ᐸ?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?ᐳ
ᐸsamples n="ENG19060"ᐳ
ᐸsampleᐳᐸp n="ENG190602148"ᐳ“Nonsense, pooh!” said the Psammead. “that wasn’t the other half. It was the same half that you’ve got—the one that wasn’t crushed and lost.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG190602149"ᐳ“But how could it be the same?” said Anthea gently.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG190602150"ᐳ“Well, not exactly, of course. The one you’ve got is a good many years older, but at any rate it’s not the other one. What did you say when you wished?”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG190602151"ᐳ“I forget,” said Jane.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG190602152"ᐳ“I don’t,” said the Psammead. “You said, ‘Take us where you are’—and it did, so you see it was the same half.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG190602153"ᐳ“I see,” said Anthea.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG190602154"ᐳ“But you mark my words,” the Psammead went on, “you’ll have trouble with that Priest yet.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG190602155"ᐳ“Why, he was quite friendly,” said Anthea.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG190602156"ᐳ“All the same you’d better beware of the Reverend Rekh‐marā.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG190602157"ᐳ“Oh, I’m sick of the Amulet,” said Cyril, “we shall never get it.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG190602158"ᐳ“Oh yes we shall,” said Robert. “Don’t you remember December 3rd?”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG190602159"ᐳ“Jinks!” said Cyril, “I’d forgotten that.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG190602160"ᐳ“I don’t believe it,” said Jane, “and I don’t feel at all well.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG190602161"ᐳ“If I were you,” said the Psammead, “I should not go out into the Past again till that date. You’ll find it safer not to go where you’re likely to meet that Egyptian any more just at present.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG190602162"ᐳ“Of course we’ll do as you say,” said Anthea soothingly, “though there’s something about his face that I really do like.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG190602163"ᐳ“Still, you don’t want to run after him, I suppose,” snapped the Psammead. “You wait till the 3rd, and then see what happens.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG190602164"ᐳCyril and Jane were feeling far from well, Anthea was always obliging, so Robert was overruled. And they promised. And none of them, not even the Psammead, at all foresaw, as you no doubt do quite plainly, exactly what it was that would happen on that memorable date.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG190602165"ᐳIF I only had time I could tell you lots of things. For instance, how, in spite of the advice of the Psammead, the four children did, one very wet day, go through their Amulet Arch into the golden desert, and there find the great Temple of Baalbec and meet with the Phœnix whom they never thought to see again. And how the Phœnix did not remember them at all until it went into a sort of prophetic trance—if that can be called remembering. But, alas! I haven’t time, so I must leave all that out though it was a wonderfully thrilling adventure. I must leave out, too, all about the visit of the children to the Hippodrome with the Psammead in its travelling bag, and about how the wishes of the people round about them were granted so suddenly and surprisingly that at last the Psammead had to be taken hurriedly home by Anthea, who consequently missed half the performance. Then there was the time when, Nurse having gone to tea with a friend out Ivalunk way, they were playing “devil in the dark”—and in the midst of that most creepy pastime the postman’s knock frightened Jane nearly out of her life. She took in the letters, however, and put them in the back of the hat‐stand drawer, so that they should be safe. And safe they were, for she never thought of them again for weeks and weeks.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸ/sampleᐳ
ᐸsampleᐳᐸp n="ENG19060773"ᐳ“Then prison’s the best place for them,” said the Queen.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19060774"ᐳ“But suppose neither did it.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19060775"ᐳ“That’s impossible,” said the Queen; “a thing’s not done unless some one does it. And you mustn’t interrupt.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19060776"ᐳThen came a woman, in tears, with a torn veil and real ashes on her head—at least Anthea thought so, but it may have been only road‐dust. She complained that her husband was in prison.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19060777"ᐳ“What for?” said the Queen.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19060778"ᐳ“They said it was for speaking evil of your Majesty,” said the woman, “but it wasn’t. Some one had a spite against him. That was what it was.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19060779"ᐳ“How do you know he hadn’t spoken evil of me?” said the Queen.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19060780"ᐳ“No one could,” said the woman simply, “when they’d once seen your beautiful face.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19060781"ᐳ“Let the man out,” said the Queen, smiling. “Next case.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19060782"ᐳThe next case was that of a boy who had stolen a fox. “Like the Spartan boy,” whispered Robert. But the Queen ruled that nobody could have any possible reason for owning a fox, and still less for stealing one. And she did not believe that there were any foxes in Babylon; she, at any rate, had never seen one. So the boy was released.