UPS AND DOWNS
We left Lucy in tears and Philip in
the grasp of the hateful Pretenderette, who, seated
on the Hippogriff, was bearing him away across the
smooth blueness of the wide sea.
‘Oh, Mr. Noah,’ said Lucy,
between sniffs and sobs, ’how can she!
You did say the Hippogriff could only carry
one!’
‘One ordinary human being,’
said Mr. Noah gently; ’you forget that dear
Philip is now an earl.’
‘But do you really think he’s safe?’
Lucy asked.
‘Yes,’ said Mr. Noah.
’And now, dear Lucy, no more questions.
Since your arrival on our shores I have been gradually
growing more accustomed to being questioned, but I
still find it unpleasant and fatiguing. Desist,
I entreat.’
So Lucy desisted and every one went
to bed, and, for crying is very tiring, to sleep.
But not for long.
Lucy was awakened in her bed of soft
dry seaweed by the sound of the castle alarm bell,
and by the blaring of trumpets and the shouting of
many voices. A bright light shone in at the window
of her room. She jumped up and ran to the window
and leaned out. Below lay the great courtyard
of the castle, a moving sea of people on which hundreds
of torches seemed to float, and the sound of shouting
rose in the air as foam rises in the wind.
‘The Fear! The Fear!’
people were shouting. ‘To the ark! to the
ark!’ And the black night that pressed round
the castle was loud with the wild roar of waves and
the shriek of a tumultuous wind.
Lucy ran to the door of her room.
But suddenly she stopped.
‘My clothes,’ she said.
And dressed herself hastily. For she perceived
that her own petticoats and shoes were likely to have
better wearing qualities than seaweed could possess,
and if they were all going to take refuge in the ark,
she felt she would rather have her own clothes on.
‘Mr. Noah is sure to come for
me,’ she most sensibly told herself. ’And
I’ll get as many clothes on as I can.’
Her own dress, of course, had been left at Polistopolis,
but the ballet dress would be better than the seaweed
tunic. When she was dressed she ran into Philip’s
room and rolled his clothes into a little bundle and
carried it under her arm as she ran down the stairs.
Half-way down she met Mr. Noah coming up.
‘Ah! you’re ready,’
he said; ’it is well. Do not be alarmed,
my Lucy. The tide is rising but slowly.
There will be time for every one to escape. All
is in train, and the embarkation of the animals is
even now in progress. There has been a little
delay in sorting the beasts into pairs. But we
are getting on. The Lord High Islander is showing
remarkable qualities. All the big animals are
on board; the pigs were being coaxed on as I came
up. And the ant-eaters are having a late supper.
Do not be alarmed.’
‘I can’t help being alarmed,’
said Lucy, slipping her free hand into Mr. Noah’s,
‘but I won’t cry or be silly. Oh,
I do wish Philip was here.’
‘Most unreasonable of girl children,’
said Mr. Noah; ’we are in danger and you wish
him to be here to share it?’
‘Oh, we are in danger,
are we?’ said Lucy quickly. ’I thought
you said I wasn’t to be alarmed.’
‘No more you are,’ said
Mr. Noah shortly; ’of course you’re in
danger. But there’s me. And there’s
the ark. What more do you want?’
‘Nothing,’ Lucy answered
in a very small voice, and the two made their way
to a raised platform overlooking the long inclined
road which led up to the tower on which the ark had
been built. A long procession toiled slowly up
it of animals in pairs, urged and goaded by the M.A.’s
under the orders of the Lord High Islander.
The wild wind blew the flames of the
torches out like golden streamers, and the sound of
the waves was like thunder on the shore.
Down below other M.A.’s were
busy carrying bales tied up in seaweed. Seen
from above the busy figures looked like ants when you
kick into an ant-hill and the little ant people run
this way and that way and every way about their little
ant businesses.
The Lord High Islander came in pale
and serious, with all the calm competence of Napoleon
at a crisis.
‘Sorry to have to worry you,
sir,’ he said to Mr. Noah, ’but of course
your experience is invaluable just now. I can’t
remember what bears eat. Is it hay or meat?’
‘It’s buns,’ said
Lucy. ’I beg your pardon, Mr. Noah.
