the police. And we don’t want to see you collared and put in prison.’

‘You can’t put queens in prison,’ she said loftily. ‘Oh, can’t you?’ said Cyril. ‘We cut off a king’s head here once.’

‘In this miserable room? How frightfully interesting.’

‘No, no, not in this room; in history.’

‘Oh, in THAT,’ said the Queen disparagingly. ‘I thought you’d done it with your own hands.’

The girls shuddered.

‘What a hideous city yours is,’ the Queen went on pleasantly, ‘and what horrid, ignorant people. Do you know they actually can’t understand a single word I say.’

‘Can you understand them?’ asked Jane.

‘Of course not; they speak some vulgar, Northern dialect. I can understand YOU quite well.’

I really am not going to explain AGAIN how it was that the children could understand other languages than their own so thoroughly, and talk them, too, so that it felt and sounded (to them) just as though they were talking English.

‘Well,’ said Cyril bluntly, ‘now you’ve seen just how horrid it is, don’t you think you might as well go home again?’ ‘Why, I’ve seen simply nothing yet,’ said the Queen, arranging her starry veil. ‘I wished to be at your door, and I was. Now I must go and see your King and Queen.’

‘Nobody’s allowed to,’ said Anthea in haste; ‘but look here, we’ll take you and show you anything you’d like to see—anything you CAN see,’ she added kindly, because she remembered how nice the Queen had been to them in Babylon, even if she had been a little deceitful in the matter of Jane and Psammead.

‘There’s the Museum,’ said Cyril hopefully; ‘there are lots of things from your country there. If only we could disguise you a little.’

‘I know,’ said Anthea suddenly. ‘Mother’s old theatre cloak, and there are a lot of her old hats in the big box.’

The blue silk, lace-trimmed cloak did indeed hide some of the Queen’s startling splendours, but the hat fitted very badly. It had pink roses in it; and there was something about the coat or the hat or the Queen, that made her look somehow not very respectable.

‘Oh, never mind,’ said Anthea, when Cyril whispered this. ‘The thing is to get her out before Nurse has finished her forty winks. I should think she’s about got to the thirty-ninth wink by now.’

‘Come on then,’ said Robert. ‘You know how dangerous it is. Let’s make haste into the Museum. If any of those people you made guys of do fetch the police, they won’t think of looking for you there.’

The blue silk coat and the pink-rosed hat attracted almost as much attention as the royal costume had done; and the children were uncommonly glad to get out of the noisy streets into the grey quiet of the Museum.

‘Parcels and umbrellas to be left here,’ said a man at the counter.

The party had no umbrellas, and the only parcel was the bag containing the Psammead, which the Queen had insisted should be brought.

‘I’M not going to be left,’ said the Psammead softly, ‘so don’t you think it.’

‘I’ll wait outside with you,’ said Anthea hastily, and went to sit on the seat near the drinking fountain.

‘Don’t sit so near that nasty fountain,’ said the creature crossly; ‘I might get splashed.’

Anthea obediently moved to another seat and waited. Indeed she waited, and waited, and waited, and waited, and waited. The Psammead dropped into an uneasy slumber. Anthea had long ceased to watch the swing-door that always let out the wrong person, and she was herself almost asleep, and still the others did not come back.

It was quite a start when Anthea suddenly realized that they HAD come back, and that they were not alone. Behind them was quite a crowd of men in uniform, and several gentlemen were there. Everyone seemed very angry.

‘Now go,’ said the nicest of the angry gentlemen. ‘Take the poor, demented thing home and tell your parents she ought to be properly looked after.’

‘If you can’t get her to go we must send for the police,’ said the nastiest gentleman.

‘But we don’t wish to use harsh measures,’ added the nice one, who was really very nice indeed, and seemed to be over all the others.

‘May I speak to my sister a moment first?’ asked Robert.

The nicest gentleman nodded, and the officials stood round the Queen, the others forming a sort of guard while Robert crossed over to Anthea.

‘Everything you can think of,’ he replied to Anthea’s glance of inquiry. ‘Kicked up the most frightful shine in there. Said those necklaces and earrings and things in the glass cases were all hers—would have them out of the cases. Tried to break the glass—she did break one bit! Everybody in the place has been at her. No good. I only got her out by telling her that was the place where they cut queens’ heads off.’

‘Oh, Bobs, what a whacker!’

‘You’d have told a whackinger one to get her out. Besides, it wasn’t. I meant MUMMY queens. How do you know they don’t cut off mummies’ heads to see how the embalming is done? What I want to say is, can’t you get her to go with you quietly?’

‘I’ll try,’ said Anthea, and went up to the Queen.

‘Do come home,’ she said; ‘the learned gentleman in our house has a much nicer necklace than anything they’ve got here. Come and see it.’

The Queen nodded.

‘You see,’ said the nastiest gentleman, ‘she does understand English.’

‘I was talking Babylonian, I think,’ said Anthea bashfully.

‘My good child,’ said the nice gentleman, ‘what you’re talking is not Babylonian, but nonsense. You just go home at once, and tell your parents exactly what has happened.’

Anthea took the Queen’s hand and gently pulled her away. The other children followed, and the black crowd of angry gentlemen stood on the steps watching them. It was when the little party of disgraced children, with the Queen who had disgraced them, had reached the middle of the courtyard that her eyes fell on the bag where the Psammead was. She stopped short.

‘I wish,’ she said, very loud and clear, ‘that all those Babylonian things would come out to me here—slowly, so that those dogs and slaves can see the working of the great Queen’s magic.’

