TALES OF THREE HEMISPHERES

Lord Dunsany

CONTENTS

The Last Dream Of Bwona KhublaHow the Office of Postman Fell Vacant In Otford-under-the-WoldThe Prayer Of Boob AheeraEast And WestA Pretty QuarrelHow The Gods Avenged Meoul Ki NingThe Gift Of The GodsThe Sack Of EmeraldsThe Old Brown CoatAn Archive Of The Older MysteriesA City Of Wonder Beyond the Fields We Know Publisher's Note First Tale: Idle Days on the Yann Second Tale: A Shop In Go-By Street Third Tale: The Avenger Of Perdóndaris

[Note that the tale "Idle Days on the Yann" also appears in thecollection "A Dreamer's Tales". ]

THE LAST DREAM OF BWONA KHUBLA

From steaming lowlands down by the equator, where monstrous orchidsblow, where beetles big as mice sit on the tent-ropes, and firefliesglide about by night like little moving stars, the travelers wentthree days through forests of cactus till they came to the open plainswhere the oryx are. 

And glad they were when they came to the water-hole, where only onewhite man had gone before, which the natives know as the camp of BwonaKhubla, and found the water there. 

It lies three days from the nearest other water, and when Bwona Khublahad gone there three years ago, what with malaria with which he wasshaking all over, and what with disgust at finding the water-hole dry, he had decided to die there, and in that part of the world suchdecisions are always fatal. In any case he was overdue to die, buthitherto his amazing resolution, and that terrible strength ofcharacter that so astounded his porters, had kept him alive and movedhis safari on. 

He had had a name no doubt, some common name such as hangs as likelyas not over scores of shops in London; but that had gone long ago, andnothing identified his memory now to distinguish it from the memoriesof all the other dead but "Bwona Khubla, " the name the Kikuyus gavehim. 

There is not doubt that he was a fearful man, a man that was dreadedstill for his personal force when his arm was no longer able to liftthe kiboko, when all his men knew he was dying, and to this day thoughhe is dead. 

Though his temper was embittered by malaria and the equatorial sun, nothing impaired his will, which remained a compulsive force to thevery last, impressing itself upon all, and after the last, from whatthe Kikuyus say. The country must have had powerful laws that droveBwona Khubla out, whatever country it was. 

On the morning of the day that they were to come to the camp of BwonaKhubla all the porters came to the travelers' tents asking for dow. Dow is the white man's medicine, that cures all evils; the nastier ittastes, the better it is. They wanted down this morning to keep awaydevils, for they were near the place where Bwona Khubla died. 

The travelers gave them quinine. 

By sunset the came to Campini Bwona Khubla and found water there. Hadthey not found water many of them must have died, yet none felt anygratitude to the place, it seemed too ominous, too full of doom, toomuch harassed almost by unseen, irresistible things. 

And all the natives came again for dow as soon as the tents werepitched, to protect them from the last dreams of Bwona Khubla, whichthey say had stayed behind when the last safari left taking BwonaKhubla's body back to the edge of civilization to show to the whitemen there that they had not killed him, for the white men might notknow that they durst not kill Bwona Khubla. 

And the travelers gave them more quinine, so much being bad for thenerves, and that night by the camp-fires there was no pleasant talk;all talking at once of meat they had eaten and cattle that each oneowned, but a gloomy silence hung by every fire and the little canvasshelters. They told the white men that Bwona Khubla's city, of whichhe had thought at the last (and where the natives believed he was oncea king), of which he had raved till the loneliness rang with hisraving, had settled down all about them; and they were afraid, for itwas so strange a city, and wanted more dow. And the two travelersgave them more quinine, for they saw real fear in their faces, andknew they might run away and leave them alone in that place, thatthey, too, had come to fear with an almost equal dread, though theyknew not why. And as the night wore on their feeling of bodingdeepened, although they had shared three bottles or so of champagnethat they meant to keep for days when they killed a lion. 

This is the story that each of those two men tell, and which theirporters corroborate, but then a Kikuyu will always say whatever hethinks is expected of him. 

The travelers were both in bed and trying to sleep but not able to doso because of an ominous feeling. That mournfullest of all the criesof the wild, the hyćna like a damned soul lamenting, strangely enoughhad ceased. The night wore on to the hour when Bwona Khubla had diedthree or four years ago, dreaming and raving of "his city"; and in thehush a sound softly arose, like a wind at first, then like the roar ofbeasts, then unmistakably the sound of motors--motors and motorbusses. 

And then they saw, clearly and unmistakably they say, in that lonelydesolation where the equator comes up out of the forest and climbsover jagged hills, --they say they saw London. 

There could have been no moon that night, but they say there was amultitude of stars. Mists had come rolling up at evening about thepinnacles of unexplored red peaks that clustered round the camp. Butthey say the mist must have cleared later on; at any rate they swearthey could see London, see it and hear the roar of it. Both say theysaw it not as they knew it at all, not debased by hundreds ofthousands of lying advertisements, but transfigured, all its housesmagnificent, its chimneys rising grandly into pinnacles, its vastsquares full of the most gorgeous trees, transfigured and yet London. 

Its windows were warm and happy, shining at night, the lamps in theirlong rows welcomed you, the public-houses were gracious jovial places;yet it was London. 

They could smell the smells of London, hear London songs, and yet itwas never the London that they knew; it was as though they had lookedon some strange woman's face with the eyes of her lover. For of allthe towns of the earth or cities of song; of all the spots there be, unhallowed or hallowed, it seemed to those two men then that the citythey saw was of all places the most to be desired by far. They say abarrel organ played quite near them, they say a coster was singing, they admit that he was singing out of tune, they admit a cockneyaccent, and yet they say that that song had in it something that noearthly song had ever had before, and both men say that they wouldhave wept but that there was a feeling about their heartstrings thatwas far too deep for tears. They believe that the longing of thismasterful man, that was able to rule a safari by raising a hand, hadbeen so strong at the last that it had impressed itself deeply uponnature and had caused a mirage that may not fade wholly away, perhapsfor several years. 

I tried to establish by questions the truth or reverse of this story, but the two men's tempers had been so spoiled by Africa that they werenot up to cross-examination. They would not even say if theircamp-fires were still burning. They say that they saw the Londonlights all round them from eleven o'clock till midnight, they couldhear London voices and the sound of the traffic clearly, and overall, a little misty perhaps, but unmistakably London, arose the greatmetropolis. 

After midnight London quivered a little and grew more indistinct, thesound of the traffic began to dwindle away, voices seemed farther off, ceased altogether, and all was quiet once more where the mirageshimmered and faded, and a bull rhinoceros coming down through thestillness snorted, and watered at the Carlton Club. 

HOW THE OFFICE OF POSTMAN FELL VACANT IN OTFORD-UNDER-THE-WOLD

The duties of postman at Otford-under-the-Wold carried Amuel Slegginsfarther afield than the village, farther afield than the last house inthe lane, right up to the big bare wold and the house where no onewent, no one that is but the three grim men that dwelt there and thesecretive wife of one, and, once a year when the queer green lettercame, Amuel Sleggins the postman. 

The green letter always came just as the leaves were turning, addressed to the eldest of the three grim men, with a wonderfulChinese stamp and the Otford post-mark, and Amuel Sleggins carried itup to the house. 

He was not afraid to go, for he always took the letter, had done sofor seven years, yet whenever summer began to draw to a close, AmuelSleggins was ill at ease, and if there was a touch of autumn aboutshivered unduly so that all folk wondered. 

And then one day a wind would blow from the East, and the wild geesewould appear, having left the sea, flying high and crying strangely, and pass till they were no more than a thin black line in the sky likea magical stick flung up by a doer of magic, twisting and twirlingaway; and the leaves would turn on the trees and the mists be white onthe marshes and the sun set large and red and autumn would step downquietly that night from the wold; and the next day the strange greenletter would come from China. 

His fear of the three grim men and that secretive woman and theirlonely, secluded house, or else the cadaverous cold of the dyingseason, rather braced Amuel when the time was come and he would stepout bolder upon the day that he feared than he had perhaps for weeks. He longed on that day for a letter for the last house in the lane, there he would dally and talk awhile and look on church-going facesbefore his last tramp over the lonely wold to end at the dreaded doorof the queer grey house called wold-hut. 

When he came to the door of wold-hut he would give the postman's knockas though he came on ordinary rounds to a house of every day, althoughno path led up to it, although the skins of weasels hung thickly fromupper windows. 

And scarcely had his postman's knock rung through the dark of thehouse when the eldest of the three grim men would always run to thedoor. O, what a face had he. There was more slyness in it than everhis beard could hide. He would put out a gristly hand; and into itAmuel Sleggins would put the letter from China, and rejoice that hisduty was done, and would turn and stride away. And the fields lit upbefore him, but, ominous, eager and low murmuring arose in thewold-hut. 

For seven years this was so and no harm had come to Sleggins, seventimes he had gone to wold-hut and as often come safely away; and thenhe needs must marry. Perhaps because she was young, perhaps becauseshe was fair or because she had shapely ankles as she came one daythrough the marshes among the milkmaid flowers shoeless in spring. Less things than these have brought men to their ends and been thenooses with which Fate snared them running. With marriage curiosityentered his house, and one day as they walked with evening through themeadows, one summer evening, she asked him of wold-hut where he onlywent, and what the folks were like that no one else had seen. All thishe told her; and then she asked him of the green letter from China, that came with autumn, and what the letter contained. He read to herall the rules of the Inland Revenue, he told her he did not know, thatit was not right that he should know, he lectured her on the sin ofinquisitiveness, he quoted Parson, and in the end she said that shemust know. They argued concerning this for many days, days of theending of summer, of shortening evenings, and as they argued autumngrew nearer and nearer and the green letter from China. 

And at last he promised that when the green letter came he would takeit as usual to the lonely house and then hide somewhere near and creepto the window at nightfall and hear what the grim folk said; perhapsthey might read aloud the letter from China. And before he had timeto repent of that promise a cold wind came one night and the woodsturned golden, the plover went in bands at evening over the marshes, the year had turned, and there came the letter from China. Neverbefore had Amuel felt such misgivings as he went his postman's rounds, never before had he so much feared the day that took him up to thewold and the lonely house, while snug by the fire his wife lookedpleasurably forward to curiosity's gratification and hoped to havenews ere nightfall that all the gossips of the village would envy. One consolation only had Amuel as he set out with a shiver, there wasa letter that day for the last house in the lane. Long did he tarrythere to look at their cheery faces, to hear the sound of theirlaughter--you did not hear laughter in wold-hut--and when the lasttopic had been utterly talked out and no excuse for lingering remainedhe heaved a heavy sigh and plodded grimly away and so came late towold-hut. 

