‘Slaves,’ said Suleiman-bin-Daoud, ‘when this gentleman on my finger’ (that was where the impudent Butterfly was sitting) ‘stamps his left front forefoot you will make my Palace and these gardens disappear in a clap of thunder. When he stamps again you will bring them back carefully.’
‘Now, little brother,’ he said, ‘go back to your wife and stamp all you’ve a mind to.’
Away flew the Butterfly to his wife, who was crying, ‘I dare you to do it! I dare you to do it! Stamp! Stamp now! Stamp!’ Balkis saw the four vast Djinns stoop down to the four corners of the gardens with the Palace in the middle, and she clapped her hands softly and said, ‘At last Suleiman-bin-Daoud will do for the sake of a Butterfly what he ought to have done long ago for his own sake, and the quarrelsome Queens will be frightened!’
Then the Butterfly stamped. The Djinns jerked the Palace and the gardens a thousand miles into the air: there was a most awful thunder-clap, and everything grew inky-black. The Butterfly’s Wife fluttered about in the dark, crying, ‘Oh, I’ll be good! I’m so sorry I spoke. Only bring the gardens back, my dear darling husband, and I’ll never contradict again.’
The Butterfly was nearly as frightened as his wife, and Suleiman-bin-Daoud laughed so much that it was several minutes before he found breath enough to whisper to the Butterfly, ‘Stamp again, little brother. Give me back my Palace, most great magician.’
‘Yes, give him back his Palace,’ said the Butterfly’s Wife, still flying about in the dark like a moth. ‘Give him back his Palace, and don’t let’s have any more horrid magic.’
‘Well, my dear,’ said the Butterfly as bravely as he could, ‘you see what your nagging has led to. Of course it doesn’t make any difference to me — I’m used to this kind of thing — but as a favour to you and to Suleiman-bin-Daoud I don’t mind putting things right.’
This is the picture of the four gull-winged Djinns lifting up Suleiman-bin-Daoud’s Palace the very minute after the Butterfly had stamped. The Palace and the gardens and everything came up in one piece like a board, and they left a big hole in the ground all full of dust and smoke. If you look in the corner, close to the thing that looks like a lion, you will see Suleiman-bin-Daoud with his magic stick and the two Butterflies behind him. The thing that looks like a lion is really a lion carved in stone, and the thing that looks like a milk-can is really a piece of a temple or a house or something. Suleiman-bin-Daoud stood there so as to be out of the way of the dust and the smoke when the Djinns lifted up the Palace. I don’t know the Djinns’ names. They were servants of Suleiman-bin-Daoud’s magic ring, and they changed about every day. They were just common gull-winged Djinns.
The thing at the bottom is a picture of a very friendly Djinn called Akraig. He used to feed the little fishes in the sea three times a day, and his wings were made of pure copper. I put him in to show you what a nice Djinn is like. He did not help to lift the Palace. He was busy feeding little fishes in the Arabian Sea when it happened.
So he stamped once more, and that instant the Djinns let down the Palace and the gardens, without even a bump. The sun shone on the dark-green orange leaves; the fountains played among the pink Egyptian lilies; the birds went on singing, and the Butterfly’s Wife lay on her side under the camphor-tree waggling her wings and panting, ‘Oh, I’ll be good! I’ll be good!’
Suleiman-bin-Daoud could hardly speak for laughing. He leaned back all weak and hiccoughy, and shook his finger at the Butterfly and said, ‘O great wizard, what is the sense of returning to me my Palace if at the same time you slay me with mirth!’
Then came a terrible noise, for all the nine hundred and ninety-nine Queens ran out of the Palace shrieking and shouting and calling for their babies. They hurried down the great marble steps below the fountain, one hundred abreast, and the Most Wise Balkis went statelily forward to meet them and said, ‘What is your trouble, O Queens?’
They stood on the marble steps one hundred abreast and shouted, ‘What is our trouble? We were living peacefully in our golden palace, as is our custom, when upon a sudden the Palace disappeared, and we were left sitting in a thick and noisome darkness; and it thundered, and Djinns and Afrits moved about in the darkness! That is our trouble, O Head Queen, and we are most extremely troubled on account of that trouble, for it was a troublesome trouble, unlike any trouble we have known.’
