The Magic City

by E. Nesbit

  CHAPTER XI

  THE NIGHT ATTACK

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

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

  'This city is now called by its ancient name of Briskford. Any citizenfound calling it Somnolentia will not be allowed to wash in water for aweek.'

  The head-man was full of schemes, the least of which was the lighting ofthe 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 caneasily adjust the machine to all sorts of other uses.'

  In the evening a banquet was (of course) given to the Deliverers. Thebanquet was all pine-apple and water, because there had been no time tomake or get anything else. But the speeches were very flattering; andPhilip and Lucy were very pleased, more so than Brenda, who did not likepine-apple and made but little effort to conceal her disappointment. Maxaccepted bits of pine-apple, out of politeness, and hid them among thefeet 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 nextday, 'now we've lost the _Lightning Loose_.'

  'I think we'd better go back by way of Polistopolis,' said Lucy, 'andfind out who's been opening the books. If they go on they may let simplyanything out. And if the worst comes to the worst, perhaps we could getsome 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'mnot 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. Itwas Brenda who suggested asking the advice of the Great Sloth.

  'He is such a fine figure of an animal,' she said admiringly; 'sohandsome and distinguished-looking. I am sure he must have a reallygreat mind. I always think good looks go with really great minds, don'tyou, 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 asit had been when it slept so much.

  The children approached it at the dinner hour and it listened patientlyif drowsily to their question. When it had quite done, it reflected--orseemed to reflect; perhaps it had fallen asleep--until the town clockstruck one, the time for resuming work. Then it got up and slouchedtowards its machine.

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

  'Cucumbers,' the Sloth repeated, and added a careful explanation. 'Yousit on the end of any young cucumber which points in the desireddirection, and when it has grown to its full length--say sixteeninches--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 youwait till the cucumber seeds, and, when the new plants grow, you selectthe earliest cucumber that points in the desired direction and take yourseat on it. By the end of the cucumber season you will be anothersixteen--or with luck seventeen--inches on your way. Thirty-two inchesin all, almost a yard. And thus you progress towards your goal, slowlybut surely, 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 bywishing for them. . . .'

  'The very thing,' said Lucy, 'let's find the head-man. _We_ mustn't wishfor a motor or we should have to go on using it. But perhaps there'ssome 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 longpined to leave the gathering of pine-apples to others. He was induced towish for a motor and a B.S.A. sixty horse-power car snorted suddenly inthe place where a moment before no car was.

  'Oh, the luxury! This is indeed like home,' sighed Brenda, curling up onthe air-cushions.

  And the children certainly felt a gloriously restful sensation. Nothingto be done; no need to think or bother. Just to sit quiet and be borneswiftly on through wonderful cities, all of which Philip vaguelyremembered to have seen, small and near, and built by his own hands andHelen's.

  And so, at last, they came close to Polistopolis. Philip never couldtell how it was that he stopped the car outside the city. It must havebeen some quite unaccountable instinct, because naturally, you know,when you are not used to being driven in motors, you like to dash up tothe house you are going to, and enjoy your friends' enjoyment of thegrand way in which you have travelled. But Philip felt--in that quitecertain and quite unexplainable way in which you do feel thingssometimes--that it was best to stop the car among the suburban groves ofsouthernwood, and to creep into the town in the disguise afforded bymotor coats, motor veils and motor goggles. (For of course all these hadcome with the motor car when it was wished for, because no motor car iscomplete without them.)

  Philip felt that it was best to stop the car among thesuburban groves of southernwood.]

  They said good-bye warmly to the Halma motor man, and went quietlytowards the town, Max and Brenda keeping to heel in the mostpraiseworthy way, and the parrot nestling inside Philip's jacket, for itwas chilled by the long rush through the evening air.

  And now the scattered houses and spacious gardens gave place to thestreets of Polistopolis, the capital of the kingdom. And the streetswere strangely deserted. The children both felt--in that quite certainand unexplainable way--that it would be unwise of them to go to theplace where they had slept the last time they were in that city.