He gave his postman's knock on the shut oak door, heard it reverberatethrough the silent house, saw the grim elder man and his gristly hand, gave up the green letter from China, and strode away. There is a clumpof trees growing all alone in the wold, desolate, mournful, by day, bynight full of ill omen, far off from all other trees as wold-hut fromother houses. Near it stands wold-hut. Not today did Amuel stridebriskly on with all the new winds of autumn blowing cheerily past himtill he saw the village before him and broke into song; but as soon ashe was out of sight of the house he turned and stooping behind a foldof the ground ran back to the desolate wood. There he waited watchingthe evil house, just too far to hear voices. The sun was low already. He chose the window at which he meant to eavesdrop, a little barredone at the back, close to the ground. And then the pigeons came in;for a great distance there was no other wood, so numbers shelterthere, though the clump is small and of so evil a look (if they noticethat); the first one frightened Amuel, he felt that it might be aspirit escaped from torture in some dim parlour of the house that hewatched, his nerves were strained and he feared foolish fears. Thenhe grew used to them and the sun set then and the aspect of everythingaltered and he felt strange fears again. Behind him was a hollow inthe wold, he watched it darkening; and before him he saw the housethrough the trunks of the trees. He waited for them to light theirlamps so that they could not see, when he would steal up softly andcrouch by the little back window. But though every bird was home, though the night grew chilly as tombs, though a star was out, stillthere shone no yellow light from any window. Amuel waited andshuddered. He did not dare to move till they lit their lamps, theymight be watching. The damp and the cold so strangely affected himthat autumn evening and the remnants of sunset, the stars and the woldand the whole vault of the sky seemed like a hall that they hadprepared for Fear. He began to feel a dread of prodigious things, andstill no light shone in the evil house. It grew so dark that hedecided to move and make his way to the window in spite of thestillness and though the house was dark. He rose and while standingarrested by pains that cramped his limbs, he heard the door swing openon the far side of the house. He had just time to hide behind thetrunk of a pine when the three grim men approached him and the womanhobbled behind. Right to the ominous clump of trees they came asthough they loved their blackness, passed through within a yard or twoof the postman and squatted down on their haunches in a ring in thehollow behind the trees. They lit a fire in the hollow and laid a kidon the fire and by the light of it Amuel saw brought forth from anuntanned pouch the letter that came from China. The elder opened itwith his gristly hand and intoning words that Amuel did not know, drewout from it a green powder and sprinkled it on the fire. At once aflame arose and a wonderful savour, the flames rose higher andflickered turning the trees all green; and Amuel saw the gods comingto snuff the savour. While the three grim men prostrated themselves bytheir fire, and the horrible woman that was the spouse of one, he sawthe gods coming gauntly over the wold, beheld the gods of Old Englandhungrily snuffing the savour, Odin, Balder, and Thor, the gods of theancient people, beheld them eye to eye clear and close in thetwilight, and the office of postman fell vacant inOtford-under-the-Wold. 

THE PRAYER OF BOOB AHEERA

In the harbour, between the liner and the palms, as the huge ship'spassengers came up from dinner, at moonrise, each in his canoe, AliKareeb Ahash and Boob Aheera passed within knife thrust. 

So urgent was the purpose of Ali Kareeb Ahash that he did not leanover as his enemy slid by, did not tarry then to settle that longaccount; but that Boob Aheera made no attempt to reach him was asource of wonder to Ali. He pondered it till the liner's electriclights shone far away behind him with one blaze and the canoe was nearto his destination, and pondered it in vain, for all that the easternsubtlety of his mind was able to tell him clearly was that it was notlike Boob Aheera to pass him like that. 

That Boob Aheera could have dared to lay such a cause as his beforethe Diamond Idol Ali had not conceived, yet as he drew near to thegolden shrine in the palms, that none that come by the great shipsever found, he began to see more clearly in his mind that this waswhere Boob had gone on that hot night. And when he beached his canoehis fears departed, giving place to the resignation with which healways viewed Destiny; for there on the white sea sand were the tracksof another canoe, the edges all fresh and ragged. Boob Aheera hadbeen before him. Ali did not blame himself for being late, the thinghad been planned before the beginning of time, by gods that knew theirbusiness; only his hate of Boob Aheera increased, his enemy againstwhom he had come to pray. And the more his hate increased the moreclearly he saw him, until nothing else could be seen by the eye of hismind but the dark lean figure, the little lean legs, the grey beardand neat loin-cloth of Boob Aheera, his enemy. 

That the Diamond Idol should have granted the prayers of such a one hedid not as yet imagine, he hated him merely for his presumptuousnessin approaching the shrine at all, for approaching it before him whosecause was righteous, for many an old past wrong, but most of all forthe expression of his face and the general look of the man as he hasswept by in his canoe with his double paddle going in the moonlight. 

Ali pushed through the steaming vegetation. The place smelt oforchids. There is no track to the shrine though many go. If therewere a track the white man would one day find it, and parties wouldrow to see it whenever a liner came in; and photographs would appearin weekly papers with accounts of it underneath by men who had neverleft London, and all the mystery would be gone away and there would benothing novel in this story. 

Ali had scarcely gone a hundred yards through cactus and creeperunderneath the palms when he came to the golden shrine that nothingguards except the deeps of the forest, and found the Diamond Idol. TheDiamond Idol is five inches high and its base a good inch square, andit has a greater lustre than those diamonds that Mr. Moses bought lastyear for his wife, when he offered her an earldom or the diamonds, andJael his wife had answered, "Buy the diamonds and be just plain Mr. Fortescue. "

Purer than those was its luster and carved as they carve not inEurope, and the men thereby are poor and held to be fearless--yet theydo not sell that idol. And I may say here that if any one of myreaders should ever come by ship to the winding harbour where theforts of the Portuguese crumble in infinite greenery, where the baobabstands like a corpse here and there in the palms, if he goes ashorewhere no one has any business to go, and where no one so far as I knowhas gone from a liner before (though it's little more than a mile orso from the pier), and if he finds a golden shrine, which is nearenough to the shore, and a five-inch diamond in it carved in the shapeof a god, it is better to leave it alone and get back safe to the shipthan to sell that diamond idol for any price in the world. 

Ali Kareeb Ahash went into the golden shrine, and when he raised hishead from the seven obeisances that are the due of the idol, behold!it glowed with such a lustre as only it wears after answering recentprayer. No native of those parts mistakes the tone of the idol, theyknow its varying shades as a tracker knows blood; the moon wasstreaming in through the open door and Ali saw it clearly. 

No one had been that night but Boob Aheera. 

The fury of Ali rose and surged to his heart, he clutched his knifetill the hilt of it bruised his hand, yet he did not utter the prayerthat he had made ready about Boob Aheera's liver, for he saw that BoobAheera's prayers were acceptable to the idol and knew that divineprotection was over his enemy. 

What Boob Aheera's prayer was he did not know, but he went back to thebeach as fast as one can go through cacti and creepers that climb tothe tops of the palms; and as fast as his canoe could carry him hewent down the winding harbour, till the liner shone beside him as hepassed, and he heard the sound of its band rise up and die, and helanded and came that night into Boob Aheera's hut. And there heoffered himself as his enemy's slave, and Boob Aheera's slave he is tothis day, and his master has protection from the idol. And Ali rowsto the liners and goes on board to sell rubies made of glass, and thinsuits for the tropics and ivory napkin rings, and Manchester kimonos, and little lovely shells; and the passengers abuse him because of hisprices; and yet they should not, for all the money cheated by AliKareeb Ahash goes to Boob Aheera, his master. 

EAST AND WEST

It was dead of night and midwinter. A frightful wind was bringingsleet from the East. The long sere grasses were wailing. Two specksof light appeared on the desolate plain; a man in a hansom cab wasdriving alone in North China. 

Alone with the driver and the dejected horse. The driver wore a goodwaterproof cape, and of course an oiled silk hat, but the man in thecab wore nothing but evening dress. He did not have the glass doordown because the horse fell so frequently, the sleet had put his cigarout and it was too cold to sleep; the two lamps flared in the wind. By the uncertain light of a candle lamp that flickered inside the cab, a Manchu shepherd that saw the vehicle pass, where he watched hissheep on the plain in fear of the wolves, for the first time sawevening dress. And though he saw if dimly, and what he saw was wet, it was like a backward glance of a thousand years, for as hiscivilization is so much older than ours they have presumably passedthrough all that kind of thing. 

He watched it stoically, not wondering at a new thing, if indeed it benew to China, meditated on it awhile in a manner strange to us, andwhen he had added to his philosophy what little could be derived fromthe sight of this hansom cab, returned to his contemplation of thatnight's chances of wolves and to such occasional thoughts as he drewat times for his comfort out of the legends of China, that have beenpreserved for such uses. And on such a night their comfort wasgreatly needed. He thought of the legend of a dragon-lady, more fairthan the flowers are, without an equal amongst daughters of men, humanly lovely to look on although her sire was a dragon, yet one whotraced his descent from gods of the elder days, and so it was that shewent in all her ways divine, like the earliest ones of her race, whowere holier than the emperor. 

She had come down one day out of her little land, a grassy valleyhidden amongst the mountains; by the way of the mountain passes shecame down, and the rocks of the rugged pass rang like little bellsabout her, as her bare feet went by, like silver bells to please her;and the sound was like the sound of the dromedaries of a prince whenthey come home at evening--their silver bells are ringing and thevillage-folk are glad. She had come down to pick the enchanted poppythat grew, and grows to this day--if only men might find it--in afield at the feet of the mountains; if one should pick it happinesswould come to all yellow men, victory without fighting, good wages, and ceaseless ease. She came down all fair from the mountains; and asthe legend pleasantly passed through his mind in the bitterest hour ofthe night, which comes before dawn, two lights appeared and anotherhansom went by. 

The man in the second cab was dressed the same as the first, he waswetter than the first, for the sleet had fallen all night, but eveningdress is evening dress all the world over. The driver wore the sameoiled hat, the same waterproof cape as the other. And when the cabhad passed the darkness swirled back where the two small lamps hadbeen, and the slush poured into the wheel-tracks and nothing remainedbut the speculations of the shepherd to tell that a hansom cab hadbeen in that part of China; presently even these ceased, and he wasback with the early legends again in contemplation of serener things. 

And the storm and the cold and the darkness made one last effort, andshook the bones of that shepherd, and rattled the teeth in the headthat mused on the flowery fables, and suddenly it was morning. Yousaw the outlines of the sheep all of a sudden, the shepherd countedthem, no wolf had come, you could see them all quite clearly. And inthe pale light of the earliest morning the third hansom appeared, withits lamps still burning, looking ridiculous in the daylight. They cameout of the East with the sleet and were all going due westwards, andthe occupant of the third cab also wore evening dress. 