‘Oh, you ARE a tiresome woman,’ said the Psammead in its bag, but it puffed itself out.

Next moment there was a crash. The glass swing doors and all their framework were smashed suddenly and completely. The crowd of angry gentlemen sprang aside when they saw what had done this.

But the nastiest of them was not quick enough, and he was roughly pushed out of the way by an enormous stone bull that was floating steadily through the door. It came and stood beside the Queen in the middle of the courtyard.

It was followed by more stone images, by great slabs of carved stone, bricks, helmets, tools, weapons, fetters, wine-jars, bowls, bottles, vases, jugs, saucers, seals, and the round long things, something like rolling pins with marks on them like the print of little bird-feet, necklaces, collars, rings, armlets, earrings—heaps and heaps and heaps of things, far more than anyone had time to count, or even to see distinctly.

All the angry gentlemen had abruptly sat down on the Museum steps except the nice one. He stood with his hands in his pockets just as though he was quite used to seeing great stone bulls and all sorts of small Babylonish objects float out into the Museum yard.

But he sent a man to close the big iron gates.

A journalist, who was just leaving the museum, spoke to Robert as he passed.

‘Theosophy, I suppose?’ he said. ‘Is she Mrs Besant?’

‘YES,’ said Robert recklessly.

The journalist passed through the gates just before they were shut.

He rushed off to Fleet Street, and his paper got out a new edition within half an hour.

MRS BESANT AND THEOSOPHY

IMPERTINENT MIRACLE AT THE BRITISH MUSEUM.

People saw it in fat, black letters on the boards carried by the sellers of newspapers. Some few people who had nothing better to do went down to the Museum on the tops of omnibuses. But by the time they got there there was nothing to be seen. For the Babylonian Queen had suddenly seen the closed gates, had felt the threat of them, and had said—

‘I wish we were in your house.’

And, of course, instantly they were.

The Psammead was furious.

‘Look here,’ it said, ‘they’ll come after you, and they’ll find ME. There’ll be a National Cage built for me at Westminster, and I shall have to work at politics. Why wouldn’t you leave the things in their places?’

‘What a temper you have, haven’t you?’ said the Queen serenely. ‘I wish all the things were back in their places. Will THAT do for you?’

The Psammead swelled and shrank and spoke very angrily.

‘I can’t refuse to give your wishes,’ it said, ‘but I can Bite. And I will if this goes on. Now then.’

‘Ah, don’t,’ whispered Anthea close to its bristling ear; ‘it’s dreadful for us too. Don’t YOU desert us. Perhaps she’ll wish herself at home again soon.’

‘Not she,’ said the Psammead a little less crossly.

‘Take me to see your City,’ said the Queen.

The children looked at each other.

‘If we had some money we could take her about in a cab. People wouldn’t notice her so much then. But we haven’t.’

‘Sell this,’ said the Queen, taking a ring from her finger.

‘They’d only think we’d stolen it,’ said Cyril bitterly, ‘and put us in prison.’

‘All roads lead to prison with you, it seems,’ said the Queen.

‘The learned gentleman!’ said Anthea, and ran up to him with the ring in her hand.

‘Look here,’ she said, ‘will you buy this for a pound?’

‘Oh!’ he said in tones of joy and amazement, and took the ring into his hand. ‘It’s my very own,’ said Anthea; ‘it was given to me to sell.’

‘I’ll lend you a pound,’ said the learned gentleman, ‘with pleasure; and I’ll take care of the ring for you. Who did you say gave it to you?’

‘We call her,’ said Anthea carefully, ‘the Queen of Babylon.’

‘Is it a game?’ he asked hopefully.

‘It’ll be a pretty game if I don’t get the money to pay for cabs for her,’ said Anthea.

‘I sometimes think,’ he said slowly, ‘that I am becoming insane, or that—’

‘Or that I am; but I’m not, and you’re not, and she’s not.’

‘Does she SAY that she’s the Queen of Babylon?’ he uneasily asked.

‘Yes,’ said Anthea recklessly.

‘This thought-transference is more far-reaching than I imagined,’ he said. ‘I suppose I have unconsciously influenced HER, too. I never thought my Babylonish studies would bear fruit like this. Horrible! There are more things in heaven and earth—’

‘Yes,’ said Anthea, ‘heaps more. And the pound is the thing I want more than anything on earth.’

He ran his fingers through his thin hair.

‘This thought-transference!’ he said. ‘It’s undoubtedly a Babylonian ring—or it seems so to me. But perhaps I have hypnotized myself. I will see a doctor the moment I have corrected the last proofs of my book.’

‘Yes, do!’ said Anthea, ‘and thank you so very much.’

She took the sovereign and ran down to the others.

And now from the window of a four-wheeled cab the Queen of Babylon beheld the wonders of London. Buckingham Palace she thought uninteresting; Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament little better. But she liked the Tower, and the River, and the ships filled her with wonder and delight.

‘But how badly you keep your slaves. How wretched and poor and neglected they seem,’ she said, as the cab rattled along the Mile End Road.

‘They aren’t slaves; they’re working-people,’ said Jane.

‘Of course they’re working. That’s what slaves are. Don’t you tell me. Do you suppose I don’t know a slave’s face when I see it?

Why don’t their masters see that they’re better fed and better clothed? Tell me in three words.’

No one answered. The wage-system of modern England is a little difficult to explain in three words even if you understand it—which the children didn’t.

‘You’ll have a revolt of your slaves if you’re not careful,’ said the Queen.

