The Marvellous Land of Snergs

by Edward Wyke Smith

  How Joe Bore Captivity

  Hours had passed. The sun was not now so very high in the heavens. From the direction of the beach came the sounds of happy shrieks; the children were having a great time there. On the window sill of the turret chamber sat Joe, his hands in his shorts’ pockets and his feet dangling outside, looking forth disconsolately. Behind him on the floor was a platter with odd bits of dry bread, and a pitcher of clear cold water from the pump. There was nothing else behind him but a little wooden bench; the chamber was as bare and smooth as an empty jampot. Above him was the bright blue sky. Before him was green grass and waving forest. Below him was a nasty drop of twenty-seven feet. I don’t think I have left anything out.

  Joe started suddenly and looked about, for from somewhere he had heard the hoot of the Aviola, or small downy owl, which by rights should be still asleep at that hour. He replied with the half-whistle, half-bleat of the Crested Grebe (these were secret signals), and Sylvia came worming her way out from the neighbouring herbaceous border, accompanied by their Small but faithful hound. She parted her mass of curls, which had fallen across her face in the passage, and stood having a good look at him.

  “Oh, Joe,” she said in the low voice of pity, “are you very beastly lonely up there? “

  “Yes, Sylvia, I’m just as lonely and miserable! And I’ve had nothing to eat but some dry bread. I think they dried it on purpose.”

  “And Tiger’s been wondering what’s the matter, Joe.” She held him up, and Tiger caught sight of Joe and wriggled and made moans, as of a puppy that wanted comfort.” But I’ve got something for you.”

  She put down Tiger and produced a handkerchief.” I’ve got some apple sauce on bits of bread that aren’t so dry, and a piece of seedy cake. And some pears. I suppose you haven’t got a piece of string? “

  “Yes I have,” he answered joyfully.” I’ve got my fishing line. Here it is. I’ve been fishing for hours and hours trying to fish up something to play with, but all I got was some bits of twigs and I couldn’t do much with them.”

  Sylvia hooked her handkerchief with the provisions on to the line, and a moment later Joe was eating busily.

  “You’re just like a captive princess in a tower,” she said after a time.” Like Rapunzel.”

  “Except I haven’t got such long hair. I feel like an old cat up a pole—except I can’t get down. When are they going to let me out? “

  “Miss Watkyns said when all of us are in bed. Isn’t she vicious?”

  “But that’s hours and hours! Oh, Sylvia, I must get out!” He bounced up and down on the window sill, and Sylvia squawked.

  “Oh, Joe, you ass, you’ll fall! “

  “Not me, don’t you think it.” He bounced up and down again to show his skill.

  “Look here, Joe, shall I hook on Tiger? I’ll tie him in my hankie so that he won’t fall and then you can play with him for a bit—No, you keep him up there with you, and then won’t Miss Watkyns be surprised when she finds him there! She’ll think he’s got wings somehow.” “Yes, that’d. be fine. But I’ve got ‘a much better idea, Sylvia. You just bring me that clothes-line over there.”

  “What for? And it’s got nighties drying on it.”

  “I don’t want them, I want only the rope. Do, Sylvia, it’s something delicious. If you don’t I’ll show you how to hangout of a window head downwards.”

  “No, don’t!” cried Sylvia.” I’ll bring it.” She ran off and came back a minute later with the clothesline, which she fastened to his fish-hook.” Nighties all over the grass. There’ll be a fine row over it if they catch me. You are a headstrong boy, Joe.”

  Joe did not answer, for he was busy. He hauled up the rope and fastened one end of it to the bench, and then managed to jam the bench across the window frame. Then he called to Sylvia to stand from under.

  “Because,” he said, “it’s rather a rotten piece of rope, and besides, I don’t think this silly old bench is going to stand much jerking about. But we’ll soon see.”

  On the next instant, Sylvia gave a screech, for there was Joe outside the window, spinning round on the rope. But before you could count ten he had slid down to the ground and Tiger was leaping and trying to get at his face so as to lick it. Not a very wonderful trick for a circus boy, but then Sylvia didn’t know anything about circuses. She put her arms round his neck and hugged him.

  “Oh, Joe,” she said, “you are a brave boy! You looked just like a clean monkey coming down—except that you haven’t got a tail. But how are you going to get the rope put back? “

  “I’m not bothering about the rope,” said Joe.” You see we’re just going to run away.”

  “Run away! What for? “

  “For fun. I’m not going to be locked up by anybody. I’m going over to see the Snergs, and you’ve got to come with me. Tiger’s coming, too, of course. We’ll have a glorious time! “

  “What do you mean, you contentious infant?”(She sometimes used words she had heard from Miss Watkyns and other ladies.) “It’s miles and miles and miles! And you don’t know the way there.”

  “Yes I do.’ It’s straight over there, just a little bit this side of where the sun goes under. We’ll just go that way until we can’t see it, and then we’ll sleep in a nice place in the forest.”

  “Yes, clever, and what about tomorrow? The sun’s always over the sea in the morning.”

