by H. R. Millar
Then, all having been made ready, there was a pause, and at the very last moment the guard pulled the whistle out of his mouth.
“I might have known!” he exclaimed angrily. “Look!”
All looked across the river and saw a figure standing forlornly.
It was the little Victorian girl.
So once more the Giant waded across. He held out his great hand so that she might step on to it, but she said she might feel giddy.
HE HELD OUT HIS GREAT HAND
This was altogether too much for the guard.
“Giddy?” he yelled. “Giddy? you weren’t giddy on the bridge at Eyrie! Don’t stand any of her nonsense, Mr. Soter; fetch her over!”
But the Giant was as gentle as he was strong. He ignored the guard and again tried to persuade the little lady. Nothing he could say would move her. But, as I am sure you know, we all of us come to our last excuse in time. And the little Victorian’s was, “she was afraid she would hurt Mr. Soter’s hand if she stepped on it.”
I suppose you are wondering what all this had to do with trains and things? So am I. So did the guard, and at this flimsy excuse he was obliged to turn away.
“I know I shall burst!” he told some distant snow-clad mountains.
But the Giant gently persisted. “Fear not, little one,” he said. “Lions have stood on it.”
After that, of course, the little one could not very well refuse; so she was carried across the river like a fragile and costly ornament; and during that short spell she found time to ask a few questions, among which were:
What was the Giant’s age?
Where did his mother live?
What did he carry in the bag at his belt? etc., etc.
And the answers seemed to be very satisfactory.*
The parting was just like all partings—laughs and kisses and some tears. I don’t know whether I should mention this, but when you are as old as I am you will know that good-byes and kisses and tears have a good every deal to do with trains somehow.
* Some of these naturalists have a cool nerve!
* I’m sorry I’ve forgotten them. I can’t remember every-thing.
CHAPTER THE ELEVENTH
THE PLACE WHERE THE OLD ENGINES GO
THEN came the promised shove, and it was something like a shove. There was a slight shiver, and the landscape changed into somewhere else—the little city of Microla.
Every wheel under them was red hot, and for the first and only time in this adventure the red-headed guard was seen to look at his time-tablets with a smile!
Microla was an amazingly small place; everything—palaces, houses, and people—was built on a tiny scale, and you had to be careful where you put your feet. You could look over the tops of the houses easily.
A king no higher than John’s knife came out to meet them. He was followed by a swarm of courtiers, bringing gifts of food. I suppose they had no idea of what ordinary-sized children’s appetites were, because the food, although it was beautiful to taste, left the boys and girls hungrier than they were before. So after filling the engine water-jar, and their own pots (and nearly emptying the palace lakes), the children set out again through the night.
Long before dawn, John, Peter, and George found themselves running on a great railway, which had scores of tracks, all perfectly straight, and extending on either side of them as far as the eye could reach. It was a railway that seemed as broad as it was long, for its rails covered the earth. And John, Peter, and George wondered what any railroad could want with such endless tracks.
The watchful boys were soon to know. From behind them, like distant thunder, came a sound as if all the engines that ever ran were coming after them like a whirlwind. Travelling at enormous speed, scores of engines passed the antiquated Chinese gift in a flash, and disappeared ahead in a thick fog of smoke.
It seemed almost instantly that the cloud of engines turned and came racing back again. This time the boys, somewhat recovered from their surprise, recognised many of the engines, such as Puffing Billy, Columbia, and the Rocket. Very old engines, which the boys had seen in pictures, were there, running at a speed which they had never so much as approached when new. One of them slowed up beside the children’s train, and two engine-men with bushy whiskers and top-hats looked curiously at John, Peter, and George’s engine from behind an enormous driving-wheel. And having satisfied their curiosity, they flew ahead again, with a swiftness that filled the boys with envy.
“THAT’S THE ‘CRAMPTON’”
THE GOLDEN GIANT
“That’s the ‘ Crampton,’” said John. “Just look at that wheel! I wish we had the Baltic here—we’d show him; but what can one do with this antique?”
So willy-nilly they had to jog along in the old manner.
“This must be the place where all the old engines go,” George said; “turned out like old horses, I suppose!”
George was nearer the truth than he knew. It was the country to which all the old engines go when they are finished and done with, a place where they can race to their hearts’ content unhindered by trains, signals, and time-tables. How joyously they ran!