  The whole party was very tired. Max walked with drooping tail, andBrenda was whining softly to herself from sheer weariness andweak-mindedness. The parrot alone was happy--or at least contented.Because it was asleep.

  At the corner of a little square planted with southernwood-trees intubs, Philip called a halt.

  'Where shall we go?' he said; 'let us put it to the vote.'

  And even as he spoke, he saw a dark form creeping along in the shadow ofthe houses.

  'Who goes there?' Philip cried with proper spirit, and the answersurprised him, all the more that it was given with a kind of desperatebravado.

  'I go here; I, Plumbeus, Captain of the old Guard of Polistopolis.'

  'Oh, it's you!' cried Philip; 'I _am_ glad. You can advise us. Where canwe go to sleep? Somehow or other I don't care to go to the house wherewe stayed before.'

  The captain made no answer. He simply caught at the hands of Lucy andPhilip, dragged them through a low arched doorway and, as soon as thelong lengths of Brenda and Max had slipped through, closed the door.

  'Safe,' he said in a breathless way, which made Philip feel that safetywas the last thing one could count on at that moment.

  'Now, speak low, who knows what spies may be listening? I am a plainman. I speak as I think. You came out of the unknown. You may be theDeliverer or the Destroyer. But I am a judge of faces--always was froma boy--and I cannot believe that this countenance of apple-cheekedinnocence is that of a Destroyer.'

  Philip was angry and Lucy was furious. So he said nothing. And she said:

  'Apple-cheeked yourself!' which was very rude.

  'I see t
hat you are annoyed,' said the captain in the dark, where, ofcourse, he could see nothing; 'but in calling your friend apple-cheekedI was merely offering the highest compliment in my power. The absence offruit in this city is, I suppose, the reason why our compliments arelike that. I believe poets say "sweet as a rose"--_we_ say "sweet as anorange." May I be allowed unreservedly to apologise?'

  'Oh, that's all right,' said Philip awkwardly.

  'And to ask whether you _are_ the Deliverer?'

  'I hope so,' said Philip modestly.

  'Of course he is,' said the parrot, putting its head out from the frontof Philip's jacket; 'and he has done six deeds out of the sevenalready.'

  'It is time that deeds were done here,' said the captain. 'I'll make alight and get you some supper. I'm in hiding here; but the walls arethick and all the shutters are shut.'

  He bolted a door and opened the slide of a dark lantern.

  'Some of us have taken refuge in the old prison,' he said; 'it's neverused, you know, so her spies don't infest it as they do every other partof the city.'

  'Whose spies?'

  'The Destroyer's,' said the captain, getting bread and milk out of acupboard; 'at least, if you're the Deliverer she must be that. But shesays she's the Deliverer.'

  He lighted candles and set them on the table as Lucy asked eagerly:

  'What Destroyer? Is it a horrid woman in a motor veil?'

  'You've guessed it,' said the captain gloomily.

  'It's that Pretenderette,' said Philip. 'Does Mr. Noah know? What hasshe been doing?'

  'Everything you can think of,' said the captain; 'she says she's Queen,and that she's done the seven deeds. And Mr. Noah doesn't know, becauseshe's set a guard round the city, and no message can get out or in.'

  'The Hippogriff?' said Lucy.

  'Yes, of course I thought of that,' said the captain. 'And so did she.She's locked it up and thrown the key into one of the municipal wells.'

  'But why do the guards obey her?' Philip asked.

  'They're not _our_ guards, of course,' the captain answered. 'They'restrange soldiers that she got out of a book. She got the people to pulldown the Hall of Justice by pretending there was fruit in the giganticbooks it's built with. And when the book was opened these soldiers camemarching out. The Sequani and the Aedui they call themselves. And whenyou've finished supper we ought to hold a council. There are a lot of ushere. All sorts. Distinctions of rank are forgotten in times of publicperil.'

  Some twenty or thirty people presently gathered in that round room fromwhose windows Philip and Lucy had looked out when they were firstimprisoned. There were indeed all sorts, match-servants, domino-men,soldiers, china-men, Mr. Noah's three sons and his wife, a pirate and acouple of sailors.

