The E. Nesbit Megapack: 26 Classic Novels and Stories

by E. Nesbit

  Brenda was so flattered that she showed her teeth and growled.

  “Oh, very well,” said the stranger; “anything to avoid fuss.”

  When the well lid was padlocked down again, Lucy said:

  “What country is this?” though she was almost sure, because of the pine-apples, that it was Somnolentia. And when they had said that word she said:

  “Now I’ll tell you something. The Deliverer is coming up that well next time you draw water. He is coming to deliver you from the bondage of the Great Sloth.”

  “It is true,” said the red round-headed leader, “that we are in bondage. And the Great Sloth wearies us with the singing of choric songs when we long to be asleep. But none can deliver us. There is no hope. There is nothing good but sleep. And of that we have never enough.”

  “Oh, dear,” said Lucy despairingly, “aren’t there any women here? They always have more sense than men.”

  “What you say is rude as well as untrue,” said the red leader; “but to avoid fuss we will lead you and your fierce dog to the huts of the women. And then perhaps you will allow us to go to sleep.”

  The huts were poor and mean, little fenced-in corners in the ruins of what had once been a great and beautiful city, with gardens and streams; but now the streams were dry and nothing grew in the gardens but weeds and pine-apples.

  But the women—who all wore green tunics of the same stiff shape as the men’s—were not quite so sleepy as their husbands. They brought Lucy fresh pine-apples to eat, and were dreamily interested in the cut of her clothes and the begging accomplishments of Brenda. And from the women she learned several things about the Somnolentians. They all wore the same shaped tunics, only the colours differed. The women’s were green, the drawers of water wore red, the attendants of the Great Sloth wore black, and the pine-apple gatherers wore yellow.

  And as Lucy sat at the door of the hut and watched the people in these four colours going lazily about among the ruins she suddenly knew what they were, and she exclaimed:

  “I know what you are; you’re Halma men.”

  Instantly every man within earshot made haste to get away, and the women whispered, “Hush! It is death to breathe that name.”

  “But why?” Lucy asked.

  “Halma was the great captain of our race,” said the woman, “and the Great Sloth fears that if we hear his name it will rouse us and we shall break from bondage and become once more a free people.”

  Lucy determined that they should hear that name pretty often; but before she could speak it again the woman sighed, and remarking “The Great Sloth sleeps,” fell asleep then and there over the pine-apple she was peeling. A vast silence settled on the city, and next moment Lucy also slept. She slept for hours.

  * * * *

  It took her some time to find the keeper of the padlock key, and when she had found him he refused to use it. Nothing would move him, not even the threat of the fierceness of Brenda.

  At last, almost in despair, Lucy suddenly remembered a word of power.

  “I command you to open the well and let down the bucket,” she said. “I command you by the great name of Halma.”

  “It is death to speak that name,” said the keeper of the key, looking over his shoulder anxiously.

  “It is life to speak that name,” said Lucy. “Halma! Halma! Halma! If you don’t open that well I’ll carve the name on a pine-apple and send it in on the golden tray with the Great Sloth’s dinner.”

  “It would have the lives of hundreds for that,” said the keeper in horror.

  “Open the well then,” said Lucy.

  * * * *

  They all held a council as soon as Philip and Max had been safely drawn up in the bucket, and Lucy told them all she knew.

  “I think whatever we do we ought to be quick,” said Lucy; “that Great Sloth is dangerous. I’m sure it is. It’s sent already to say I am to be brought to its presence to sing songs to it while it goes to sleep. It doesn’t mind me because it knows I’m not the Deliverer. And if you’ll let me, I believe I can work everything all right. But if it knows you’re here, it’ll be much harder.”

  The degraded Halma men were watching them from a distance, in whispering groups.

  “I shall go and sing to the Great Sloth,” she said, “and you must go about and say the name of power to every one you meet, and tell them you’re the Deliverer. Then if my idea doesn’t come off, we must overpower the Great Sloth by numbers and.… You just go about saying ‘Halma!’—see?”

