In the Land of Time

by Alfred Dunsany

  So he was quite uninterested. Now she must let him know who she was, since he had quite evidently not found out. So she opened her small bag and began to rummage in it holding it quite low near the floor; and as she rummaged her gold cigarette case fell out. It had her name written clearly on one side, Lucy Fells in small diamonds. Which side up would it fall, she wondered? But it did not matter. As a matter of fact it fell diamondside upward.

  “Oh I have dropped my cigarette case,” she said.

  He picked it up for her.

  “Thank you so much,” she said. “It was very careless of me. But I can’t really lose it, unless it got stolen, because I have my name writen fairly large on it, as you see.”

  And she showed it him. And he said, “Oh yes.”

  She saw then unmistakably, though I don’t know exactly how, but unmistakably, that he had never heard her name. The evening paper had printed it half an inch high. But he had never heard of it. Aphrodite coming in from the sea, to find all her temples fallen and nobody noticing her, would not have been more shocked.

  I used the simile of a tiger among gazelles that paid no attention to him. A tiger in such a situation would not long remain idle. Nor did Miss Lucy Fells. She struck with her full force, with all her beauty and all her charm. She spoke to Albert Terrup about the weather. She said that the days were drawing in fast. She said that the train was slow. She asked what time it got to Blackheath. She asked if he knew the country round there. She asked what it was like. She said that she thought the gardens must be very nice in spring. She said she was fond of gardens. She asked Albert Terrup if he was fond of gardens, too. She asked if he was much troubled with weeds, and what he did to get rid of them. And she asked what kind of weather they usually got at this time of year.

  And when all those questions had been asked and lamely answered, Albert Terrup was at last at her feet, a tremendously happy, though abjectly conquered, heart. Nor was it to be wondered at. She had won the hearts of big audiences in great cities in far less time. It took her much longer than she felt that it ought to leave taken, but she did not grudge a minute of it; for this conquest had to be made. She could not have anyone holding out against her like this, at the height of her glory. What would Alexander have done if some little village of India had ignored him utterly? No, such a thing could not be.

  When she had conquered Albert Terrup, he became her abject slave. He made fantastic suggestions: he spoke of flight to the Continent, he spoke of settling down in the suburbs. He even suggested that she should marry him.

  To none of these suggestions Lucy Fells turned a deaf ear, or definitely refused to accede to any of them. For a conqueror cannot refuse to accept a surrender. And on that short railway journey from Charing Cross in Blackheath, which was beyond the station at which he should have got out, flowered the romance of Albert Terrup’s life.

  What I think happened was that in that railway carriage was a brief but idyllic scene, in which the world-famous actress really did become engaged to Albert Terrup. And at Blackheath they embraced and parted with vows of love, which Albert Terrup remembered all through his quiet life, and always will, as Lucy Fells sincerely intended to do on the platform at Blackheath station. But with all her public engagements, and no record of this in writing, it must have slipped her memory, and I believe that quite honestly she forgot all about it.