When the children had passed out of this happy railway land their own train seemed in comparison no quicker than a row of tired snails. John, Peter, and George struggled with the engine and tried all sorts of dodges to make it more like an “express” than it was. But, try as they might, the magician’s miracle rumbled sedately on at its own pace. I think, however, that the ancient relic had a lot more sense than the boys gave it credit for, and this slow, doddering pace was but the calm which comes before the storm, as it were. So far the engine had always managed to get them out of trouble; but the old thing was caught napping when a real earthquake happened under their very feet (or wheels).
The train was crawling through a mountain gorge at the time, and suddenly it began to wag about. When it had stopped wagging, the children collected their scattered senses and found themselves settled between two great barriers of rock and earth, and no possible way for the train to pass. The rails came out of a great heap behind them and disappeared under a much bigger heap in front of them. The situation looked really hopeless this time. It was useless to think of digging a way through, even if they had spades. And I think the train and the children would be in that horrid valley now if it hadn’t been for Nats.
This learned boy found the way out. He had been observed walking up and down in deep meditation and occasionally making swift calculations in a little book. I don’t know what the sums were about, but Nats refused food until he had solved them, which took him a long time.
But having completed the sums, or whatever they were, Nats pulled his hat more firmly on his head and started to climb the steep mountain side. The children watched him until he had bobbed out of sight, and then sat down to wait for his return. They felt hopeful somehow, because Nats had thrown away his butterfly nets and gone away wearing an extra wise expression.
And, oh, what a long time they waited! It was a whole week before they got warning of his return, and then stones began to roll down into the gorge.
Away up the mountain side where it curved over to the sky they saw two objects moving towards them. They were quite tiny at first, but as they came nearer they were seen to be the missing Nats driving something before him—some creature that was very large and shapeless.
The children wondered what the strange shape could be.
THE HAPPY LAND OF OLD ENGINES
“It’s a rockery,” said one.
“No—it’s a billiard-table!” cried another. “No, it isn’t! It’s a—a—oh! I don’t know what it is.”
As the two got nearer and clearer they didn’t like its looks at all, and when Nats and his find slid down the last fifty yards in a cloud of dust, the children fled up the other hill-side in a panic.
And so would you have done. When Nats and his weird beast came to a stand, the children returned and looked at it.
I’ve done the best I can
with its portrait, for both it and Nats were smothered in dust and flue.
The red-headed guard didn’t seem to mind it in the least; he walked all round it like an overseer and examined it critically.
“And what’s the good of that?” he demanded.
“Wait and see!” snapped the unhappy Nats, banging the dust out of his hat on a convenient corner of the beast. “You needn’t kiss it if you don’t want to. I’ve had trouble enough to get it here!”
Nats was dreadfully angry. If ever you’ve seen a furious lamb, he was like that. And well he might be, for he had not eaten or slept for a week, and we will forgive him for calling the red-headed guard an ungrateful pig.*
“Sleepy sort of beggar,” said the guard loftily.
“So would you be,” answered Nats, “if you’d been asleep for ten million years, besides having to fight a spider in a pitch-dark cavern.”
“Was it a very big spider?” asked a quavering voice.
THE EDGE OF THE WORLD
“Big?” said Nats; “why, its web was a mile long—that’s some of it,” he continued, and he pulled what looked like a piece of ship’s rope, all sticky, off the monster. Then he suddenly went to the head of the beast. “I thought as much,” he growled. “He’s gone to sleep again. He’s done that twenty times since I found him.”
And sure enough the beast had. It stood on its short, squatty legs, breathing twice a minute like a great smith’s bellows.
Then Nats behaved in a mysterious manner: he fished out of his pocket two smallish pieces of root; one he took to the great barrier and buried in a cranny between two rocks; the other he placed on the nose of the sleeping beast.
Then he stalked up to the guard and said, “Give me that whistle!” and to everybody’s surprise the guard meekly handed it over. Nats blew a piercing blast into the ear of the sleeping Pariasaurus.
Then the amazingest thing happened. The brute opened its jewellike eyes and promptly swallowed the piece of root on its nose. Then it scratched with its hind-legs like a dog on a lawn, and so, having eased the stiffness of ten million years from its joints, it lurched towards the barrier.
I can’t tell you exactly what happened, but the children say that it fought terribly with its claws, and sank into the barrier as if it were only made of butter. Then once more they flew up the hill-side to safety away from the hurricane of flying rocks, stones, and earth that the great beast threw behind it.
Twice the monster turned in the hole and thrust out before it a vast heap of rubble, and on the second occasion it came right out, with claws that were well-nigh red-hot, and made for the engine. Rearing up against the tender, it began to drink the water in the tank with a long yellow tongue. Peter tried to push it away with his foot because there was little water to spare.
THE PARIASAURUS FINDS A WAY
“Don’t,” screamed Nats, “or it’ll tear the tank open like a paper bag!”
