The E. Nesbit Megapack: 26 Classic Novels and Stories

by E. Nesbit

  He spoke this standing on the prow beside Lucy, and as he spoke she clutched his arm.

  “Oh, look,” she breathed, “oh, listen!”

  He listened. And he heard a dull echoing roar that got louder and louder. And he looked. The light of the lamps shone ahead on the dark gleaming water, and then quite suddenly it did not shine on the water because there was no longer any water for it to shine on. Only great empty black darkness. A great hole, ahead, into which the stream poured itself. And now they were at the edge of the gulf. The Lightning Loose gave a shudder and a bound and hung for what seemed a long moment on the edge of the precipice down which the underground river was pouring itself in a smooth sleek stream, rather like poured treacle, over what felt like the edge of everything solid.

  The moment ended, and the little yacht, with Philip and Lucy and the parrot and the two dogs, plunged headlong over the edge into the dark unknown abyss below.

  “It’s all right, Lu,” said Philip in that moment. “I’ll take care of you.”

  And then there was silence in the cavern—only the rushing sound of the great waterfall echoed in the rocky arch.

  CHAPTER X

  THE GREAT SLOTH

  You have heard of Indians shooting rapids in their birch-bark canoes? And perhaps you have yourself sailed a toy boat on a stream, and made a dam of clay, and waited with more or less patience till the water rose nearly to the top, and then broken a bit of your dam out and made a waterfall and let your boat drift over the edge of it. You know how it goes slowly at first, then hesitates and sweeps on more and more quickly. Sometimes it upsets; and sometimes it shudders and strains and trembles and sways to one side and to the other, and at last rights itself and makes up its mind, and rushes on down the stream, usually to be entangled in the clump of rushes at the stream’s next turn. This is what happened to that good yacht, the Lightning Loose. She shot over the edge of that dark smooth subterranean waterfall, hung a long breathless moment between still air and falling water, slid down like a flash, dashed into the stream below, shuddered, reeled, righted herself and sped on. You have perhaps been down the water chute at Earl’s Court? It was rather like that.

  “It’s—it’s all right,” said Philip, in a rather shaky whisper. “She’s going on all right.”

  “Yes,” said Lucy, holding his arm very tight; “yes, I’m sure she’s going on all right.”

  “Are we drowned?” said a trembling squeak. “Oh, Max, are we really drowned?”

  “I don’t think so,” Max replied with caution. “And if we are, my dear, we cannot undrown ourselves by screams.”

  “Far from it,” said the parrot, who had for the moment been rendered quite speechless by the shock. And you know a parrot is not made speechless just by any little thing. “So we may just as well try to behave,” it said.

  The lamps had certainly behaved, and behaved beautifully; through the wild air of the fall, the wild splash as the Lightning Loose struck the stream below, the lamps had shone on, seemingly undisturbed.

  “An example to us all,” said the parrot.

  “Yes, but,” said Lucy, “what are we to do?”

  “When adventures take a turn one is far from expecting, one does what one can,” said the parrot.

  “And what’s that?”

  “Nothing,” said the parrot. “Philip has relieved Max at the helm and is steering a straight course between the banks—if you can call them banks. There is nothing else to be done.”

  There plainly wasn’t. The Lightning Loose rushed on through the darkness. Lucy reflected for a moment and then made cocoa. This was real heroism. It cheered every one up, including the cocoa-maker herself. It was impossible to believe that anything dreadful was going to happen when you were making that soft, sweet, ordinary drink.

  “I say,” Philip remarked when she carried a cup to him at the wheel, “I’ve been thinking. All this is out of a book. Some one must have let it out. I know what book it’s out of too. And if the whole story got out of the book we’re all right. Only we shall go on for ages and climb out at last, three days’ journey from Trieste.”

  “I see,” said Lucy, and added that she hated geography. “Drink your cocoa while it’s hot,” she said in motherly accents, and “what book is it?”