  The Pirate of the Round Pond

  I’ve been reading a lot about great men lately; having to read about them; Julius Caesar, William the Conqueror, Nelson and Mr. Gladstone. But there’s a thing I’ve noticed about grown-ups, and I imagine it applies jolly well to all of them, great and small: they don’t keep at it. They may be great just when they’re having a battle, or whatever it is, but at other times they’ll sit in a chair and read a paper, or talk about the taxes being all wrong, or go out for a walk along a road, when they might be ratting or climbing a tree, or doing anything sensible. Now, Bob Tipling is great the whole time. I should think he is the greatest chap in the world. Any way he is the greatest chap in our school, by a long way. And he’s not only the cleverest, but he’s best at cricket and football too. Once he made a hundred runs. And he’s a fast bowler too. Well, I can’t tell you all about that: there just wouldn’t be time. We beat Blikton by an innings and 70 runs, and all because of Bob Tipling. But what I am going to tell you about is about Bob as a pirate, because lots of people have seen him playing cricket, but I and one other boy are the only people in the world besides Bob who know all about him being a pirate. So, if I don’t tell about it, probably nobody will, and that would be a pity. Not that I like writing, I’d sooner be out-of-doors. Well, Bob was talking to me once, and I was saying what I’d like to be when I grew up, if I could get the job; and of course that isn’t always so easy. What I’d like best of all would be to capture cities, like Alexander and those people; but of course you can’t always do that. And then Bob said that he didn’t want to be anything when he grew up, because grown-ups were always dull and didn’t seem able to enjoy themselves properly, or even to want to: he wanted to be it now. And I asked him what he wanted to be, and he said a pirate. And I asked him what sea he was going to. Now, Bob Tipling always knew all about what he was talking of; more than anybody else; so I can tell you I was pretty surprised when I heard his answer. And yet I knew that Bob wasn’t talking nonsense. He never does. He said, “The Round Pond.”7 Well, I knew the Round Pond quite well; used to go there most Sundays; but I didn’t see how you could be a pirate on the Round Pond. And so I asked Bob. Well, he said he’d had the idea for something like a year, and he’d hung about Kensington Gardens, which was quite near where he lived (both of us for that matter), until he found a boy whose father had lots of money, and he had told the idea to him and he had liked it very much. The idea was to put a pirate ship on the Round Pond, and to fit it out with torpedo-tubes.

  “How would you do that?” I asked.

  “It’s already been done,” he said. “They’re miniature torpedoes, just as it’s a miniature ship. There’s two of them, one on each side, and we’ve had a dozen torpedoes made. They are shot out by compressed air, like little air-guns, and there’s a good big explosive in them, which goes off when the nose hits anything. They cost a lot to make, but this boy has got lots.”

  “Does your ship put to sea?” I asked.

  “Oh, yes,” he said.

  “Then how do you fire them?” I said.

  “That cost a lot too,” he told me. “I touch them off by wireless.”

  “What will people say,” I asked him, “when they see you shooting off your torpedoes from your wireless-set on the bank at their boats?”

  “They won’t see,” said Bob. “But we’ll have to be careful about that. We could have it in a large sailing-boat at the edge of the water, what they call a parent boat; or we could hide it in a tea-basket. Then we wait till a good big ship has put to sea, and we launch the pirate-ship so that it should intercept her. If it doesn’t, we try again and again, until we are lucky. What I want to do is to get the Rakish Craft (that is to be her name) head on to her beam at about 3 or 4 yards, then we fire a torpedo, and if we meet her somewhere about the middle of the pond, she should never reach land. What do you think of it?”

  “I think it’s perfectly splendid,” I said. “There’s only one thing seems to be missing like.”

  “What’s that?” he asked rather sharply.

  “Treasure,” I said. “Isn’t treasure rather the chief part of a pirate’s life?”

  “That shows all you know about it,” he said. “The principal part of a pirate’s life is the battles he has, and the thrill of seeing his enemy sink, and the danger, the risk of hanging. I don’t say they’d hang me, but I’d go to prison for years if I was caught. And of course if anybody was drowned as a result of the accident, going in to pull out the ship or anything, then I’d be hanged. And even without that, after all I’m a pirate; it doesn’t matter where: I might be hanged in any case. Now, I’m g
iving you a chance you’ll probably never have again in a lifetime. Would you like to come in with me?”

  Well, of course it was pretty wonderful getting an offer like that from such a tremendous chap as Bob Tipling; because I knew he would be as wonderful as a pirate as he was at everything else. Of course I said, “Yes, rather.”

  And then he told me what I would have to do. Carry the tea-basket chiefly, and walk about and look unconcerned. Or look concerned if he told me to, and walk away from him to draw attention off. “It’s full of detectives,” he said.

  That was on a Saturday morning, and we get the afternoons off on Saturdays. So Bob Tipling told me to meet him at the Round Pond at 2 o’clock, which I did, and he made me walk up and down looking unconcerned. There were some nice ships there, big sailing-ships and some clockwork ones, and even one that went by petrol, a beauty, a big grey ship. “That’s the one we’ll get if she’s there when we put to sea,” said Bob. “She’ll hole nicely.”

  And I made the mistake of saying, “Wouldn’t it be rather a pity to sink a nice ship like that?”

