The E. Nesbit Megapack: 26 Classic Novels and Stories

by E. Nesbit

  This Jane at last consented to do.

  As they got nearer to the browny fence they saw that it was a great hedge about eight feet high, made of piled-up thorn bushes.

  ‘What’s that for?’ asked Cyril.

  ‘To keep out foes and wild beasts,’ said the girl.

  ‘I should think it ought to, too,’ said he. ‘Why, some of the thorns are as long as my foot.’

  There was an opening in the hedge, and they followed the girl through it. A little way further on was another hedge, not so high, also of dry thorn bushes, very prickly and spiteful-looking, and within this was a sort of village of huts.

  There were no gardens and no roads. Just huts built of wood and twigs and clay, and roofed with great palm-leaves, dumped down anywhere. The doors of these houses were very low, like the doors of dog-kennels. The ground between them was not paths or streets, but just yellow sand trampled very hard and smooth.

  In the middle of the village there was a hedge that enclosed what seemed to be a piece of ground about as big as their own garden in Camden Town.

  No sooner were the children well within the inner thorn hedge than dozens of men and women and children came crowding round from behind and inside the huts.

  The girl stood protectingly in front of the four children, and said—

  ‘They are wonder-children from beyond the desert. They bring marvellous gifts, and I have said that it is peace between us and them.’

  She held out her arm with the Lowther Arcade bangle on it.

  The children from London, where nothing now surprises anyone, had never before seen so many people look so astonished.

  They crowded round the children, touching their clothes, their shoes, the buttons on the boys’ jackets, and the coral of the girls’ necklaces.

  ‘Do say something,’ whispered Anthea.

  ‘We come,’ said Cyril, with some dim remembrance of a dreadful day when he had had to wait in an outer office while his father interviewed a solicitor, and there had been nothing to read but the Daily Telegraph—‘we come from the world where the sun never sets. And peace with honour is what we want. We are the great Anglo-Saxon or conquering race. Not that we want to conquer you,’ he added hastily. ‘We only want to look at your houses and your—well, at all you’ve got here, and then we shall return to our own place, and tell of all that we have seen so that your name may be famed.’

  Cyril’s speech didn’t keep the crowd from pressing round and looking as eagerly as ever at the clothing of the children. Anthea had an idea that these people had never seen woven stuff before, and she saw how wonderful and strange it must seem to people who had never had any clothes but the skins of beasts. The sewing, too, of modern clothes seemed to astonish them very much. They must have been able to sew themselves, by the way, for men who seemed to be the chiefs wore knickerbockers of goat-skin or deer-skin, fastened round the waist with twisted strips of hide. And the women wore long skimpy skirts of animals’ skins. The people were not very tall, their hair was fair, and men and women both had it short. Their eyes were blue, and that seemed odd in Egypt. Most of them were tattooed like sailors, only more roughly.

  ‘What is this? What is this?’ they kept asking touching the children’s clothes curiously.

  Anthea hastily took off Jane’s frilly lace collar and handed it to the woman who seemed most friendly.

  ‘Take this,’ she said, ‘and look at it. And leave us alone. We want to talk among ourselves.’

  She spoke in the tone of authority which she had always found successful when she had not time to coax her baby brother to do as he was told. The tone was just as successful now. The children were left together and the crowd retreated. It paused a dozen yards away to look at the lace collar and to go on talking as hard as it could.

  The children will never know what those people said, though they knew well enough that they, the four strangers, were the subject of the talk. They tried to comfort themselves by remembering the girl’s promise of friendliness, but of course the thought of the charm was more comfortable than anything else. They sat down on the sand in the shadow of the hedged-round place in the middle of the village, and now for the first time they were able to look about them and to see something more than a crowd of eager, curious faces.

  They here noticed that the women wore necklaces made of beads of different coloured stone, and from these hung pendants of odd, strange shapes, and some of them had bracelets of ivory and flint.

