The Scarecrow and His Servant

by Philip Pullman

“Just like that?” he said. “We don't have to pay a toll or anything? How clever! I never thought I'd go to sea. This will be very interesting.”

  “Why, yes, it will, master,” said Jack. “We don't know whether we'll drown before we starve to death, or starve to death before we drown. Or die of thirst, maybe. It'll be interesting to find out. We'd be better off getting shot to pieces by cannonballs, if you ask me.”

  “Now then, you're forgetting the man in the misty cart, Jack! Fame and glory, remember!”

  “I think we've had that already, master. We're on to the danger and suffering now.”

  “But it ends in triumph and happiness!”

  Jack was too fed up to say anything. He sat on the edge of the raft and stared glumly all around. There was not a speck of land anywhere, and the sun glared like a furnace in the burning sky.

  The Scarecrow saw his unhappiness and said, “Cheer up, Jack! I'm sure that success is just around the corner.”

  “We're at sea, master. There aren't any corners.”

  “Hmm,” said the Scarecrow. “I think I'll scan the horizon.”

  So Jack held on to his master's legs, and the Scarecrow held on to Jack's head and peered this way and that, shading his eyes with the umbrella; but there was nothing to be seen except more and more water.

  “Very dull,” said the Scarecrow, a little disappointed. “There isn't even a seagull to scare.”

  “I don't like the look of those clouds, though,” said Jack, pointing at the horizon. “I think we're going to have a storm. Well, this is just what we need, I must say.”

  The clouds got higher and bigger and darker as they watched, and presently a stiff wind began to blow, making the water lurch up and down in a very unpleasant way.

  “A storm at sea, Jack!” said the Scarecrow eagerly. “This will be a noble spectacle! All the awe-inspiring powers of nature will be unleashed over our very heads. There, you see?”

  There was a flash of lightning and, only a few seconds later, the loudest crash of thunder Jack had ever heard. And then came the rain. The heavy drops hurtled down as fast as bullets, and almost as hard.

  “Never mind, my boy,” shouted the Scarecrow over the noise. “Here—shelter under my umbrella!”

  “No, master! Put it down, whatever you do! We'll be struck by lightning, and that'll be the end for both of us!”

  The two of them clung together on their fragile raft, with the waves getting higher and rougher, and the sky getting darker, and the thunder getting closer, and the wind getting fiercer every minute.

  And then Jack felt the sticks of the raft beginning to come loose.

  “Master! Hold on! Don't let go, whatever you do!” he cried.

  “This is exciting, Jack! Boom! Crash! Whoosh! Splash!”

  Then the biggest wave of all swept over them, and the raft collapsed completely.

  “Oh no—it's coming apart—help! Help!”

  Jack and the Scarecrow clung together as they fell into the water, among the loose sticks and bits of string that were all that was left of the raft.

  “Master! Help! I can't swim!”

  “Don't worry, my boy! I can float! You hold on to me! I shan't let you down!”

  Jack didn't dare open his mouth again in case he swallowed more sea. In mortal terror, he clung to his master as the waves hurled them this way and that.

  How long they floated he had no idea. But eventually the storm passed over; the waves calmed down, the clouds rolled away, and the sun came out. Jack was trembling with the effort of holding tight, and weak from hunger and thirst, and still very frightened, so when the Scarecrow said something, he had to reply:

  “What's that, master? I didn't hear you.”

  “I said I can see a tree, Jack.”

  “What? Where?”

  The Scarecrow twisted around a bit in the water and stood up. Jack was too amazed to do more than lie there and look up as his master stood above him, shaking the water out of his clothes and pointing ahead.

  Then Jack realized that he wasn't floating anymore. In fact, he was lying in very shallow water at the edge of a beach.

  “We're safe!” he cried. “We haven't drowned! We're still alive!”

  He jumped to his feet and skipped ashore, full of joy. It didn't matter that he was cold and wet and hungry—nothing like that mattered a bit. He was alive!