Then Balkis the Most Beautiful Queen — Suleiman-bin-Daoud’s Very Best Beloved — Queen that was of Sheba and Sabie and the Rivers of the Gold of the South — from the Desert of Zinn to the Towers of Zimbabwe — Balkis, almost as wise as the Most Wise Suleiman-bin-Daoud himself, said, ‘It is nothing, O Queens! A Butterfly has made complaint against his wife because she quarrelled with him, and it has pleased our Lord Suleiman-bin-Daoud to teach her a lesson in low-speaking and humbleness, for that is counted a virtue among the wives of the butterflies.’
Then up and spoke an Egyptian Queen — the daughter of a Pharaoh — and she said, ‘Our Palace cannot be plucked up by the roots like a leek for the sake of a little insect. No! Suleiman-bin-Daoud must be dead, and what we heard and saw was the earth thundering and darkening at the news.’
Then Balkis beckoned that bold Queen without looking at her, and said to her and to the others, ‘Come and see.’
They came down the marble steps, one hundred abreast, and beneath his camphor-tree, still weak with laughing, they saw the Most Wise King Suleiman-bin-Daoud rocking back and forth with a Butterfly on either hand, and they heard him say, ‘O wife of my brother in the air, remember after this, to please your husband in all things, lest he be provoked to stamp his foot yet again; for he has said that he is used to this magic, and he is most eminently a great magician — one who steals away the very Palace of Suleiman-bin-Daoud himself. Go in peace, little folk!’ And he kissed them on the wings, and they flew away.
Then all the Queens except Balkis — the Most Beautiful and Splendid Balkis, who stood apart smiling — fell flat on their faces, for they said, ‘If these things are done when a Butterfly is displeased with his wife, what shall be done to us who have vexed our King with our loud-speaking and open quarrelling through many days?’
Then they put their veils over their heads, and they put their hands over their mouths, and they tiptoed back to the Palace most mousy-quiet.
Then Balkis — The Most Beautiful and Excellent Balkis — went forward through the red lilies into the shade of the camphor-tree and laid her hand upon Suleiman-bin-Daoud’s shoulder and said, ‘O my Lord and Treasure of my Soul, rejoice, for we have taught the Queens of Egypt and Ethiopia and Abyssinia and Persia and India and China with a great and a memorable teaching.’
And Suleiman-bin-Daoud, still looking after the Butterflies where they played in the sunlight, said, ‘O my Lady and Jewel of my Felicity, when did this happen? For I have been jesting with a Butterfly ever since I came into the garden.’ And he told Balkis what he had done.
Balkis — The tender and Most Lovely Balkis — said, ‘O my Lord and Regent of my Existence, I hid behind the camphor-tree and saw it all. It was I who told the Butterfly’s Wife to ask the Butterfly to stamp, because I hoped that for the sake of the jest my Lord would make some great magic and that the Queens would see it and be frightened.’ And she told him what the Queens had said and seen and thought.
Then Suleiman-bin-Daoud rose up from his seat under the camphor-tree, and stretched his arms and rejoiced and said, ‘O my Lady and Sweetener of my Days, know that if I had made a magic against my Queens for the sake of pride or anger, as I made that feast for all the animals, I should certainly have been put to shame. But by means of your wisdom I made the magic for the sake of a jest and for the sake of a little Butterfly, and — behold — it has also delivered me from the vexations of my vexatious wives! Tell me, therefore, O my Lady and Heart of my Heart, how did you come to be so wise?’
And Balkis the Queen, beautiful and tall, looked up into Suleiman-bin-Daoud’s eyes and put her head a little on one side, just lik
e the Butterfly, and said, ‘First, O my Lord, because I loved you; and secondly, O my Lord, because I know what women-folk are.’
Then they went up to the Palace and lived happily ever afterwards.
But wasn’t it clever of Balkis?
There was never a Queen like Balkis,
From here to the wide world’s end;
But Balkis talked to a butterfly
As you would talk to a friend.
There was never a King like Solomon,
Not since the world began;
But Solomon talked to a butterfly
As a man would talk to a man.
She was Queen of Sabæa —
And he was Asia’s Lord —
But they both of ‘em talked to butterflies
When they took their walks abroad!
TRAFFICS AND DISCOVERIES
This collection was first printed in 1904, offering both poems and short stories.