Calmly that Manchu shepherd, without curiosity, still less withwonder, but as one who would see whatever life has to show him, stoodfor four hours to see if another would come. The sleet and the Eastwind continued. And at the end of four hours another came. Thedriver was urging it on as fast as he could, as though he were makingthe most of the daylight, his cabby's cape was flapping wildly abouthim; inside the cab a man in evening dress was being jolted up anddown by the unevenness of the plain. 

This was of course that famous race from Pittsburg to Piccadilly, going round by the long way, that started one night after dinner fromMr. Flagdrop's house, and was won by Mr. Kagg, driving the HonourableAlfred Fortescue, whose father it will be remembered was HagarDermstein, and became (by Letters Patent) Sir Edgar Fortescue, andfinally Lord St. George. 

The Manchu shepherd stood there till evening, and when he saw that nomore cabs would come, turned homeward in search of food. 

And the rice prepared for him was hot and good, all the more after thebitter coldness of that sleet. And when he had consumed it herperused his experience, turning over again in his mind each detail ofthe cabs he had seen; and from that his thoughts slipped calmly to theglorious history of China, going back to the indecorous times beforecalmness came, and beyond those times to the happy days of the earthwhen the gods and dragons were here and China was young; and lightinghis opium pipe and casting his thoughts easily forward he looked tothe time when the dragons shall come again. 

And for a long while then his mind reposed itself in such a dignifiedcalm that no thought stirred there at all, from which when he wasaroused he cast off his lethargy as a man emerges from the baths, refreshed, cleansed and contented, and put away from his musings thethings he had seen on the plain as being evil and of the nature ofdreams, or futile illusion, the results of activity which troublethcalm. And then he turned his mind toward the shape of God, the One, the Ineffable, who sits by the lotus lily, whose shape is the shape ofpeace, and denieth activity, and went out his thanks to him that hehad cast all bad customs westward out of China as a woman throwshousehold dirt out of her basket far out into neighbouring gardens. 

From thankfulness he turned to calm again, and out of calm to sleep. 

A PRETTY QUARREL

On one of those unattained, and unattainable pinnacles that are knownas the Bleaks of Eerie, an eagle was looking East with a hopefulpresage of blood. 

For he knew, and rejoiced in the knowledge, that eastward over thedells the dwarfs were risen in Ulk, and gone to war with thedemi-gods. 

The demi-gods are they that were born of earthly women, but theirsires are the elder gods who walked of old among men. Disguised theywould go through the villages sometimes in summer evenings, cloakedand unknown of men; but the younger maidens knew them and always ranto them singing, for all that their elders said: in evenings long agothey had danced to the woods of the oak-trees. Their children dweltout-of-doors beyond the dells of the bracken, in the cool and heatherylands, and were now at war with the dwarfs. 

Dour and grim were the demi-gods and had the faults of both parents, and would not mix with men but claimed the right of their fathers, andwould not play human games but forever were prophesying, and yet weremore frivolous than their mothers were, whom the fairies had longsince buried in wild wood gardens with more than human rites. 

And being irked at their lack of rights and ill content with the land, and having no power at all over the wind and snow, and caring littlefor the powers they had, the demi-gods became idle, greasy, and slow;and the contemptuous dwarfs despised them ever. 

The dwarfs were contemptuous of all things savouring of heaven, and ofeverything that was even partly divine. They were, so it has beensaid, of the seed of man; but, being squat and hairy like to thebeasts; they praised all beastly things, and bestiality was shownreverence among them, so far as reverence was theirs to show. So mostof all they despised the discontent of the demi-gods, who dreamed ofthe courts of heaven and power over wind and snow; for what better, said the dwarfs, could demi-gods do than nose in the earth for rootsand cover their faces with mire, and run with the cheerful goats andbe even as they?

Now in their idleness caused by their discontent, the seed of the godsand the maidens grew more discontented still, and only spake of orcared for heavenly things; until the contempt of the dwarfs, who heardof all these doings, was bridled no longer and it must needs be war. They burned spice, dipped in blood and dried, before the chief oftheir witches, sharpening their axes, and made war on the demi-gods. 

They passed by night over the Oolnar Mountains, each dwarf with hisgood axe, the old flint war-axe of his fathers, a night when no moonshone, and they went unshod, and swiftly, to come on the demi-gods inthe darkness beyond the dells of Ulk, lying fat and idle andcontemptible. 

And before it was light they found the heathery lands, and thedemi-gods lying lazy all over the side of a hill. The dwarfs stoletowards them warily in the darkness. 

Now the art that the gods love most is the art of war: and when theseed of the gods and those nimble maidens awoke and found it was warit was almost as much to them as the godlike pursuits of heaven, enjoyed in the marble courts; or power over wind and snow. They alldrew out at once their swords of tempered bronze, cast down to themcenturies since on stormy nights when their fathers, drew them andfaced the dwarfs, and casting their idleness from them, fell on them, sword to axe. And the dwarfs fought hard that night, and bruised thedemi-gods sorely, hacking with those huge axes that had not spared theoaks. Yet for all the weight of their blows and the cunning of theiradventure, one point they had overlooked: _the demi-gods wereimmortal. _

As the fight rolled on towards morning the fighters were fewer andfewer, yet for all the blows of the dwarfs men fell upon one sideonly. 

Dawn came and the demi-gods were fighting against no more than six, and the hour that follows dawn, and the last of the dwarfs was gone. 

And when the light was clear on that peak of the Bleaks of Eerie theeagle left his crag and flew grimly East, and found it was as he hadhoped in the matter of blood. 

But the demi-gods lay down in their heathery lands, for once contentthough so far from the courts of heaven, and even half forgot theirheavenly rights, and sighed no more for power over wind and snow. 

HOW THE GODS AVENGED MEOUL KI NING

Meoul Ki Ning was on his way with a lily from the lotus ponds of Eshto offer it to the Goddess of Abundance in her temple Aoul Keroon. Andon the road from the pond to the little hill and the temple AoulKeroon, Ap Ariph, his enemy, shot him with an arrow from a bow that hehad made out of bamboo, and took his pretty lily up the hill andoffered it to the Goddess of Abundance in her temple Aoul Keroon. Andthe Goddess was pleased with the gift, as all women are, and sentpleasant dreams to Ap Ariph for seven nights straight from the moon. 

And on the seventh night the gods held conclave together, on thecloudy peaks they held it, above Narn, Ktoon, and Pti. So high theirpeak arises that no man heard their voices. They spake on that cloudymountain (not the highest hamlet heard them). "What doth the Goddessof Abundance, " (but naming her Lling, as they name her), "what dothshe sending sweet dreams for seven nights to Ap Ariph?"

And the gods sent for their seer who is all eyes and feet, running toand fro on the Earth, observing the ways of men, seeing even theirlittlest doings, never deeming a doing too little, but knowing the webof the gods is woven of littlest things. He it is that sees the catin the garden of parakeets, the thief in the upper chamber, the sin ofthe child with the honey, the women talking indoors and the smallhut's innermost things. Standing before the gods he told them thecase of Ap Ariph and the wrongs of Meoul Ki Ning and the rape of thelotus lily; he told of the cutting and making of Ap Ariph's bamboobow, of the shooting of Meoul Ki Ning, and of how the arrow hit him, and the smile on the face of Lling when she came by the lotus bloom. 

And the gods were wroth with Ap Ariph and swore to avenge Ki Ning. 

And the ancient one of the gods, he that is older than Earth, calledup the thunder at once, and raised his arms and cried out on the gods'high windy mountain, and prophesied on those rocks with runes thatwere older than speech, and sang in his wrath old songs that he hadlearned in storm from the sea, when only that peak of the gods in thewhole of the earth was dry; and he swore that Ap Ariph should die thatnight, and the thunder raged about him, and the tears of Lling werevain. 

The lightning stroke of the gods leaping earthward seeking Ap Ariphpassed near to his house but missed him. A certain vagabond was downfrom the hills, singing songs in the street near by the house of ApAriph, songs of a former folk that dwelt once, they say, in thosevalleys, and begging for rice and curds; it was him the lightning hit. 

And the gods were satisfied, and their wrath abated, and their thunderrolled away and the great black clouds dissolved, and the ancient oneof the gods went back to his age-old sleep, and morning came, and thebirds and the light shone on the mountain, and the peak stood clear tosee, the serene home of the gods. 

THE GIFT OF THE GODS

There was once a man who sought a boon of the gods. For peace wasover the world and all things savoured of sameness, and the man wasweary at heart and sighed for the tents and the warfields. Thereforehe sought a boon of the ancient gods. And appearing before them hesaid to them, "Ancient gods; there is peace in the land where I dwell, and indeed to the uttermost parts, and we are full weary of peace. Oancient gods, grant us war!"

And the ancient gods made him a war. 

And the man went forth with his sword, and behold it was even war. Andthe man remembered the little things that he knew, and thought of thequiet days that there used to be, and at night on the hard grounddreamed of the things of peace. And dearer and dearer grew the wontedthings, the dull but easeful things of the days of peace, andremembering these he began to regret the war, and sought once more aboon of the ancient gods, and appearing before them he said: "Oancient gods, indeed but a man loves best the days of peace. Thereforetake back your war and give us peace, for indeed of all yourblessedness peace is best. "

And the man returned again to the haunts of peace. 

But in a while the man grew weary of peace, of the things that he usedto know, and the savour of sameness again; and sighing again for thetents, and appearing once more to the gods, he said to them: "Ancientgods; we do not love your peace, for indeed the days are dull, and aman is best at war. "

And the gods made him a war. 

And there were drums again, the smoke of campfires again, wind in thewaste again, the sound of horses of war, burning cities again, and thethings that wanderers know; and the thoughts of that man went home tothe ways of peace; moss upon lawns again, light in old spires again, sun upon gardens again, flowers in pleasant woods and sleep and thepaths of peace. 

And once more the man appeared to the ancient gods and sought fromthem one more boon, and said to them: "Ancient gods; indeed but theworld and we are a-weary of war and long for the ancient ways and thepaths of peace. "

So the gods took back their war and gave him peace. 

But the man took counsel one day and communed long with himself andsaid to himself: "Behold, the wishes I wish, which the gods grant, arenot to be much desired; and if the gods should one day grant a wishand never revoke it, which is a way of the gods, I should be sorelytried because of my wish; my wishes are dangerous wishes and not to bedesired. "

And therefore he wrote an anonymous letter to the gods, writing: "Oancient gods; this man that hath four times troubled you with hiswishes, wishing for peace and war, is a man that hath no reverence forthe gods, speaking ill of them on days when they do not hear, andspeaking well of them on holy days and at the appointed hours when thegods are hearkening to prayer. Therefore grant no more wishes to thisimpious man. "

And the days of peace wore on and there arose again from the earth, like mist in the autumn from the fields that generations haveploughed, the savour of sameness again. And the man went forth onemorning and appeared once more to the gods, and cried: "O ancientgods; give us but one war again, for I would be back to the camps anddebateable borders of lands. "

And the gods said: "We hear not well of your way of life, yea illthings have come to our hearing, so that we grant no more the wishesyou wish. "

THE SACK OF EMERALDS

One bad October night in the high wolds beyond Wiltshire, with a northwind chaunting of winter, with the old leaves letting go their holdone by one from branches and dropping down to decay, with a mournfulsound of owls, and in fearsome loneliness, there trudged in brokenboots and in wet and windy rags an old man, stooping low under a sackof emeralds. It were easy to see had you been travelling late on thatinauspicious night, that the burden of the sack was far too great forthe poor old man that bore it. And had you flashed a lantern in hisface there was a look there of hopelessness and fatigue that wouldhave told you it was no wish of his that kept him tottering on underthat bloated sack. 