  “Then all we’ve got to do is to go the other way. Can’t you see? “

  Sylvia was rather impressed by his resourcefulness.” Yes, but what about afterwards, Joe,” she said after a moment.

  “What will Miss Watkyns do when she knows about it?”

  “Yes, but what happens afterwards will happen afterwards. Can’t you see? Come along, Sylvia, its adventures, like those tales your nurse told you about. And it’s much better being a tale than just hearing it. We’ll sleep in the forest tonight it’s nice and warm—and tomorrow sometime we’ll be at the Snerg’s place and have a jolly time with them. Just think what the other kids will think of us. Won’t they be jealous! “

  How it happened Sylvia could never quite make out, but she found herself running .along hand-in-hand with Joe over the soft turf, with Tiger bouncing alongside of them and sometimes tumbling over his own barks, drawing nearer and nearer to the trees which looked so cool and inviting on that warm afternoon.

  “Oh, Joe,” she panted as she ran, “what an absurd mite you are! “

  The Forest Land

  It seemed to these precocious infants that the forest was deeper and shadier and more silent, and the grass softer than they had ever known it before; but perhaps that was because before they had always gone with troops of young ones, which would at least do away with the quietness. In parts where the trees were not so very thick the grass was all dappled with spots of sun, and sometimes there were great shafts of light through the trees to make a guide for them, for all they had to do so far was to go as fast as they could in the direction of the sun. And they ran on and on and on, with the pretence idea. that they were fleeing from enemies who knew no touch of mercy and they must get as far as possible while they could.

  At length they had to stop running and walk, but they walked hard because Joe said they must keep on for hours and hours. But it was not so very long before they had to sit down and rest, for they were all hot and sticky and getting very hungry. Joe opened Sylvia’s handkerchief, in which he earned the rest of the pears she had brought. There were five left, rather soft with the jolting, being ripe, but they ate them, squashed parts and peel and all, and then they had a draught from a stream, lying down on their stomachs and drinking like hunters. Tiger’s share of the meal was as much water as he liked to drink, and the sight of him sitting up and thinking after this meagre diet brought into Sylvia’s head an idea that perhaps they had been a tiny bit rash. But Joe said that Tiger could make up
for it tomorrow by a good blow-out, entirely omitting to consider the many weary miles that lay between them and the country of the Snergs and the slim chance they had of ever finding their way there at all. He said it was really adventures, like the one her nurse had told her of, and he pointed out how very likely it was that something exciting would happen at any moment. Sylvia gave her opinion that they were rather too small to be of much use if anything exciting did occur and said she hoped it wouldn’t. She asked him if he thought it would be cold when the dark came, and he said, “No, only nice and cool,” for he was an optimist always.

  They got up and went on again, following the gleam of the sun as well as they could, until at last it went altogether and they could only see a red glow from the open parts where there were mostly bushes. And still they went on and on and on, until Sylvia said her legs began to feel all wobbly and she had to sit down. There it was: those silly things were deep in the lonely woods and the shadows were creeping up from the far places.

  Joe climbed a tree to see if he could see something worth seeing, such as the smoke from an honest wood-cutter’s hut or the like, as in the tales of forests; though really he hadn’t much expectation of finding anything, for he had been told there was little else but billions of trees between the sea and the Snerg country. All he could see was a little speck of red which he said might be the last of the sunset, or might be a fire made by Indians or cannibals; though of course he did not mean the last part nor did Sylvia believe it or take any interest in it. What she wanted was a bite of real supper and a bed; the forest had been growing darker and more serious and a little shiver went through her as if a lot of the fun had suddenly gone.

  “It’s getting more and more like one of those tales,” said Joe in a satisfied way—as will have been seen, he had a good deal of what is known as the bulldog breed in him.” Specially that part over there where it’s like a dark passage. Suppose an old witch was to come along there, flop, flop, flop, and tell us to go home with her.”

  “Oh, don’t, Joe! We don’t want it too much like those tales. It’s getting awfully lonely. I wish I hadn’t come.”

  “But it’s only lonely enough to be nice, Sylvia. Besides, it’s great fun. There’s nobody to tell us we mustn’t do things, or to tell us when to go to bed. We jolly well go to bed when we like.”

  “Yes, but where are we to go to bed? “

  “Oh, somewhere or other. I know! We’ll get some fallen leaves, like in the babes in the wood, and covet ourselves up.”

  “But it’s summer time and there aren’t any fallen leaves.”

  “More there are. Then what we’ve got to do is to cuddle up close. I’ll look after you, never fear, and if any old witch was to—” here he stopped suddenly and looked round at the deepening shadows.

  “Oh, Joe!” cried Sylvia, getting close up to him and rather behind him.

  The sound they heard was a nasty, soft, flopping sound, and it came from the part which Joe had said looked like a dark passage. He wished he had brought a sword with him somehow, or a bow and arrows, or else one of old Vanderdecken’s guns even if it did knock him over backwards as the one did that he got hold of one day (but nobody found out who it was). Alas, he had nothing but his wooden scalping knife; but he got it out because it seemed better than, nothing.