CONTENTS
THE CAPTIVE
POSEIDON’S LAW
THE BONDS OF DISCIPLINE
THE RUNNERS
A SAHIBS’ WAR
THE WET LITANY
“THEIR LAWFUL OCCASIONS”
THE KING’S TASK
THE COMPREHENSION OF PRIVATE COPPER
STEAM TACTICS
THE NECESSITARIAN
“WIRELESS”
KASPAR’S SONG IN VARDA
SONG OF THE OLD GUARD
THE ARMY OF A DREAM
“THEY”
THE RETURN OF THE CHILDREN
MRS. BATHURST
“OUR FATHERS ALSO”
BELOW THE MILL DAM
THE RETURN OF THE CHILDREN
THE CAPTIVE
FROM THE MASJID-AL-AQSA OF SAYYID AHMED (WAHABI)
Not with an outcry to Allah nor any complaining
He answered his name at the muster and stood to the chaining.
When the twin anklets were nipped on the leg-bars that held them,
He brotherly greeted the armourers stooping to weld them.
Ere the sad dust of the marshalled feet of the chain-gang swallowed him,
Observing him nobly at ease, I alighted and followed him.
Thus we had speech by the way, but not touching his sorrow
Rather his red Yesterday and his regal To-morrow,
Wherein he statelily moved to the clink of his chains unregarded,
Nowise abashed but contented to drink of the potion awarded.
Saluting aloofly his Fate, he made swift with his story;
And the words of his mouth were as slaves spreading carpets of glory
Embroidered with names of the Djinns — a miraculous weaving —
But the cool and perspicuous eye overbore unbelieving.
So I submitted myself to the limits of rapture —
Bound by this man we had bound, amid captives his capture —
Till he returned me to earth and the visions departed;
But on him be the Peace and the Blessing: for he was great-hearted!
THE CAPTIVE
“He that believeth shall not make haste.” — Isaiah.
The guard-boat lay across the mouth of the bathing-pool, her crew idly spanking the water with the flat of their oars. A red-coated militia-man, rifle in hand, sat at the bows, and a petty officer at the stern. Between the snow-white cutter and the flat-topped, honey-coloured rocks on the beach the green water was troubled with shrimp-pink prisoners-of-war bathing. Behind their orderly tin camp and the electric-light poles rose those stone-dotted spurs that throw heat on Simonstown. Beneath them the little Barracouta nodded to the big Gibraltar, and the old Penelope, that in ten years has been bachelors’ club, natural history museum, kindergarten, and prison, rooted and dug at her fixed moorings. Far out, a three-funnelled Atlantic transport with turtle bow and stern waddled in from the deep sea.
Said the sentry, assured of the visitor’s good faith, “Talk to ‘em? You can, to any that speak English. You’ll find a lot that do.”
Here and there earnest groups gathered round ministers of the Dutch Reformed Church, who doubtless preached conciliation, but the majority preferred their bath. The God who Looks after Small Things had caused the visitor that day to receive two weeks’ delayed mails in one from a casual postman, and the whole heavy bundle of newspapers, tied with a strap, he dangled as bait. At the edge of the beach, cross-legged, undressed to his sky-blue army shirt, sat a lean, ginger-haired man, on guard over a dozen heaps of clothing. His eyes followed the incoming Atlantic boat.
“Excuse me, Mister,” he said, without turning (and the speech betrayed his nationality), “would you mind keeping away from these garments? I’ve been elected janitor — on the Dutch vote.”
The visitor moved over against the barbed-wire fence and sat down to his mail. At the rustle of the newspaper-wrappers the ginger-coloured man turned quickly, the hunger of a press-ridden people in his close-set iron- grey eyes.
“Have you any use for papers?” said the visitor.
“Have I any use?” A quick, curved forefinger was already snicking off the outer covers. “Why, that’s the New York postmark! Give me the ads. at the back of Harper’s and M’Clure’s and I’m in touch with God’s Country again! Did you know how I was aching for papers?”
The visitor told the tale of the casual postman.
“Providential!” said the ginger-coloured man, keen as a terrier on his task; “both in time and matter. Yes! … The Scientific American yet once more! Oh, it’s good! it’s good!” His voice broke as he pressed his hawk-like nose against the heavily-inked patent-specifications at the end. “Can I keep it? I thank you — I thank you! Why — why — well — well! The American Tyler of all things created! Do you subscribe to that?”