  ‘I say,’ said Robert, ‘what a lot we could teach them if we stayed here!’

  ‘I expect they could teach us something too,’ said Cyril. ‘Did you notice that flint bracelet the woman had that Anthea gave the collar to? That must have taken some making. Look here, they’ll get suspicious if we talk among ourselves, and I do want to know about how they do things. Let’s get the girl to show us round, and we can be thinking about how to get the Amulet at the same time. Only mind, we must keep together.’

  Anthea beckoned to the girl, who was standing a little way off looking wistfully at them, and she came gladly.

  ‘Tell us how you make the bracelets, the stone ones,’ said Cyril.

  ‘With other stones,’ said the girl; ‘the men make them; we have men of special skill in such work.’

  ‘Haven’t you any iron tools?’

  ‘Iron,’ said the girl, ‘I don’t know what you mean.’ It was the first word she had not understood.

  ‘Are all your tools of flint?’ asked Cyril. ‘Of course,’ said the girl, opening her eyes wide.

  I wish I had time to tell you of that talk. The English children wanted to hear all about this new place, but they also wanted to tell of their own country. It was like when you come back from your holidays and you want to hear and to tell everything at the same time. As the talk went on there were more and more words that the girl could not understand, and the children soon gave up the attempt to explain to her what their own country was like, when they began to see how very few of the things they had always thought they could not do without were really not at all necessary to life.

  The girl showed them how the huts were made—indeed, as one was being made that very day she took them to look at it. The way of building was very different from ours. The men stuck long pieces of wood into a piece of ground the size of the hut they wanted to make. These were about eight inches apart; then they put in another row about eight inches away from the first, and then a third row still further out. Then all the space between was filled up with small branches and twigs, and then daubed over with black mud worked with the feet till it was soft and sticky like putty.

  The girl told them how the men went hunting with flint spears and arrows, and how they made boats with reeds and clay. Then she explained the reed thing in the river that she had taken the fish out of. It was a fish-trap—just a ring of reeds set up in the water with only one little opening in it, and in this opening, just below the water, were stuck reeds slanting the way of the river’s flow, so that the fish, when they had swum sillily in, sillily couldn’t get out again. She showed them the clay pots and jars and platters, some of them ornamented with black and red patterns, and the most wonderful things made of flint and different sorts of stone, beads, and ornaments, and tools and weapons of all sorts and kinds.

  ‘It is really wonderful,’ said Cyril patronizingly, ‘when you consider that it’s all eight thousand years ago—’

  ‘I don’t understand you,’ said the girl.

  ‘It isn’t eight thousand years ago,’ whispered Jane. ‘It’s now—and that’s just what I don’t like about it. I say, do let’s get home again before anything more happens. You can see for yourselves the charm isn’t here.’

  ‘What’s in that place in the middle?’ asked Anthea, struck by a sudden thought, and pointing to the fence.

  ‘That’s t
he secret sacred place,’ said the girl in a whisper. ‘No one knows what is there. There are many walls, and inside the insidest one it is, but no one knows what it is except the headsmen.’

  ‘I believe you know,’ said Cyril, looking at her very hard.

  ‘I’ll give you this if you’ll tell me,’ said Anthea taking off a bead-ring which had already been much admired.

  ‘Yes,’ said the girl, catching eagerly at the ring. ‘My father is one of the heads, and I know a water charm to make him talk in his sleep. And he has spoken. I will tell you. But if they know I have told you they will kill me. In the insidest inside there is a stone box, and in it there is the Amulet. None knows whence it came. It came from very far away.’

  ‘Have you seen it?’ asked Anthea.

  The girl nodded.

  ‘Is it anything like this?’ asked Jane, rashly producing the charm.

  The girl’s face turned a sickly greenish-white.

  ‘Hide it, hide it,’ she whispered. ‘You must put it back. If they see it they will kill us all. You for taking it, and me for knowing that there was such a thing. Oh, woe—woe! why did you ever come here?’

