A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
came crashing down and knocked him all to rags.
A fine effect. In fact, as fine as any I ever produced, with so
little time to work it up in.
But I saw in a moment that I had overdone the thing a little.
I was expecting to scare them, but I wasn't expecting to scare
them to death. They were mighty near it, though. You see they
had been a whole lifetime learning to appreciate the pillory; and
to have that thing staring them in the face, and every one of them
distinctly at the mercy of me, a stranger, if I chose to go and
report--well, it was awful, and they couldn't seem to recover
from the shock, they couldn't seem to pull themselves together.
Pale, shaky, dumb, pitiful? Why, they weren't any better than
so many dead men. It was very uncomfortable. Of course, I thought
they would appeal to me to keep mum, and then we would shake hands,
and take a drink all round, and laugh it off, and there an end.
But no; you see I was an unknown person, among a cruelly oppressed
and suspicious people, a people always accustomed to having advantage
taken of their helplessness, and never expecting just or kind
treatment from any but their own families and very closest intimates.
Appeal to _me_ to be gentle, to be fair, to be generous? Of course,
they wanted to, but they couldn't dare.
CHAPTER XXXIV
THE YANKEE AND THE KING SOLD AS SLAVES
Well, what had I better do? Nothing in a hurry, sure. I must
get up a diversion; anything to employ me while I could think,
and while these poor fellows could have a chance to come to life
again. There sat Marco, petrified in the act of trying to get
the hang of his miller-gun--turned to stone, just in the attitude
he was in when my pile-driver fell, the toy still gripped in his
unconscious fingers. So I took it from him and proposed to explain
its mystery. Mystery! a simple little thing like that; and yet it
was mysterious enough, for that race and that age.
I never saw such an awkward people, with machinery; you see, they
were totally unused to it. The miller-gun was a little double-barreled
tube of toughened glass, with a neat little trick of a spring
to it, which upon pressure would let a shot escape. But the shot
wouldn't hurt anybody, it would only drop into your hand. In the
gun were two sizes--wee mustard-seed shot, and another sort that
were several times larger. They were money. The mustard-seed
shot represented milrays, the larger ones mills. So the gun was
a purse; and very handy, too; you could pay out money in the dark
with it, with accuracy; and you could carry it in your mouth; or
in your vest pocket, if you had one. I made them of several sizes
--one size so large that it would carry the equivalent of a dollar.
Using shot for money was a good thing for the government; the metal
cost nothing, and the money couldn't be counterfeited, for I was
the only person in the kingdom who knew how to manage a shot tower.
“Paying the shot” soon came to be a common phrase. Yes, and I knew
it would still be passing men's lips, away down in the nineteenth
century, yet none would suspect how and when it originated.
The king joined us, about this time, mightily refreshed by his nap,
and feeling good. Anything could make me nervous now, I was so
uneasy--for our lives were in danger; and so it worried me to
detect a complacent something in the king's eye which seemed to
indicate that he had been loading himself up for a performance
of some kind or other; confound it, why must he go and choose
such a time as this?
I was right. He began, straight off, in the most innocently
artful, and transparent, and lubberly way, to lead up to the
subject of agriculture. The cold sweat broke out all over me.
I wanted to whisper in his ear, “Man, we are in awful danger!
every moment is worth a principality till we get back these men's
confidence; _don't_ waste any of this golden time.” But of course
I couldn't do it. Whisper to him? It would look as if we were
conspiring. So I had to sit there and look calm and pleasant while
the king stood over that dynamite mine and mooned along about his
damned onions and things. At first the tumult of my own thoughts,
summoned by the danger-signal and swarming to the rescue from
every quarter of my skull, kept up such a hurrah and confusion
and fifing and drumming that I couldn't take in a word; but
presently when my mob of gathering plans began to crystallize
and fall into position and form line of battle, a sort of order and
quiet ensued and I caught the boom of the king's batteries, as if
out of remote distance:
“--were not the best way, methinks, albeit it is not to be denied
that authorities differ as concerning this point, some contending
that the onion is but an unwholesome berry when stricken early
from the tree--”
The audience showed signs of life, and sought each other's eyes
in a surprised and troubled way.
“--whileas others do yet maintain, with much show of reason, that
this is not of necessity the case, instancing that plums and other
like cereals do be always dug in the unripe state--”
The audience exhibited distinct distress; yes, and also fear.
“--yet are they clearly wholesome, the more especially when one
doth assuage the asperities of their nature by admixture of the
tranquilizing juice of the wayward cabbage--”
The wild light of terror began to glow in these men's eyes, and
one of them muttered, “These be errors, every one--God hath surely
smitten the mind of this farmer.” I was in miserable apprehension;
I sat upon thorns.