  But Bob explained to me that the people who owned it should think themselves very lucky if their ship was sunk without any loss of life, which wasn’t often the case if you were attacked by a pirate. “And, after all, there must be pirates,” he said. “And anyhow,” he said, “I shall only attack those that deserve it, as Robin Hood used to do on land. The money that that boat cost would have kept a poor man and his family in food for a year. I’m helping the Government, really, to swat the rich. Though that’s not the view they’ll take if they catch me.”

  “They ought to,” I said.

  “We’ll just not get caught,” said Bob Tipling. “Now walk about concernedly, so that they’ll watch you if I want their attention switched off me.”

  So I did, and it’s wonderful how soon I saw one or two men mopping their faces with white handkerchiefs, and making funny little signs. We went away then, because we didn’t want people to get to know us.

  There were only three of us in it; Bob, me and this rich boy that Bob had found. He had hung about among the trees in Kensington Gardens off and on for nearly a year, before he found this boy walking alone and got a chance to talk to him. He had tried others, of course, but they hadn’t enough money. This one had, and he took to the idea at once, as who wouldn’t? He had always wanted to be a pirate, and knew that he never would be; and then this chance came to him, brought by Bob. Bob had worked it all out, except the actual making of the torpedoes, and he knew there were people who could make them, and send them off by wireless: all he wanted was the money; and this boy had it, or he could get it out of his father, which comes to the same thing. Bob fixed next Sunday week for putting to sea, under the black-and-yellow flag with the skull-and-crossbones; only, Bob said that the actual flag might attract too much attention, and that he would sail under false colours, as pirates often did. We said nothing to each other in school; we almost might have been strangers; but it wouldn’t have done to have let a thing like that get out; we should only have been hanged, if it had, before we started. Bob Tipling said that it wasn’t a hanging matter. And he would be sure to know. At the same time we were pirates, and I never heard of anything else happening to a pirate, if he got caught, in any book that I’ve read. So it seemed best not to risk it.

  I learned a lot that week in school, but what it was I couldn’t tell you, because I was only thinking of one thing all the week, that is of being a pirate. They say it’s wicked to be a pirate, and I dare say it is. At the same time nobody could say that it isn’t better than sitting indoors at a desk, learning things; especially the kind of things I was learning that week, whatever they were. I never knew a week go by slower. I’d have liked to have timed it, because I should think that it was the slowest week that ever went by. But it came to an end at last, and I slipped away from my home, which is where I lived, and came to the Round Pond at the time Bob Tipling said, which was 12 o’clock on the Sunday morning. I came along the Broad Walk, because I was to meet Bob and his friend there. It was all black earth by the edge of the walk, or dark grey any way, and there were little trickles of yellow sand in it. I liked the look of the black earth, because it made me think of a wide and desolate moor; and it would have been, if it hadn’t been for the grass. And there was a great row of elm-trees there, and all the little leaves were just coming out, because it was Spring. They looked very small and shiny. And at the end of the row I met Bob and his rich friend. Bob had his arms folded and a coloured handkerchief round his neck, and I thought he looked very like a pirate. We were quite near the Round Pond then. Bob introduces me to the rich boy, and his name turns out to be Algernon, and some other name that I forget. And it’s just as well to forget it, as we were all involved in piracy together. Bob is away where the police can’t catch him now. I’m not going to tell you my name. Algernon was carrying a big luncheon-basket by a handle, and Bob has the ship on the grass beside him, with a bit of a cloth wrapped round it to hide the torpedo-tubes.

  “That’s a nice boat,” I says.

  “It’s a long low rakish craft,” said Bob.