  “While you do the dangerous part? Likely!” said Philip.

  “It’s not dangerous. It never hurts the people who sing—never,” said Lucy. “Now I’m going.”

  And she went before Philip could stop her.

  “Let her go,” said the parrot; “she is a wise child.”

  The temple of the Great Sloth was built of solid gold. It had beautiful pillars and doorways and windows and courts, one inside the other, each paved with gold flagstones. And in the very middle of everything was a large room which was entirely feather-bed. There the Great Sloth passed its useless life in eating, sleeping and listening to music.

  Outside the moorish arch that led to this inner room Lucy stopped and began to sing. She had a clear little voice and she sang “Jockey to the Fair,” and “Early one morning,” and then she stopped.

  And a great sleepy slobbery voice came out from the room and said:

  “Your songs are in very bad taste. Do you know no sleepy songs?”

  “Your people sing you sleepy songs,” said Lucy. “What a pity they can’t sing to you all the time.”

  “You have a sympathetic nature,” said the Great Sloth, and it came out and leaned on the pillar of its door and looked at her with sleepy interest. It was enormous, as big as a young elephant, and it walked on its hind legs like a gorilla. It was very black indeed.

  “It is a pity,” it said; “but they say they cannot live without drinking, so they waste their time in drawing water from the wells.”

  “Wouldn’t it be nice,” said Lucy, “if you had a machine for drawing water. Then they could sing to you all day—if they chose.”

  “If I chose,” said the Great Sloth, yawning like a hippopotamus. “I am sleepy. Go!”

  “No,” said Lucy, and it was so long since the Great Sloth had heard that word that the shock of the sound almost killed its sleepiness.

  “What did you say?” it asked, as if it could not believe its large ears.

  “I said ‘No,’” said Lucy. “I mean that you are so great and grand you have only to wish for anything and you get it.”

  “Is that so?” said the Great Sloth dreamily and like an American.

  “Yes,” said Lucy with firmness. “You just say, ‘I wish I had a machine to draw up water for eight hours a day.’ That’s the proper length for a working day. Father says so.”

  “Say it all again, and slower,” said the creature. “I didn’t quite catch what you said.”

  Lucy repeated the words.

  “If that’s all.…” said the Great Sloth; “now say it again, very slowly indeed.”

  Lucy did so and the Great Sloth repeated after her:

  “I wish I had a machine to draw up water for eight hours a day.”

  “Don’t,” it said angrily, looking back over its shoulder into the feather-bedded room, “don’t, I say. Where are you shoving to? Who are you? What are you doing in my room? Come out of it.”

  Something did come out of the room, pushing the Great Sloth away from the door. And what came out was the vast feather-bed in enormous rolls and swellings and bulges. It was being pushed out by something so big and strong that it was stronger that the Great Sloth itself, and pushed that mountain of lazy sloth-flesh half across its own inner courtyard. Lucy retreated b
efore its advancing bulk and its extreme rage.

  “Push me out of my own feather-bedroom, would it?” said the Sloth, now hardly sleepy at all. “You wait till I get hold of it, whatever it is.”

  The whole of the feather-bed was out in the courtyard now, and the Great Sloth climbed slowly back over it into its room to find out who had dared to outrage its Slothful Majesty.

  Lucy waited, breathless with hope and fear, as the Great Sloth blundered back into the inner room of its temple. It did not come out again. There was a silence, and then a creaking sound and the voice of the Great Sloth saying:

  “No, no, no, I won’t. Let go, I tell you.” Then more sounds of creaking and the sound of metal on metal.

  She crept to the arch and peeped round it.

  The room that had been full of feather-bed was now full of wheels and cogs and bands and screws and bars. It was full, in fact, of a large and complicated machine. And the handle of that machine was being turned by the Great Sloth itself.

