The Magic City by E. Nesbit (top novels txt) 📗
- Author: E. Nesbit
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'Nothing,' Lucy answered in a very small voice, and the two made their way to a raised platform overlooking the long inclined road which led up to the tower on which the ark had been built. A long procession toiled slowly up it of animals in pairs, urged and goaded by the M.A.'s under the orders of the Lord High Islander.
The wild wind blew the flames of the torches out like golden streamers, and the sound of the waves was like thunder on the shore.
Down below other M.A.'s were busy carrying bales tied up in seaweed. Seen from above the busy figures looked like ants when you kick into an ant-hill and the little ant people run this way and that way and every way about their little ant businesses.
The Lord High Islander came in pale and serious, with all the calm competence of Napoleon at a crisis.
'Sorry to have to worry you, sir,' he said to Mr. Noah, 'but of course your experience is invaluable just now. I can't remember what bears eat. Is it hay or meat?'
'It's buns,' said Lucy. 'I beg your pardon,[222] Mr. Noah. Of course I ought to have waited for you to say.'
'In my ark,' said Mr. Noah, 'buns were unknown and bears were fed entirely on honey, the providing of which kept our pair of bees fully employed. But if you are sure bears like buns we must always be humane, dear Lucy, and study the natural taste of the animals in our charge.'
'They love them,' said Lucy.
'Buns and honey,' said the Lord Islander; 'and what about bats?'
'I don't know what bats eat,' said Mr. Noah; 'I believe it was settled after some discussion that they don't eat cats. But what they do eat is one of the eleven mysteries. You had better let the bats fast.'
'They are, sir,' said the Lord High Islander.
'And is all going well? Shall I come down and lend a personal eye?'
'I think I'm managing all right, sir,' said the Lord High Islander modestly. 'You see it's a great honour for me. The M.A.'s are carrying in the provisions, the boys are stowing them and also herding the beasts. They are very good workers, sir.'
'Are you frightened?' Lucy whispered, as he turned to go back to his overseeing.[223]
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'Not I,' said the Lord High Islander. 'Don't you understand that I've been promoted to be Lord Vice-Noah of Polistarchia? And of course the hearts of all Vice-Noahs are strangers to fear. But just think what a difficult thing Fear would have been to be a stranger to if you and Philip hadn't got us the ark!'
'It was Philip's doing,' said Lucy; 'oh, do you think he's all right?'
'I think his heart is a stranger to fear, naturally,' said the Lord High Islander, 'so he's certain to be all right.'
When the last of the animals had sniffed and snivelled its way into the ark—it was a porcupine with a cold in its head—the islanders, the M.A.'s, Lucy and Mr. Noah followed. And when every one was in, the door of the ark was shut from inside by an ingenious mechanical contrivance worked by a more than usually intelligent M.A.
You must not suppose that the inside of the ark was anything like the inside of your own Noah's ark, where all the animals are put in anyhow, all mixed together and wrong way up as likely as not. That, with live animals and live people, would, as you will readily imagine, be quite uncomfortable. The inside of the ark which had been built under the[226] direction of Mr. Noah and Mr. Perrin was not at all like that. It was more like the inside of a big Atlantic liner than anything else I can think of. All the animals were stowed away in suitable stalls, and there were delightful cabins for all those for whom cabins were suitable. The islanders and the M.A.'s retired to their cabins in perfect order, and Lucy and Mr. Noah, Mr. Perrin and the Lord High Islander gathered in the saloon, which was large and had walls and doors of inlaid mother-of-pearl and pink coral. It was lighted by glass globes filled with phosphorus collected by an ingenious process invented by another of the M.A.'s.
'And now,' said Mr. Noah, 'I beg that anxiety may be dismissed from every mind. If the waters subside, they leave us safe. If they rise, as I confidently expect them to do, our ark will float, and we still are safe. In the morning I will take soundings and begin to steer a course. We will select a suitable spot on the shore, land and proceed to the Hidden Places, where we will consult the oracle. A little refreshment before we retire for what is left of the night? A captain's biscuit would perhaps not be inappropriate?' He took a tin from a locker and handed it round.
'That's A1, sir,' said the Lord High[227] Islander, munching. 'What a head you have for the right thing.'
'All practice,' said Mr. Noah modestly.
'Thank you,' said Lucy, taking a biscuit; 'I wish. . . .'
The sentence was never finished. With a sickening suddenness the floor of the saloon heaved up under their feet, a roaring surging battering sound broke round them; the saloon tipped over on one side and the whole party was thrown on the pink silk cushions of the long settee. A shudder seemed to run through the ark from end to end, and 'What is it? Oh! what is it?' cried Lucy as the ark heeled over the other way and the unfortunate occupants were thrown on to the opposite set of cushions. (It really was, now, rather like what you imagine the inside of your Noah's ark must be when you put in Mr. Noah and his family and a few hastily chosen animals and shake them all up together.)
