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 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 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.
And now the scattered houses and spacious
gardens gave place to the streets of Polistopolis,
the capital of the kingdom. And the streets were
strangely deserted. The children both felt in
that quite certain and unexplainable way that
it would be unwise of them to go to the place where
they had slept the last time they were in that city.
The whole party was very tired.
Max walked with drooping tail, and Brenda was whining
softly to herself from sheer weariness and weak-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 in tubs, 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 of the houses.
‘Who goes there?’ Philip
cried with proper spirit, and the answer surprised
him, all the more that it was given with a kind of
desperate bravado.
‘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 can we go to sleep? Somehow
or other I don’t care to go to the house where
we stayed before.’
The captain made no answer. He
simply caught at the hands of Lucy and Philip, dragged
them through a low arched doorway and, as soon as the
long lengths of Brenda and Max had slipped through,
closed the door.
‘Safe,’ he said in a breathless
way, which made Philip feel that safety was the last
thing one could count on at that moment.
’Now, speak low, who knows what
spies may be listening? I am a plain man.
I speak as I think. You came out of the unknown.
You may be the Deliverer or the Destroyer. But
I am a judge of faces always was from a
boy and I cannot believe that this countenance
of apple-cheeked innocence 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 that you are annoyed,’
said the captain in the dark, where, of course, he
could see nothing; ’but in calling your friend
apple-cheeked I was merely offering the highest compliment
in my power. The absence of fruit in this city
is, I suppose, the reason why our compliments are
like that. I believe poets say “sweet as
a rose” we say “sweet
as an orange.” 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 front of
Philip’s jacket; ’and he has done six deeds
out of the seven already.’
‘It is time that deeds were
done here,’ said the captain. ’I’ll
make a light and get you some supper. I’m
in hiding here; but the walls are thick 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
never used, you know, so her spies don’t infest
it as they do every other part of the city.’
‘Whose spies?’
‘The Destroyer’s,’
said the captain, getting bread and milk out of a
cupboard; ’at least, if you’re the Deliverer
she must be that. But she says 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
has she 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, because she’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’re strange soldiers that she got
out of a book. She got the people to pull down
the Hall of Justice by pretending there was fruit in
the gigantic books it’s built with. And
when the book was opened these soldiers came marching
out. The Sequani and the Aedui they
call themselves. And when you’ve finished
supper we ought to hold a council. There are a
lot of us here. All sorts. Distinctions
of rank are forgotten in times of public peril.’
Some twenty or thirty people presently
gathered in that round room from whose windows Philip
and Lucy had looked out when they were first imprisoned.
There were indeed all sorts, match-servants, domino-men,
soldiers, china-men, Mr. Noah’s three sons and
his wife, a pirate and a couple of sailors.
‘What book,’ Philip asked
Lucy in an undertone, ’did she get these soldiers
out of?’
‘Caesar, I think,’ said
Lucy. ’And I’m afraid it was my fault.
I remember telling her about the barbarians and the
legions and things after father had told me when
she was my nurse, you know. She’s very
clever at thinking of horrid things to do, isn’t
she?’
The council talked for two hours,
and nobody said anything worth mentioning. 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’s
feet.
‘I’ve thought of something,’
said Philip in a low excited voice. ’I’m
going 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 all
by myself. Lucy’s done more than her share
already. Look out, Max; I’m going to get
up and go out.’
He got up and he went out. There
was a faint greyness of dawn now which showed him
the great square of the city on which he and Lucy had
looked from the prison window, a very long time ago
as it seemed. He found without difficulty the
ruins of the Hall of Justice.
And among the vast blocks scattered
on the ground was one that seemed of grey 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 any of
the pages.’
The men set their shoulders to the
marble slab that was the book’s cover and 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 thin figure stepped
out, clothed in toga and cloak and wearing on its head
a crown of bays.
‘I called,’ said
Philip in a voice that trembled a little. ’There’s
no one but you who can help. The barbarians of
Gaul hold this city. I call on 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 and always
failed. Now you shall be no more ashamed of that
failure, for you shall see Caesar’s power.
Bid your slaves raise the leaves of my book to the
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 an open marble tomb, came
long lines of silent armed men, ranged themselves
in ranks, and, passing Caesar, saluted. And still
more came, and more and more, each with the round
shield and the shining helmet and the javelins and
the terrible short sword. And on their backs were
the packages they used to carry with them into war.
‘The Barbarians of Gaul are
loose in this city,’ said the voice of the great
commander; ’drive them before you once more as
you drove them of old.’
‘Whither, O Caesar?’ asked one of the
Roman generals.
‘Drive them, O Titus Labienus,’
said Caesar, ’back into that book wherein I
set them more than nineteen hundred years ago, and
from which they 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; ’let her be
taken prisoner and brought before me.’
Low-voiced, the generals of Caesar’s
army gave their commands, and with incredible quietness
the army moved away, spreading itself out in all directions.
‘She has caged the Hippogriff,’
said Philip; ’the winged horse, and we want
to send him with a message.’
‘See that the beast is freed,’
said Caesar, and turned to Plumbeus the captain.
‘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 the captain’s shoulder, and at the
head of the last legion, Caesar and the captain of
the soldiers marched to the main gate.