‘Oh, no,’ said Cyril; ‘you see they have votes—that makes them safe not to revolt. It makes all the difference. Father told me so.’

‘What is this vote?’ asked the Queen. ‘Is it a charm? What do they do with it?’

‘I don’t know,’ said the harassed Cyril; ‘it’s just a vote, that’s all! They don’t do anything particular with it.’

‘I see,’ said the Queen; ‘a sort of plaything. Well, I wish that all these slaves may have in their hands this moment their fill of their favourite meat and drink.’

Instantly all the people in the Mile End Road, and in all the other streets where poor people live, found their hands full of things to eat and drink. From the cab window could be seen persons carrying every kind of food, and bottles and cans as well. Roast meat, fowls, red lobsters, great yellowy crabs, fried fish, boiled pork, beef-steak puddings, baked onions, mutton pies; most of the young people had oranges and sweets and cake. It made an enormous change in the look of the Mile End Road—brightened it up, so to speak, and brightened up, more than you can possibly imagine, the faces of the people.

‘Makes a difference, doesn’t it?’ said the Queen.

‘That’s the best wish you’ve had yet,’ said Jane with cordial approval.

just by the Bank the cabman stopped.

‘I ain’t agoin’ to drive you no further,’ he said. ‘Out you gets.’

They got out rather unwillingly.

‘I wants my tea,’ he said; and they saw that on the box of the cab was a mound of cabbage, with pork chops and apple sauce, a duck, and a spotted currant pudding. Also a large can.

‘You pay me my fare,’ he said threateningly, and looked down at the mound, muttering again about his tea.

‘We’ll take another cab,’ said Cyril with dignity. ‘Give me change for a sovereign, if you please.’

But the cabman, as it turned out, was not at all a nice character. He took the sovereign, whipped up his horse, and disappeared in the stream of cabs and omnibuses and wagons, without giving them any change at all.

Already a little crowd was collecting round the party.

‘Come on,’ said Robert, leading the wrong way.

The crowd round them thickened. They were in a narrow street where many gentlemen in black coats and without hats were standing about on the pavement talking very loudly.

‘How ugly their clothes are,’ said the Queen of Babylon. ‘They’d be rather fine men, some of them, if they were dressed decently, especially the ones with the beautiful long, curved noses. I wish they were dressed like the Babylonians of my court.’

And of course, it was so.

The moment the almost fainting Psammead had blown itself out every man in Throgmorton Street appeared abruptly in Babylonian full dress.

All were carefully powdered, their hair and beards were scented and curled, their garments richly embroidered. They wore rings and armlets, flat gold collars and swords, and impossible-looking head-dresses.

A stupefied silence fell on them.

‘I say,’ a youth who had always been fair-haired broke that silence, ‘it’s only fancy of course—something wrong with my eyes—but you chaps do look so rum.’

‘Rum,’ said his friend. ‘Look at YOU. You in a sash! My hat! And your hair’s gone black and you’ve got a beard. It’s my belief we’ve been poisoned. You do look a jackape.’

‘Old Levinstein don’t look so bad. But how was it DONE—that’s what I want to know. How was it done? Is it conjuring, or what?’

‘I think it is chust a ver’ bad tream,’ said old Levinstein to his clerk; ‘all along Bishopsgate I haf seen the gommon people have their hants full of food—GOOT food. Oh yes, without doubt a very bad tream!’

‘Then I’m dreaming too, Sir,’ said the clerk, looking down at his legs with an expression of loathing. ‘I see my feet in beastly sandals as plain as plain.’

‘All that goot food wasted,’ said old Mr Levinstein. A bad tream—a bad tream.’

The Members of the Stock Exchange are said to be at all times a noisy lot. But the noise they made now to express their disgust at the costumes of ancient Babylon was far louder than their ordinary row. One had to shout before one could hear oneself speak.

‘I only wish,’ said the clerk who thought it was conjuring—he was quite close to the children and they trembled, because they knew that whatever he wished would come true. ‘I only wish we knew who’d done it.’

And, of course, instantly they did know, and they pressed round the Queen.

‘Scandalous! Shameful! Ought to be put down by law. Give her in charge. Fetch the police,’ two or three voices shouted at once.

The Queen recoiled.

‘What is it?’ she asked. ‘They sound like caged lions—lions by the thousand. What is it that they say?’

‘They say “Police!”,’ said Cyril briefly. ‘I knew they would sooner or later. And I don’t blame them, mind you.’

‘I wish my guards were here!’ cried the Queen. The exhausted Psammead was panting and trembling, but the Queen’s guards in red and green garments, and brass and iron gear, choked Throgmorton Street, and bared weapons flashed round the Queen.

‘I’m mad,’ said a Mr Rosenbaum; ‘dat’s what it is—mad!’

‘It’s a judgement on you, Rosy,’ said his partner. ‘I always said you were too hard in that matter of Flowerdew. It’s a judgement, and I’m in it too.’

The members of the Stock Exchange had edged carefully away from the gleaming blades, the mailed figures, the hard, cruel Eastern faces.

But Throgmorton Street is narrow, and the crowd was too thick for them to get away as quickly as they wished.

‘Kill them,’ cried the Queen. ‘Kill the dogs!’

The guards obeyed.

‘It IS all a dream,’ cried Mr Levinstein, cowering in a doorway behind his clerk.

‘It isn’t,’ said the clerk. ‘It isn’t. Oh, my good gracious! those foreign brutes are killing everybody. Henry Hirsh is down now, and Prentice is cut in two—oh, Lord! and Huth, and there goes Lionel Cohen with his head off, and Guy Nickalls has lost his head now. A dream? I wish to goodness it was all a dream.’