When the menacing look of the night and its cheerless sounds, and thecold, and the weight of the sack, had all but brought him to the doorof death, and he had dropped his sack onto the road and was draggingit on behind him, just as he felt that his final hour was come, andcome (which was worse) as he held the accursed sack, just then he sawthe bulk and the black shape of the Sign of the Lost Shepherd loom upby the ragged way. He opened the door and staggered into the lightand sank on a bench with his huge sack beside him. 

All this you had seen had you been on that lonely road, so late onthose bitter wolds, with their outlines vast and mournful in the dark, and their little clumps of trees sad with October. But neither younor I were out that night. I did not see the poor old man and hissack until he sank down all of a heap in the lighted inn. 

And Yon the blacksmith was there; and the carpenter, Willie Losh; andJackers, the postman's son. And they gave him a glass of beer. Andthe old man drank it up, still hugging his emeralds. 

And at last they asked him what he had in his sack, the question heclearly dreaded; and he only clasped yet tighter the sodden sack andmumbled he had potatoes. 

"Potatoes, " said Yon the blacksmith. 

"Potatoes, " said Willie Losh. 

And when he heard the doubt that was in their voices the old manshivered and moaned. 

"Potatoes, did you say?" said the postman's son. And they all threerose and tried to peer at the sack that the rain-soaked wayfarer sozealously sheltered. 

And from the old man's fierceness I had said that, had it not been forthat foul night on the roads and the weight he had carried so far andthe fearful winds of October, he had fought with the blacksmith, thecarpenter and the postman's son, all three, till he beat them awayfrom his sack. And weary and wet as he was he fought them hard. 

I should no doubt have interfered; and yet the three men meant no harmto the wayfarer, but resented the reticence that he displayed to themthough they had given him beer; it was to them as though a master keyhad failed to open a cupboard. And, as for me, curiosity held me downto my chair and forbade me to interfere on behalf of the sack; for theold man's furtive ways, and the night out of which he came, and thehour of his coming, and the look of his sack, all made me long as muchto know what he had, as even the blacksmith, the carpenter and thepostman's son. 

And then they found the emeralds. They were all bigger than hazelnuts, hundreds and hundreds of them: and the old man screamed. 

"Come, come, we're not thieves, " said the blacksmith. 

"We're not thieves, " said the carpenter. 

"We're not thieves, " said the postman's son. 

And with awful fear on his face the wayfarer closed his sack, whimpering over his emeralds and furtively glancing round as thoughthe loss of his secret were and utterly deadly thing. And then theyasked him to give them just one each, just one huge emerald each, because they had given him a glass of beer. Then to see the wayfarershrink against his sack and guard it with clutching fingers one wouldhave said that he was a selfish man, were it not for the terror thatwas freezing his face. I have seen men look sheer at Death with farless fear. 

And they took their emerald all three, one enormous emerald each, while the old man hopelessly struggled till he saw his three emeraldsgo, and fell to the floor and wept, a pitiable, sodden heap. 

And about that time I began to hear far off down the windy road, bywhich that sack had come, faintly at first and slowly louder andlouder, the click clack clop of a lame horse coming nearer. Clickclack clop and a loose shoe rattling, the sound of a horse too wearyto be out upon such a night, too lame to be out at all. 

Click clack clop. And all of a sudden the old wayfarer heard it;heard it above the sound of his won sobbing, and at once went white tothe lips. Such sudden fear as blanched him in a moment struck rightto the hearts of all there. They muttered to him that it was onlytheir play, they hastily whispered excuses, they asked him what waswrong, but seemed scarcely to hope for an answer, nor did he speak, but sat with a frozen stare, all at once dry-eyed, a monument toterror. 

Nearer and nearer came the click clack clop. 

And when I saw the expression of that man's face and how its horrordeepened as the ominous sound drew nearer, then I knew that somethingwas wrong. And looking for the last time upon all four I saw thewayfarer horror-struck by his sack and the other three crowding roundto put their huge emeralds back then, even on such a night, I slippedaway from the inn. 

Outside the bitter wind roared in my ears, and close in the darknessthe horse went click clack clop. 

And as soon as my eyes could see at all in the night I saw a man in ahuge hat looped up in front, wearing a sword in a scabbard shabby andhuge, and looking blacker than the darkness, riding on a lean horseslowly up to the inn. Whether his were the emeralds, or who he was, or why he rode a lame horse on such a night, I did not stop todiscover, but went at once from the inn as he strode in his greatblack riding coat up to the door. 

And that was the last that was ever seen of the wayfarer; theblacksmith, the carpenter or the postman's son. 

THE OLD BROWN COAT

My friend, Mr. Douglas Ainslie, tells me that Sir James Barrie oncetold him this story. The story, or rather the fragment, was asfollows. 

A man strolling into an auction somewhere abroad, I think it must havebeen France, for they bid in francs, found they were selling oldclothes. And following some idle whim he soon found himself biddingfor an old coat. A man bid against him, he bid against the man. Upand up went the price till the old coat was knocked down to him fortwenty pounds. As he went away with the coat he saw the other bidderlooking at him with an expression of fury. 

That's as far as the story goes. But how, Mr. Ainslie asked me, didthe matter develop, and why that furious look? I at once madeenquiries at a reliable source and have ascertained that the man'sname was Peters, who thus oddly purchased a coat, and that he took itto the Rue de Rivoli, to a hotel where he lodged, from the little low, dark auction room by the Seine in which he concluded the bargain. There he examined it, off and on, all day and much of the nextmorning, a light brown overcoat with tails, without discovering anyexcuse, far less a reason, for having spent twenty pounds on so worn athing. And late next morning to his sitting room looking out on theGardens of the Tuileries the man with the furious look was ushered in. 

Grim he stood, silent and angry, till the guiding waiter went. Nottill then did he speak, and his words came clear and brief, welling upfrom deep emotions. 

"How did you dare to bid against me?"

His name was Santiago. And for many moments Peters found no excuse tooffer, no apology, nothing in extenuation. Lamely at last, weakly, knowing his argument to be of no avail, he muttered something to theintent that Mr. Santiago could have outbid him. 

"No, " said the stranger. "We don't want all the town in this. Thisis a matter between you and me. " He paused, then added in his fierce, curt way: "A thousand pounds, no more. "

Almost dumbly Peters accepted the offer and, pocketing the thousandpounds that was paid him, and apologizing for the inconvenience he hadunwittingly caused, tried to show the stranger out. But Santiagostrode swiftly on before him, taking the coat, and was gone. 

There followed between Peters and his second thoughts another longafternoon of bitter reproaches. Why ever had he let go sothoughtlessly of a garment that so easily fetched a thousand pounds?And the more he brooded on this the more clearly did he perceive thathe had lost an unusual opportunity of a first class investment of aspeculative kind. He knew men perhaps better than he knew materials;and, though he could not see in that old brown coat the value of somuch as a thousand pounds, he saw far more than that in the man'seager need for it. An afternoon of brooding over lost opportunitiesled to a night of remorse, and scarcely had day dawned when he ran tohis sitting-room to see if he still had safe the card of Santiago. Andthere was the neat and perfumed _carte de visite_ with Santiago'sParisian address in the corner. 

That morning he sought him out, and found Santiago seated at a tablewith chemicals and magnifying glasses beside him examining, as it layspread wide before him, the old brown coat. And Peters fancied hewore a puzzled air. 

They came at once to business. Peters was rich and asked Santiago toname his price, and that small dark man admitted financial straits, and so was willing to sell for thirty thousand pounds. A littlebargaining followed, the price came down and the old brown coatchanged hands once more, for twenty thousand pounds. 

Let any who may be inclined to doubt my story understand that in theCity, as any respectable company promoter will tell them, twentythousand pounds is invested almost daily with less return for it thanan old tail coat. And, whatever doubts Mr. Peters felt that day aboutthe wisdom of his investment, there before him lay that tangiblereturn, that something that may be actually fingered and seen, whichis so often denied to the investor in gold mines and other SelectedInvestments. Yet as the days wore on and the old coat grew noyounger, nor any more wonderful, nor the least useful, but more andmore like an ordinary old coat, Peters began once more to doubt hisastuteness. Before the week was out his doubts had grown acute. Andthen one morning, Santiago returned. A man, he said, had just arrivedfrom Spain, a friend unexpected all of a sudden in Paris, from whom hemight borrow money: and would Peters resell the coat for thirtythousand pounds?

It was then that Peters, seeing his opportunity, cast aside thepretence that he had maintained for so long of knowing something aboutthe mysterious coat, and demanded to know its properties. Santiagoswore that he knew not, and repeatedly swore the same by many sacrednames; but when Peters as often threatened not to sell, Santiago atlast drew out a thin cigar and, lighting it and settling himself in achair, told all he knew of the coat. 

He had been on its tracks for weeks with suspicions growing all thetime that it was no ordinary coat, and at last he had run it to earthin that auction room but would not bid for it more than twenty poundsfor fear of letting every one into the secret. What the secret was heswore he did not know, but this much he knew all along, that theweight of the coat was absolutely nothing; and he had discovered bytesting it with acids that the brown stuff of which the coat was madewas neither cloth nor silk nor any known material, and would neitherburn nor tear. He believed it to be some undiscovered element. Andthe properties of the coat which he was convinced were marvellous hefelt sure of discovering within another week by means of experimentswith his chemicals. Again he offered thirty thousand pounds, to bepaid within two or three days if all went well. And then they startedhaggling together as business men will. 

And all the morning went by over the gardens of the Tuileries and theafternoons came on, and only by two o'clock they arrived at anunderstanding, on a basis, as they called it, of thirty thousandguineas. And the old tail coat was brought out and spread on thetable, and they examined it together and chatted about its properties, all the more friendly for their strenuous argument. And Santiago wasrising up to go, and Peters pleasantly holding out his hand, when astep was heard on the stair. It echoed up to the room, the dooropened. And an elderly labouring man came stumping in. He walkedwith difficulty, almost like a bather who has been swimming andfloating all morning and misses the buoyancy of the water when he hascome to land. He stumped up to the table without speaking and there atonce caught sight of the old brown coat. 