'It's the sea,' cried the Lord High Islander; 'it's the great Fear come upon us! And I'm not afraid!' He drew himself up as well as he could in his cramped position, with Mr. Noah's elbow pinning his shoulder down and Mr. Perrin's boot on his ear.
With a shake and a shiver the ark righted itself, and the floor of the saloon got flat again.[228]
'It's all right,' said Mr. Perrin, resuming control of his boot; 'good workmanship, it do tell. She ain't shipped a drop, Mr. Noah, sir.'
'It's all right,' said Mr. Noah, taking his elbow to himself and standing up rather shakily on his yellow mat.
'Up, up with the flag Let it wave o'er the sea; We're afloat, we're afloat— And what else should we be?'
'I don't know,' said Lucy; 'but there isn't any flag, is there?'
'The principle's the same,' said Mr. Noah; 'but I'm afraid we didn't think of a flag.'
'I did,' said Mr. Perrin; 'it's only a Jubilee hankey'—he drew it slowly from his breast-pocket, a cotton Union Jack it was—'but it shall wave all right. But not till daylight, I think, sir. Discretion's the better part of—don't you think, Mr. Noah, sir? Wouldn't do to open the ark out of hours, so to speak!'
'Just so,' said Mr. Noah. 'One, two, three! Bed!'
The ark swayed easily on a sea not too[229] rough. The saloon passengers staggered to their cabins. And silence reigned in the ark.
I am sorry to say that the Pretenderette dropped the wicker cage containing the parrot into the sea—an unpardonable piece of cruelty and revenge; unpardonable, that is, unless you consider that she did not really know any better. The Hippogriff's white wings swept on; Philip, now laid across the knees of the Pretenderette (a most undignified attitude for any boy, and I hope none of you may be placed in such a position), screamed as the cage struck the water, and, 'Oh, Polly!' he cried.
'All right,' the parrot answered; 'keep your pecker up!'
'What did it say?' the Pretenderette asked.
'Something about peck,' said Philip upside down.
'Ah!' said the Pretenderette with satisfaction, 'he won't do any more pecking for some time to come.' And the wide Hippogriff wings swept on over the wide sea.
Polly's cage fell and floated. And it floated alone till the dawn, when, with wheelings and waftings and cries, the gulls came from far and near to see what this new strange thing might be that bobbed up and down in their waters in the light of the new-born day.[230]
'Hullo!' said Polly in bird-talk, clinging upside down to the top bars of the cage.
'Hullo, yourself,' replied the eldest gull; 'what's up? And who are you? And what are you doing in that unnatural lobster pot?'
'I conjure you,' said the parrot earnestly, 'I conjure you by our common birdhood to help me in my misfortune.'
'No gull who is a gull can resist that appeal,' said the master of the sea birds; 'what can we do, brother-bird?'
'The matter is urgent,' said Polly, but quite calmly. 'I am getting very wet and I dislike salt water. It is bad for my plumage. May I give an order to your followers, bird-brother?'
'Give,' said the master gull, with a graceful wheel and whirl of his splendid wings.
'Let four of my brothers raise this detested trap high above the waves,' said the parrot, 'and let others of you, with your brave strong beaks, break through the bars and set me free.'
'Delighted,' said the master gull; 'any little thing, you know,' and his own high-bred beak was the first to take hold of the cage, which presently the gulls lifted in the air and broke through, setting the parrot free.
'Thank you, brother-birds,' the parrot said, shaking wet wings and spreading them; 'one[231] good turn deserves another. The beach yonder was white with cockles but yesterday.'
'Thank you, brother-bird,' they all said, and flew fleetly cocklewards.
And that was how the parrot got free from the cage and went back to the shore to have that little talk with the blugraiwee which I told you about in the last chapter.
The ark was really very pleasant by daylight with the sun shining in at its windows. The sun shone outside as well, of course, and the Union Jack waved cheerfully in the wind. Breakfast was served on the terrace at the end of the ark—you know—that terrace where the boat part turns up. It was a very nice breakfast, and the sea was quite smooth—a quite perfect sea. This was rather fortunate, for there was nothing else. Sea on every side of the ark. No land at all.
'However shall we find the way,' Lucy asked the Lord High Islander, 'with nothing but sea?'
'Oh,' he answered, 'that's all the better, really. Mr. Noah steers much better when there's no land in sight. It's all practice, you know.'
'And when we come in sight of land, will he steer badly then?'[232]
'Oh, anybody can steer then,' said Billy; 'you if you like.' So it was Lucy who steered the ark into harbour, under Mr. Noah's directions. Arks are very easy to steer if you only know the way. Of course arks are not like other vessels; they require neither sails nor steam engines, nor oars to
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