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19060783"ᐳThe people came to the Queen about all sorts of family quarrels and neighbourly misunderstandings—from a fight between brothers over the division of an inheritance, to the dishonest and unfriendly conduct of a woman who had borrowed a cooking‐pot at the last New Year’s festival, and not returned it yet.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19060784"ᐳAnd the Queen decided everything, very, very decidedly indeed. At last she clapped her hands quite suddenly and with extreme loudness, and said—ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19060785"ᐳ“The audience is over for today.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19060786"ᐳEvery one said, “May the Queen live for ever!” and went out.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19060787"ᐳAnd the children were left alone in the justice‐hall with the Queen of Babylon and her ladies.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19060788"ᐳ“There!” said the Queen, with a long sigh of relief. “That’s over! I couldn’t have done another stitch of justice if you’d offered me the crown of Egypt! Now come into the garden, and we’ll have a nice, long, cosy talk.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19060789"ᐳShe led them through long, narrow corridors whose walls they somehow felt, were very, very thick, into a sort of garden courtyard. There were thick shrubs closely planted, and roses were trained over trellises, and made a pleasant shade—needed, indeed, for already the sun was as hot as it is in England in August at the seaside.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸ/sampleᐳ
ᐸsampleᐳᐸp n="ENG19060946"ᐳThe Psammead, roused from its sound sleep, told the same story.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19060947"ᐳ“But,” it added, “what possessed you to tell that Queen that I could give wishes? I sometimes think you were born without even the most rudimentary imitation of brains.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19060948"ᐳThe children did not know the meaning of rudimentary, but it sounded a rude, insulting word.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19060949"ᐳ“I don’t see that we did any harm,” said Cyril sulkily.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19060950"ᐳ“Oh, no,” said the Psammead with withering irony, “not at all! Of course not! Quite the contrary! Exactly so! Only she happened to wish that she might soon find herself in your country. And soon may mean any moment.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19060951"ᐳ“Then it’s your fault,” said Robert, “because you might just as well have made ‘soon’ mean some moment next year or next century.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19060952"ᐳ“That’s where you, as so often happens, make the mistake,” rejoined the Sand‐fairy. “I couldn’t mean anything but what she meant by ‘soon.’ It wasn’t my wish. And what she meant was the next time the King happens to go out lion hunting. So she’ll have a whole day, and perhaps two, to do as she wishes with. She doesn’t know about time only being a mode of thought.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19060953"ᐳ“Well,” said Cyril, with a sigh of resignation, “we must do what we can to give her a good time. She was jolly decent to us. I say, suppose we were to go to St James’s Park after dinner and feed those ducks that we never did feed. After all that Babylon and all those years ago, I feel as if I should like to see something real, and now. You’ll come, Psammead?”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19060954"ᐳ“Where’s my priceless woven basket of sacred rushes?” asked the Psammead morosely. “I can’t go out with nothing on. And I won’t, what’s more.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19060955"ᐳAnd then everybody remembered with pain that the bass bag had, in the hurry of departure from Babylon, not been remembered.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19060956"ᐳ“But it’s not so extra precious,” said Robert hastily. “You can get them given to you for nothing if you buy fish in Farringdon Market.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19060957"ᐳ“Oh,” said the Psammead very crossly indeed, “so you presume on my sublime indifference to the things of this disgusting modern world, to fob me off with a travelling equipage that costs you nothing. Very well, I shall go to sand. Please don’t wake me.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19060958"ᐳAnd it went then and there to sand, which, as you know, meant to bed. The boys went to St James’s Park to feed the ducks, but they went alone.ᐸ/pᐳ
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ᐸsampleᐳᐸp n="ENG190601334"ᐳThey could see from the balcony the sea‐captain edging his way out from among the people. And his face was dead white, like paper.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG190601335"ᐳ“To the hills!” he cried in a loud and terrible voice. And above his voice came another voice, louder, more terrible—the voice of the sea.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG190601336"ᐳThe girls looked seaward.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG190601337"ᐳAcross the smooth distance of the sea something huge and black rolled towards the town. It was a wave, but a wave a hundred feet in height, a wave that looked like a mountain—a wave rising higher and higher till suddenly it seemed to break in two—one half of it rushed out to sea again; the other—ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG190601338"ᐳ“Oh!” cried Anthea, “the town—the poor people!”