Of course I ought to have waited for you to say.’
‘In my ark,’ said Mr.
Noah, ’buns were unknown and bears were fed
entirely on honey, the providing of which kept our
pair of bees fully employed. But if you are sure
bears like buns we must always be humane, dear
Lucy, and study the natural taste of the animals in
our charge.’
‘They love them,’ said Lucy.
‘Buns and honey,’ said the Lord Islander;
‘and what about bats?’
‘I don’t know what bats
eat,’ said Mr. Noah; ’I believe it was
settled after some discussion that they don’t
eat cats. But what they do eat is one
of the eleven mysteries. You had better let the
bats fast.’
‘They are, sir,’ said the Lord
High Islander.
‘And is all going well? Shall I come down
and lend a personal eye?’
‘I think I’m managing
all right, sir,’ said the Lord High Islander
modestly. ’You see it’s a great honour
for me. The M.A.’s are carrying in the
provisions, the boys are stowing them and also herding
the beasts. They are very good workers, sir.’
‘Are you frightened?’
Lucy whispered, as he turned to go back to his overseeing.
‘Not I,’ said the Lord
High Islander. ’Don’t you understand
that I’ve been promoted to be Lord Vice-Noah
of Polistarchia? And of course the hearts of
all Vice-Noahs are strangers to fear. But just
think what a difficult thing Fear would have been
to be a stranger to if you and Philip hadn’t
got us the ark!’
‘It was Philip’s doing,’
said Lucy; ‘oh, do you think he’s
all right?’
‘I think his heart is a stranger
to fear, naturally,’ said the Lord High Islander,
‘so he’s certain to be all right.’
When the last of the animals had sniffed
and snivelled its way into the ark it was
a porcupine with a cold in its head the
islanders, the M.A.’s, Lucy and Mr. Noah followed.
And when every one was in, the door of the ark was
shut from inside by an ingenious mechanical contrivance
worked by a more than usually intelligent M.A.
You must not suppose that the inside
of the ark was anything like the inside of your own
Noah’s ark, where all the animals are put in
anyhow, all mixed together and wrong way up as likely
as not. That, with live animals and live people,
would, as you will readily imagine, be quite uncomfortable.
The inside of the ark which had been built under the
direction of Mr. Noah and Mr. Perrin was not at all
like that. It was more like the inside of a big
Atlantic liner than anything else I can think of.
All the animals were stowed away in suitable stalls,
and there were delightful cabins for all those for
whom cabins were suitable. The islanders and
the M.A.’s retired to their cabins in perfect
order, and Lucy and Mr. Noah, Mr. Perrin and the Lord
High Islander gathered in the saloon, which was large
and had walls and doors of inlaid mother-of-pearl
and pink coral. It was lighted by glass globes
filled with phosphorus collected by an ingenious process
invented by another of the M.A.’s.
‘And now,’ said Mr. Noah,
’I beg that anxiety may be dismissed from every
mind. If the waters subside, they leave us safe.
If they rise, as I confidently expect them to do,
our ark will float, and we still are safe. In
the morning I will take soundings and begin to steer
a course. We will select a suitable spot on the
shore, land and proceed to the Hidden Places, where
we will consult the oracle. A little refreshment
before we retire for what is left of the night?
A captain’s biscuit would perhaps not be inappropriate?’
He took a tin from a locker and handed it round.
‘That’s A1, sir,’
said the Lord High Islander, munching. ’What
a head you have for the right thing.’
‘All practice,’ said Mr. Noah modestly.
‘Thank you,’ said Lucy, taking a biscuit;
‘I wish. . . .’
The sentence was never finished.
With a sickening suddenness the floor of the saloon
heaved up under their feet, a roaring surging battering
sound broke round them; the saloon tipped over on one
side and the whole party was thrown on the pink silk
cushions of the long settee. A shudder seemed
to run through the ark from end to end, and ’What
is it? Oh! what is it?’ cried Lucy as the
ark heeled over the other way and the unfortunate
occupants were thrown on to the opposite set of cushions.
(It really was, now, rather like what you imagine
the inside of your Noah’s ark must be when you
put in Mr. Noah and his family and a few hastily chosen
animals and shake them all up together.)