  “It’s The Last Cruise of the Teal,” he said. “Helen gave it me just before she went away. It’s a ripping book, and I used it for the roof of the outer court of the Hall of Justice. I remember it perfectly. The chaps on the Teal made torches of paper soaked in paraffin.”

  “We haven’t any,” said Lucy; “besides our lamps light everything up all right. Oh! there’s Brenda crying again. She hasn’t a shadow of pluck.”

  She went quickly to the cabin where Max was trying to cheer Brenda by remarks full of solid good sense, to which Brenda paid no attention whatever.

  “I knew how it would be,” she kept saying in a whining voice; “I told you so from the beginning. I wish we hadn’t come. I want to go home. Oh! what a dreadful thing to happen to dear little dogs.”

  “Brenda,” said Lucy firmly, “if you don’t stop whining you shan’t have any cocoa.”

  Brenda stopped at once and wagged her tail appealingly.

  “Cocoa?” she said, “did any one say cocoa? My nerves are so delicate. I know I’m a trial, dear Max, it’s no use your pretending I’m not, but there is nothing like cocoa for the nerves. Plenty of sugar, please, dear Lucy. Thank you so much! Yes, it’s just as I like it.”

  “There will be other things to eat by and by,” said Lucy. “People who whine won’t get any.”

  “I’m sure nobody would dream of whining,” said Brenda. “I know I’m too sensitive; but you can do anything with dear little dogs by kindness. And as for whining—do you know it’s a thing I’ve never been subject to, from a child, never. Max will tell you the same.”

  Max said nothing, but only fixed his beautiful eyes hopefully on the cocoa jug.

  And all the time the yacht was speeding along the underground stream, beneath the vast arch of the underground cavern.

  “The worst of it is we may be going ever so far away from where we want to get to,” said Philip, when Max had undertaken the steering again.

  “All roads,” remarked the parrot, “lead to Somnolentia. And besides the ship is travelling due north—at least so the ship’s compass states, and I have no reason as yet for doubting its word.”

  “Hullo!” cried more than one voice, and the ship shot out of the dark cavern into a sheet of water that lay spread under a white dome. The stream that had brought them there seemed to run across one side of this pool. Max, directed by the parrot, steered the ship into smooth water, where she lay at rest at last in the very middle of this great underground lake.

  “This isn’t out of The Cruise of the Teal,” said Philip. “They must have shut that book.”

  “I think it’s out of a book about Mexico or Peru or Ingots or some geographical place,” said Lucy; “it had a green-and-gold binding. I think you used it for the other end of the outer justice court. And if you did, this dome’s solid silver, and there’s a hole in it, and under this dome there’s untold treasure in gold incas.”

  “What’s incas?”

  “Gold bars, I believe,” said Lucy; “and Mexicans come down through the hole in the roof and get it, and when enemies come they flood it with water. It’s flooded now,” she added unnecessarily.

  “I wish adventures had never been invented,” said Brenda. “No, dear Lucy, I am not whining. Far from it. But if a dear little dog might suggest it, we should all be better in a home, should we not?”

  All eyes now perceived a dark hole in the roof, a round hole exactly in the middle of the shining dome. And as they gazed the dark hole became light. And they saw above them a white shining disk like a very large and very brig
ht moon. It was the light of day.

  “Some one has opened the trap-door,” said Lucy. “The Ingots always closed their treasure-vaults with trap-doors.”

  The bright disk was obscured; confused shapes broke its shining roundness. Then another disk, small and very black appeared in the middle of it; the black disk grew larger and larger and larger. It was coming down to them. Slowly and steadily it came; now it reached the level of the dome, now it hung below it; down, down, down it came, past the level of their eager eyes and splashed in the water close by the ship. It was a large empty bucket. The rope which held it was jerked from above; the bucket dipped and filled and was drawn up again slowly and steadily till it disappeared in the hole in the roof.