  ‘Don’t be frightened,’ said Cyril. ‘They shan’t know. Jane, don’t you be such a little jack-ape again—that’s all. You see what will happen if you do. Now, tell me—’ He turned to the girl, but before he had time to speak the question there was a loud shout, and a man bounded in through the opening in the thorn-hedge.

  ‘Many foes are upon us!’ he cried. ‘Make ready the defences!’

  His breath only served for that, and he lay panting on the ground. ‘Oh, do let’s go home!’ said Jane. ‘Look here—I don’t care—I will!’

  She held up the charm. Fortunately all the strange, fair people were too busy to notice her. She held up the charm. And nothing happened.

  ‘You haven’t said the word of power,’ said Anthea.

  Jane hastily said it—and still nothing happened.

  ‘Hold it up towards the East, you silly!’ said Robert.

  ‘Which is the East?’ said Jane, dancing about in her agony of terror.

  Nobody knew. So they opened the fish-bag to ask the Psammead.

  And the bag had only a waterproof sheet in it.

  The Psammead was gone.

  ‘Hide the sacred thing! Hide it! Hide it!’ whispered the girl.

  Cyril shrugged his shoulders, and tried to look as brave as he knew he ought to feel.

  ‘Hide it up, Pussy,’ he said. ‘We are in for it now. We’ve just got to stay and see it out.’

  CHAPTER 5

  THE FIGHT IN THE VILLAGE

  Here was a horrible position! Four English children, whose proper date was A.D. 1905, and whose proper address was London, set down in Egypt in the year 6000 B.C. with no means whatever of getting back into their own time and place. They could not find the East, and the sun was of no use at the moment, because some officious person had once explained to Cyril that the sun did not really set in the West at all—nor rise in the East either, for the matter of that.

  The Psammead had crept out of the bass-bag when they were not looking and had basely deserted them.

  An enemy was approaching. There would be a fight. People get killed in fights, and the idea of taking part in a fight was one that did not appeal to the children.

  The man who had brought the news of the enemy still lay panting on the sand. His tongue was hanging out, long and red, like a dog’s. The people of the village were hurriedly filling the gaps in the fence with thorn-bushes from the heap that seemed to have been piled there ready for just such a need. They lifted the cluster-thorns with long poles—much as men at home, nowadays, lift hay with a fork.

  Jane bit her lip and tried to decide not to cry.

  Robert felt in his pocket for a toy pistol and loaded it with a pink paper cap. It was his only weapon.

  Cyril tightened his belt two holes.

  And Anthea absently took the drooping red roses from the buttonholes of the others, bit the ends of the stalks, and set them in a pot of water that stood in the shadow by a hut door. She was always rather silly about flowers.

  ‘Look here!’ she said. ‘I think perhaps the Psammead is really arranging something for us. I don’t believe it would go away and leave us all alone in the Past. I’m certain it wouldn’t.’

  Jane succeeded in deciding not to cry—at any rate yet.

  ‘But what can we do?’ Robert asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ Cyril answered promptly, ‘except keep our eyes and ears open. Look! That runner chap’s getting his wind. Let’s go and hear what he’s got to say.’

  The runner had risen to his knees and was sitting back on his heels. Now he stood up and spoke. He began by some respectful remarks addressed to the heads of the village. His speech got more interesting when he said—

  ‘I went out in my raft to snare ibises, and I had gone up the stream an hour’s journey. Then I set my snares and waited. And I heard the sound of many wings, and looking up, saw many herons circling in the air. And I saw that they were afraid; so I took thought. A beast may scare one heron, coming upon it suddenly, but no beast will scare a whole flock of herons. And still they flew and circled, and would not light. So then I knew that what scared the herons must be men, and men who knew not our ways of going softly so as to take the birds and beasts unawares. By this I knew they were not of our race or of our place. So, leaving my raft, I crept along the river bank, and at last came upon the strangers. They are many as the sands of the desert, and their spear-heads shine red like the sun. They are a terrible people, and their march is towards us. Having seen this, I ran, and did not stay till I was before you.’