And, of course, instantly it was! The entire Stock Exchange rubbed its eyes and went back to close, to over, and either side of seven-eights, and Trunks, and Kaffirs, and Steel Common, and Contangoes, and Backwardations, Double Options, and all the interesting subjects concerning which they talk in the Street without ceasing.

No one said a word about it to anyone else. I think I have explained before that business men do not like it to be known that they have been dreaming in business hours. Especially mad dreams including such dreadful things as hungry people getting dinners, and the destruction of the Stock Exchange.

The children were in the dining-room at 300, Fitzroy Street, pale and trembling. The Psammead crawled out of the embroidered bag, and lay flat on the table, its leg stretched out, looking more like a dead hare than anything else.

‘Thank Goodness that’s over,’ said Anthea, drawing a deep breath.

‘She won’t come back, will she?’ asked Jane tremulously.

‘No,’ said Cyril. ‘She’s thousands of years ago. But we spent a whole precious pound on her. It’ll take all our pocket-money for ages to pay that back.’

‘Not if it was ALL a dream,’ said Robert.

‘The wish said ALL a dream, you know, Panther; you cut up and ask if he lent you anything.’

‘I beg your pardon,’ said Anthea politely, following the sound of her knock into the presence of the learned gentleman, ‘I’m so sorry to trouble you, but DID you lend me a pound today?’

‘No,’ said he, looking kindly at her through his spectacles. ‘But it’s extraordinary that you should ask me, for I dozed for a few moments this afternoon, a thing I very rarely do, and I dreamed quite distinctly that you brought me a ring that you said belonged to the Queen of Babylon, and that I lent you a sovereign and that you left one of the Queen’s rings here. The ring was a magnificent specimen.’ He sighed. ‘I wish it hadn’t been a dream,’ he said smiling. He was really learning to smile quite nicely.

Anthea could not be too thankful that the Psammead was not there to grant his wish.

 

CHAPTER 9. ATLANTIS

You will understand that the adventure of the Babylonian queen in London was the only one that had occupied any time at all. But the children’s time was very fully taken up by talking over all the wonderful things seen and done in the Past, where, by the power of the Amulet, they seemed to spend hours and hours, only to find when they got back to London that the whole thing had been briefer than a lightning flash.

They talked of the Past at their meals, in their walks, in the dining-room, in the first-floor drawing-room, but most of all on the stairs. It was an old house; it had once been a fashionable one, and was a fine one still. The banister rails of the stairs were excellent for sliding down, and in the corners of the landings were big alcoves that had once held graceful statues, and now quite often held the graceful forms of Cyril, Robert, Anthea, and Jane.

One day Cyril and Robert in tight white underclothing had spent a pleasant hour in reproducing the attitudes of statues seen either in the British Museum, or in Father’s big photograph book. But the show ended abruptly because Robert wanted to be the Venus of Milo, and for this purpose pulled at the sheet which served for drapery at the very moment when Cyril, looking really quite like the Discobolos—with a gold and white saucer for the disc—was standing on one foot, and under that one foot was the sheet.

Of course the Discobolos and his disc and the would-be Venus came down together, and everyone was a good deal hurt, especially the saucer, which would never be the same again, however neatly one might join its uneven bits with Seccotine or the white of an egg.

‘I hope you’re satisfied,’ said Cyril, holding his head where a large lump was rising.

‘Quite, thanks,’ said Robert bitterly. His thumb had caught in the banisters and bent itself back almost to breaking point.

‘I AM so sorry, poor, dear Squirrel,’ said Anthea; ‘and you were looking so lovely. I’ll get a wet rag. Bobs, go and hold your hand under the hot-water tap. It’s what ballet girls do with their legs when they hurt them. I saw it in a book.’

‘What book?’ said Robert disagreeably. But he went.

When he came back Cyril’s head had been bandaged by his sisters, and he had been brought to the state of mind where he was able reluctantly to admit that he supposed Robert hadn’t done it on purpose.

Robert replying with equal suavity, Anthea hastened to lead the talk away from the accident.

‘I suppose you don’t feel like going anywhere through the Amulet,’ she said.

‘Egypt!’ said Jane promptly. ‘I want to see the pussy cats.’

‘Not me—too hot,’ said Cyril. ‘It’s about as much as I can stand here—let alone Egypt.’ It was indeed, hot, even on the second landing, which was the coolest place in the house. ‘Let’s go to the North Pole.’

‘I don’t suppose the Amulet was ever there—and we might get our fingers frost-bitten so that we could never hold it up to get home again. No thanks,’ said Robert.

‘I say,’ said Jane, ‘let’s get the Psammead and ask its advice. It will like us asking, even if we don’t take it.’

The Psammead was brought up in its green silk embroidered bag, but before it could be asked anything the door of the learned gentleman’s room opened and the voice of the visitor who had been lunching with him was heard on the stairs. He seemed to be speaking with the door handle in his hand.

‘You see a doctor, old boy,’ he said; ‘all that about thought-transference is just simply twaddle. You’ve been over-working. Take a holiday. Go to Dieppe.’

‘I’d rather go to Babylon,’ said the learned gentleman.

‘I wish you’d go to Atlantis some time, while we’re about it, so as to give me some tips for my Nineteenth Century article when you come home.’

‘I wish I could,’ said the voice of the learned gentleman. ‘Goodbye. Take care of yourself.’

