A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
into a stone reservoir which stood against the outer wall of the
well-chamber and inserted a section of lead pipe that was long
enough to reach to the door of the chapel and project beyond
the threshold, where the gushing water would be visible to the
two hundred and fifty acres of people I was intending should be
present on the flat plain in front of this little holy hillock at
the proper time.
We knocked the head out of an empty hogshead and hoisted this
hogshead to the flat roof of the chapel, where we clamped it down
fast, poured in gunpowder till it lay loosely an inch deep on the
bottom, then we stood up rockets in the hogshead as thick as they
could loosely stand, all the different breeds of rockets there are;
and they made a portly and imposing sheaf, I can tell you. We
grounded the wire of a pocket electrical battery in that powder,
we placed a whole magazine of Greek fire on each corner of the
roof--blue on one corner, green on another, red on another, and
purple on the last--and grounded a wire in each.
About two hundred yards off, in the flat, we built a pen of
scantlings, about four feet high, and laid planks on it, and so
made a platform. We covered it with swell tapestries borrowed
for the occasion, and topped it off with the abbot's own throne.
When you are going to do a miracle for an ignorant race, you want
to get in every detail that will count; you want to make all the
properties impressive to the public eye; you want to make matters
comfortable for your head guest; then you can turn yourself loose
and play your effects for all they are worth. I know the value of
these things, for I know human nature. You can't throw too much
style into a miracle. It costs trouble, and work, and sometimes
money; but it pays in the end. Well, we brought the wires to
the ground at the chapel, and then brought them under the ground
to the platform, and hid the batteries there. We put a rope fence
a hundred feet square around the platform to keep off the common
multitude, and that finished the work. My idea was, doors open
at 10:30, performance to begin at 11:25 sharp. I wished I could
charge admission, but of course that wouldn't answer. I instructed
my boys to be in the chapel as early as 10, before anybody was
around, and be ready to man the pumps at the proper time, and
make the fur fly. Then we went home to supper.
The news of the disaster to the well had traveled far by this time;
and now for two or three days a steady avalanche of people had
been pouring into the valley. The lower end of the valley was
become one huge camp; we should have a good house, no question
about that. Criers went the rounds early in the evening and
announced the coming attempt, which put every pulse up to fever
heat. They gave notice that the abbot and his official suite would
move in state and occupy the platform at 10:30, up to which time
all the region which was under my ban must be clear; the bells
would then cease from tolling, and this sign should be permission
to the multitudes to close in and take their places.
I was at the platform and all ready to do the honors when the
abbot's solemn procession hove in sight--which it did not do till
it was nearly to the rope fence, because it was a starless black
night and no torches permitted. With it came Merlin, and took
a front seat on the platform; he was as good as his word for once.
One could not see the multitudes banked together beyond the ban,
but they were there, just the same. The moment the bells stopped,
those banked masses broke and poured over the line like a vast
black wave, and for as much as a half hour it continued to flow,
and then it solidified itself, and you could have walked upon
a pavement of human heads to--well, miles.
We had a solemn stage-wait, now, for about twenty minutes--a thing
I had counted on for effect; it is always good to let your audience
have a chance to work up its expectancy. At length, out of the
silence a noble Latin chant--men's voices--broke and swelled up
and rolled away into the night, a majestic tide of melody. I had
put that up, too, and it was one of the best effects I ever invented.
When it was finished I stood up on the platform and extended my
hands abroad, for two minutes, with my face uplifted--that always
produces a dead hush--and then slowly pronounced this ghastly word
with a kind of awfulness which caused hundreds to tremble, and
many women to faint:
“Constantinopolitanischerdudelsackspfeifenmachersgesellschafft!”
Just as I was moaning out the closing hunks of that word, I touched
off one of my electric connections and all that murky world of
people stood revealed in a hideous blue glare! It was immense
--that effect! Lots of people shrieked, women curled up and quit
in every direction, foundlings collapsed by platoons. The abbot
and the monks crossed themselves nimbly and their lips fluttered
with agitated prayers. Merlin held his grip, but he was astonished
clear down to his corns; he had never seen anything to begin
with that, before. Now was the time to pile in the effects. I lifted
my hands and groaned out this word--as it were in agony:
“Nihilistendynamittheaterkaestchenssprengungsattentaetsversuchungen!”
--and turned on the red fire! You should have heard that Atlantic
of people moan and howl when that crimson hell joined the blue!
After sixty seconds I shouted:
“Transvaaltruppentropentransporttrampelthiertreibertrauungsthraenentrag-
oedie!”
--and lit up the green fire! After waiting only forty seconds this
time, I spread my arms abroad and thundered out the devastating
syllables of this word of words:
“Mekkamuselmannenmassenmenchenmoerdermohrenmuttermarmormonumentenmacher!”