"Why, " he said, "that be my old coat. "

And without another word he put it on. In the fierce glare of hiseyes as he fitted on that coat, carefully fastening the buttons, buttoning up the flap of a pocket here, unbuttoning one there, neitherPeters nor Santiago found a word to say. They sat there wondering howthey had dared to bid for that brown tail coat, how they had dared tobuy it, even to touch it, they sat there silent without a singleexcuse. And with no word more the old labourer stumped across theroom, opened wide the double window that looked on the Tuileriesgardens and, flashing back over his shoulder one look that was full ofscorn, stumped away up through the air at an angle of forty degrees. 

Peters and Santiago saw him bear to his left from the window; passingdiagonally over the Rue de Rivoli and over a corner of the Tuileriesgardens; they saw him clear the Louvre, and thence they dumbly watchedhim still slanting upwards, stepping out with a firmer and moreconfident stride as he dwindled and dwindled away with his old browncoat. 

Neither spoke till he was no more than a speck in the sky far awayover Paris going South Eastwards. 

"Well I am blowed, " said Peters. 

But Santiago sadly shook his head. "I knew it was a good coat, " hesaid. "I _knew_ it was a good coat. "

AN ARCHIVE OF THE OLDER MYSTERIES

It is told in the Archive of the Older Mysteries of China that one ofthe house of Tlang was cunning with sharpened iron and went to thegreen jade mountains and carved a green jade god. And this was in thecycle of the Dragon, the seventy-eighth year. 

And for nearly a hundred years men doubted the green jade god, andthen they worshipped him for a thousand years; and after that theydoubted him again, and the green jade god made a miracle and whelmedthe green jade mountains, sinking them down one evening at sunset intothe earth so that there is only a marsh where the green jade mountainswere. And the marsh is full of the lotus. 

By the side of this lotus marsh, just as it glitters at evening, walksLi La Ting, the Chinese girl, to bring the cows home; she goes behindthem singing of the river Lo Lang Ho. And thus she sings of theriver, even of Lo Lang Ho: she sings that he is indeed of all riversthe greatest, born of more ancient mountains than even the wise menknow, swifter than hares, more deep than the sea, the master of otherrivers perfumed even as roses and fairer than the sapphires around theneck of a prince. And then she would pray to the river Lo Lang Ho, master of rivers and rival of the heaven at dawn, to bring her down ina boat of light bamboo a lover rowing out of the inner land in agarment of yellow silk with turquoises at his waist, young and merryand idle, with a face as yellow as gold and a ruby in his cap withlanterns shining at dusk. 

Thus she would pray of an evening to the river Lo Lang Ho as she wentbehind the cows at the edge of the lotus marshes and the green jadegod under the lotus marshes was jealous of the lover that the maidenLi La Ting would pray for of an evening to the river Lo Lang Ho, andhe cursed the river after the manner of gods and turned it into anarrow and evil smelling stream. 

And all this happened a thousand years ago, and Lo Lang Ho is but areproach among travelers and the story of that great river isforgotten, and what became of the maiden no tale saith though all menthink she became a goddess of jade to sit and smile at a lotus on alotus carven of stone by the side of the green jade god far under themarshes upon the peaks of the mountains, but women know that her ghoststill haunts the lotus marshes on glittering evenings, singing of LoLang Ho. 

A CITY OF WONDER

Past the upper corner of a precipice the moon rode into view. Nighthad for some while now hooded the marvelous city. They had planned itto be symmetrical, its maps were orderly, near; in two dimensions, that is length and breadth, its streets met and crossed each otherwith regular exactitude, with all the dullness of the science of man. The city had laughed as it were and shaken itself free and in thethird dimension had soared away to consort with all the careless, irregular things that know not man for their master. 

Yet even there, even at those altitudes, man had still clung to hissymmetry, still claimed that these mountains were houses; in orderlyrows the thousand windows stood watching each other precisely, allorderly, all alike, lest any should guess by day that there might bemystery here. So they stood in the daylight. The sun set, still theywere orderly, as scientific and regular as the labour of only man andthe bees. The mists darken at evening. And first the WoolworthBuilding goes away, sheer home and away from any allegiance to man, totake his place among mountains; for I saw him stand with the lowerslopes invisible in the gloaming, while only his pinnacles showed upin the clearer sky. Thus only mountains stand. 

Still all the windows of the other buildings stood in their regularrows--all side by side in silence, not yet changed, as though waitingone furtive moment to step from the schemes of man, to slip back tomystery and romance again as cats do when they steal on velvet feetaway from familiar hearths in the dark of the moon. 

Night fell, and the moment came. Someone lit a window, far up anothershone with its orange glow. Window by window, and yet not nearly all. Surely if modern man with his clever schemes held any sway here stillhe would have turned one switch and lit them all together; but we areback with the older man of whom far songs tell, he whose spirit is kinto strange romances and mountains. One by one the windows shine fromthe precipices; some twinkle, some are dark; man's orderly schemeshave gone, and we are amongst vast heights lit by inscrutable beacons. 

I have seen such cities before, and I have told of them in _The Bookof Wonder_. 

Here in New York a poet met a welcome. 

 ** BEYOND THE FIELDS WE KNOW **

PUBLISHER'S NOTE

Beyond the fields we know, in the Lands of Dream, lies the Valley ofthe Yann where the mighty river of that name, rising in the Hills ofHap, idleing its way by massive dream-evoking amethyst cliffs, orchid-laden forests, and ancient mysterious cities, comes to the Gatesof Yann and passes to the sea. 

Some years since a poet visiting that land voyaged down the Yann on atrading bark named the _Bird of the River_ and returning safe toIreland, set down in a tale that is called _Idle Days on the Yann_, the wonders of that voyage. Now the tale being one of marvellousbeauty, found its way into a volume we call _A Dreamer's Tales_ whereit may be found to this day with other wondrous tales of that samepoet. 

As the days went by the lure of the river and pleasant memories of hisshipmates bore in with a constant urge on the soul of the poet that hemight once more journey Beyond the Fields We Know and come to thefloor of Yann; and one day it fell out that turning into Go-by Streetthat leads up from the Embankment toward the Strand and which you andI always do go by and perhaps never see in passing, he found the doorwhich one enters on the way to the Land of Dream. 

Twice of late has Lord Dunsany entered that door in Go-by Street andreturned to the Valley of the Yann and each time come back with atale; one, of his search for the _Bird of the River, _ the other of themighty hunter who avenged the destruction of Perdóndaris, where on hisearlier voyage the captain tied up his ship and traded within thecity. That all may be clear to those who read these new tales and towhom no report has previously come Beyond the Fields We Know thepublishers reprint in this volume _Idle Days on the Yann_. 

IDLE DAYS ON THE YANN

So I came down through the wood to the bank of Yann and found, as hadbeen prophesied, the ship _Bird of the River_ about to loose hercable. 

The captain sate cross-legged upon the white deck with his scimitarlying beside him in its jewelled scabbard, and the sailors toiled tospread the nimble sails to bring the ship into the central stream ofYann, and all the while sang ancient soothing songs. And the wind ofthe evening descending cool from the snowfields of some mountainousabode of distant gods came suddenly, like glad tidings to an anxiouscity, into the wing-like sails. 

And so we came into the central stream, whereat the sailors loweredthe greater sails. But I had gone to bow before the captain, and toinquire concerning the miracles, and appearances among men, of themost holy gods of whatever land he had come from. And the captainanswered that he came from fair Belzoond, and worshipped gods thatwere the least and humblest, who seldom sent the famine or thethunder, and were easily appeased with little battles. And I told howI came from Ireland, which is of Europe, whereat the captain and allthe sailors laughed, for they said, "There are no such places in allthe land of dreams. " When they had ceased to mock me, I explained thatmy fancy mostly dwelt in the desert of Cuppar-Nombo, about a beautifulcity called Golthoth the Damned, which was sentinelled all round bywolves and their shadows, and had been utterly desolate for years andyears, because of a curse which the gods once spoke in anger and couldnever since recall. And sometimes my dreams took me as far as PungarVees, the red walled city where the fountains are, which trades withthe Isles and Thul. When I said this they complimented me upon theabode of my fancy, saying that, though they had never seen thesecities, such places might well be imagined. For the rest of thatevening I bargained with the captain over the sum that I should payhim for my fare if God and the tide of Yann should bring us safely asfar as the cliffs by the sea, which are named Bar-Wul-Yann, the Gateof Yann. 

And now the sun had set, and all the colours of the world and heavenhad held a festival with him, and slipped one by one away before theimminent approach of night. The parrots had all flown home to thejungle on either bank, the monkeys in rows in safety on high branchesof the trees were silent and asleep, the fireflies in the deeps of theforest were going up and down, and the great stars came gleaming outto look on the face of Yann. Then the sailors lighted lanterns andhung them round the ship, and the light flashed out on a sudden anddazzled Yann, and the ducks that fed along his marshy banks allsuddenly arose, and made wide circles in the upper air, and saw thedistant reaches of the Yann and the white mist that softly cloaked thejungle, before they returned again into their marshes. 

And then the sailors knelt on the decks and prayed, not all together, but five or six at a time. Side by side there kneeled down togetherfive or six, for there only prayed at the same time men of differentfaiths, so that no god should hear two men praying to him at once. Assoon as any one had finished his prayer, another of the same faithwould take his place. Thus knelt the row of five or six with bendedheads under the fluttering sail, while the central stream of the RiverYann took them on towards the sea, and their prayers rose up fromamong the lanterns and went towards the stars. And behind them in theafter end of the ship the helmsman prayed aloud the helmsman's prayer, which is prayed by all who follow his trade upon the River Yann, ofwhatever faith they be. And the captain prayed to his little lessergods, to the gods that bless Belzoond. 

And I too felt that I would pray. Yet I liked not to pray to a jealousGod there where the frail affectionate gods whom the heathen love werebeing humbly invoked; so I bethought me, instead, of Sheol Nugganoth, whom the men of the jungle have long since deserted, who is nowunworshipped and alone; and to him I prayed. 

And upon us praying the night came suddenly down, as it comes upon allmen who pray at evening and upon all men who do not; yet our prayerscomforted our own souls when we thought of the Great Night to come. 

And so Yann bore us magnificently onwards, for he was elate withmolten snow that the Poltiades had brought him from the Hills of Hap, and the Marn and Migris were swollen full with floods; and he bore usin his might past Kyph and Pir, and we saw the lights of Goolunza. 

Soon we all slept except the helmsman, who kept the ship in themidstream of Yann. 

When the sun rose the helmsman ceased to sing, for by song he cheeredhimself in the lonely night. When the song ceased we suddenly allawoke, and another took the helm, and the helmsman slept. 