The door was banged, and the visitor came smiling down the stairs—a stout, prosperous, big man. The children had to get up to let him pass.

‘Hullo, Kiddies,’ he said, glancing at the bandages on the head of Cyril and the hand of Robert, ‘been in the wars?’

‘It’s all right,’ said Cyril. ‘I say, what was that Atlantic place you wanted him to go to? We couldn’t help hearing you talk.’

‘You talk so VERY loud, you see,’ said Jane soothingly.

‘Atlantis,’ said the visitor, ‘the lost Atlantis, garden of the Hesperides. Great continent—disappeared in the sea. You can read about it in Plato.’

‘Thank you,’ said Cyril doubtfully.

‘Were there any Amulets there?’ asked Anthea, made anxious by a sudden thought.

‘Hundreds, I should think. So HE’S been talking to you?’

‘Yes, often. He’s very kind to us. We like him awfully.’

‘Well, what he wants is a holiday; you persuade him to take one. What he wants is a change of scene. You see, his head is crusted so thickly inside with knowledge about Egypt and Assyria and things that you can’t hammer anything into it unless you keep hard at it all day long for days and days. And I haven’t time. But you live in the house. You can hammer almost incessantly. Just try your hands, will you? Right. So long!’

He went down the stairs three at a time, and Jane remarked that he was a nice man, and she thought he had little girls of his own.

‘I should like to have them to play with,’ she added pensively.

The three elder ones exchanged glances. Cyril nodded.

‘All right. LET’S go to Atlantis,’ he said.

‘Let’s go to Atlantis and take the learned gentleman with us,’ said Anthea; ‘he’ll think it’s a dream, afterwards, but it’ll certainly be a change of scene.’

‘Why not take him to nice Egypt?’ asked Jane.

‘Too hot,’ said Cyril shortly.

‘Or Babylon, where he wants to go?’

‘I’ve had enough of Babylon,’ said Robert, ‘at least for the present. And so have the others. I don’t know why,’ he added, forestalling the question on Jane’s lips, ‘but somehow we have. Squirrel, let’s take off these beastly bandages and get into flannels. We can’t go in our unders.’

‘He WISHED to go to Atlantis, so he’s got to go some time; and he might as well go with us,’ said Anthea.

This was how it was that the learned gentleman, permitting himself a few moments of relaxation in his chair, after the fatigue of listening to opinions (about Atlantis and many other things) with which he did not at all agree, opened his eyes to find his four young friends standing in front of him in a row.

‘Will you come,’ said Anthea, ‘to Atlantis with us?’

‘To know that you are dreaming shows that the dream is nearly at an end,’ he told himself; ‘or perhaps it’s only a game, like “How many miles to Babylon?”.’ So he said aloud: ‘Thank you very much, but I have only a quarter of an hour to spare.’

‘It doesn’t take any time,’ said Cyril; ‘time is only a mode of thought, you know, and you’ve got to go some time, so why not with us?’

‘Very well,’ said the learned gentleman, now quite certain that he was dreaming.

Anthea held out her soft, pink hand. He took it. She pulled him gently to his feet. Jane held up the Amulet.

‘To just outside Atlantis,’ said Cyril, and Jane said the Name of Power.

‘You owl!’ said Robert, ‘it’s an island. Outside an island’s all water.’

‘I won’t go. I WON’T,’ said the Psammead, kicking and struggling in its bag.

But already the Amulet had grown to a great arch. Cyril pushed the learned gentleman, as undoubtedly the first-born, through the arch—not into water, but on to a wooden floor, out of doors. The others followed. The Amulet grew smaller again, and there they all were, standing on the deck of a ship whose sailors were busy making her fast with chains to rings on a white quay-side. The rings and the chains were of a metal that shone red-yellow like gold.

Everyone on the ship seemed too busy at first to notice the group of newcomers from Fitzroy Street. Those who seemed to be officers were shouting orders to the men.

They stood and looked across the wide quay to the town that rose beyond it. What they saw was the most beautiful sight any of them had ever seen—or ever dreamed of.

The blue sea sparkled in soft sunlight; little white-capped waves broke softly against the marble breakwaters that guarded the shipping of a great city from the wilderness of winter winds and seas. The quay was of marble, white and sparkling with a veining bright as gold. The city was of marble, red and white. The greater buildings that seemed to be temples and palaces were roofed with what looked like gold and silver, but most of the roofs were of copper that glowed golden-red on the houses on the hills among which the city stood, and shaded into marvellous tints of green and blue and purple where they had been touched by the salt sea spray and the fumes of the dyeing and smelting works of the lower town.

Broad and magnificent flights of marble stairs led up from the quay to a sort of terrace that seemed to run along for miles, and beyond rose the town built on a hill.

The learned gentleman drew a long breath. ‘Wonderful!’ he said, ‘wonderful!’

‘I say, Mr—what’s your name,’ said Robert. ‘He means,’ said Anthea, with gentle politeness, ‘that we never can remember your name. I know it’s Mr De Something.’

‘When I was your age I was called Jimmy,’ he said timidly. ‘Would you mind? I should feel more at home in a dream like this if I—Anything that made me seem more like one of you.’

‘Thank you—Jimmy,’ said Anthea with an effort. It seemed such a cheek to be saying Jimmy to a grown-up man. ‘Jimmy, DEAR,’ she added, with no effort at all. Jimmy smiled and looked pleased.

But now the ship was made fast, and the Captain had time to notice other things. He came towards them, and he was dressed in the best of all possible dresses for the seafaring life.