--and whirled on the purple glare! There they were, all going
at once, red, blue, green, purple!--four furious volcanoes pouring
vast clouds of radiant smoke aloft, and spreading a blinding
rainbowed noonday to the furthest confines of that valley. In
the distance one could see that fellow on the pillar standing rigid
against the background of sky, his seesaw stopped for the first
time in twenty years. I knew the boys were at the pump now and
ready. So I said to the abbot:
“The time is come, Father. I am about to pronounce the dread name
and command the spell to dissolve. You want to brace up, and take
hold of something.” Then I shouted to the people: “Behold, in
another minute the spell will be broken, or no mortal can break it.
If it break, all will know it, for you will see the sacred water
gush from the chapel door!”
I stood a few moments, to let the hearers have a chance to spread
my announcement to those who couldn't hear, and so convey it
to the furthest ranks, then I made a grand exhibition of extra
posturing and gesturing, and shouted:
“Lo, I command the fell spirit that possesses the holy fountain
to now disgorge into the skies all the infernal fires that still
remain in him, and straightway dissolve his spell and flee hence
to the pit, there to lie bound a thousand years. By his own dread
name I command it--BGWJJILLIGKKK!”
Then I touched off the hogshead of rockets, and a vast fountain of
dazzling lances of fire vomited itself toward the zenith with a
hissing rush, and burst in mid-sky into a storm of flashing jewels!
One mighty groan of terror started up from the massed people
--then suddenly broke into a wild hosannah of joy--for there, fair
and plain in the uncanny glare, they saw the freed water leaping
forth! The old abbot could not speak a word, for tears and the
chokings in his throat; without utterance of any sort, he folded me
in his arms and mashed me. It was more eloquent than speech.
And harder to get over, too, in a country where there were really
no doctors that were worth a damaged nickel.
You should have seen those acres of people throw themselves down
in that water and kiss it; kiss it, and pet it, and fondle it, and
talk to it as if it were alive, and welcome it back with the dear
names they gave their darlings, just as if it had been a friend who
was long gone away and lost, and was come home again. Yes, it was
pretty to see, and made me think more of them than I had done before.
I sent Merlin home on a shutter. He had caved in and gone down
like a landslide when I pronounced that fearful name, and had
never come to since. He never had heard that name before,--neither
had I--but to him it was the right one. Any jumble would have
been the right one. He admitted, afterward, that that spirit's own
mother could not have pronounced that name better than I did.
He never could understand how I survived it, and I didn't tell
him. It is only young magicians that give away a secret like that.
Merlin spent three months working enchantments to try to find out
the deep trick of how to pronounce that name and outlive it.
But he didn't arrive.
When I started to the chapel, the populace uncovered and fell back
reverently to make a wide way for me, as if I had been some kind
of a superior being--and I was. I was aware of that. I took along
a night shift of monks, and taught them the mystery of the pump,
and set them to work, for it was plain that a good part of the
people out there were going to sit up with the water all night,
consequently it was but right that they should have all they wanted
of it. To those monks that pump was a good deal of a miracle
itself, and they were full of wonder over it; and of admiration,
too, of the exceeding effectiveness of its performance.
It was a great night, an immense night. There was reputation in it.
I could hardly get to sleep for glorying over it.
CHAPTER XXIV
A RIVAL MAGICIAN
My influence in the Valley of Holiness was something prodigious
now. It seemed worth while to try to turn it to some valuable
account. The thought came to me the next morning, and was suggested
by my seeing one of my knights who was in the soap line come
riding in. According to history, the monks of this place two
centuries before had been worldly minded enough to want to wash.
It might be that there was a leaven of this unrighteousness still
remaining. So I sounded a Brother:
“Wouldn't you like a bath?”
He shuddered at the thought--the thought of the peril of it to
the well--but he said with feeling:
“One needs not to ask that of a poor body who has not known that
blessed refreshment sith that he was a boy. Would God I might
wash me! but it may not be, fair sir, tempt me not; it is forbidden.”
And then he sighed in such a sorrowful way that I was resolved
he should have at least one layer of his real estate removed,
if it sized up my whole influence and bankrupted the pile. So I
went to the abbot and asked for a permit for this Brother. He
blenched at the idea--I don't mean that you could see him blench,
for of course you couldn't see it without you scraped him, and
I didn't care enough about it to scrape him, but I knew the blench
was there, just the same, and within a book-cover's thickness of
the surface, too--blenched, and trembled. He said:
“Ah, son, ask aught else thou wilt, and it is thine, and freely
granted out of a grateful heart--but this, oh, this! Would you
drive away the blessed water again?”
“No, Father, I will not drive it away. I have mysterious knowledge
which teaches me that there was an error that other time when
it was thought the institution of the bath banished the fountain.”
A large interest began to show up in the old man's face. “My
knowledge informs me that the bath was innocent of that misfortune,
which was caused by quite another sort of sin.”
“These are brave words--but--but right welcome, if they be true.”
“They are true, indeed. Let me build the bath again, Father.
Let me build it again, and the fountain shall flow forever.”