  “Quick,” said the parrot, “get the ship exactly under the hole, and next time the bucket comes down you can go up in it.”

  “This is out of the Arabian Nights, I think,” said Lucy, when the yacht was directly under the hole in the roof. “But who is it that keeps on opening the books? Somebody must be pulling Polistopolis down.”

  “The Pretenderette, I shouldn’t wonder,” said Philip gloomily. “She isn’t the Deliverer, so she must be the Destroyer. Nobody else can get into Polistarchia, you know.”

  “There’s me.”

  “Oh, you’re Deliverer too.”

  “Thank you,” said Lucy gratefully. “But there’s Helen.”

  “She was only on the Island, you know; she couldn’t come to Polistarchia. Look out!”

  The bucket was descending again, and instead of splashing in the water it bumped on the deck.

  “You go first,” said Philip to Lucy.

  “And you,” said Max to Brenda.

  “Oh, I’ll go first if you like,” said Philip.

  “Yes,” said Max, “I’ll go first if you like, Brenda.”

  You see Philip felt that he ought to give Lucy the first chance of escaping from the poor Lightning Loose. Yet he could not be at all sure what it was that she would be escaping to. And if there was danger overhead, of course he ought to be the one to go first to face it. And the worthy Max felt the same about Brenda.

  And Lucy felt just the same as they did. I don’t know what Brenda felt. She whined a little. Then for one moment Lucy and Philip stood on the deck each grasping the handle of the bucket and looking at each other, and the dogs looked at them, and the parrot looked at every one in turn. An impatient jerk and shake of the rope from above reminded them that there was no time to lose.

  Lucy decided that it was more dangerous to go than to stay, just at the same moment when Philip decided that it was more dangerous to stay than to go, so when Lucy stepped into the bucket Philip helped her eagerly. Max thought the same as Philip, and I am afraid Brenda agreed with them. At any rate she leaped into Lucy’s lap and curled her long length round just as the rope tightened and the bucket began to go up. Brenda screamed faintly, but her scream was stifled at once.

  “I’ll send the bucket down again the moment I get up,” Lucy called out; and a moment later, “it feels awfully jolly, like a swing.”

  And so saying she was drawn up into the hole in the roof of the dome. Then a sound of voices came down the shaft, a confused sound; the anxious little party on the Lightning Loose could not make out any distinct words. They all stood staring up, expecting, waiting for the bucket to come down again.

  “I hate leaving the ship,” said Philip.

  “You shall be the last to leave her,” said the parrot consolingly; “that is if we can manage about Max without your having to sit on him in the bucket if he gets in first.”

  “But how about you?” said Philip.

  A little arrogantly the parrot unfolded half a bright wing.

  “Oh!” said Philip enlightened and reminded. “Of course! And you might have flown away at any time. And yet you stuck to us. I say, you know, that was jolly decent of you.”

  “Not at all,” said the parrot with conscious modesty.

  “But it was,” Philip insisted. “You might have—hullo!” cried Philip. The bucket came down again with a horrible rush. They held their breaths and looked to see the form of Lucy hurtling through the air. But no, the bucket swung loose a moment in mid-air, then it was hastily drawn up, and a hollow metallic clang echoed through the cavern.

  “Brenda!” the cry was wrung from the heart of the sober self-contained Max.

  “My wings and claws!” exclaimed the parrot.

  “Oh, bother!” said Philip.

  There was some excuse for these expressions of emotion. The white disk overhead had suddenly disappeared. Some one up above had banged the lid down. And all the manly hearts were below in the cave, and brave Lucy and helpless Brenda were above in a strange place, whose dangers those below could only imagine.

  “I wish I’d gone,” said Philip. “Oh, I wish I’d gone.”

  “Yes, indeed,” said Max, with a deep sigh.

  “I feel a little faint,” said the parrot; “if some one would make a cup of cocoa.”