‘It’s the sea,’
cried the Lord High Islander; ’it’s the
great Fear come upon us! And I’m not afraid!’
He drew himself up as well as he could in his cramped
position, with Mr. Noah’s elbow pinning his shoulder
down and Mr. Perrin’s boot on his ear.
With a shake and a shiver the ark
righted itself, and the floor of the saloon got flat
again.
‘It’s all right,’
said Mr. Perrin, resuming control of his boot; ’good
workmanship, it do tell. She ain’t shipped
a drop, Mr. Noah, sir.’
‘It’s all right,’
said Mr. Noah, taking his elbow to himself and standing
up rather shakily on his yellow mat.
’We’re afloat,
we’re afloat
On the dark rolling tide;
The ark’s water-tight
And the crew are inside.
’Up, up with the flag
Let it wave o’er the sea;
We’re afloat, we’re afloat
And what else should we be?’
‘I don’t know,’
said Lucy; ‘but there isn’t any flag, is
there?’
‘The principle’s the same,’
said Mr. Noah; ’but I’m afraid we didn’t
think of a flag.’
‘I did,’ said Mr.
Perrin; ’it’s only a Jubilee hankey’ he
drew it slowly from his breast-pocket, a cotton Union
Jack it was ’but it shall wave all
right. But not till daylight, I think, sir.
Discretion’s the better part of don’t
you think, Mr. Noah, sir? Wouldn’t do to
open the ark out of hours, so to speak!’
‘Just so,’ said Mr. Noah. ‘One,
two, three! Bed!’
The ark swayed easily on a sea not
too rough. The saloon passengers staggered to
their cabins. And silence reigned in the ark.
I am sorry to say that the Pretenderette
dropped the wicker cage containing the parrot into
the sea an unpardonable piece of cruelty
and revenge; unpardonable, that is, unless you consider
that she did not really know any better. The
Hippogriff’s white wings swept on; Philip, now
laid across the knees of the Pretenderette (a most
undignified attitude for any boy, and I hope none
of you may be placed in such a position), screamed
as the cage struck the water, and, ‘Oh, Polly!’
he cried.
‘All right,’ the parrot answered; ‘keep
your pecker up!’
‘What did it say?’ the Pretenderette asked.
‘Something about peck,’ said Philip upside
down.
‘Ah!’ said the Pretenderette
with satisfaction, ’he won’t do any more
pecking for some time to come.’ And the
wide Hippogriff wings swept on over the wide sea.
Polly’s cage fell and floated.
And it floated alone till the dawn, when, with wheelings
and waftings and cries, the gulls came from far and
near to see what this new strange thing might be that
bobbed up and down in their waters in the light of
the new-born day.
‘Hullo!’ said Polly in
bird-talk, clinging upside down to the top bars of
the cage.
‘Hullo, yourself,’ replied
the eldest gull; ’what’s up? And who
are you? And what are you doing in that unnatural
lobster pot?’
‘I conjure you,’ said
the parrot earnestly, ’I conjure you by our common
birdhood to help me in my misfortune.’
‘No gull who is a gull
can resist that appeal,’ said the master of the
sea birds; ‘what can we do, brother-bird?’
‘The matter is urgent,’
said Polly, but quite calmly. ’I am getting
very wet and I dislike salt water. It is bad
for my plumage. May I give an order to your followers,
bird-brother?’
‘Give,’ said the master
gull, with a graceful wheel and whirl of his splendid
wings.
‘Let four of my brothers raise
this detested trap high above the waves,’ said
the parrot, ’and let others of you, with your
brave strong beaks, break through the bars and set
me free.’
‘Delighted,’ said the
master gull; ‘any little thing, you know,’
and his own high-bred beak was the first to take hold
of the cage, which presently the gulls lifted in the
air and broke through, setting the parrot free.
‘Thank you, brother-birds,’
the parrot said, shaking wet wings and spreading them;
’one good turn deserves another. The beach
yonder was white with cockles but yesterday.’
‘Thank you, brother-bird,’
they all said, and flew fleetly cocklewards.
And that was how the parrot got free
from the cage and went back to the shore to have that
little talk with the blugraiwee which I told you about
in the last chapter.
