The marvellous land of Snergs

_The Marvellous Land of Snergs_ _by_ E. A. WYKE SMITH AUTHOR OF “SOME PIRATES AND MARMADUKE” “THE LAST OF THE BARON,” ETC. _illustrated by_ GEORGE MORROW _London Ernest Benn Limited Bouverie House Fleet Street_ 1927 PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN _To My Daughter_ NINA _A List of the Chapters_ PART I PAGE 1. A Place apart 1 2. Miss Watkyns 2 3. Ways and Means 4 4. The Snergs 7 5. Sylvia 11 6. Joe 13 7. Vanderdecken and his Men 14 8. How the Adventure started 19 9. How it really began 21 10. The Turret Chamber 23 11. How Joe bore Captivity 24 12. The Forest Land 29 13. The Dawn 33 14. Gorbo the Snerg 35 15. The Town 38 16. The Royal House 40 17. The King of the Snergs 41 18. The Feast 45 19. A Morning Walk 47 20. The Twisted Trees 50 PART II 21. Trouble at Watkyns Bay 57 22. Beyond the Door 60 23. The Mushroom Cavern 63 24. The other side of the River 71 25. Golithos the Ogre 73 26. Dinner with Golithos 76 27. Golithos explains 80 28. The Upstairs Room 82 29. Gorbo’s Doubts 84 30. Golithos is tempted 86 31. Beyond the Tower 89 32. The Knight Errant 90 33. Sir Percival’s Job 95 34. The Mysterious Castle 96 35. Sir Percival’s Annoyance 99 36. The Castle Kitchen 100 37. Breakfast 101 38. A Terrible Moment 103 39. More Trouble 104 40. The Sorrows of Baldry 107 41. The Dark Woods 113 42. Mother Meldrum’s House 115 43. More Sorrow for Baldry 119 44. A Change of Tone 121 45. Dinner with a Witch 122 46. The Spare Bedroom 125 47. What happened in the Night 127 48. The Green Ride 132 49. Captives 137 PART III 50. The Doings at Home 139 51. The Ingenuity of Vanderdecken 141 52. How they passed over the River 142 53. Boot and Saddle 144 54. The First Day’s March 145 55. The Mysterious Castle again 146 56. How Gorbo gathered Mandrakes 151 57. The Cozening of Gorbo 158 58. A Fearful Bargain 162 59. Captives on the Road 165 60. King Kul I 167 61. A Change of Clothes at last 171 62. Another Meal with Royalty 173 63. A Stinger 174 64. The Morning after 177 65. The Invasion 179 66. An Historic Meeting 181 67. Necessary Explanations 182 68. Baldry’s Sentence 184 69. Royal Clemency 187 70. The Next Day 189 71. And the Day after that 190 72. Captives again 194 73. The Barren Rocks 200 74. How Gorbo found the Way 203 75. The Reform of Golithos 206 76. Mother Meldrum goes 208 77. All Troubles over 210 78. Back across the River 213 79. Back to the Town 214 80. Back to Watkyns Bay 215 81. To finish up 217 The Marvellous Land of Snergs _Part I_ A PLACE APART If any seafaring person, such as a yachtsman, were to sail round the corner of Watkyns Bay in the morning, he would find large numbers of children playing in the water, and would be either pleased or depressed at the sight according to the way his nature was originally formed. Certainly he would wonder how they came to be there, in such a lonely place and so very much at home, the little ones splashing about in the shallow parts and chasing each other over the sand, and the bigger ones swimming out to rafts and diving from them, and all shouting and squeaking. But this is a case of supposing, for no yacht or any other vessel will ever round the corner of the bay and no sail will ever be seen on the skyline, the reason being that it is the land of the S.R.S.C. and therefore a place set apart. If a yachtsman were ever tempted to sail in that direction he would be met by baffling winds from the nor’-east, alternating with baffling winds from the sou’-west, and this, combined with the prevalence of waterspouts, would make him repent of his purpose, and he could consider himself lucky if he got out of those waters lashed to what was left of the mast. There is one exception to the rule that no outsider can sail near there, and that is the case of Vanderdecken and his men, who put in and camped some two and a half miles north of the bay. Owing to his rash oath that he would beat round the Cape of Good Hope if he beat round it till Doomsday he found himself doing so, and though this was rough luck on his crew, who had not made any rash oaths, naturally they had to beat round with him. It is supposed that the curse wore thin after a few hundred years; at any rate they managed to slip into the waters of the S.R.S.C. during the vernal equinox, and there they are now, camped in little huts, with the ship anchored in the mouth of a river and in a shocking state of barnacles. MISS WATKYNS The bay is named after Miss Watkyns, who is not only the Principal but the originator of the S.R.S.C., or Society for the Removal of Superfluous Children. Like a good many ladies who have no children of their own she was greatly interested in them, and being a little interfering in her ways she became in time a noted figure in police courts and was often laughed at by the public. This brought her in contact with other ladies similarly disposed and finally the Society was formed, its object being the removal of children who are obviously not wanted by their parents, or parent, as the case may be. The greatest care is taken to avoid mistakes, but once a child is removed it is never returned, and it soon forgets what happened when it was with its parents (or parent) for the air of the place is splendid for forgetting. There are cases where, after some years with the Society (or what would be some years if time counted there in the ordinary way), a child is delivered over to some person who ardently desires one; but the selection of such a person needs even greater care to avoid mistakes.