  The Scarecrow was ahead of him, peering about with great interest. The tree he had seen was a palm tree, with one solitary coconut hanging high up among the leaves, and as Jack found when he joined his master, it was the only tree to be seen.

  “We're on a tropical island,” he said. “We're shipwrecked!”

  “Well, Jack,” said the Scarecrow, “I wonder what we'll find on this island. Quite often people find buried chests full of treasure, you know. I think we should start digging right away.”

  “We'd be better off looking for food, master. You can't eat doubloons and pieces of eight.”

  The Scarecrow looked all around. It was a very small island, indeed; they could see all the way across it, and Jack reckoned that even if he walked very slowly, it would only take him ten minutes to walk all the way around the edge.

  “Never despair,” said the Scarecrow. “I shall think of something.”

  Jack thought he'd better look for some water before he died of thirst, so he wandered into the middle of the island, among the bushes, to look for something to drink.

  But there was no stream, no pond, nothing. He found some little fruits and ate one to see if it was juicy; but it was so sour and bitter that he had to spit it out at once, although he thought it was a waste of spit, because he didn't have any to spare. He looked at every different kind of leaf in case there was a cup-shaped one that had kept a drop of dew from the night before; but all the leaves were either flat and floppy or dry and hairy or thin and spiny, and none of them held a single drop of water.

  Oh, dear, he said to himself, we're in big trouble now. This is the biggest trouble we've seen yet. This is a desperate situation, and no mistake.

  With a slow, unhappy tread, Jack continued his short walk around the island. Less than five minutes later he came back to the coconut palm. He tried to climb the trunk, but there were no branches to hold on to; he tried to throw stones at the coconut, but it was too high; he tried to shake the trunk, but it didn't move.

  He moved into the shade and lay down, feeling so hungry and miserable and frightened that he began to cry. He found himself sobbing and weeping and couldn't stop, and he realized that although he was partly crying for himself, he was partly crying for the poor Scarecrow, too, because his master wouldn't understand at all when he found his servant lying there dead and turning into a skeleton; he wouldn't know what to do, he'd be so distressed; and with no one to look after him, he'd just wander about the island forever until he fell apart.

  “Oh, Jack, Jack, my dear boy!” he heard, and he felt a pair of rough wooden arms embracing him. “Don't distress yourself! Life and hope, you know! Life and hope!”

  “I'm sorry, master,” Jack said. “I'll stop now. Did you have an interesting walk?”

  “Oh yes. I found a bush that looks just like a turkey, and another bush with little flowers the same color as a starling's egg, and a stone exactly as big as a duck. It's full of interesting things, you know, this island. Oh! And I found a little place that looks just like Spring Valley, in miniature.”

  “Spring Valley, master? I'd like to have a look at that.”

  “Then follow me!”

  The Scarecrow led him to a spot near the middle of the island, where the ground rose up a little way, and where some bare rocks stood above the surface. In between them there was a little grassy hollow.

  “You see,” said the Scarecrow, “the farmhouse is here, and there's the orchard, and that's where the vines grow, and the olives are over there, and the stream runs down here….”

  “Nice-looking place, master. I wish there was a real stream here, though.”
/>   “Then we shall just have to dig a well, Jack. There's bound to be some fresh water under here. That's what we do in Spring Valley.”

  “Well …,” said Jack.

  “Yes! A well. You dig there, and I'll dig here,” said the Scarecrow, and he began to scrape vigorously at the ground with a dry stick.

  There was nothing better to do, so Jack found a stick, too, and scratched and poked and scrabbled at the earth. The sun was hot, and the work made him even thirstier than he was to begin with, and besides, the end of his stick soon got wedged under the corner of a big rock.

  He found a stone to jam under the stick so he could lever the rock out. The Scarecrow was happily scratching away farther down the miniature Spring Valley, singing to himself, and Jack heaved down on his stick with all his might.

  The big rock shifted a bit. He heaved again, and it shifted some more.

  It looked a bit funny for a rock. The corner was perfectly square, for one thing, and for another, it wasn't made of rock at all. It was made of wood, and bound with iron. Jack felt his eyes grow wider and wider. The iron was rusty, and the wood was decaying, and there was a great big padlock holding it shut, which fell off as soon as he touched it.