  “Let me go,” said the Great Sloth, gnashing its great teeth. “I won’t work!”

  “You must,” said a purring voice from the heart of the machinery. “You wished for me, and now you have to work me eight hours a day. It is the law”; it was the machine itself which spoke.

  “I’ll break you,” said the Sloth.

  “I am unbreakable,” said the machine with gentle pride.

  “This is your doing,” said the Sloth, turning its furious eyes on Lucy in the doorway. “You wait till I catch you!” And all the while it had to go on turning that handle.

  “Thank you,” said Lucy politely; “I think I will not wait. And I shall have eight hours’ start,” she added.

  Even as she spoke a stream of clear water began to run from the pumping machine. It slid down the gold steps and across the golden court. Lucy ran out into the ruined square of the city shouting:

  “Halma! Halma! Halma! To me, Halma’s men!”

  And the men, already excited by Philip, who had gone about saying that name of power without a moment’s pause all the time Lucy had been in the golden temple, gathered round her in a crowd.

  “Quick!” she said; “the Great Sloth is pumping water up for you. He will pump for eight hours a day. Quick! dig a channel for the water to run in. The Deliverer,” she pointed to Philip, “has given you back your river.”

  Some ran to look out old rusty half-forgotten spades and picks. But others hesitated and said:

  “The Great Sloth will work for eight hours, and then it will be free to work vengeance on us.”

  “I will go back,” said Lucy, “and explain to it that if it does not behave nicely you will all wish for machine guns, and it knows now that if people wish for machinery they have to use it. It will be awake now for eight hours and if you all work for eight hours a day you’ll soon have your city as fine as ever. And there’s one new law. Every time the clock strikes you must all say ‘Halma!’ aloud, every one of you, to remind yourselves of your great destiny, and that you are no longer slaves of the Great Sloth.”

  She went back and explained machine guns very carefully to the now hard-working Sloth. When she came back all the men were at work digging a channel for the new river.

  The women and children crowded round Lucy and Philip.

  “Ah!” said the oldest woman of all, “now we shall be able to wash in water. I’ve heard my grandmother say water was very pleasant to wash in. I never thought I should live to wash in water myself.”

  “Why?” Lucy asked. “What do you wash in?”

  “Pine-apple juice,” said a dozen voices, “when we do wash!”

  “But that must be very sticky,” said Lucy.

  “It is,” said the oldest woman of all; “very!”

  CHAPTER XI

  THE NIGHT ATTACK

  The Halma men were not naturally lazy. They were, in the days before the coming of the Great Sloth, a most energetic and industrious people. Now that the Sloth was obliged to work eight hours a day, the weight of its constant and catching sleepiness was taken away, and the people set to work in good earnest. (I did explain, didn’t I, that the Great Sloth’s sleepiness really was catching, like measles?)

  So now the Halma men were as busy as ants. Some dug the channel for the new stream, some set to work to restore the buildings, while others weeded the overgrown gardens and ploughed the deserted fields. The head Halma man painted in large letters on a column in the market-place these words:

  “This city is now called by its ancient name of Briskford. Any citizen found calling it Somnolentia will not be allowed to wash in water for a week.”

  The head-man was full of schemes, the least of which was the lighting of the town by electricity, the power to be supplied by the Great Sloth.

  “He can’t go on pumping eight hours a day,” said the head-man; “I can easily adjust the machine to all sorts of other uses.”

  In the evening a banquet was (of course) given to the Deliverers. The banquet was all pine-apple and water, because there had been no time to make or get anything else. But the speeches were very flattering; and Philip and Lucy were very pleased, more so than Brenda, who did not like pine-apple and made but little effort to conceal her disappointment. Max accepted bits of pine-apple, out of politeness, and hid them among the feet of the guests so that nobody’s feelings should be hurt.

  “I don’t know how we’re to get back to the island,” said Philip next day, “now we’ve lost the Lightning Loose.”

