Adventures of the Little Wooden Horse

by Ursula Moray Williams

  Presently, however, the ship began to roll, and both the elephant and the little wooden horse were very seasick. They were most unhappy for three days and three nights, but then they came into another port, and that was the end of their voyage.

  8

  The Little Wooden Horse Goes Down the Mine

  The little wooden horse wondered what he should do next, as he waited with the elephant for the ship to be unloaded. He asked if the elephant thought a little wooden horse could earn money in a circus too.

  “Well, no,” said the elephant kindly. “You see, your paint is just a little spoiled and worn. And then you would have to sign on for several years, and I believe you are anxious to get home to your master.”

  “Oh, I am!” said the little wooden horse hastily, and he began to wonder what else he could do to make his fortune.

  “Now, in the mines, where all these pit-props are going, I believe they use a great many horses,” said the elephant. “Why don’t you try and get work there? If, as you say, you are strong, and a quiet little horse, I think you ought to be very successful.”

  The little wooden horse thought this over, and decided that the elephant’s advice was good, so when at last the door opened and the elephant was taken out he trundled off to hide among the pit-props that were being taken off in great loads and put into a train.

  After a long journey the little wooden horse found himself at a great mine. He was lonely and missed the elephant, for there were no horses to be seen about, for all that he had said. He crept away from the pit-props and went up to the nearest miner, a large fellow with a dirty face, whose eyes nearly popped out of his head when he saw the little wooden horse trundling along to meet him. When he heard what he had to say the miner put his hands on his hips and roared with laughter.

  “Call the foreman!” he shouted. “Here’s a little wooden horse come to find work in the mine and wants a shilling a day and his keep!”

  Soon a little group of miners were gathered round the little wooden horse, teasing him and asking for his story.

  The little wooden horse did not like their loud voices and black, dirty hands, but he was a quiet little horse, so he answered them politely, and at last the foreman told the men to take him down the mine to the other ponies. So amid cheers and laughter the little wooden horse was put into a kind of black cage with nine or ten men, and lowered down an immense shaft into the mine.

  They led him down dark passages to the stables where the ponies lived when they were not pulling the trucks. Here they left him all alone, wondering if he would ever see daylight and Uncle Peder again.

  By and by the ponies were brought in for the night, while the miners went up to their homes in the village above. The little wooden horse kept very still in the corner of the stable, for a big black pony had been turned into the stall with him, and he was afraid to move.

  But the black pony seemed to know he was there. It snuffled all round the stable till it came to his corner, when it laid back its ears with an angry squeal.

  “What’s that?” squealed all the other ponies in the mine, throwing up their heads.

  “Yes, what are you?” screamed the black pony angrily, as he nosed the little wooden horse all over. “And what are you doing here?”

  “Oh, please! I’m only a very quiet little horse,” explained the little wooden horse, as he tried to tell them his story. But the ponies were not at all pleased to see him.

  “What do they want with a little wooden horse here?” they said. “Aren’t we good enough?” And they sulked all night. In his corner the little wooden horse kept as still as a mouse, but he shivered and trembled with fear.

  In the morning the other ponies were no more friendly than at first. They lost no opportunity of kicking and hustling him; and when they were led out to work and harnessed to the trucks they saw to it that the heaviest loads fell to his share, and that he made the longest journeys. But the little wooden horse worked bravely, for he had the thought of Uncle Peder to encourage him, and he knew that at the end of the week he would receive his money like the other miners, and by and by he would make his fortune.

  The ponies were angrier than ever when the little wooden horse came back with his wages at the end of his first week in the mine. “We don’t get any money!” they complained. “We only get kicks and blows!” Which was partly true, for they were a lazy lot of ponies, and they soon grew jealous of the way the little wooden horse was petted and praised by the foreman. So when Sunday came and the ponies were taken up for a scamper in the field above the mine they managed to leave the little wooden horse behind, and he had to spend a long, lonely day in the empty mine by himself.

  This happened week after week, but the little wooden horse was patient; he spent the days counting up his money and wondering how soon he would have enough to take back to Uncle Peder.

  One day he was working in a far corridor of the mine with three other ponies and some miners. The day’s work was nearly over, and the little wooden horse was glad, for the ponies had been laughing at him all day long, and he wanted to get back to the quiet corner of the stall where he slept.

  “Your master would not know you now!” the ponies teased him. “Red saddle, blue stripes – all gone – all black as coal!”

  The little wooden horse knew very well that his beauties were faded, and lately he had lost a wheel, so that he pulled the trucks along cloppetty-clack! cloppetty-clack! and even the kind-hearted miners smiled when they heard him coming.

  “But when I have made my fortune,” said the little wooden horse, “I shall have a new coat of paint, new wheels, a new red saddle, and three new blue stripes. One can’t have everything at once.”

  The day’s work was nearly over when there was a rumble in the mine, and all the miners stopped working to listen. The three ponies pricked up their ears.

  “What was that?” asked the little wooden horse.