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG190601339"ᐳ“It’s all thousands of years ago, really,” said Robert but his voice trembled. They hid their eyes for a moment. They could not bear to look down, for the wave had broken on the face of the town, sweeping over the quays and docks, overwhelming the great storehouses and factories, tearing gigantic stones from forts and bridges, and using them as battering rams against the temples. Great ships were swept over the roofs of the houses and dashed down half‐way up the hill among ruined gardens and broken buildings. The water ground brown fishing‐boats to powder on the golden roofs of Palaces.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG190601340"ᐳThen the wave swept back towards the sea.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG190601341"ᐳ“I want to go home,” cried the Psammead fiercely.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG190601342"ᐳ“Oh, yes, yes!” said Jane, and the boys were ready—but the learned gentleman had not come.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG190601343"ᐳThen suddenly they heard him dash up to the inner gallery, crying—ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG190601344"ᐳ“I must see the end of the dream.” He rushed up the higher flight. The others followed him. They found themselves in a sort of turret—roofed, but open to the air at the sides.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG190601345"ᐳThe learned gentleman was leaning on the parapet, and as they rejoined him the vast wave rushed back on the town. This time it rose higher—destroyed more.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG190601346"ᐳ“Come home,” cried the Psammead; “that’s the last, I know it is! That’s the last—over there.” It pointed with a claw that trembled.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG190601347"ᐳ“Oh, come!” cried Jane, holding up the Amulet.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG190601348"ᐳ“I will see the end of the dream,” cried the learned gentleman.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG190601349"ᐳ“You’ll never see anything else if you do,” said Cyril.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG190601350"ᐳ“Oh, Jimmy!” appealed Anthea. “I’ll never bring you out again!”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG190601351"ᐳ“You’ll never have the chance if you don’t go soon,” said the Psammead.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸ/sampleᐳ
ᐸsampleᐳᐸp n="ENG19060692"ᐳ“Oh, yes; you know everything,” Robert replied. “What’s all that grey‐green stuff you see away over there, where it’s all flat and sandy?”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19060693"ᐳ“All right,” said Cyril loftily, “I don’t want to tell you anything. I only thought you’d like to know a palm‐tree when you saw it again.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19060694"ᐳ“Look!” cried Anthea; “they’re opening the gates.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19060695"ᐳAnd indeed the great gates swung back with a brazen clang, and instantly a little crowd of a dozen or more people came out and along the road towards them.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19060696"ᐳThe children, with one accord, crouched behind the tamarisk hedge.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19060697"ᐳ“I don’t like the sound of those gates,” said Jane. “Fancy being inside when they shut. You’d never get out.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19060698"ᐳ“You’ve got an arch of your own to go out by,” the Psammead put its head out of the basket to remind her. “Don’t behave so like a girl. If I were you I should just march right into the town and ask to see the king.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19060699"ᐳThere was something at once simple and grand about this idea, and it pleased everyone.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19060700"ᐳSo when the work‐people had passed (they were work‐people, the children felt sure, because they were dressed so plainly—just one long blue shirt thing—of blue or yellow) the four children marched boldly up to the brazen gate between the towers. The arch above the gate was quite a tunnel, the walls were so thick.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19060701"ᐳ“Courage,” said Cyril. “Step out. It’s no use trying to sneak past. Be bold!”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19060702"ᐳRobert answered this appeal by unexpectedly bursting into “The British Grenadiers,” and to its quick‐step they approached the gates of Babylon.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19060703"ᐳThis brought them to the threshold of the gate, and two men in bright armour suddenly barred their way with crossed spears.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19060704"ᐳ“Who goes there?” they said.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19060705"ᐳ(I think I must have explained to you before how it was that the children were always able to understand the language of any place they might happen to be in, and to be themselves understood. If not, I have no time to explain it now.)ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19060706"ᐳ“We come from very far,” said Cyril mechanically. “From the Empire where the sun never sets, and we want to see your King.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19060707"ᐳ“If it’s quite convenient,” amended Anthea.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19060708"ᐳ“The King (may he live for ever!),” said the gatekeeper, “is gone to fetch home his fourteenth wife. Where on earth have you come from not to know that?”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19060709"ᐳ“The Queen then,” said Anthea hurriedly, and not taking any notice of the question as to where they had come from.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸ/sampleᐳᐸ/samplesᐳ