  Bob was giving the orders, and Algernon and I went down with him to the pond to the part of it where he says, where there was a little kind of a bay. There were lots of ducks on it, mostly black-and-white ones, and every now and then they would get up out of the water and shake their wings and splash themselves. I suppose they were having a bath. Algernon said they was tufted ducks. And then there was ducks with green heads, that was just ducks. And there was a couple of geese that swam by, honking. And I saw a swan. And there were sea-gulls, lots of them, flying backwards and forwards over the pond and squawking as they flew. And there were lots of boats. I saw a little sailing-boat far out, nearly becalmed, and some clockwork ones like ours. And then all of a sudden I sees the big grey ship that went by petrol. I stopped breathing for a moment when I saw that, and then I pointed her out to Algernon, and Bob nodded his head. And then we both went round to where she was, just beside our little bay, and there was a boy running it that was about the same age as me, which is thirteen. Bob is fourteen, and knows about as much about most things as grown-ups. I don’t know about Algernon: I should say he was about the same age as Bob, but nothing near so clever. And just as we came up to where the boy was, a fat little brown spaniel with a wide smile ran up to the boy and licked one of his knees, which was bare. And the boy jumped out of the way. And there was a lady with the brown spaniel, and she said to the boy, “Our Billy won’t hurt you.” And the boy says, “I am not accustomed to being licked by dogs.” “Oh, aren’t you?” says Bob.

  I don’t know if the boy heard him or not.

  And then Bob says to me in a lower voice, “That settles the business of it being a pity to sink his nice ship.”

  There was a fat man standing near, smoking a cigar, evidently the boy’s father, and I says to Bob, “Well, it’s he that will lose what he paid for the ship if we sink it.”

  “That’s true,” said Bob. And he goes up to the fat man with the cigar and says to him, “That’s a fine boat your boy’s got, sir.”

  “Yes. You leave it alone,” says the fat man.

  “Certainly, sir,” says Bob.

  “Well, that settles it,” he says to me. “The ship is doomed.”

  The big ship touched land just then, and Bob hurried back to his bay, to be ready to launch the Rakish Craft, his idea being to launch it just at the right moment to cut off the big grey ship when it sets out again. With the curve that there was on the bay we could send our ship right across her course. I had a very responsible job. I had to unpack the luncheon-basket and get my finger on to a knob of the wireless-set that was hidden under some paper packets, and to press it down whenever Bob gave the sign. I can’t tell you what the sign was, because I took an oath to Bob that I would never reveal it, but it is something he did with his elbow. Well, the big grey ship set out almost at once. “That’s the last she’ll see of land,�
� said Bob. But he was wrong there, because our ship didn’t quite hit her off, Bob not having had time quite to calculate the speed of the big ship, though he knew the speed of the Rakish Craft, and so we were a bit behind her and never fired a torpedo, and we went right across the pond, and the grey ship went very nearly to the other end of it.

  Well, the boy ran round and the fat man walked slowly after him; and, to make a long story short, they puts to sea again. And Bob watches to see about where the grey ship will come in, and goes round and launches the Rakish Craft to intercept her about half-way. And Bob said he had calculated the two speeds exactly, but I think it was pure luck. Anyway, the Rakish Craft, heading towards Bayswater, comes right up to within nearly two yards of the side of the grey ship, which is sailing towards Hyde Park; and just as the grey ship passes our bows Bob makes the sign with his elbow, and I presses the button where I am sitting on the grass beside the luncheon-basket, with my finger inside it touching the wireless-set. And there is a white fountain against the side of the grey ship, and both boats rock a bit, and the big one goes on apparently unconcerned. And I look round, and nobody has noticed a thing. But I couldn’t see anything out of the way, myself, except that white splash and the two boats rocking a little, ours more than the other one. For a moment I thought that Bob’s game did not work, and then to my delight I saw the big ship’s bows dipping a little, or thought I did. Then I saw I was right. She continued straight on her course, but the bows went lower and lower. And all of a sudden her stern went into the air, and she dived right under, and never came up any more. The only thing that could have made it any more perfect would have been a bit of blood on the water. However, one can’t have everything. I wanted to cheer, but I caught Bob’s eye. Bob strolled round with Algernon to the part of the shore to which our ship was heading, and they hardly glanced at the water. Bob wanted to go on and sink some more boats. But that’s where Algernon showed sense, and he told Bob not to do it. That’s what they were talking about when on the grass by the luncheon-basket. And I joined in with Algernon and said, “Don’t do it, Bob. Nobody has suspected a thing, and we can start all fresh next Sunday; but, if you get them suspecting you now, they’ll be waiting for you next time you come, and it will probably be prison for all of us.”