The marvellous land of Snergs
He added that as Providence looked after fools there was cause for
cheerful hopes, since Gorbo was the biggest fool even among the Snergs,
who, though having many good qualities, are not celebrated for brain
waves.
These kind efforts had some effect in restoring confidence and the
ladies were able to discuss the matter with comparative calm. Miss
Gribblestone had at first wondered whether by some untoward combination
of chances the children had slipped back to the scene of their former
life, and she drew a pathetic picture of Sylvia and Joe wandering
about the streets of London with bare legs and only slinkers on their
feet, and possibly starving, and she suggested the advisability of
her instant departure for London with a bundle of warm underthings
and two woolly coats. Miss Watkyns reproved her with some sharpness,
pointing out the impossibility of such a thing: leaving out fifty other
reasons the moon was only a quarter full and the air currents would
be in opposition, and this alone made the suggestion absurd. Miss
Scadging advanced an even wilder theory that the children had suffered
such mental anguish from the reproof and punishment given that they
had wandered away and died of broken hearts, and at this Miss Watkyns
begged her to consider the extravagance of such a suggestion applied
to either Sylvia or Joe and to give her energies to a more practical
solution of the problem.
When the rest of the children heard the news they were slightly
awe-struck but not immoderately grieved, for their experience of Joe
and Sylvia had led them to believe they were capable of coming safely
out of any trouble, and the general opinion was that they were having a
continuation of their surprising and interesting adventures somewhere
and would return in due time, full of glory and slightly swollen
headed. Poor things, they knew little of the harsh, real world; they
had forgotten what happened to them in the past; as has been said, the
air of the place was grand for forgetting.
The King next went over to see Vanderdecken and had a long conference
with him, and then returned across the forest with his retinue. He
had left word with Miss Watkyns that he and a band of picked men would
leave next day on an expedition, but for the present he preferred not
to say where to, in order to avoid raising either fears or hopes. On
his arrival at the town he made a short speech, and then personally
superintended preparations. Swords and axes were sharpened, quivers
were stuffed with arrows, steel casques had old dents knocked out,
cuirasses had the buckles put in order, provisions were packed into
little wallets. The air smelt of war, as in the brave days of old.
Miss Watkyns, pacing with knitted brow on her verandah, was disturbed
by the sound of shrieks and expletives. Looking up in anger, she
saw Vanderdecken and all his men coming up the path, the foremost
seaman bearing the parrot’s cage--this accounting for the noise,
for the bird was enraged. All had their sea-boots on, and they bore
muskets, powder-horns, pouches with slugs and bullets, cutlasses
and snickersnees; each man had also a bag containing pickled beef,
biscuits, a cake of tobacco, and a small bottle of Schnapps.
Vanderdecken said that they were going away for an indefinite period
and asked Miss Watkyns if she would kindly give an eye to the camp in
their absence and see that things were aired occasionally and the weeds
kept down in the garden. Also, if it was not too much trouble, would
she see to it that the Snergs did at least half an hour’s pumping of
the old ship every morning and evening. He then handed over the parrot
with a request that it be supplied with nuts and fruit, and a bit of
sulphur in its water to prevent it getting scaly feet, and begged
her to pardon any of its verbal lapses. She agreed readily to these
requests, and they departed across the forest and joined King Merse and
his men on the following morning. An hour later they were all trooping
together over the hillside beyond the town.
BEYOND THE DOOR
While Gorbo was battering himself against the heavy little door, which
had closed so gently and firmly as if pushed to from without, Sylvia
clung to Joe and hid her face and trembled. Joe held her tight without
speaking; he, too, tough and adventurous as he was, had received a
shock.
Gorbo turned round at last, and in the faint light that came from
somewhere below they could see a badly scared look on his face, and
it was all twisted as if he were going to cry. He was thinking of the
horrid mess he had got the little ones into.
“I’ve done it this time,” he said. “So the old woman was right after
all.”
“Which old woman?” asked Joe.
“An old woman who told my mother that she would only have one son and
that he would be the biggest fool among the Snergs.”
“Then it isn’t your fault,” said Joe, to comfort him. “If it was all
settled before you were born.”
“That’s so!” exclaimed Gorbo. “I must be a fool not to think of that
before. But then if I had thought of it,” he added mournfully, “I
wouldn’t be a fool and the old woman would have been wrong; so it works
out all right.”
“But you’re sometimes quite sensible,” said Joe. “Isn’t he, Sylvia?”
“Y--y--yes,” agreed Sylvia. “But I wish we could get out.”
“It seems to me,” said Gorbo, “--not that _I_ am much of a man to
listen to--that we should see what we can see down these steps.”
“Well, we can’t stay here for ever,” said Joe, “so let’s go.”
“I’ll go ahead,” said Gorbo. “If there are any fierce things that bite
below, they can have first bite at me and serve me right.”