  Thus did the excellent bird seek to occupy their minds in that first moment of disaster. And it was well that the captain and crew were thus saved from despair. For before the kettle boiled, the lid of the shaft opened about a foot and something largeish, roundish and lumpish fell heavily and bounced upon the deck of the Lightning Loose.

  It was a pine-apple, fresh, ripe and juicy. On its side was carved in large letters of uncertain shape the one word “WAIT.”

  It was good advice and they took it. Really I do not see what else they could have done in any case. And they ate the pine-apple. And presently every one felt extremely sleepy.

  “Waiting is one of those things that you can do as well asleep as awake, or even better,” said the parrot. “Forty winks will do us all the good in the world.” He put his head under his wing where he sat on the binnacle.

  “May I turn in alongside you, sir?” Max asked. “I shan’t feel the dreadful loneliness so much then.”

  So Philip and Max curled up together on the deck, warmly covered with the spare flags of all nations, and the forty winks lasted for the space of a good night’s rest—about ten hours, in fact. So ten hours’ waiting was got through quite easily. But there was more waiting to do after they woke up, and that was not so easy.

  * * * *

  When Lucy, sitting in the bucket with Brenda in her lap, felt the bucket lifted from the deck and swung loose in the air, it was as much as she could do to refrain from screaming. Brenda did scream, as you know, but Lucy stifled the sound in the folds of her frock.

  Lucy bit her lips, made a great effort and called out that remark about the bucket-swing, just as though she were quite comfortable. It was very brave of her and helped her to go on being brave.

  The bucket drew slowly up and up and up and passed from the silver dome into the dark shaft above. Lucy looked up. Yes, it was daylight that showed at the top of the shaft, and the rope was drawing her up towards it. Suppose the rope broke? Brenda was quite quiet now. She said afterwards that she must have fainted. And now the light was nearer and nearer. Now Lucy was in it, for the bucket had been drawn right up, and hands were reached out to draw it over the side of what seemed like a well. At that moment Lucy saw in a flash what might happen if the owners of the hands, in their surprise, let go the bucket and the windlass. She caught Brenda in her hands and threw the dog out on to the dry ground, and threw herself across the well parapet. Just in time, for a shout of surprise went up and the bucket went down, clanging against the well sides. The hands had let go.

  Lucy clambered over the well side slowly, and when her feet stood on firm ground she saw that the hands were winding up the bucket again, and that it came very easily.

  “Oh, don’t!” she said. “Let it go right down! There are some more people down there.”

 
“Sorry, but it’s against the rules. The bucket only goes down this well forty times a day. And that was the fortieth time.”

  They pulled the bucket in and banged down the lid of the well. Some one padlocked it and put the key in his pocket. And Lucy and he stood facing each other. He was a little round-headed man in a curious stiff red tunic, and there was something about the general shape of him and his tunic which reminded Lucy of something, only she could not remember what. Behind him stood two others, also red-tunicked and round-headed.

  Brenda crouched at Lucy’s feet and whined softly, and Lucy waited for the strangers to speak.

  “You shouldn’t do that,” said the red-tunicked man at last, “it was a great shock to us, your bobbing up as you did. It will keep us awake at night, just remembering it.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Lucy.

  “You should always come into strange towns by the front gate,” said the man; “try to remember that, will you? Good-night.”

  “But you’re not going off like this,” said Lucy. “Let me write a note and drop it down to the others. Have you a bit of pencil, and paper?”

  “No,” said the strange people, staring at her.

  “Haven’t you anything I can write on?” Lucy asked them.

  “There’s nothing here but pine-apples,” said one of them at last.

  So she cut a pine-apple from among the hundreds that grew among the rocks near by, and carved “WAIT” on it with her penknife.

  “Now,” she said, “open that well lid.”

  “It’s as much as our lives are worth,” said the leader.

  “No it isn’t,” said Lucy; “there’s no law against dropping pine-apples into the well. You know there isn’t. It isn’t like drawing water. And if you don’t I shall set my little dog at you. She is very fierce.”