We knew that soon we should come to Mandaroon. We made a meal, andMandaroon appeared. Then the captain commanded, and the sailors loosedagain the greater sails, and the ship turned and left the stream ofYann and came into a harbour beneath the ruddy walls of Mandaroon. Then while the sailors went and gathered fruits I came alone to thegate of Mandaroon. A few huts were outside it, in which lived theguard. A sentinel with a long white beard was standing in the gate, armed with a rusty pike. He wore large spectacles, which were coveredwith dust. Through the gate I saw the city. A deathly stillness wasover all of it. The ways seemed untrodden, and moss was thick ondoorsteps; in the market-place huddled figures lay asleep. A scent ofincense and burned poppies, and there was a hum of the echoes ofdistant bells. I said to the sentinel in the tongue of the region ofYann, "Why are they all asleep in this still city?"

He answered: "None may ask questions in this gate for fear they wakethe people of the city. For when the people of this city wake the godswill die. And when the gods die men may dream no more. " And I began toask him what gods that city worshipped, but he lifted his pike becausenone might ask questions there. So I left him and went back to the_Bird of the River_. 

Certainly Mandaroon was beautiful with her white pinnacles peeringover her ruddy walls and the green of her copper roofs. 

When I came back again to the _Bird of the River_, I found the sailorswere returned to the ship. Soon we weighed anchor, and sailed outagain, and so came once more to the middle of the river. And now thesun was moving towards his heights, and there had reached us on theRiver Yann the song of those countless myriads of choirs that attendhim in his progress round the world. For the little creatures thathave many legs had spread their gauze wings easily on the air, as aman rests his elbows on a balcony and gave jubilant, ceremonialpraises to the sun, or else they moved together on the air in waveringdances intricate and swift, or turned aside to avoid the onrush ofsome drop of water that a breeze had shaken from a jungle orchid, chilling the air and driving it before it, as it fell whirring in itsrush to the earth; but all the while they sang triumphantly. "For theday is for us, " they said, "whether our great and sacred father theSun shall bring up more life like us from the marshes, or whether allthe world shall end to-night. " And there sang all those whose notesare known to human ears, as well as those whose far more numerousnotes have never been heard by man. 

To these a rainy day had been as an era of war that should desolatecontinents during all the lifetime of a man. 

And there came out also from the dark and steaming jungle to beholdand rejoice in the Sun the huge and lazy butterflies. And they danced, but danced idly, on the ways of the air, as some haughty queen ofdistant conquered lands might in her poverty and exile dance, in someencampment of the gipsies, for the mere bread to live by, but beyondthat would never abate her pride to dance for a fragment more. 

And the butterflies sung of strange and painted things, of purpleorchids and of lost pink cities and the monstrous colours of thejungle's decay. And they, too, were among those whose voices are notdiscernible by human ears. And as they floated above the river, goingfrom forest to forest, their splendour was matched by the inimicalbeauty of the birds who darted out to pursue them. Or sometimes theysettled on the white and wax-like blooms of the plant that creeps andclambers about the trees of the forest; and their purple wings flashedout on the great blossoms as, when the caravans go from Nurl to Thace, the gleaming silks flash out upon the snow, where the crafty merchantsspread them one by one to astonish the mountaineers of the Hills ofNoor. 

But upon men and beasts the sun sent a drowsiness. The river monstersalong the river's marge lay dormant in the slime. The sailors pitcheda pavilion, with golden tassels, for the captain upon the deck, andthen went, all but the helmsman, under a sail that they had hung as anawning between two masts. Then they told tales to one another, each ofhis own city or of the miracles of his god, until all were fallenasleep. The captain offered me the shade of his pavilion with the goldtassels, and there we talked for a while, he telling me that he wastaking merchandise to Perdóndaris, and that he would take back to fairBelzoond things appertaining to the affairs of the sea. Then, as Iwatched through the pavilion's opening the brilliant birds andbutterflies that crossed and recrossed over the river, I fell asleep, and dreamed that I was a monarch entering his capital underneatharches of flags, and all the musicians of the world were there, playing melodiously their instruments; but no one cheered. 

In the afternoon, as the day grew cooler again, I awoke and found thecaptain buckling on his scimitar, which he had taken off him while herested. 

And now we were approaching the wide court of Astahahn, which opensupon the river. Strange boats of antique design were chained there tothe steps. As we neared it we saw the open marble court, on threesides of which stood the city fronting on colonnades. And in the courtand along the colonnades the people of that city walked with solemnityand care according to the rites of ancient ceremony. All in that citywas of ancient device; the carving on the houses, which, when age hadbroken it remained unrepaired, was of the remotest times, andeverywhere were represented in stone beasts that have long sincepassed away from Earth--the dragon, the griffin, and the hippogriffin, and the different species of gargoyle. Nothing was to be found, whether material or custom, that was new in Astahahn. Now they took nonotice at all of us as we went by, but continued their processions andceremonies in the ancient city, and the sailors, knowing their custom, took no notice of them. But I called, as we came near, to one whostood beside the water's edge, asking him what men did in Astahahn andwhat their merchandise was, and with whom they traded. He said, "Herewe have fettered and manacled Time, who would otherwise slay thegods. "

I asked him what gods they worshipped in that city, and he said, "Allthose gods whom Time has not yet slain. " Then he turned from me andwould say no more, but busied himself in behaving in accordance withancient custom. And so, according to the will of Yann, we driftedonwards and left Astahahn, and we found in greater quantities suchbirds as prey on fishes. And they were very wonderful in theirplumage, and they came not out of the jungle, but flew, with theirlong necks stretched out before them, and their legs lying on the windbehind straight up the river over the mid-stream. 

And now the evening began to gather in. A thick white mist hadappeared over the river, and was softly rising higher. It clutched atthe trees with long impalpable arms, it rose higher and higher, chilling the air; and white shapes moved away into the jungle asthough the ghosts of shipwrecked mariners were searching stealthily inthe darkness for the spirits of evil that long ago had wrecked them onthe Yann. 

As the sun sank behind the field of orchids that grew on the mattedsummit of the jungle, the river monsters came wallowing out of theslime in which they had reclined during the heat of the day, and thegreat beasts of the jungle came down to drink. The butterflies a whilesince were gone to rest. In little narrow tributaries that we passednight seemed already to have fallen, though the sun which haddisappeared from us had not yet set. 

And now the birds of the jungle came flying home far over us, with thesunlight glistening pink upon their breasts, and lowered their pinionsas soon as they saw the Yann, and dropped into the trees. And thewidgeon began to go up the river in great companies, all whistling, and then would suddenly wheel and all go down again. And there shot byus the small and arrow-like teal; and we heard the manifold cries offlocks of geese, which the sailors told me had recently come in fromcrossing over the Lispasian ranges; every year they come by the sameway, close by the peak of Mluna, leaving it to the left, and themountain eagles know the way they come and--men say--the very hour, and every year they expect them by the same way as soon as the snowshave fallen upon the Northern Plains. But soon it grew so dark that wesaw these birds no more, and only heard the whirring of their wings, and of countless others besides, until they all settled down along thebanks of the river, and it was the hour when the birds of the nightwent forth. Then the sailors lit the lanterns for the night, and hugemoths appeared, flapping about the ship, and at moments their gorgeouscolours would be revealed by the lanterns, then they would pass intothe night again, where all was black. And again the sailors prayed, and thereafter we supped and slept, and the helmsman took our livesinto his care. 

When I awoke I found that we had indeed come to Perdóndaris, thatfamous city. For there it stood upon the left of us, a city fair andnotable, and all the more pleasant for our eyes to see after thejungle that was so long with us. And we were anchored by themarketplace, and the captain's merchandise was all displayed, and amerchant of Perdóndaris stood looking at it. And the captain had hisscimitar in his hand, and was beating with it in anger upon the deck, and the splinters were flying up from the white planks; for themerchant had offered him a price for his merchandise that the captaindeclared to be an insult to himself and his country's gods, whom henow said to be great and terrible gods, whose curses were to bedreaded. But the merchant waved his hands, which were of greatfatness, showing his pink palms, and swore that of himself he thoughtnot at all, but only of the poor folk in the huts beyond the city towhom he wished to sell the merchandise for as low a price as possible, leaving no remuneration for himself. For the merchandise was mostlythe thick toomarund carpets that in the winter keep the wind from thefloor, and tollub which the people smoke in pipes. Therefore themerchant said if he offered a piffek more the poor folk must gowithout their toomarunds when the winter came, and without theirtollub in the evenings, or else he and his aged father must starvetogether. Thereat the captain lifted his scimitar to his own throat, saying that he was now a ruined man, and that nothing remained to himbut death. And while he was carefully lifting he beard with his lefthand, the merchant eyed the merchandise again, and said that ratherthan see so worthy a captain die, a man for whom he had conceived anespecial love when first he saw the manner in which he handled hisship, he and his aged father should starve together and therefore heoffered fifteen piffeks more. 

When he said this the captain prostrated himself and prayed to hisgods that they might yet sweeten this merchant's bitter heart--to hislittle lesser gods, to the gods that bless Belzoond. 

At last the merchant offered yet five piffeks more. Then the captainwept, for he said that he was deserted of his gods; and the merchantalso wept, for he said that he was thinking of his aged father, and ofhow soon he would starve, and he hid his weeping face with both hishands, and eyed the tollub again between his fingers. And so thebargain was concluded, and the merchant took the toomarund and tollub, paying for them out of a great clinking purse. And these were packedup into bales again, and three of the merchant's slaves carried themupon their heads into the city. And all the while the sailors had satsilent, cross-legged in a crescent upon the deck, eagerly watching thebargain, and now a murmur of satisfaction arose among them, and theybegan to compare it among themselves with other bargains that they hadknown. And I found out from them that there are seven merchants inPerdóndaris, and that they had all come to the captain one by onebefore the bargaining began, and each had warned him privately againstthe others. And to all the merchants the captain had offered the wineof his own country, that they make in fair Belzoond, but could in nowise persuade them to it. But now that the bargain was over, and thesailors were seated at the first meal of the day, the captain appearedamong them with a cask of that wine, and we broached it with care andall made merry together. And the captain was glad in his heart becausehe knew that he had much honour in the eyes of his men because of thebargain that he had made. So the sailors drank the wine of theirnative land, and soon their thoughts were back in fair Belzoond andthe little neighbouring cities of Durl and Duz. 

But for me the captain poured into a little glass some heavy yellowwine from a small jar which he kept apart among his sacred things. Thick and sweet it was, even like honey, yet there was in its heart amighty, ardent fire which had authority over souls of men. It wasmade, the captain told me, with great subtlety by the secret craft ofa family of six who lived in a hut on the mountains of Hian Min. Oncein these mountains, he said, he followed the spoor of a bear, and hecame suddenly on a man of that family who had hunted the same bear, and he was at the end of a narrow way with precipice all about him, and his spear was sticking in the bear, and the wound not fatal, andhe had no other weapon. And the bear was walking towards the man, veryslowly because his wound irked him--yet he was now very close. Andwhat the captain did he would not say, but every year as soon as thesnows are hard, and travelling is easy on the Hian Min, that man comesdown to the market in the plains, and always leaves for the captain inthe gate of fair Belzoond a vessel of that priceless secret wine. 