  Then he lifted the lid.

  “Master!” he cried. “Treasure! Look! You were right!”

  The box was packed with coins, jewels, medals, necklaces, bracelets, pendants, rings for ears and rings for fingers, medallions, and every kind of gold ornament. They spilled out of the top of the box and jingled heavily as they fell on the ground. The Scarecrow's muddy little eyes couldn't open wide at the best of times, but they were fairly goggling.

  “Well, that's amazing, Jack,” he said.

  The Scarecrow picked up an earring and felt

  around the side of his turnip for an ear, but there wasn't one. Then he picked up a necklace and tried to put it on, but it wouldn't go over his turnip at all; so he put a golden bracelet on his signpost wrist, and it fell straight off. Jack plunged his hands into the chest and filled them with coins and jewels, holding them high and letting them fall down through his fingers.

  “We must be millionaires, master!” he said.

  But his mouth was so dry that he couldn't speak properly.

  “All the same,” he croaked, “I'd rather have some water.”

  “Would you, my boy? There should be enough in the well by now. Come and see.”

  Jack thought he was hallucinating. He scrambled to his feet and ran after the Scarecrow, and sure enough, in the spot where he'd been digging, a little stream had started bubbling up.

  “Oh, master! Oh, thank you! Oh! Oh! Oh!”

  Jack flung himself to the ground and plunged his face into the muddy water, and drank and drank and drank until his belly could hold no more.

  The Scarecrow was watching him with quiet satisfaction.

  “There you are, you see,” he said. “We understand water in Spring Valley.”

  Jack lay back, bloated, and let the blessed feeling of not being thirsty anymore soak him from head to feet.

  When he got up, the spring was still bubbling away, and the water was trickling down toward the beach. It didn't look as if it would get there, because most of it sank straight down into the dry earth. The Scarecrow was busy somewhere else— Jack could hear him singing to himself—so, looking carefully at the way the earth sloped and where the rocks were, Jack found another stick and began to dig.

  “What are you doing, Jack?” called the Scarecrow.

  “I'm making a reservoir, master. What are you doing?”

  “Sorting out the treasure,” came the answer.

  “Good idea.”

  So Jack went on digging until there was a hole as deep as his arm and about the same size across, and he patted the earth smooth and tight all around inside it. Then he scraped a trench in the soil and led the water from the spring down into his new hole. The Scarecrow came to watch.

  “See, master, once the water's in there, all the mud will sink to the bottom, and it'll be nice and clear to drink from,” Jack explained.

  “Excellent!” said the Scarecrow. “A splendid piece of civil engineering, Jack.”

  Jack scraped another trench at the other side, for the water to run away once the reservoir was full. They stood and watched the hole filling up.

  “Now come and see what I've done!” said the Scarecrow proudly.

  He had made a little grotto with some stones and some mud, and he'd stuck diamonds and pearls and rubies and emeralds all over it with some sticky gum from a bush. He'd made a pretty pattern in the ground with some gold coins, and another pattern with the silver ones, and then he'd made some pretend trees out of bits of stick, and draped the necklaces over them like icicles.

  “That's lovely, master,” said Jack.

  “And I haven't even begun to sort the coins out. Oh, there's endless food for the mind here, Jack!”

  “Food …”

  Jack looked longingly at the coconut palm, but the coconut still hung there high up among the leaves, as if it were mocking him. He tried to put it out of his mind. At least he had something to drink.

  So while the Scarecrow worked on his grotto, Jack went down to the beach and walked up and down, looking for a fish to catch. But there wasn't a fish to be seen. He could feel himself going a little crazy from hunger.

  Maybe I could eat one of my toes, he said to himself. I wouldn't really miss it, not a little one. But there wouldn't be enough meat on just one. I'd need a whole foot, or two, maybe.

  He paddled up and down at the edge of the sea, sunk in misery. Then he went to the reservoir to have another drink, and the Scarecrow showed him the grotto, with great pride, pointing out all the architectural and decorative effects.