‘What are you doing here?’ he asked rather fiercely. ‘Do you come to bless or to curse?’

‘To bless, of course,’ said Cyril. ‘I’m sorry if it annoys you, but we’re here by magic. We come from the land of the sun-rising,’ he went on explanatorily.

‘I see,’ said the Captain; no one had expected that he would. ‘I didn’t notice at first, but of course I hope you’re a good omen. It’s needed. And this,’ he pointed to the learned gentleman, ‘your slave, I presume?’

‘Not at all,’ said Anthea; ‘he’s a very great man. A sage, don’t they call it? And we want to see all your beautiful city, and your temples and things, and then we shall go back, and he will tell his friend, and his friend will write a book about it.’

‘What,’ asked the Captain, fingering a rope, ‘is a book?’

‘A record—something written, or,’ she added hastily, remembering the Babylonian writing, ‘or engraved.’

Some sudden impulse of confidence made Jane pluck the Amulet from the neck of her frock.

‘Like this,’ she said.

The Captain looked at it curiously, but, the other three were relieved to notice, without any of that overwhelming interest which the mere name of it had roused in Egypt and Babylon.

‘The stone is of our country,’ he said; ‘and that which is engraved on it, it is like our writing, but I cannot read it. What is the name of your sage?’

‘Ji-jimmy,’ said Anthea hesitatingly.

The Captain repeated, ‘Ji-jimmy. Will you land?’ he added. ‘And shall I lead you to the Kings?’

‘Look here,’ said Robert, ‘does your King hate strangers?’

‘Our Kings are ten,’ said the Captain, ‘and the Royal line, unbroken from Poseidon, the father of us all, has the noble tradition to do honour to strangers if they come in peace.’

‘Then lead on, please,’ said Robert, ‘though I SHOULD like to see all over your beautiful ship, and sail about in her.’

‘That shall be later,’ said the Captain; ‘just now we’re afraid of a storm—do you notice that odd rumbling?’

‘That’s nothing, master,’ said an old sailor who stood near; ‘it’s the pilchards coming in, that’s all.’

‘Too loud,’ said the Captain.

There was a rather anxious pause; then the Captain stepped on to the quay, and the others followed him.

‘Do talk to him—Jimmy,’ said Anthea as they went; ‘you can find out all sorts of things for your friend’s book.’

‘Please excuse me,’ he said earnestly. ‘If I talk I shall wake up; and besides, I can’t understand what he says.’

No one else could think of anything to say, so that it was in complete silence that they followed the Captain up the marble steps and through the streets of the town. There were streets and shops and houses and markets.

‘It’s just like Babylon,’ whispered Jane, ‘only everything’s perfectly different.’

‘It’s a great comfort the ten Kings have been properly brought up—to be kind to strangers,’ Anthea whispered to Cyril.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘no deepest dungeons here.’

There were no horses or chariots in the street, but there were handcarts and low trolleys running on thick log-wheels, and porters carrying packets on their heads, and a good many of the people were riding on what looked like elephants, only the great beasts were hairy, and they had not that mild expression we are accustomed to meet on the faces of the elephants at the Zoo.

‘Mammoths!’ murmured the learned gentleman, and stumbled over a loose stone.

The people in the streets kept crowding round them as they went along, but the Captain always dispersed the crowd before it grew uncomfortably thick by saying—

‘Children of the Sun God and their High Priest—come to bless the City.’

And then the people would draw back with a low murmur that sounded like a suppressed cheer.

Many of the buildings were covered with gold, but the gold on the bigger buildings was of a different colour, and they had sorts of steeples of burnished silver rising above them.

‘Are all these houses real gold?’ asked Jane.

‘The temples are covered with gold, of course,’ answered the Captain, ‘but the houses are only oricalchum. It’s not quite so expensive.’

The learned gentleman, now very pale, stumbled along in a dazed way, repeating:

‘Oricalchum—oricalchum.’

‘Don’t be frightened,’ said Anthea; ‘we can get home in a minute, just by holding up the charm. Would you rather go back now? We could easily come some other day without you.’

‘Oh, no, no,’ he pleaded fervently; ‘let the dream go on. Please, please do.’

‘The High Ji-jimmy is perhaps weary with his magic journey,’ said the Captain, noticing the blundering walk of the learned gentleman; ‘and we are yet very far from the Great Temple, where today the Kings make sacrifice.’

He stopped at the gate of a great enclosure. It seemed to be a sort of park, for trees showed high above its brazen wall.

The party waited, and almost at once the Captain came back with one of the hairy elephants and begged them to mount.

This they did.

It was a glorious ride. The elephant at the Zoo—to ride on him is also glorious, but he goes such a very little way, and then he goes back again, which is always dull. But this great hairy beast went on and on and on along streets and through squares and gardens. It was a glorious city; almost everything was built of marble, red, or white, or black. Every now and then the party crossed a bridge.

It was not till they had climbed to the hill which is the centre of the town that they saw that the whole city was divided into twenty circles, alternately land and water, and over each of the water circles were the bridges by which they had come.

And now they were in a great square. A vast building filled up one side of it; it was overlaid with gold, and had a dome of silver. The rest of the buildings round the square were of oricalchum. And it looked more splendid than you can possibly imagine, standing up bold and shining in the sunlight.

‘You would like a bath,’ said the Captain, as the hairy elephant went clumsily down on his knees. ‘It’s customary, you know, before entering the Presence. We have baths for men, women, horses, and cattle. The High Class Baths are here. Our Father Poseidon gave us a spring of hot water and one of cold.’