The ark was really very pleasant by
daylight with the sun shining in at its windows.
The sun shone outside as well, of course, and the Union
Jack waved cheerfully in the wind. Breakfast was
served on the terrace at the end of the ark you
know that terrace where the boat part turns
up. It was a very nice breakfast, and the sea
was quite smooth a quite perfect sea.
This was rather fortunate, for there was nothing else.
Sea on every side of the ark. No land at all.
‘However shall we find the way,’
Lucy asked the Lord High Islander, ‘with nothing
but sea?’
‘Oh,’ he answered, ’that’s
all the better, really. Mr. Noah steers much
better when there’s no land in sight. It’s
all practice, you know.’
‘And when we come in sight of
land, will he steer badly then?’
‘Oh, anybody can steer then,’
said Billy; ‘you if you like.’ So
it was Lucy who steered the ark into harbour, under
Mr. Noah’s directions. Arks are very easy
to steer if you only know the way. Of course arks
are not like other vessels; they require neither sails
nor steam engines, nor oars to make them move.
The very arkishness of the ark makes it move just
as the steersman wishes. He only has to say ‘Port,’
‘Starboard,’ ‘Right ahead,’
‘Slow’ and so on, and the ark (unlike many
people I know) immediately does as it is told.
So steering was easy and pleasant; one just had to
keep the ark’s nose towards the distant domes
and pinnacles of a town that shone and glittered on
the shore a few miles away. And the town grew
nearer and nearer, and the black streak that was the
people of the town began to show white dots that were
the people’s faces. And then the ark was
moored against a quay side, and a friendly populace
cheered as Mr. Noah stepped on to firm land, to be
welcomed by the governor of the town and a choice
selection of eminent citizens.
‘It’s quite an event for
them,’ said Mr. Perrin. ’They don’t
have much happening here. A very lazy lot they
be, almost as bad as Somnolentia.’
‘What makes them lazy?’ Lucy asked.
’It’s owing to the onions
and potatoes growing wild in these parts, I believe,’
said the Lord High Islander. ’They get enough
to eat without working. And the onions make them
sleepy.’
They talked apart while Mr. Noah was
arranging things with the Governor of the town, who
had come down to the harbour in a hurry and a flurry
and a furry gown.
‘I’ve arranged everything,’
said Mr. Noah at last. ’The islanders and
the M.A.’s and the animals are to be allowed
to camp in the public park till we’ve consulted
the oracle and decided what’s to be done with
them. They must live somewhere, I suppose.
Life has become much too eventful for me lately.
However there are only three more deeds for the Earl
of Ark to do, and then perhaps we shall have a little
peace and quietness.’
‘The Earl of Ark?’ Lucy repeated.
’Philip, you know. I do
wish you’d try to remember that he’s an
earl now. Now you and I must take camel and be
off.’
And now came seven long days of camel
travelling, through desert and forest and over hill
and through valley, till at last Lucy and Mr. Noah
came to the Hidden Place where the oracle is, and where
that is I may not tell you because it’s
one of the eleven mysteries. And I must not tell
you what the oracle is because that is another of the
mysteries. But I may tell you that if you want
to consult the oracle you have to go a long way between
rows of round pillars, rather like those in Egyptian
tombs. And as you go it gets darker and darker,
and when it is quite dark you see a little, little
light a very long way off, and you hear very far away,
a beautiful music, and you smell the scent of flowers
that do not grow in any wood or field or garden of
this earth. Mixed with this scent is the scent
of incense and of old tapestried rooms, where no one
has lived for a very long time. And you remember
all the sad and beautiful things you have ever seen
or heard, and you fall down on the ground and hide
your face in your hands and call on the oracle, and
if you are the right sort of person the oracle answers
you.
Lucy and Mr. Noah waited in the dark
for the voice of the oracle, and at last it spoke.