  “There, Jack! What d'you think of that? Do you see how I've arranged the stones, with all the light ones here and all the dark ones there? I think I'll go and look for some shells now, to stick around the edge. But, Jack—what's the matter, my boy?”

  “I'm sorry, master. I've tried not to give in to despair, but I'm starving to death. I think what you're making there must be my burial place, and a very nice one, too, but I don't want to starve to death…. I don't know what to do, master, really I don't.”

  And poor Jack sank down to the ground, too weak to stand up any longer. In a moment the Scarecrow was kneeling by his side.

  “Jack, Jack, what was I thinking of! If that blackbird hadn't stolen my brain, you could have made some pea soup. But as it is, the rest of my head is at your disposal, my dear servant. Cut yourself a slice of my turnip, and feast to your heart's content!”

  So Jack struggled up and, not wanting to hurt the Scarecrow's feelings, took his little pocketknife and tried to find a place to cut a slice of his master's turnip. The poor thing was so battered and bruised and dried out that it was scarcely a vegetable anymore, and it was as hard as a piece of wood; but Jack managed to find a bit around the back where he could cut a little slice, and he did and crammed it into his mouth.

  “Not all at once, my boy—you'll choke!” said the Scarecrow. “Nibble, that's the thing to do. And drink plenty of water.”

  The turnip was hardly edible at all. It was dry and woody and bitter, and it took so much chewing that every mouthful took five minutes to soften and swallow.

  Nevertheless, Jack ate it and even thought he felt it doing him good.

  By the time he'd finished, the Scarecrow had come back with some pretty shells from the beach. They spent an hour or so sorting them out, and then they stuck them on the ceiling of the little grotto. Then they dug a lake around it, and led some water into it from the stream, and that kept them going until sunset, and by then Jack's belly was so empty that he kept on making little moaning sounds, and the Scarecrow offered him another slice of turnip.

  But there was hardly anything left to hack. A few bitter shreds were all Jack had for supper. And while he hugged his empty belly and tried to fall asleep, the Scarecrow pottered about in the moonlight
, fitting every jewel and every gold ornament and every piece of priceless jewelry into the grotto-palace until it was perfect, and it glittered over its reflection in the tiny lake, looking fit for the queen of the fairies.

  Chapter Eleven

  An Invitation

  Just before he woke up in the morning, Jack had a dream.

  He dreamed he was just lying there on the sand, listening to a conversation in the air above. He couldn't see who was talking, but they had rusty voices, like old barbed wire being pulled through holes in a tin can.

  “I'll bet you the small one goes before the day's out,” said one voice.

  “I reckon the big one's gone already,” said the other.

  “No. He's a monster, and they go on forever.”

  “Thin pickings these days, brother!”

  “I heard there was a great battle on the mainland. Feasting for days, my cousin said.”

  “All gone when I got there. Bones, nothing but bones.”

  “The land's bare, brother. The soldiers move on, and who knows where they go?”

  “Aye, who knows. Did you hear of the factories they're building in Spring Valley? They're making poisons, brother, poisons for the land. Is that little feller dead yet?”

  Jack had been listening in his dream, and all of a sudden, with a horrible shock, he realized that it wasn't a dream at all, and that two vultures were sitting in the palm tree directly above him.

  “Go away!” he managed to shout in a voice almost as hoarse as theirs. “Go on! Scram!”

  His cry awoke the Scarecrow, who leapt up at once.

  “Leave this to me, Jack!” he cried. “This is scarecrow's work!”

  And he uttered a bloodcurdling cry and opened and shut his umbrella several times. The vultures, duly scared, spread their wings and lumbered away. “My dear servant!” the Scarecrow said, full of compassion as he turned to Jack. “How long had those two villains been sitting up there?”

  “I dunno, master. I heard them talking and I thought it was a dream. I wish it had been—they said I was almost a goner. Oh, master, ever since we began, there's been people talking about eating me, and now the birds are at it, too—and I'm the one that needs to eat!”