The children had never before bathed in baths of gold.

‘It feels very splendid,’ said Cyril, splashing.

‘At least, of course, it’s not gold; it’s or—what’s its name,’ said Robert. ‘Hand over that towel.’

The bathing hall had several great pools sunk below the level of the floor; one went down to them by steps.

‘Jimmy,’ said Anthea timidly, when, very clean and boiled-looking, they all met in the flowery courtyard of the Public, ‘don’t you think all this seems much more like NOW than Babylon or Egypt—? Oh, I forgot, you’ve never been there.’

‘I know a little of those nations, however,’ said he, ‘and I quite agree with you. A most discerning remark—my dear,’ he added awkwardly; ‘this city certainly seems to indicate a far higher level of civilization than the Egyptian or Babylonish, and—’

‘Follow me,’ said the Captain. ‘Now, boys, get out of the way.’ He pushed through a little crowd of boys who were playing with dried chestnuts fastened to a string.

‘Ginger!’ remarked Robert, ‘they’re playing conkers, just like the kids in Kentish Town Road!’

They could see now that three walls surrounded the island on which they were. The outermost wall was of brass, the Captain told them; the next, which looked like silver, was covered with tin; and the innermost one was of oricalchum.

And right in the middle was a wall of gold, with golden towers and gates.

‘Behold the Temples of Poseidon,’ said the Captain. ‘It is not lawful for me to enter. I will await your return here.’

He told them what they ought to say, and the five people from Fitzroy Street took hands and went forward. The golden gates slowly opened.

‘We are the children of the Sun,’ said Cyril, as he had been told, ‘and our High Priest, at least that’s what the Captain calls him. We have a different name for him at home.’ ‘What is his name?’ asked a white-robed man who stood in the doorway with his arms extended.

‘Ji-jimmy,’ replied Cyril, and he hesitated as Anthea had done. It really did seem to be taking a great liberty with so learned a gentleman. ‘And we have come to speak with your Kings in the Temple of Poseidon—does that word sound right?’ he whispered anxiously.

‘Quite,’ said the learned gentleman. ‘It’s very odd I can understand what you say to them, but not what they say to you.’

‘The Queen of Babylon found that too,’ said Cyril; ‘it’s part of the magic.’

‘Oh, what a dream!’ said the learned gentleman.

The white-robed priest had been joined by others, and all were bowing low.

‘Enter,’ he said, ‘enter, Children of the Sun, with your High Ji-jimmy.’

In an inner courtyard stood the Temple—all of silver, with gold pinnacles and doors, and twenty enormous statues in bright gold of men and women. Also an immense pillar of the other precious yellow metal.

They went through the doors, and the priest led them up a stair into a gallery from which they could look down on to the glorious place.

‘The ten Kings are even now choosing the bull. It is not lawful for me to behold,’ said the priest, and fell face downward on the floor outside the gallery. The children looked down.

The roof was of ivory adorned with the three precious metals, and the walls were lined with the favourite oricalchum.

At the far end of the Temple was a statue group, the like of which no one living has ever seen.

It was of gold, and the head of the chief figure reached to the roof. That figure was Poseidon, the Father of the City. He stood in a great chariot drawn by six enormous horses, and round about it were a hundred mermaids riding on dolphins.

Ten men, splendidly dressed and armed only with sticks and ropes, were trying to capture one of some fifteen bulls who ran this way and that about the floor of the Temple. The children held their breath, for the bulls looked dangerous, and the great horned heads were swinging more and more wildly.

Anthea did not like looking at the bulls. She looked about the gallery, and noticed that another staircase led up from it to a still higher storey; also that a door led out into the open air, where there seemed to be a balcony.

So that when a shout went up and Robert whispered, ‘Got him,’ and she looked down and saw the herd of bulls being driven out of the Temple by whips, and the ten Kings following, one of them spurring with his stick a black bull that writhed and fought in the grip of a lasso, she answered the boy’s agitated, ‘Now we shan’t see anything more,’ with—

‘Yes we can, there’s an outside balcony.’

So they crowded out.

But very soon the girls crept back.

‘I don’t like sacrifices,’ Jane said. So she and Anthea went and talked to the priest, who was no longer lying on his face, but sitting on the top step mopping his forehead with his robe, for it was a hot day.

‘It’s a special sacrifice,’ he said; ‘usually it’s only done on the justice days every five years and six years alternately. And then they drink the cup of wine with some of the bull’s blood in it, and swear to judge truly. And they wear the sacred blue robe, and put out all the Temple fires. But this today is because the City’s so upset by the odd noises from the sea, and the god inside the big mountain speaking with his thunder-voice. But all that’s happened so often before. If anything could make ME uneasy it wouldn’t be THAT.’

‘What would it be?’ asked Jane kindly.

‘It would be the Lemmings.’

‘Who are they—enemies?’

‘They’re a sort of rat; and every year they come swimming over from the country that no man knows, and stay here awhile, and then swim away. This year they haven’t come. You know rats won’t stay on a ship that’s going to be wrecked. If anything horrible were going to happen to us, it’s my belief those Lemmings would know; and that may be why they’ve fought shy of us.’

‘What do you call this country?’ asked the Psammead, suddenly putting its head out of its bag.

‘Atlantis,’ said the priest.

‘Then I advise you to get on to the highest ground you can find. I remember hearing something about a flood here. Look here, you’—it turned to Anthea; ‘let’s get home. The prospect’s too wet for my whiskers.’ The girls obediently went to find their brothers, who were leaning on the balcony railings.