“I’m on the free list,” said the visitor, nodding.
He extended his blue-tanned hand with that air of Oriental spaciousness which distinguishes the native-born American, and met the visitor’s grasp expertly. “I can only say that you have treated me like a Brother (yes, I’ll take every last one you can spare), and if ever — ” He plucked at the bosom of his shirt. “Psha! I forgot I’d no card on me; but my name’s Zigler — Laughton G. Zigler. An American? If Ohio’s still in the Union, I am, Sir. But I’m no extreme States’-rights man. I’ve used all of my native country and a few others as I have found occasion, and now I am the captive of your bow and spear. I’m not kicking at that. I am not a coerced alien, nor a naturalised Texas mule-tender, nor an adventurer on the instalment plan. I don’t tag after our consul when he comes around, expecting the American Eagle to lift me out o’ this by the slack of my pants. No, sir! If a Britisher went into Indian Territory and shot up his surroundings with a Colt automatic (not that she’s any sort of weapon, but I take her for an illustration), he’d be strung up quicker’n a snowflake ‘ud melt in hell. No ambassador of yours ‘ud save him. I’m my neck ahead on this game, anyway. That’s how I regard the proposition.
“Have I gone gunning against the British? To a certain extent, I presume you never heard tell of the Laughton-Zigler automatic two-inch field-gun, with self-feeding hopper, single oil-cylinder recoil, and ballbearing gear throughout? Or Laughtite, the new explosive? Absolutely uniform in effect, and one-ninth the bulk of any present effete charge — flake, cannonite, cordite, troisdorf, cellulose, cocoa, cord, or prism — I don’t care what it is. Laughtite’s immense; so’s the Zigler automatic. It’s me. It’s fifteen years of me. You are not a gun-sharp? I am sorry. I could have surprised you. Apart from my gun, my tale don’t amount to much of anything. I thank you, but I don’t use any tobacco you’d be likely to carry… Bull Durham? Bull Durham! I take it all back — every last word. Bull Durham — here! If ever you strike Akron, Ohio, when this fool-war’s over, remember you’ve Laughton O. Zigler in your vest pocket. Including the city of Akron. We’ve a little club there…. Hell! What’s the sense of talking Akron with no pants?
“My gun? … For two cents I’d have shipped
her to our Filipeens. ‘Came mighty near it too; but from what I’d read in the papers, you can’t trust Aguinaldo’s crowd on scientific matters. Why don’t I offer it to our army? Well, you’ve an effete aristocracy running yours, and we’ve a crowd of politicians. The results are practically identical. I am not taking any U.S. Army in mine.
“I went to Amsterdam with her — to this Dutch junta that supposes it’s bossing the war. I wasn’t brought up to love the British for one thing, and for another I knew that if she got in her fine work (my gun) I’d stand more chance of receiving an unbiassed report from a crowd of dam-fool British officers than from a hatful of politicians’ nephews doing duty as commissaries and ordnance sharps. As I said, I put the brown man out of the question. That’s the way I regarded the proposition.
“The Dutch in Holland don’t amount to a row of pins. Maybe I misjudge ‘em.
Maybe they’ve been swindled too often by self-seeking adventurers to know
a enthusiast when they see him. Anyway, they’re slower than the Wrath o’
God. But on delusions — as to their winning out next Thursday week at 9
A.M. — they are — if I may say so — quite British.
“I’ll tell you a curious thing, too. I fought ‘em for ten days before I could get the financial side of my game fixed to my liking. I knew they didn’t believe in the Zigler, but they’d no call to be crazy-mean. I fixed it — free passage and freight for me and the gun to Delagoa Bay, and beyond by steam and rail. Then I went aboard to see her crated, and there I struck my fellow-passengers — all deadheads, same as me. Well, Sir, I turned in my tracks where I stood and besieged the ticket-office, and I said, ‘Look at here, Van Dunk. I’m paying for my passage and her room in the hold — every square and cubic foot.’ ‘Guess he knocked down the fare to himself; but I paid. I paid. I wasn’t going to deadhead along o’ that crowd of Pentecostal sweepings. ‘Twould have hoodooed my gun for all time. That was the way I regarded the proposition. No, Sir, they were not pretty company.
Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) Page 365