And as I sipped the wine and the captain talked, I remembered me ofstalwart noble things that I had long since resolutely planned, and mysoul seemed to grow mightier within me and to dominate the whole tideof the Yann. It may be that I then slept. Or, if I did not, I do notnow minutely recollect every detail of that morning's occupations. Towards evening, I awoke and wishing to see Perdóndaris before we leftin the morning, and being unable to wake the captain, I went ashorealone. Certainly Perdóndaris was a powerful city; it was encompassedby a wall of great strength and altitude, having in it hollow ways fortroops to walk in, and battlements along it all the way, and fifteenstrong towers on it in every mile, and copper plaques low down wheremen could read them, telling in all the languages of those parts ofthe Earth--one language on each plaque--the tale of how an army onceattacked Perdóndaris and what befell that army. Then I enteredPerdóndaris and found all the people dancing, clad in brilliant silks, and playing on the tam-bang as they danced. For a fearful thunderstormhad terrified them while I slept, and the fires of death, they said, had danced over Perdóndaris, and now the thunder had gone leaping awaylarge and black and hideous, they said, over the distant hills, andhad turned round snarling at them, showing his gleaming teeth, and hadstamped, as he went, upon the hilltops until they rang as though theyhad been bronze. And often and again they stopped in their merrydances and prayed to the God they knew not, saying, "O, God that weknow not, we thank Thee for sending the thunder back to his hills. "And I went on and came to the market-place, and lying there upon themarble pavement I saw the merchant fast asleep and breathing heavily, with his face and the palms of his hands towards the sky, and slaveswere fanning him to keep away the flies. And from the market-place Icame to a silver temple and then to a palace of onyx, and there weremany wonders in Perdóndaris, and I would have stayed and seen themall, but as I came to the outer wall of the city I suddenly saw in ita huge ivory gate. For a while I paused and admired it, then I camenearer and perceived the dreadful truth. The gate was carved out ofone solid piece!

I fled at once through the gateway and down to the ship, and even as Iran I thought that I heard far off on the hills behind me the tramp ofthe fearful beast by whom that mass of ivory was shed, who was perhapseven then looking for his other tusk. When I was on the ship again Ifelt safer, and I said nothing to the sailors of what I had seen. 

And now the captain was gradually awakening. Now night was rolling upfrom the East and North, and only the pinnacles of the towers ofPerdóndaris still took the fallen sunlight. Then I went to the captainand told him quietly of the thing I had seen. And he questioned me atonce about the gate, in a low voice, that the sailors might not know;and I told him how the weight of the thing was such that it could nothave been brought from afar, and the captain knew that it had not beenthere a year ago. We agreed that such a beast could never have beenkilled by any assault of man, and that the gate must have been afallen tusk, and one fallen near and recently. Therefore he decidedthat it were better to flee at once; so he commanded, and the sailorswent to the sails, and others raised the anchor to the deck, and justas the highest pinnacle of marble lost the last rays of the sun weleft Perdóndaris, that famous city. And night came down and cloakedPerdóndaris and hid it from our eyes, which as things have happenedwill never see it again; for I have heard since that something swiftand wonderful has suddenly wrecked Perdóndaris in a day--towers, andwalls, and people. 

And the night deepened over the River Yann, a night all white withstars. And with the night there arose the helmsman's song. As soon ashe had prayed he began to sing to cheer himself all through the lonelynight. But first he prayed, praying the helmsman's prayer. And this iswhat I remember of it, rendered into English with a very feebleequivalent of the rhythm that seemed so resonant in those tropicnights

 To whatever god may hear. 

 Wherever there be sailors whether of river or sea: whether their way be dark or whether through storm: whether their perils be of beast or of rock: or from enemy lurking on land or pursuing on sea: wherever the tiller is cold or the helmsman stiff: wherever sailors sleep or helmsman watch: guard, guide, and return us to the old land, that has known us: to the far homes that we know. 

 To all the gods that are. 

 To whatever god may hear. 

So he prayed, and there was silence. And the sailors laid them down torest for the night. The silence deepened, and was only broken by theripples of Yann that lightly touched our prow. Sometimes some monsterof the river coughed. 

Silence and ripples, ripples and silence again. 

And then his loneliness came upon the helmsman, and he began to sing. And he sang the market songs of Durl and Duz, and the olddragon-legends of Belzoond. 

Many a song he sang, telling to spacious and exotic Yann the littletales and trifles of his city of Durl. And the songs welled up overthe black jungle and came into the clear cold air above, and the greatbands of stars that looked on Yann began to know the affairs of Durland Duz, and of the shepherds that dwelt in the fields between, andthe flocks that they had, and the loves that they had loved, and allthe little things that they hoped to do. And as I lay wrapped up inskins and blankets listening to those songs, and watching thefantastic shapes of the great trees like to black giants stalkingthrough the night, I suddenly fell asleep. 

When I awoke great mists were trailing away from the Yann. And theflow of the river was tumbling now tumultuously, and little wavesappeared; for Yann had scented from afar the ancient crags of Glorm, and knew that their ravines lay cool before him wherein he should meetthe merry wild Irillion rejoicing from fields of snow. So he shook offfrom him the torpid sleep that had come upon him in the hot andscented jungle, and forgot its orchids and its butterflies, and swepton turbulent, expectant, strong; and soon the snowy peaks of the Hillsof Glorm came glittering into view. And now the sailors were waking upfrom sleep. Soon we all ate, and then the helmsman laid him down tosleep while a comrade took his place, and they all spread over himtheir choicest furs. 

And in a while we heard the sound that the Irillion made as she camedown dancing from the fields of snow. 

And then we saw the ravine in the Hills of Glorm lying precipitous andsmooth before us, into which we were carried by the leaps of Yann. Andnow we left the steamy jungle and breathed the mountain air; thesailors stood up and took deep breaths of it, and thought of their ownfar-off Acroctian hills on which were Durl and Duz--below them in theplains stands fair Belzoond. 

A great shadow brooded between the cliffs of Glorm, but the crags wereshining above us like gnarled moons, and almost lit the gloom. Louderand louder came the Irillion's song, and the sound of her dancing downfrom the fields of snow. And soon we saw her white and full of mists, and wreathed with rainbows delicate and small that she had plucked upnear the mountain's summit from some celestial garden of the Sun. Thenshe went away seawards with the huge grey Yann and the ravine widened, and opened upon the world, and our rocking ship came through to thelight of day. 

And all that morning and all the afternoon we passed through themarshes of Pondoovery; and Yann widened there, and flowed solemnly andslowly, and the captain bade the sailors beat on bells to overcome thedreariness of the marshes. 

At last the Irusian Mountains came in sight, nursing the villages ofPen-Kai and Blut, and the wandering streets of Mlo, where priestspropitiate the avalanche with wine and maize. Then the night came downover the plains of Tlun, and we saw the lights of Cappadarnia. Weheard the Pathnites beating upon drums as we passed Imaut andGolzunda, then all but the helmsman slept. And villages scatteredalong the banks of the Yann heard all that night in the helmsman'sunknown tongue the little songs of cities that they know not. 

I awoke before dawn with a feeling that I was unhappy before Iremembered why. Then I recalled that by the evening of the approachingday, according to all forseen probabilities, we should come toBar-Wul-Yann, and I should part from the captain and his sailors. And Ihad liked the man because he had given me of his yellow wine that wasset apart among his sacred things, and many a story he had told meabout his fair Belzoond between the Acrotian hills and the Hian Min. And I had liked the ways that his sailors had, and the prayers thatthey prayed at evening side by side, grudging not one another theiralien gods. And I had a liking too for the tender way in which theyoften spoke of Durl and Duz, for it is good that men should love theirnative cities and the little hills that hold those cities up. 

And I had come to know who would meet them when they returned to theirhomes, and where they thought the meetings would take place, some in avalley of the Acrotian hills where the road comes up from Yann, othersin the gateway of one or another of the three cities, and others bythe fireside in the home. And I thought of the danger that had menacedus all alike outside Perdóndaris, a danger that, as things havehappened, was very real. 

And I thought too of the helmsman's cheery song in the cold and lonelynight, and how he had held our lives in his careful hands. And as Ithought of this the helmsman ceased to sing, and I looked up and saw apale light had appeared in the sky, and the lonely night had passed;and the dawn widened, and the sailors awoke. 

And soon we saw the tide of the Sea himself advancing resolute betweenYann's borders, and Yann sprang lithely at him and they struggled awhile; then Yann and all that was his were pushed back northwards, sothat the sailors had to hoist the sails, and the wind beingfavourable, we still held onwards. 

And we passed Góndara and Narl and Hoz. And we saw memorable, holyGolnuz, and heard the pilgrims praying. 

When we awoke after the midday rest we were coming near to Nen, thelast of the cities in the River Yann. And the jungle was all about usonce again, and about Nen; but the great Mloon ranges stood up overall things, and watched the city from beyond the jungle. 

Here we anchored, and the captain and I went up into the city andfound that the Wanderers had come into Nen. 

And the Wanderers were a weird, dark, tribe, that once in every sevenyears came down from the peaks of Mloon, having crossed by a pass thatis known to them from some fantastic land that lies beyond. And thepeople of Nen were all outside their houses, and all stood wonderingat their own streets. For the men and women of the Wanderers hadcrowded all the ways, and every one was doing some strange thing. Somedanced astounding dances that they had learned from the desert wind, rapidly curving and swirling till the eye could follow no longer. Others played upon instruments beautiful wailing tunes that were fullof horror, which souls had taught them lost by night in the desert, that strange far desert from which the Wanderers came. 

None of their instruments were such as were known in Nen nor in anypart of the region of the Yann; even the horns out of which some weremade were of beasts that none had seen along the river, for they werebarbed at the tips. And they sang, in the language of none, songs thatseemed to be akin to the mysteries of night and to the unreasoned fearthat haunts dark places. 

Bitterly all the dogs of Nen distrusted them. And the Wanderers toldone another fearful tales, for though no one in Nen knew aught oftheir language, yet they could see the fear on the listeners' faces, and as the tale wound on, the whites of their eyes showed vividly interror as the eyes of some little beast whom the hawk has seized. Thenthe teller of the tale would smile and stop, and another would tellhis story, and the teller of the first tale's lips would chatter withfear. And if some deadly snake chanced to appear the Wanderers wouldgreet him like a brother, and the snake would seem to give hisgreetings to them before he passed on again. Once that most fierce andlethal of tropic snakes, the giant lythra, came out of the jungle andall down the street, the central street of Nen, and none of theWanderers moved away from him, but they all played sonorously ondrums, as though he had been a person of much honour; and the snakemoved through the midst of them and smote none. 