  “That was an explosion. Didn’t you know that?” the other ponies scoffed. “Part of the mine has fallen in somewhere.”

  “We had better go back,” said the men, and they began to unharness the ponies.

  The little wooden horse was hardly free before there was a tremendous explosion quite close to him, like a thousand peals of thunder.

  “Run! Run!” he heard the men say, and in a moment things began to rattle about his wooden ears, as though the roof of the world were coming down – but it was only the roof of the mine they were in. The awful crashing went on, and the little wooden horse was knocked over and over, and flung about and battered, till at last he lay still under a pile of loose stones.

  “This is a very strange thing,” said the little wooden horse, as soon as he could hear himself speak. “Here am I, a quiet little horse that only asks to stay by his master’s side, flung out into the wide world to seek my fortune, tossed across the sea, and now the roof of the world itself has come down on my head, and I shall never see my master again.”

  For the moment it seemed that the little wooden horse’s words were true, for the explosion in the mine had brought a thousand tons of rocks down on his head, and there he was, shut in a tiny cave many fathoms beneath the daylight, a thousand miles from Uncle Peder.

  Just at that moment he heard a movement beside him, and there lay the biggest of the ponies, with the two others close by, also knocked over by the explosion, but all alive and well, except that their noses and eyes were full of dust.

  “What happened to the men?” asked the little wooden horse.

  “I saw them run away,” said the black pony. “I think they all ran to safety before the mine fell. But what is going to happen to us? We shall all die of thirst and starvation in this little hole.”

  But the little wooden horse was already busy exploring their prison. He pushed his little wooden head here, thrust his three remaining wooden wheels there, and hunted for a way to get out.

  “I can smell fresh air,” he said. “Somewhere there is a chink or a crack, and I’m going
to find it.”

  The ponies watched him anxiously.

  “Oh, do find a way out, dear little wooden horse!” they begged him humbly now. “If you do we will never bite you or kick you again. We were jealous and unkind, and we treated you badly, but we will never be so wicked again if you will only find a way to take us once more up into the sweet yellow sunshine.”

  At last the little wooden horse discovered a cranny through which the cooler air of the outer mine was blowing, and he became so excited that he thrust his head far through the crack and could not draw it back again. Now here he was in a worse plight than before – half of him in the cave, blocked and wedged in by rocks, and half of him in the cool dark air outside, but quite unable to free himself.

  Inside the hole the ponies seized him gently by the tail and pulled, but nothing could free the little wooden horse from his uncomfortable position.

  “Pull harder! Pull harder!” he cried, till at last the ponies were pulling with all their strength.

  Suddenly the head of the little wooden horse flew off and fell among the stones, and he was free at last – but headless! There lay his head on the wrong side of the cranny!

  Now he had no head and only three wheels, but, nothing daunted, the little wooden horse flew at the cranny, battering and thundering at it until it was large enough for him to squeeze through and find his poor little wooden head. He did not notice that while he thundered and battered nearly all his wages flew out of the hole in his neck and were lost among the stones.

  Now the little wooden horse thundered and battered harder than ever to make a hole large enough for the three ponies to squeeze through. He did not care that his last three wheels were chipped almost to fragments, and that the splinters were dropping off his once beautifully painted coat. Inside the cave the three ponies battered and hammered too with their hard little hoofs, till one by one they were able to squeeze through the cranny into the corridor of the mine. Then they galloped back as fast as their legs could carry them to the shaft, with the little wooden horse limping in the rear.

  At the entrance to the mine the miners could hardly believe their eyes when they saw them, for they had been quite certain that the ponies had been killed in the explosion. They took them straight up to the surface for a day’s holiday in the sun, and with them went the little wooden horse.

  When they had been shut into the field the three ponies galloped round and round, wild with joy at being safe and free again.

  The little wooden horse stayed where he was, in a corner of the field, quite quiet and still. He crouched in the long grass while the hours went by, and the other ponies shrilled and gambolled. Now and then he shook his head to hear the three coins jingle that still remained in his little wooden body, but he did not nibble at the clover or roll in the sunshine. For a terrible thing had happened to the little wooden horse after all those weeks that he had been down in the mine. He had become quite blind.

  9

  The Little Wooden Horse Sees the King

  When nightfall came the other pit ponies were taken back to the mine, but the little wooden horse was left behind. He crouched in his corner of the field, and for the first time for weeks heard the familiar night noises that he remembered in the forest where he had left Uncle Peder – the owls hooting, the twittering bats, the rustling foxes, the dry hissing of the hedgerow riddled by small brown mice.

  When the sun rose he could feel it shining on his battered body, but for all he could see he might still have been in the darkness of the mine.

  “Now I shall die,” said the little wooden horse, “for I have no money and no eyes, and only three wheels. What use can I be to my dear master now?”

  But before he could die he heard footsteps in the grass, and two kind, warm little hands encircled his body.

  “Oh! Oh!” said a kind, warm little voice. “What a beautiful little wooden horse!”