Lucy heard no words, only the most beautiful voice
in the world speaking softly, and so sweetly and finely
and bravely that at once she felt herself brave enough
to dare any danger, and strong enough to do any deed
that might be needed to get Philip out of the clutches
of the base Pretenderette. All the tiredness
of her long journey faded away, and but for the thought
that Philip needed her, she would have been content
to listen for ever to that golden voice. Everything
else in the world faded away and grew to seem worthless
and unmeaning. Only the soft golden voice remained
and the grey hard voice that said, ’You’ve
got to look after Philip, you know!’ And the
two voices together made a harmony more beautiful
than you will find in any of Beethoven’s sonatas.
Because Lucy knew that she should follow the grey voice,
and remember the golden voice as long as she lived.
But something was tiresomely pulling
at her sleeve, dragging her away from the wonderful
golden voice. Mr. Noah was pulling her sleeve
and saying, ‘Come away,’ and they turned
their backs on the little light and the music and
the enchanting perfumes, and instantly the voice stopped
and they were walking between dusky pillars towards
a far grey speck of sunlight.
It was not till they were once more
under the bare sky that Lucy said:
‘What did it say?’
‘You must have heard,’ said Mr. Noah.
’I only heard the voice and
what it meant. I didn’t understand the
words. But the voice was like dreams and everything
beautiful I’ve ever thought of.’
‘I thought it a wonderfully
straight-forward business-like oracle,’ said
Mr. Noah briskly; ’and the voice was quite distinct
and I remember every word it said.’
(Which just shows how differently
the same thing may strike two people.)
‘What did it say?’ Lucy
asked, trotting along beside him, still clutching
Philip’s bundle, which through all these days
she had never let go.
And Mr. Noah gravely recited the following
lines. I agree with him that, for an oracle,
they were extremely straightforward.
’You had better embark
Once again in the Ark,
And sailing from dryland
Make straight for the Island.’
‘Did it really say that?’ Lucy
asked.
‘Of course it did,’ said
Mr. Noah; ’that’s a special instruction
to me, but I daresay you heard something quite different.
The oracle doesn’t say the same thing to every
one, of course. Didn’t you get any special
instruction?’
‘Only to try to be brave and good,’ said
Lucy shyly.
‘Well, then,’ said Mr.
Noah, ’you carry out your instructions and I’ll
carry out mine.’
’But what’s the use of
going to the island if you can’t land when you
get there?’ Lucy insisted. ’You know
only two people can land there, and we’re not
them, are we?’
‘Oh, if you begin asking what’s
the use, we shan’t get anywhere,’ said
Mr. Noah. ‘And more than half the things
you say are questions.’
I’m sorry this chapter is cut
up into bits with lines of stars, but stars are difficult
to avoid when you have to tell about a lot of different
things happening all at once. That is why it is
much better always to keep your party together if
you can. And I have allowed mine to get separated
so that Philip, the parrot and the rest of the company
are going through three sets of adventures all at the
same time. This is most trying for me, and fully
accounts for the stars. Which I hope you’ll
excuse. However.
We now come back by way of the stars
to Philip wrong way up in the clutches of the Pretenderette.
She had breathed the magic word in the Hippogriff’s
ear, but she had not added any special order.
So the Hippogriff was entirely its own master as far
as the choice of where it was to go was concerned.
It tossed its white mane after circling three times
between air and sky, made straight for the Island-where-you-mayn’t-go.
The Pretenderette didn’t know that it was the
Island-where-you-mayn’t-go, and as they got nearer
and she could see plainly its rainbow-coloured sands,
its palms and its waterfalls, its cool green thickets
and many tinted flowers and glowing fruits, it seemed
to her that she might do worse than land there and
rest for a little while. For even the most disagreeable
people get tired sometimes, and the Pretenderette
had had a hard day of it. So she made no attempt
to check the Hippogriff or alter its course. And
when the Hippogriff was hovering but a few inches
from the grass of the most beautiful of the island
glades, she jerked Philip roughly off her knee and
he fell all in a heap on the ground. With great
presence of mind our hero if he isn’t
a hero by now he never will be picked himself
up and bolted into the bushes. No rabbit could
have bolted more instantly and fleetly.
‘I’ll teach you,’
said the furious Pretenderette, preparing to alight.
She looked down to find a soft place to jump on.
And then she saw that every blade of grass was a tiny
spear of steel, and every spear was pointed at her.