“--and further instancing the known truth that in the case of
animals, the young, which may be called the green fruit of the
creature, is the better, all confessing that when a goat is ripe,
his fur doth heat and sore engame his flesh, the which defect,
taken in connection with his several rancid habits, and fulsome
appetites, and godless attitudes of mind, and bilious quality
of morals--”
They rose and went for him! With a fierce shout, “The one would
betray us, the other is mad! Kill them! Kill them!” they flung
themselves upon us. What joy flamed up in the king's eye! He
might be lame in agriculture, but this kind of thing was just in
his line. He had been fasting long, he was hungry for a fight.
He hit the blacksmith a crack under the jaw that lifted him clear
off his feet and stretched him flat on his back. “St. George for
Britain!” and he downed the wheelwright. The mason was big, but
I laid him out like nothing. The three gathered themselves up and
came again; went down again; came again; and kept on repeating
this, with native British pluck, until they were battered to jelly,
reeling with exhaustion, and so blind that they couldn't tell us
from each other; and yet they kept right on, hammering away with
what might was left in them. Hammering each other--for we stepped
aside and looked on while they rolled, and struggled, and gouged,
and pounded, and bit, with the strict and wordless attention to
business of so many bulldogs. We looked on without apprehension,
for they were fast getting past ability to go for help against us,
and the arena was far enough from the public road to be safe
from intrusion.
Well, while they were gradually playing out, it suddenly occurred
to me to wonder what had become of Marco. I looked around; he
was nowhere to be seen. Oh, but this was ominous! I pulled the
king's sleeve, and we glided away and rushed for the hut. No Marco
there, no Phyllis there! They had gone to the road for help, sure.
I told the king to give his heels wings, and I would explain later.
We made good time across the open ground, and as we darted into
the shelter of the wood I glanced back and saw a mob of excited
peasants swarm into view, with Marco and his wife at their head.
They were making a world of noise, but that couldn't hurt anybody;
the wood was dense, and as soon as we were well into its depths
we would take to a tree and let them whistle. Ah, but then came
another sound--dogs! Yes, that was quite another matter. It
magnified our contract--we must find running water.
We tore along at a good gait, and soon left the sounds far behind
and modified to a murmur. We struck a stream and darted into it.
We waded swiftly down it, in the dim forest light, for as much
as three hundred yards, and then came across an oak with a great
bough sticking out over the water. We climbed up on this bough,
and began to work our way along it to the body of the tree; now
we began to hear those sounds more plainly; so the mob had struck
our trail. For a while the sounds approached pretty fast. And
then for another while they didn't. No doubt the dogs had found
the place where we had entered the stream, and were now waltzing
up and down the shores trying to pick up the trail again.
When we were snugly lodged in the tree and curtained with foliage,
the king was satisfied, but I was doubtful. I believed we could
crawl along a branch and get into the next tree, and I judged it
worth while to try. We tried it, and made a success of it, though
the king slipped, at the junction, and came near failing to connect.
We got comfortable lodgment and satisfactory concealment among
the foliage, and then we had nothing to do but listen to the hunt.
Presently we heard it coming--and coming on the jump, too; yes,
and down both sides of the stream. Louder--louder--next minute
it swelled swiftly up into a roar of shoutings, barkings, tramplings,
and swept by like a cyclone.
“I was afraid that the overhanging branch would suggest something
to them,” said I, “but I don't mind the disappointment. Come,
my liege, it were well that we make good use of our time. We've
flanked them. Dark is coming on, presently. If we can cross the
stream and get a good start, and borrow a couple of horses from
somebody's pasture to use for a few hours, we shall be safe enough.”
We started down, and got nearly to the lowest limb, when we seemed
to hear the hunt returning. We stopped to listen.
“Yes,” said I, “they're baffled, they've given it up, they're on
their way home. We will climb back to our roost again, and let
them go by.”
So we climbed back. The king listened a moment and said:
“They still search--I wit the sign. We did best to abide.”
He was right. He knew more about hunting than I did. The noise
approached steadily, but not with a rush. The king said:
“They reason that we were advantaged by no parlous start of them,
and being on foot are as yet no mighty way from where we took
the water.”
“Yes, sire, that is about it, I am afraid, though I was hoping
better things.”
The noise drew nearer and nearer, and soon the van was drifting
under us, on both sides of the water. A voice called a halt from
the other bank, and said:
“An they were so minded, they could get to yon tree by this branch
that overhangs, and yet not touch ground. Ye will do well to send
a man up it.”
“Marry, that we will do!”
I was obliged to admire my cuteness in foreseeing this very thing
and swapping trees to beat it. But, don't you know, there are
some things that can beat smartness and foresight? Awkwardness
and stupidity can. The best swordsman in the world doesn't need
to fear the second best swordsman in the world; no, the person
for him to be afraid of is some ignorant antagonist who has never
had a sword in his hand before; he doesn't do the thing he ought
to do, and so the expert isn't prepared for him; he does the thing
he ought not to do; and often it catches the expert out and ends
him on the spot. Well, how could I, with all my gifts, make any
valuable preparation against a near-sighted, cross-eyed, pudding-headed
clown who would aim himself at the wrong tree and hit the right