‘Where’s the learned gentleman?’ asked Anthea.

‘There he is—below,’ said the priest, who had come with them. ‘Your High Ji-jimmy is with the Kings.’

The ten Kings were no longer alone. The learned gentleman—no one had noticed how he got there—stood with them on the steps of an altar, on which lay the dead body of the black bull. All the rest of the courtyard was thick with people, seemingly of all classes, and all were shouting, ‘The sea—the sea!’

‘Be calm,’ said the most kingly of the Kings, he who had lassoed the bull. ‘Our town is strong against the thunders of the sea and of the sky!’

‘I want to go home,’ whined the Psammead.

‘We can’t go without HIM,’ said Anthea firmly.

‘Jimmy,’ she called, ‘Jimmy!’ and waved to him. He heard her, and began to come towards her through the crowd. They could see from the balcony the sea-captain edging his way out from among the people. And his face was dead white, like paper.

‘To the hills!’ he cried in a loud and terrible voice. And above his voice came another voice, louder, more terrible—the voice of the sea.

The girls looked seaward.

Across the smooth distance of the sea something huge and black rolled towards the town. It was a wave, but a wave a hundred feet in height, a wave that looked like a mountain—a wave rising higher and higher till suddenly it seemed to break in two—one half of it rushed out to sea again; the other—

‘Oh!’ cried Anthea, ‘the town—the poor people!’

‘It’s all thousands of years ago, really,’ said Robert but his voice trembled. They hid their eyes for a moment. They could not bear to look down, for the wave had broken on the face of the town, sweeping over the quays and docks, overwhelming the great storehouses and factories, tearing gigantic stones from forts and bridges, and using them as battering rams against the temples. Great ships were swept over the roofs of the houses and dashed down halfway up the hill among ruined gardens and broken buildings. The water ground brown fishing-boats to powder on the golden roofs of Palaces.

Then the wave swept back towards the sea.

‘I want to go home,’ cried the Psammead fiercely.

‘Oh, yes, yes!’ said Jane, and the boys were ready—but the learned gentleman had not come.

Then suddenly they heard him dash up to the inner gallery, crying—

‘I MUST see the end of the dream.’ He rushed up the higher flight.

The others followed him. They found themselves in a sort of turret—roofed, but open to the air at the sides.

The learned gentleman was leaning on the parapet, and as they rejoined him the vast wave rushed back on the town. This time it rose higher—destroyed more.

‘Come home,’ cried the Psammead; ‘THAT’S the LAST, I know it is! That’s the last—over there.’ It pointed with a claw that trembled.

‘Oh, come!’ cried Jane, holding up the Amulet.

‘I WILL SEE the end of the dream,’ cried the learned gentleman.

‘You’ll never see anything else if you do,’ said Cyril. ‘Oh, JIMMY!’ appealed Anthea. ‘I’ll NEVER bring you out again!’

‘You’ll never have the chance if you don’t go soon,’ said the Psammead.

‘I WILL see the end of the dream,’ said the learned gentleman obstinately.

The hills around were black with people fleeing from the villages to the mountains. And even as they fled thin smoke broke from the great white peak, and then a faint flash of flame. Then the volcano began to throw up its mysterious fiery inside parts. The earth trembled; ashes and sulphur showered down; a rain of fine pumice-stone fell like snow on all the dry land. The elephants from the forest rushed up towards the peaks; great lizards thirty yards long broke from the mountain pools and rushed down towards the sea. The snows melted and rushed down, first in avalanches, then in roaring torrents. Great rocks cast up by the volcano fell splashing in the sea miles away.

‘Oh, this is horrible!’ cried Anthea. ‘Come home, come home!’

‘The end of the dream,’ gasped the learned gentleman.

‘Hold up the Amulet,’ cried the Psammead suddenly. The place where they stood was now crowded with men and women, and the children were strained tight against the parapet. The turret rocked and swayed; the wave had reached the golden wall.

Jane held up the Amulet.

‘Now,’ cried the Psammead, ‘say the word!’

And as Jane said it the Psammead leaped from its bag and bit the hand of the learned gentleman.

At the same moment the boys pushed him through the arch and all followed him.

He turned to look back, and through the arch he saw nothing but a waste of waters, with above it the peak of the terrible mountain with fire raging from it.

He staggered back to his chair.

‘What a ghastly dream!’ he gasped. ‘Oh, you’re here, my—er—dears. Can I do anything for you?’

‘You’ve hurt your hand,’ said Anthea gently; ‘let me bind it up.’

The hand was indeed bleeding rather badly.

The Psammead had crept back to its bag. All the children were very white.

‘Never again,’ said the Psammead later on, ‘will I go into the Past with a grown-up person! I will say for you four, you do do as you’re told.’

‘We didn’t even find the Amulet,’ said Anthea later still.

‘Of course you didn’t; it wasn’t there. Only the stone it was made of was there. It fell on to a ship miles away that managed to escape and got to Egypt. I could have told you that.’

‘I wish you had,’ said Anthea, and her voice was still rather shaky. ‘Why didn’t you?’

‘You never asked me,’ said the Psammead very sulkily. ‘I’m not the sort of chap to go shoving my oar in where it’s not wanted.’

‘Mr Ji-jimmy’s friend will have something worth having to put in his article now,’ said Cyril very much later indeed.

‘Not he,’ said Robert sleepily. ‘The learned Ji-jimmy will think it’s a dream, and it’s ten to one he never tells the other chap a word about it at all.’

Robert was quite right on both points. The learned gentleman did. And he never did.

 

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