  Now it was so long since the little wooden horse had been called beautiful that the surprise quite revived him, and he blinked his poor little blind eyes and decided not to die for the present. As he blinked it seemed to him that a ray of light darted across his eyes, as though he were not, after all, so blind as he had supposed!

  The miner’s little boy wrapped the little wooden horse in his blouse and took him back to the village. There he scrubbed him under the pump till his paint began to show again: a glimpse of his red saddle appeared under the coal dust, and presently his three blue stripes peeped out too. When his mane was brushed and combed the little wooden horse began to feel a new fellow, while little by little his poor eyes were recovering, till at last he could see the miner’s little boy himself, and the little boy’s mother, and his baby sister, and the spotlessly clean kitchen to which he had been brought.

  In the evening the miner himself came home, and this was the best moment that the little wooden horse had known for many a day, for no sooner had he finished his supper than the boy’s father brought out his pocket knife and cut four new wheels for the little wooden horse, which he fastened on with bright new nails. Then, while the little boy watched and admired – “with his mouth hanging open wide enough,” said his mother, “to catch all the sharks in the bay” – the miner brought out a pot of red paint and a pot of blue, and painted up the little wooden horse till you would have said he had come straight out of Uncle Peder’s sack that very night.

  The little wooden horse and the miner’s boy were so pleased they ran round and round the kitchen, waking up the baby sister, so that they both got a scolding from the little boy’s mother, and the miner got a scolding too for making such a noisy pair of them. But on the whole everyone was very happy, and the evening passed pleasantly away.

  The miner’s boy and the little wooden horse soon became great friends. The little wooden horse thought no more about going back to work in the mine, for his coat was far too fine and fresh, and if he spoiled it, who would give him another? Then he did not want to become blind again, and the explosion in the mine had frightened him very much.

  He still thought a great deal about Uncle Peder, on whose account the loss of his money troubled him very much.

  The miner’s boy soon found the last three coins that jingled about inside his wooden body. “What a splendid moneybox that would make!” said the miner’s boy. So he took his own coins out of the red stocking his mother had given him to keep them in, and put them down the hole in the neck of the little wooden horse. His baby sister thought this made a good rattle; but, rattle or moneybox, the little wooden horse did not mind. He guarded the little boy’s money carefully along with his own, and played with the baby sister all over the floor.

  But the time came when he began to think once more about seeking his fortune, so he was glad enough when one day the miner’s boy said to him, “The days are pleasant enough, my little wooden horse, but it seems to me there’s more in the world for you and me to see. All my life I have wanted a little wooden horse of my own, so that I could go to the city and see the King and the ten little Princes and Princesses. Then I should buy a beautiful present for my father, and for my mother, and for my baby sister, and ride back here to the mine with a sackful of cakes and surprises. Now that I have five silver coins of my own I really think we had better go, my little wooden horse.”

  The little wooden horse had nothing to say against this, for he asked for nothing better, so one morning the two of them rose before anyone was awake, and trundled up the long, long road towards the city, the miner’s boy first, walking very fast because he was happy and felt a man, while behind him came the little wooden horse on his four new wooden wheels, wishing that Uncle Peder could see him with his fine newly painted saddle and three blue stripes.

  On his back he carried the empty sack that the miner’s boy meant to fill with cakes and presents when he went home.

  “Perhaps I shall find some work to do in the city to get some more money,” said the little wooden horse as he trundled along the long, long road behind the miner’s little
boy.

  When at last they came to the city they found the streets thronged with people, standing, watching, waiting, but doing very little else, it seemed.

  “Do the people always behave like this in the town?” the miner’s little boy asked of a passer-by, for he was not used to seeing people so idle. At home it was his mother or in the mine his father and the other men, who were always bustling about and being busy. In the little boy’s life nobody stood still. To the little wooden horse too it seemed very strange, although by now he had seen more of the world than the miner’s little boy.

  “Why, it’s a holiday!” said the man, smiling kindly down at the miner’s little boy and his wooden horse. “It’s the King’s birthday today, and he is going to drive all round the city with the Queen and the ten little Princes and Princesses in the royal coach driven by ten white horses. That’s what we are all waiting to see!”

  Now all his life the miner’s little boy had been waiting to see the King and the Queen and the ten little Princes and Princesses, so he and the little wooden horse pushed themselves into the crowd to wait too until the procession should come along.

  They waited and waited, but nobody came, and the people began to grow restless. They moved and craned and peered and shuffled, and although the miner’s boy and the little wooden horse held tightly on to each other, they could not help being pushed and jostled about by the crowd, until presently they found themselves squeezed right to the back of all the people; and then they were jostled out altogether into a new road, with a hundred people between them and the road where the King must pass in his coach with the Queen and the ten little Princes and Princesses. But no coach came, and everyone was looking at one another and saying, “Where is the King? Where is the Queen? What can have happened to the royal coach and the ten little Princes and Princesses?”