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Miss Watkyns is a lady of intelligence far above the ordinary, and in addition to being a great organizer she has no mean knowledge of the sciences. These qualities enabled her not only to discover the existence of the Land of the Snergs (in itself a marvellous piece of brain work) but also how to get there without a nasty spill. I do not propose to go into details of how she managed this (as it would take a book twice as long as this one) but will merely state that she admitted into the Society twenty-two carefully selected ladies (each of whom had four or five children ready to be removed from their homes without notice) and made the most careful preparations for transferring them all to the new land. It was arranged that each lady should come with one well wrapped up superfluous child, as this would be all that they could carry at one time and the rest could be fetched later. They were to bring also for each one a bundle containing blankets, woollies, and two combination suits of wear-resisting fabric, and to use their discretion with regard to small extras, such as wash rags, fine tooth combs and the like. All went excellently. They met on Hampstead Heath one blowy October night at 11.30, and by 12.15 Miss Watkyns had inspected and passed all bundles and seen that all hands had taken a cup of hot milk or cocoa. Then she gave the word and away they all went on a high wind. From this slight beginning grew the organization of the S.R.S.C. as it is to-day, with 478 superfluous children under its care and more coming. As this is purely a narrative of the extraordinary adventures that befell two of the children owing to their foolish disregard of the laws so wisely made for their benefit (a narrative which should not be without improving effect on the minds of my younger readers), I will not give more than a brief account of the ways and means by which the Society attains its object. WAYS AND MEANS The children are divided into two classes, according to size and age. The little ones wear one-piece garments known as the “slip-on,” which have the advantage that they can be slipped off for bathing with one wriggle. The older ones wear two-piece garments; the boys having shorts and shirts and the girls skirts and blouses. Woolly coats are worn in the cold weather, which lasts only for a few seasonable weeks at Christmas time. For most of the year they do not wear shoes, but what are called slinkers. The houses are on the higher ground just behind Watkyns Bay, and are all of one story. They are made of a criss-cross framework of timbers, with walls of clay mixed with little mashed-up shells in between the timbers, very strong and neat in appearance. Inside, the walls are plastered and painted light pink or blue. Behind the houses there is a wide stretch of turf, on which are swings and arrangements for healthful games such as net-ball and bumble-puppy. Not far away the forest begins with few trees at first and mostly bushes, where they play at pretence Indians and Robin Hood and so forth; but the trees soon grow thicker and thicker until it is quite shady even at midday in some parts. A pleasant place, with soft lawns here and there and a variety of ferns, but it is not wise to let the children roam about there too much for it is quite easy to get lost. Beyond the forest, a long day’s march away, is the town of the Snergs, who built the houses for the Society as well as doing other useful things of which I will give an account later. Each house has a protecting fence twelve feet from the walls to keep away the cinnamon bears, who live in the forest and who form friendships with the children when on their walks. This is all very well in its way, but the bears had the habit of trying to get into the houses at night, and, when they found the doors shut, of lying down outside and rubbing against the walls at intervals, which kept the children awake and made them giggle and whisper in a silly way, so the fence was put up. The bears are of fair size, with softish fur smelling slightly of cinnamon, hence the name. They must not be