A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain (any book recommendations TXT) 📗

By my authority as executive I threw Merlin into prison—the same cell I had occupied myself.  Then I gave public notice by herald and trumpet that I should be busy with affairs of state for a fortnight, but about the end of that time I would take a moment’s leisure and blow up Merlin’s stone tower by fires from heaven; in the meantime, whoso listened to evil reports about me, let him beware.  Furthermore, I would perform but this one miracle at this time, and no more; if it failed to satisfy and any murmured, I would turn the murmurers into horses, and make them useful. Quiet ensued.

I took Clarence into my confidence, to a certain degree, and we went to work privately.  I told him that this was a sort of miracle that required a trifle of preparation, and that it would be sudden death to ever talk about these preparations to anybody.  That made his mouth safe enough.  Clandestinely we made a few bushels of first-rate blasting powder, and I superintended my armorers while they constructed a lightning-rod and some wires.  This old stone tower was very massive—and rather ruinous, too, for it was Roman, and four hundred years old.  Yes, and handsome, after a rude fashion, and clothed with ivy from base to summit, as with a shirt of scale mail.  It stood on a lonely eminence, in good view from the castle, and about half a mile away.

Working by night, we stowed the powder in the tower—dug stones out, on the inside, and buried the powder in the walls themselves, which were fifteen feet thick at the base.  We put in a peck at a time, in a dozen places.  We could have blown up the Tower of London with these charges.  When the thirteenth night was come we put up our lightning-rod, bedded it in one of the batches of powder, and ran wires from it to the other batches.  Everybody had shunned that locality from the day of my proclamation, but on the morning of the fourteenth I thought best to warn the people, through the heralds, to keep clear away—a quarter of a mile away. Then added, by command, that at some time during the twenty-four hours I would consummate the miracle, but would first give a brief notice; by flags on the castle towers if in the daytime, by torch-baskets in the same places if at night.

Thunder-showers had been tolerably frequent of late, and I was not much afraid of a failure; still, I shouldn’t have cared for a delay of a day or two; I should have explained that I was busy with affairs of state yet, and the people must wait.

Of course, we had a blazing sunny day—almost the first one without a cloud for three weeks; things always happen so.  I kept secluded, and watched the weather.  Clarence dropped in from time to time and said the public excitement was growing and growing all the time, and the whole country filling up with human masses as far as one could see from the battlements.  At last the wind sprang up and a cloud appeared—in the right quarter, too, and just at nightfall.  For a little while I watched that distant cloud spread and blacken, then I judged it was time for me to appear.  I ordered the torch-baskets to be lit, and Merlin liberated and sent to me. A quarter of an hour later I ascended the parapet and there found the king and the court assembled and gazing off in the darkness toward Merlin’s Tower.  Already the darkness was so heavy that one could not see far; these people and the old turrets, being partly in deep shadow and partly in the red glow from the great torch-baskets overhead, made a good deal of a picture.

Merlin arrived in a gloomy mood.  I said:

“You wanted to burn me alive when I had not done you any harm, and latterly you have been trying to injure my professional reputation.  Therefore I am going to call down fire and blow up your tower, but it is only fair to give you a chance; now if you think you can break my enchantments and ward off the fires, step to the bat, it’s your innings.”

“I can, fair sir, and I will. Doubt it not.”

He drew an imaginary circle on the stones of the roof, and burnt a pinch of powder in it, which sent up a small cloud of aromatic smoke, whereat everybody fell back and began to cross themselves and get uncomfortable.  Then he began to mutter and make passes in the air with his hands.  He worked himself up slowly and gradually into a sort of frenzy, and got to thrashing around with his arms like the sails of a windmill.  By this time the storm had about reached us; the gusts of wind were flaring the torches and making the shadows swash about, the first heavy drops of rain were falling, the world abroad was black as pitch, the lightning began to wink fitfully.  Of course, my rod would be loading itself now.  In fact, things were imminent. So I said:

“You have had time enough.  I have given you every advantage, and not interfered.  It is plain your magic is weak. It is only fair that I begin now.”