  ‘These are your folk,’ said the headman, turning suddenly and angrily on Cyril, ‘you came as spies for them.’

  ‘We did not,’ said Cyril indignantly. ‘We wouldn’t be spies for anything. I’m certain these people aren’t a bit like us. Are they now?’ he asked the runner.

  ‘No,’ was the answer. ‘These men’s faces were darkened, and their hair black as night. Yet these strange children, maybe, are their gods, who have come before to make ready the way for them.’

  A murmur ran through the crowd.

  ‘No, no,’ said Cyril again. ‘We are on your side. We will help you to guard your sacred things.’

  The headman seemed impressed by the fact that Cyril knew that there were sacred things to be guarded. He stood a moment gazing at the children. Then he said—

  ‘It is well. And now let all make offering, that we may be strong in battle.’

  The crowd dispersed, and nine men, wearing antelope-skins, grouped themselves in front of the opening in the hedge in the middle of the village. And presently, one by one, the men brought all sorts of things—hippopotamus flesh, ostrich-feathers, the fruit of the date palms, red chalk, green chalk, fish from the river, and ibex from the mountains; and the headman received these gifts. There was another hedge inside the first, about a yard from it, so that there was a lane inside between the hedges. And every now and then one of the headmen would disappear along this lane with full hands and come back with hands empty.

  ‘They’re making offerings to their Amulet,’ said Anthea. ‘We’d better give something too.’

  The pockets of the party, hastily explored, yielded a piece of pink tape, a bit of sealing-wax, and part of the Waterbury watch that Robert had not been able to help taking to pieces at Christmas and had never had time to rearrange. Most boys have a watch in this condition. They presented their offerings, and Anthea added the red roses.

  The headman who took the things looked at them with awe, especially at the red roses and the Waterbury-watch fragment.

  ‘This is a day of very wondrous happenings,’ he said. ‘I have no more room in me to be astonished. Our maide
n said there was peace between you and us. But for this coming of a foe we should have made sure.’

  The children shuddered.

  ‘Now speak. Are you upon our side?’

  ‘Yes. Don’t I keep telling you we are?’ Robert said. ‘Look here. I will give you a sign. You see this.’ He held out the toy pistol. ‘I shall speak to it, and if it answers me you will know that I and the others are come to guard your sacred thing—that we’ve just made the offerings to.’

  ‘Will that god whose image you hold in your hand speak to you alone, or shall I also hear it?’ asked the man cautiously.

  ‘You’ll be surprised when you do hear it,’ said Robert. ‘Now, then.’ He looked at the pistol and said—

  ‘If we are to guard the sacred treasure within’—he pointed to the hedged-in space—‘speak with thy loud voice, and we shall obey.’

  He pulled the trigger, and the cap went off. The noise was loud, for it was a two-shilling pistol, and the caps were excellent.

  Every man, woman, and child in the village fell on its face on the sand. The headman who had accepted the test rose first.

  ‘The voice has spoken,’ he said. ‘Lead them into the ante-room of the sacred thing.’

  So now the four children were led in through the opening of the hedge and round the lane till they came to an opening in the inner hedge, and they went through an opening in that, and so passed into another lane.

  The thing was built something like a maze, and all the hedges were of brushwood and thorns.

  ‘It’s like the maze at Hampton Court,’ whispered Anthea.

  The lanes were all open to the sky, but the little hut in the middle of the maze was round-roofed, and a curtain of skins hung over the doorway.

  ‘Here you may wait,’ said their guide, ‘but do not dare to pass the curtain.’ He himself passed it and disappeared.

  ‘But look here,’ whispered Cyril, ‘some of us ought to be outside in case the Psammead turns up.’