So they had to let the thirsty monster drink as far as its tongue could reach.
For the third time it returned to its task, and from the tunnel the alarmed children heard the most tremendous roars and squeals.
“I don’t think it feels very well,” said someone to Nats.
“Rubbish!” said Nats. “It is singing at its work!”
Then the guard, who had been intently looking into the tunnel, suddenly turned.
“It’s through!” he said.
It was a glorious sight for the children to see the patch of blue at the other end of the great hole.
There was no sign of Pariasaurus, so the children had to turn to and clear the rails themselves. It was a tremendous job, but they got it done, and then the train was taken very cautiously into the tunnel, which was really nothing more than a very rough hole. The other end let them out on to the narrow edge of a precipice one thousand feet high with just room for the train to turn.
PETER TRIED TO PUSH IT AWAY WITH HIS FOOT
There was no sign of their rescuer at all, but on looking down the precipice Nats saw its footmarks, and said it couldn’t have hurt itself, and most likely had gone back to its den in the cavern to sleep. He sighed as he said this, because of all the specimens he had found he wanted this one most for his museum.
It was as well, perhaps, that he couldn’t “collect” Pariasaurus, because it would have been a tremendous job to stick it down on a card—without a lot of help, that is.
Then on again—but slowly.
They rode along the precipice until it led on to a plain.
* Dear! dear!
CHAPTER THE TWELFTH
THE EDGE OF THE WORLD
THE ancient train rolled along that day through country that changed all the time. It was wooded at first, but gradually became bare and more bare till, towards late afternoon, nothing was seen but a grass plain which was smooth as a lawn. The train went slower and slower.
John said, “We don’t seem to be getting anything out of her!”
Then, for a reason he could never explain, he felt compelled to slow up. For some time the boys had been puzzled with what they saw ahead of them. The train seemed to be at an immense height, but no horizon could be seen.
They stopped finally a few paces from what seemed like the edge of another precipice. All got down from the train, but no one ventured to go forward—except the guard.
“I will look,” he said.
He took off his cap and watch-belt, and going down on his hands and knees, crept forward till he reached the edge. Then he lay down flat and looked over.
The others watched breathlessly.
There was a long pause.
“What do you see?” cried some.
The guard made no answer. But he seemed tremendously absorbed in something.
The children’s curiosity was too much for them; they dropped upon their hands and knees too, and crept forward, as the red-headed guard had done, and lying in a row beside him, looked over too.
And all of them fell asleep.
They had seen nothing!
That is why they slept.
You want to know why they slept because they saw nothing, I suppose?
Well—you yourself always go to sleep when you see nothing!
Yes, of course you do!
Why? Well, it’s very hard to explain—it’s like this.
If you can see anything you must be awake. That is so, isn’t it? You couldn’t see it if you were not awake.
Then, when you see nothing you are asleep.
That is why all the boys and girls went to sleep when they looked over the edge of the world, because there was nothing.
• • • • • • • •
They all woke up in their own beds.
John, Peter, and George woke up too about the same time.
John was the first to speak.
“I’ve had such a wonderful dream,” he yawned. “I dreamt I was driving a train which was carried across a river by a giant; weird, wasn’t it?”
“Yes; but I liked the old gold-fish best,” answered Peter lazily.
At this John sat up in bed as though he had been jerked up by an unseen hand, and stared at Peter.
“What do you mean?” he managed to gasp. “How—how could you see something in my dream? because I saw the gold-fish too.”
Then George sat up. “Did you see a Chinaman with long nails?” he demanded of John, “because if you did, I saw him too and talked to him!”
“But you couldn’t both be in my dream and see things that I saw—now could you?” said John feebly.
“Did you see the lions?” he went on.
“Yes!” cried Peter and George together, “and a nigger who climbed a high cliff to—”
“Oh! but it’s nonsense—how can it be so? It’s ridiculous. I thought you were just dream ‘ Peters ’ and ‘ Georges.’”
How long the argument would have continued I can’t guess, but it was Peter who found the solution.
“I know!” he yelled excitedly; “the camera!�
�
And if you turn back to the beginning of the story you will know about Peter’s camera. You had forgotten it, hadn’t you? The film it held was developed by three of the most excited boys in the whole world, and they found all the “snaps” were spoiled except three—and here they are.
Now the problem is—Is this story true, or is it only a dream?
And if it is only a dream, how did I remember the shapes and sizes of the nine thousand odd things which I have put in the pictures?
Guess.
The Equatorial.
Nats and the Pariasaurus.
Ebonabad.
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