She made the Hippogriff take her to another glade more
little steel spears. To the rainbow sands but
on looking at them she saw that they were quivering
quicksands. Wherever green grass had grown the
spears now grew; and wherever the sand was it was a
terrible trap of quicksand. She tried to dismount
in a little pool, but fortunately for her she noticed
in time that what shone in it so silvery was not water
but white-hot molten metal.
‘What a nasty place,’
said the Pretenderette; ’I don’t know that
I could have chosen a nastier place to leave that
naughty child in. He’ll know who’s
master by the time I send to fetch him back to prison.
Here, you, get back to Polistopolis as fast as you
can. See? Please, I mean,’ she added,
and then she spoke the magic word.
Philip was peeping through the bushes
close by, and he heard that magic word (I dare not
tell you what it is) and he saw for the first time
the face of the Pretenderette. And he trembled
and shivered in his bushy lurking-place. For
the Pretenderette was the only really unpleasant person
Philip had ever met in the world. It was Lucy’s
nurse, the nurse with the grey dress and the big fat
feet, who had been so cross to him and had pulled
down his city.
‘How on earth,’ Philip
wondered to himself, ’did she get here?
And how on earth shall I get away from her?’
He had not seen the spears and the quicksands and
the molten metal, and he was waiting unhappily for
her to alight, and for a game of hide and seek to
begin, which he was not at all anxious to play.
Even as he wondered, the Hippogriff
spread wings and flew away. And Philip was left
alone on the island. But what did that matter?
It was much better to be alone than with that Pretenderette.
And for Philip there were no white-hot metal and spears
and snares of quicksand, only dewy grass and sweet
flowers and trees and safety and delight.
‘If only Lucy were here,’ he said.
When he was quite sure that the Pretenderette
was really gone, he came out and explored the island.
It had on it every kind of flower and fruit that you
can think of, all growing together. There were
gold oranges and white orange flowers, pink apple-blossom
and red apples, cherries and cherry-blossom, strawberry
flowers and strawberries, all growing together, wild
and sweet.
At the back of his mind Philip remembered
that he had, at some time or other, heard of an island
where fruit and blossoms grew together at the same
time, but that was all he could remember. He passed
through the lovely orchards and came to a lake.
It was frozen. And he remembered that, in the
island he had heard of, there was a lake ready for
skating even when the flowers and fruit were on the
trees. Then he came to a little summer-house
built all of porcupine quills like Helen’s pen-box.
And then he knew. All these wonders
were on the island that he and Helen had invented
long ago the island that she used to draw
maps of.
‘It’s our very own island,’
he said, and a glorious feeling of being at home glowed
through him, warm and delightful. ’We said
no one else might come here! That’s why
the Pretenderette couldn’t land. And why
they call it the Island-where-you-mayn’t-go.
I’ll find the bun tree and have something to
eat, and then I’ll go to the boat-house and get
out the Lightning Loose and go back for Lucy.
I do wish I could bring her here. But of course
I can’t without asking Helen.’
The Lightning Loose was the
magic yacht Helen had invented for the island.
He soon found a bush whose fruit was
buns, and a jam-tart tree grew near it. You have
no idea how nice jam tarts can taste till you have
gathered them yourself, fresh and sticky, from the
tree. They are as sticky as horse-chestnut buds,
and much nicer to eat.
As he went towards the boat-house
he grew happier and happier, recognising, one after
the other, all the places he and Helen had planned
and marked on the map. He passed by the marble
and gold house with King’s Palace painted
on the door. He longed to explore it: but
the thought of Lucy drove him on. As he went down
a narrow leafy woodland path towards the boat-house,
he passed the door of the dear little thatched cottage
(labelled Queen’s Palace) which was the
house Helen had insisted that she liked best for her
very own.
‘How pretty it is; I wish Helen
was here,’ he said; ’she helped to make
it. I should never have thought of it without
her. She ought to be here,’ he said.
With that he felt very lonely, all of a sudden, and
very sad. And as he went on, wondering whether
in all this magic world there might not somehow be
some magic strong enough to bring Helen there to see
the island that was their very own, and to give her
consent to his bringing Lucy to it, he turned a corner
in the woodland path, and walked straight into the
arms of Helen.