  “I think we’d better go back by way of Polistopolis,” said Lucy, “and find out who’s been opening the books. If they go on they may let simply anything out. And if the worst comes to the worst, perhaps we could get some one to help us to open the Teal book again and get the Teal out to cross to the island in.”

  “Lu,” said Philip with feeling, “you’re clever, really clever. No, I’m not kidding. I mean it. And I’m sorry I ever said you were only a girl. But how are we to get to Polistopolis?”

  It was a difficult problem. The head-man could offer no suggestions. It was Brenda who suggested asking the advice of the Great Sloth.

  “He is such a fine figure of an animal,” she said admiringly; “so handsome and distinguished-looking. I am sure he must have a really great mind. I always think good looks go with really great minds, don’t you, dear Lucy?”

  “We might as well,” said Philip, “if no one can think of anything else.”

  No one could. So they decided to take Brenda’s advice.

  Now that the Sloth worked every day it was not nearly so disagreeable as it had been when it slept so much.

  The children approached it at the dinner hour and it listened patiently if drowsily to their question. When it had quite done, it reflected—or seemed to reflect; perhaps it had fallen asleep—until the town clock struck one, the time for resuming work. Then it got up and slouched towards its machine.

  “Cucumbers,” it said, and began to turn the handle of its wheel. They had to wait till tea-time to ask it what it meant, for in that town the rule about not speaking to the man at the wheel was strictly enforced.

  “Cucumbers,” the Sloth repeated, and added a careful explanation. “You sit on the end of any young cucumber which points in the desired direction, and when it has grown to its full length—say sixteen inches—why, then you are sixteen inches on your way.”

  “But that’s not much,” said Lucy.

  “Every little helps,” said the Sloth; “more haste less speed. Then you wait till the cucumber seeds, and, when the new plants grow, you select the earliest cucumber that points in the desired direction and take your seat on it. By the end of the cucumber season you will be another sixteen—or with luck seventeen—inches on your way. Thirty-two inches in all, almost a yard. And thus you progress towards your goal, slowly but sure
ly, like in politics.”

  “Thank you very much,” said Philip; “we will think it over.”

  But it did not need much thought.

  “If we could get a motor car!” said Philip. “If you can get machines by wishing for them.…”

  “The very thing,” said Lucy, “let’s find the head-man. We mustn’t wish for a motor or we should have to go on using it. But perhaps there’s some one here who’d like to drive a motor—for his living, you know?”

  There was. A Halma man, with an inborn taste for machinery, had long pined to leave the gathering of pine-apples to others. He was induced to wish for a motor and a B.S.A. sixty horse-power car snorted suddenly in the place where a moment before no car was.

  “Oh, the luxury! This is indeed like home,” sighed Brenda, curling up on the air-cushions.

  And the children certainly felt a gloriously restful sensation. Nothing to be done; no need to think or bother. Just to sit quiet and be borne swiftly on through wonderful cities, all of which Philip vaguely remembered to have seen, small and near, and built by his own hands and Helen’s.

  And so, at last, they came close to Polistopolis. Philip never could tell how it was that he stopped the car outside the city. It must have been some quite unaccountable instinct, because naturally, you know, when you are not used to being driven in motors, you like to dash up to the house you are going to, and enjoy your friends’ enjoyment of the grand way in which you have travelled. But Philip felt—in that quite certain and quite unexplainable way in which you do feel things sometimes—that it was best to stop the car among the suburban groves of southernwood, and to creep into the town in the disguise afforded by motor coats, motor veils and motor goggles. (For of course all these had come with the motor car when it was wished for, because no motor car is complete without them.)

  They said good-bye warmly to the Halma motor man, and went quietly towards the town, Max and Brenda keeping to heel in the most praiseworthy way, and the parrot nestling inside Philip’s jacket, for it was chilled by the long rush through the evening air.