  Then, to the surprise and joy of these infants, a great cinnamon bear. hove in sight and came up to them, wagging his head from side to side, and, so to speak, gently barging at them. It took some time to prove to him that they were in no mood for play, but by dint of strenuous pushing at him on one side he got it into his thick head that they wanted him to lie down, and he flopped over. Then they got close up to him, Sylvia on the inside so as to give her as much of the fur as possible, and Tiger curled up in a little hollow space by her neck; and they were soon asleep, for they were very tired, what with the long tramp and the novelty of everything. But what a change! From their nicely prepared supper of warm milk. and rusks to cold pears and water. From their clean, decorously tinted dormitory to the lonely wind-sighing forest. From their little cots, with clean sheets spread over resilient aromatic hops, to the lee-side of a bear. And the bear had bad dreams and kept waking them up by moaning and shuddering sounds, and more than once he turned over, forgetting all about them, and Joe had to punch him and pull his fur hard to let him know that there were young folks and a puppy underneath. It was a long, hard, disagreeable night, and they were right glad when, after a week as it seemed, the dawn came.

  The Dawn

  There was nothing special about the dawn when it did come. It was cold and grey and shivery, with a mist that hid the trees a little distance away, and Sylvia felt very discontented and hungry and really wished she hadn’t listened to Joe. He on the other hand was very brave and strong, and he rubbed her hands and feet to warm them and then turned somersaults backwards to warm himself; to the great surprise of the bear, who sat up on his hind legs and stared, as cinnamons will at anything new. There was nothing to eat except some chilly berries all covered with dew, and these did not appeal to the children’s stomachs at that hour. But the bear ate large quantities of them and they had to kick him to make stop stuffing and come on.

  Joe helped Sylvia onto the bear’s back, and she sat there with Tiger clasped to her because he was now a very silent pup owing to his having had nothing to eat for such a longtime, and they went on their way for some miles—that is to say, they went on in an opposite. direction to where they could see signs of sunrise over the trees. But the bear did not understand that they, wanted him to go as near due west as possible, and he kept turning up sylvan glades at right angles and Joe had continuously to push his head round in the way he should go.

  They parted with him suddenly and in a surprising way. He caught sight of a hollow tree in the middle distance, from which issued bees in large numbers though peacefully, and he intimated by grunts that there was food for all hands and to spare. Before they quite realized what he meant he was charging up to the tree, and Sylvia had just time to slip from his back. In another instant he was tearing away at the rotten part of the tree to get at the honey, and clouds of bees came out in a horrible rage to see about it. Joe caught Sylvia’s hand and dragged her into a clump of bushes just in time, and they went tearing through it and then as hard as they could pelt over the grass until they were a long way off. They could hear, subdued by distance, the hum of bees like the rich deep note of a church organ, and the mixed grunting arid howling of the bear; though whether the latter sounds were those of joy or grief was a doubtful question. Sylvia said that bears did not feel pain from bees’ stings except on the tip of the nose because their fur protected them, but Joe was of opinion that they got stung furiously all over but that they considered the honey was worth the pain, hence the mixed quality of the howls.

  They went on and on and on, and at last the sun got up and sent beams of cheerful light through the leaves and drove away the mist, so that ‘Sylvia began to feel much better, though hungry, and hungrier as time went on. And just when the question of breakfast had become a really serious and mournful subject, they roused a shout of joy, for they saw coming towards them down the woodland ways one Gorbo, a Snerg.

  Gorbo the Snerg

  Gorbo was a well-known, utterly irresponsible Snerg who occasionally came over to Watkyns Bay to do a job of work, and who was quite celebrated for his habit of doing it very badly and getting tired of it almost at once and wandering off again. He was of average size for a Snerg and fairly young—possibly two hundred and fifty—and though good-natured to excess he had little intelligence of the useful kind. He had given it out that he was a potter by trade—he had indeed some superficial knowledge of the business—and he had induced Miss Watkyns to let him start a little kiln in order to supply the Society with pots. But there was no particular shape to his pots when he had made them and many of them fell to bits when they were handled, so Miss Watkyns told hi
m plainly that he was a fraud; and to this he agreed heartily for he did not like to contradict people. She told him to go away—to potter off was her bitter expression—so he had gone to spend a day or two with Vanderdecken’s men, who rather liked his face but I don’t know why, and then he had come across the forest on his way to the town, where he had a little house of one room and a kitchen. And that is why the children met him that morning, grinning all over his face and carrying his bow and arrows, and a little bundle containing his few potter’s tools and his other shirt and a bunch of wheat-cakes. He had slept in a thicket of ferns, some of which he had chopped up to form a sort of nest, and what with the odds and ends of fern sticking to his clothes and his wild hair straggling out from his saucer cap, he looked as disreputable a person as you might expect to meet even among the Snergs, who are not over particular about their personal appearance at the best.