With this cheerful remark he started off. Joe went next and Sylvia came
close behind him. The way was very narrow and so low that their heads
nearly touched the roof, small as they were. And they went down and
down and down, and the more they went down the lighter it got with a
sickly yellowish-green light that seemed to come from a little growth
on the walls, like fungus. There was absolutely nothing to see but
steps and walls, very neatly cut out of solid rock. It must have been
an awful job for those who did all this work, whoever they were.
“Do you think these steps go on for ever and ever?” asked Joe after a
time.
“No,” replied Gorbo, stopping suddenly. “They’ve come to an end.” He
was standing in a little flat place, from which five narrow passages
branched out like the fingers of a hand. The question of which passage
to take was indeed a hard one.
“We’d better start with the first one,” said Gorbo. “Then if it’s a
wrong one we’ll try the next, and so on.”
“But suppose we go miles and miles before we find it’s a wrong one,”
objected Joe. “We’d be hours over it, wouldn’t we?”
Gorbo scratched his head. “That sounds sound,” he observed.
“I know!” cried Joe. “We’ll see which one is ‘out.’ Let Sylvia try. She
knows all the out poems.”
“All right.” Sylvia began to take great interest in the matter now.
“Which one shall I try it with?”
“Try the cat one,” suggested Joe, after consideration.
So Sylvia pointed her finger at the little tunnels one after the other
and repeated:
“If you want to stroke a cat
Lay it flat upon a mat.
Hold it firmly by the tail
Smack it if it starts to wail.
If it starts to spit and shout
Pick it up and throw it OUT.”
She stopped with her finger pointing at the fourth tunnel and she
looked excitedly at the others, because it was becoming like a game.
“Here we go,” said Gorbo, making his way into the fourth tunnel.
They went on and on and on along the tunnel, and just at the exact
moment when they agreed that it would never have any end, they fetched
up against a blank wall. But on either side was a passage going at
right angles, and the question was of course, which was the right one
to take?
Sylvia repeated her little mystic rhyme, and “out” was the left-hand
turning, so they went along it. After a dozen steps it turned to the
right, and a little further on to the left; then it went straight on
until it came to an end, with a smooth wall in front and on both sides.
There was nothing for it but to go back and take the other turning.
They wondered why the people who had done all this work had made
this extra blind passage. Joe said they had done it to make it more
interesting and adventurous. Sylvia said they had done it because they
were pigs. Gorbo said it was merely because they were worse fools than
he was and it quite cheered him up.
The other road soon began to turn gently to the left; then without
rhyme or reason it turned gently to the right; then to the right and
left alternately in very sharp turns. And just when they were convinced
that it would go on turning idiotically for ever and ever they came
suddenly into what appeared to be a mighty cavern, lighted by the same
yellowish-green light of the tunnels, only more so, and full of monster
mushrooms.
THE MUSHROOM CAVERN
When I say that the mushrooms were monsters, it hardly gives a correct
idea of their size. Under the moderately small ones the three could
stand upright, and the large ones were as high as a good-sized cottage
and reached nearly to the roof of the cavern. The floor was hard and
dry and perfectly flat, and the huge stalks of the mushrooms could
be seen like a forest of giant skittles, going into the far distance
on all sides. Above, the pink underneaths of those strange specimens
showed like an unnecessarily large assortment of giant fancy umbrellas,
opened. These, of course, accounted for the cheese-like smell that
Gorbo had observed when he first put his head in the little door and
sniffed. (It was not exactly like cheese, of course, but cheese is near
enough.)
Gorbo showed himself a man of resource in a way. He said that, after
all, mushrooms were mushrooms and good breakfast food, and that they
might at least have a meal, whatever else happened afterwards. This
cheered up Sylvia tremendously and she helped to gather heaps of dried
stalks from the floor, and Gorbo got out his flint and steel from his
bundle--he rarely went anywhere without his little bundle of tools
and other matters and his bow and arrows--and soon had a fire going
(to those who may object that mushroom stalks do not burn I have only
to say that these did). With the aid of his useful trowel he provided
an appetizing series of mushroom steaks, which they all enjoyed
tremendously.
They found that the smaller ones were on the whole of a better flavour,
and it was while they were searching for some tiny specimens, scarcely
as high as a table, in order to cook some more, that they all got a
sudden shock. They found that certain mushrooms had large semicircular
pieces bitten out of them; the mouth that did it must have been a foot
wide, with tremendous teeth. A very disturbing discovery you will say.
They looked about them fearfully; and then they heard what sounded like
heavy, shuffling footsteps, and a satisfied purring, as of a giant cat.
Gorbo put the children behind him in a hurry and fitted an arrow to
his bow (the Snergs’ bows are on the small size, but they can send
an arrow through a two-inch board at close range). Then to their
horror appeared an animal that I can only describe as resembling a
blonde four-footed walrus walking on its hind legs. It was covered
with sleek, ginger-coloured hair, and it had goggling eyes, a mouth
that corresponded closely with the estimate they had formed of it
from the big bites, and a white drooping moustache. Strange to say,
it was a marsupial--that is to say, it had a pouch--but no young ones
were peeping out of the pouch as in the case of kangaroos and other
marsupials. No, it seemed full of large chunks of mushroom, and the