  'What book,' Philip asked Lucy in an undertone, 'did she get thesesoldiers out of?'

  'Caesar, I think,' said Lucy. 'And I'm afraid it was my fault. Iremember telling her about the barbarians and the legions and thingsafter father had told me--when she was my nurse, you know. She's veryclever at thinking of horrid things to do, isn't she?'

  The council talked for two hours, and nobody said anything worthmentioning. When every one was quite tired out, every one went to bed.

  It was Philip who woke in the night in the grasp of a sudden idea.

  'What is it?' asked Max, rousing himself from his warm bed at Philip'sfeet.

  'I've thought of something,' said Philip in a low excited voice. 'I'mgoing to have a night attack.'

  'Shall I wake the others?' asked Max, ever ready to oblige.

  Philip thought a moment. Then:

  'No,' he said, 'it's rather dangerous; and besides I want to do it allby myself. Lucy's done more than her share already. Look out, Max; I'mgoing to get up and go out.'

  He got up and he went out. There was a faint greyness of dawn now whichshowed him the great square of the city on which he and Lucy had lookedfrom the prison window, a very long time ago as it seemed. He foundwithout difficulty the ruins of the Hall of Justice.

  And among the vast blocks scattered on the ground was one that seemed ofgrey marble, and bore on its back in gigantic letters of gold the words_De Bello Gallico_.

  Philip stole back to the prison and roused the captain.

  'I want twenty picked men,' he said, 'without boots--and at once.'

  He got them, and he led them to the ruins of the Justice Hall.

  'Now,' he said, 'raise the cover of this book; only the cover, not anyof the pages.'

  The men set their shoulders to the marble slab that was the book's coverand heaved it up. And as it rose on their shoulders Philip spoke softly,urgently.

  'Caesar,' he said, 'Caesar!'

  And a voice answered from under the marble slab.

  'Who calls?' it said. 'Who calls upon Julius Caesar?'

  And from the space below the slab, as it were from a marble tomb, a thinfigure stepped out, clothed in toga and cloak and wearing on its head acrown of bays.

  '_I_ called,' said Philip in a voice that trembled a little. 'There's noone but you who can help. The barbarians of Gaul hold this city. I callon great Caesar to drive them away. No one else can help us.'

  Caesar stood for a moment silent in the grey twilight. Then he spoke.

  'I will do it,' he said; 'you have often tried to master Caesar andalways failed. Now you shall be no more ashamed of that failure, for youshall see Caesar's power. Bid your slaves raise the leaves of my book tothe number of fifteen.'

  It was done, and Caesar turned towards the enormous open book.

  'Come forth!' he said. 'Come forth, my legions!'

  Then something in the book moved suddenly, and out of it, as out of anopen marble tomb, came long lines of silent armed men, ranged themselvesin ranks, and, passing Caesar, saluted. And still more came, and moreand more, each with the round shield and the shining helmet and thejavelins and the terrible short sword. And on their backs were thepackages they used to carry with them into war.

  'The Barbarians of Gaul are loose in this city,' said the voice of thegreat commander; 'drive them before you once more as you drove them ofold.'

  'Whither, O Caesar?' asked one of the Roman generals.

  'Drive them, O Titus Labienus,' said Caesar, 'back into that bookwherein I set them more than nineteen hundred years ago, and from whichthey have dared to escape. Who is their leader?' he asked of Philip.

  'The Pretenderette,' said Philip; 'a woman in a motor veil.'

  'Caesar does not war with women,' said the man in the laurel crown; 'lether be taken prisoner and brought before me.'

  Low-voiced, the generals of Caesar's army gave their commands, and withincredible quietness the army moved away, spreading itself out in alldirections.

  'She has caged the Hippogriff,' said Philip; 'the winged horse, and wewant to send him with a message.'

  'See that the beast is freed,' said Caesar, and turned to Plumbeus thecaptain. 'We be soldiers together,' he said. 'Lead me to the main gate.It is there that the fight will be fiercest.' He laid a hand on thecaptain's shoulder, and at the head of the last legion, Caesar and thecaptain of the soldiers marched to the main gate.