Even the Wanderers' children could do strange things, for if any oneof them met with a child of Nen the two would stare at each other insilence with large grave eyes; then the Wanderers' child would slowlydraw from his turban a live fish or snake. And the children of Nencould do nothing of that kind at all. 

Much I should have wished to stay and hear the hymn with which theygreet the night, that is answered by the wolves on the heights ofMloon, but it was now time to raise the anchor again that the captainmight return from Bar-Wul-Yann upon the landward tide. So we went onboard and continued down the Yann. And the captain and I spoke little, for we were thinking of our parting, which should be for long, and wewatched instead the splendour of the westerning sun. For the sun was aruddy gold, but a faint mist cloaked the jungle, lying low, and intoit poured the smoke of the little jungle cities, and the smoke of themmet together in the mist and joined into one haze, which becamepurple, and was lit by the sun, as the thoughts of men become hallowedby some great and sacred thing. Sometimes one column from a lonelyhouse would rise up higher than the cities' smoke, and gleam by itselfin the sun. 

And now as the sun's last rays were nearly level, we saw the sightthat I had come to see, for from two mountains that stood on eithershore two cliffs of pink marble came out into the river, all glowingin the light of the low sun, and they were quite smooth and ofmountainous altitude, and they nearly met, and Yann went tumblingbetween them and found the sea. 

And this was Bar-Wul-Yann, the Gate of Yann, and in the distancethrough that barrier's gap I saw the azure indescribable sea, wherelittle fishing-boats went gleaming by. 

And the sunset and the brief twilight came, and the exultation of theglory of Bar-Wul-Yann was gone, yet still the pink cliffs glowed, thefairest marvel that the eye beheld-and this in a land of wonders. Andsoon the twilight gave place to the coming out of stars, and thecolours of Bar-Wul-Yann went dwindling away. And the sight of thosecliffs was to me as some chord of music that a master's hand hadlaunched from the violin, and which carries to Heaven of Faëry thetremulous spirits of men. 

And now by the shore they anchored and went no farther, for they weresailors of the river and not of the sea, and knew the Yann but not thetides beyond. 

And the time was come when the captain and I must part, he to go backagain to his fair Belzoond in sight of the distant peaks of the HianMin, and I to find my way by strange means back to those hazy fieldsthat all poets know, wherein stand small mysterious cottages throughwhose windows, looking westwards, you may see the fields of men, andlooking eastwards see glittering elfin mountains, tipped with snow, going range on range into the region of Myth, and beyond it into thekingdom of Fantasy, which pertain to the Lands of Dream. Long weshould meet no more, for my fancy is weakening as the years slip by, and I go ever more seldom into the Lands of Dream. Then we claspedhands, uncouthly on his part, for it is not the method of greeting inhis country, and he commended my soul to the care of his own gods, tohis little lesser gods, the humble ones, to the gods that blessBelzoond. 

A SHOP IN GO-BY STREET

I said I must go back to Yann again and see if _Bird of the River_still plies up and down and whether her bearded captain commands herstill or whether he sits in the gate of fair Belzoond drinking atevening the marvellous yellow wine that the mountaineer brings downfrom the Hian Min. And I wanted to see the sailors again who camefrom Durl and Duz and to hear from their lips what befell Perdóndariswhen its doom came up without warning from the hills and fell on thatfamous city. And I wanted to hear the sailors pray at night each tohis own god, and to feel the wind of the evening coolly arise when thesun went flaming away from that exotic river. For I thought neveragain to see the tide of Yann, but when I gave up politics not longago the wings of my fancy strengthened, though they had erstwhiledrooped, and I had hopes of coming behind the East once more whereYann like a proud white war-horse goes through the Lands of Dream. 

Yet I had forgotten the way to those little cottages on the edge ofthe fields we know whose upper windows, though dim with antiquecobwebs, look out on the fields we know not and are the starting-pointof all adventure in all the Lands of Dream. 

I therefore made enquiries. And so I came to be directed to the shopof a dreamer who lives not far from the Embankment in the City. Amongso many streets as there are in the city it is little wonder thatthere is one that has never been seen before; it is named Go-by Streetand runs out of the Strand if you look very closely. Now when youenter this man's shop you do not go straight to the point but you askhim to sell you something, and if it is anything with which he cansupply you he hands it you and wishes you good-morning. It is hisway. And many have been deceived by asking for some unlikely thing, such as the oyster-shell from which was taken one of those singlepearls that made the gates of Heaven in Revelations, and finding thatthe old man had it in stock. 

He was comatose when I went into the shop, his heavy lids almostcovered his little eyes; he sat, and his mouth was open. I said, "Iwant some of Abama and Pharpah, rivers of Damascus. " "How much?" hesaid. "Two and a half yards of each, to be delivered to my flat. ""That is very tiresome, " he muttered, "very tiresome. We do not stockit in that quantity. " "Then I will take all you have, " I said. 

He rose laboriously and looked among some bottles. I saw onelabelled: Nilos, river of Ćgyptos; and others Holy Ganges, Phlegethon, Jordan; I was almost afraid he had it, when I heard him mutter again, "This is very tiresome, " and presently he said, "We are out of it. ""Then, " I said, "I wish you to tell me the way to those littlecottages in whose upper chambers poets look out upon the fields weknow not, for I wish to go into the Land of Dream and to sail oncemore upon mighty, sea-like Yann. "

At that he moved heavily and slowly in way-worn carpet slippers, panting as he went, to the back part of his shop, and I went with him. This was a dingy lumber-room full of idols: the near end was dingy anddark but at the far end was a blue cćrulean glow in which stars seemedto be shining and the heads of the idols glowed. "This, " said the fatold man in carpet slippers, "is the heaven of the gods who sleep. " Iasked him what gods slept and he mentioned names that I had neverheard as well as names that I knew. "All those, " he said, "that arenot worshipped now are asleep. "

"Then does Time not kill the gods?" I said to him and he answered, "No. But for three or four thousand years a god is worshipped and forthree or four he sleeps. Only Time is wakeful always. "

"But they that teach us of new gods"--I said to him, "are they notnew?"

"They hear the old ones stirring in their sleep being about to wake, because the dawn is breaking and the priests crow. These are thehappy prophets: unhappy are they that hear some old god speak while hesleeps still being deep in slumber, and prophesy and prophesy and nodawn comes, they are those that men stone saying, 'Prophesy where thisstone shall hit you, and this. '"

"Then shall Time never slay the gods, " I said. And he answered, "Theyshall die by the bedside of the last man. Then Time shall go mad inhis solitude and shall not know his hours from his centuries of yearsand they shall clamour round him crying for recognition and he shalllay his stricken hands on their heads and stare at them blindly andsay, 'My children, I do not know you one from another, ' and at thesewords of Time empty worlds shall reel. "

And for some while then I was silent, for my imagination went out intothose far years and looked back at me and mocked me because I was thecreature of a day. 

Suddenly I was aware by the old man's heavy breathing that he had goneto sleep. It was not an ordinary shop: I feared lest one of his godsshould wake and call for him: I feared many things, it was so dark, and one or two of those idols were something more than grotesque. Ishook the old man hard by one of his arms. 

"Tell me the way to the cottages, " I said, "on the edge of the fieldswe know. "

"I don't think we can do that, " he said. 

"Then supply me, " I said, "with the goods. "

That brought him to his senses. He said, "You go out by the back doorand turn to the right"; and he opened a little, old, dark door in thewall through which I went, and he wheezed and shut the door. The backof the shop was of incredible age. I saw in antique characters upon amouldering board, "Licensed to sell weasels and jade earrings. " Thesun was setting now and shone on little golden spires that gleamedalong the roof which had long ago been thatched and with a wonderfulstraw. I saw that the whole of Go-by Street had the same strangeappearance when looked at from behind. The pavement was the same asthe pavement of which I was weary and of which so many thousand mileslay the other side of those houses, but the street was of most pureuntrampled grass with such marvellous flowers in it that they lureddownward from great heights the flocks of butterflies as they traveledby, going I know not whence. The other side of the street there waspavement again but no houses of any kind, and what there was in placeof them I did not stop to see, for I turned to my right and walkedalong the back of Go-by Street till I came to the open fields and thegardens of the cottages that I sought. Huge flowers went up out ofthese gardens like slow rockets and burst into purple blooms and stoodthere huge and radiant on six-foot stalks and softly sang strangesongs. Others came up beside them and bloomed and began singing too. A very old witch came out of her cottage by the back door and into thegarden in which I stood. 

"What are these wonderful flowers?" I said to her. 

"Hush! Hush!" she said, "I am putting the poets to bed. Theseflowers are their dreams. "

And in a lower voice I said: "What wonderful songs are they singing?"and she said, "Be still and listen. "

And I listened and found they were singing of my own childhood and ofthings that happened there so far away that I had quite forgotten themtill I heard the wonderful song. 

"Why is the song so faint?" I said to her. 

"Dead voices, " she said, "Dead voices, " and turned back again to hercottage saying: "Dead voices" still, but softly for fear that sheshould wake the poets. "They sleep so badly while they live, " shesaid. 

I stole on tiptoe upstairs to the little room from whose windows, looking one way, we see the fields we know and, looking another, thosehilly lands that I sought--almost I feared not to find them. I lookedat once toward the mountains of faëry; the afterglow of the sunsetflamed on them, their avalanches flashed on their violet slopes comingdown tremendous from emerald peaks of ice; and there was the old gapin the blue-grey hills above the precipice of amethyst whence one seesthe Lands of Dream. 

All was still in the room where the poets slept when I came quietlydown. The old witch sat by a table with a lamp, knitting a splendidcloak of gold and green for a king that had been dead a thousandyears. 

"Is it any use, " I said, "to the king that is dead that you sit andknit him a cloak of gold and green?"

"Who knows?" she said. 

"What a silly question to ask, " said her old black cat who lay curledby the fluttering fire. 

Already the stars were shining on that romantic land when I closed thewitch's door; already the glow-worms were mounting guard for the nightaround those magical cottages. I turned and trudged for the gap inthe blue-grey mountains. 

Already when I arrived some colour began to show in the amethystprecipice below the gap although it was not yet morning. I heard arattling and sometimes caught a flash from those golden dragons faraway below me that are the triumph of the goldsmiths of Sirdoo andwere given life by the ritual incantations of the conjurer Amargrarn. On the edge of the opposite cliff, too near I thought for safety, Isaw the ivory palace of Singanee that mighty elephant-hunter; smalllights appeared in windows, the slaves were awake, and beginning withheavy eyelids the work of the day. 

And now a ray of sunlight topped the world. Others than I mustdescribe how it swept from the amethyst cliff the shadow of the blackone that opposed it, how that one shaft of sunlight pierced theamethyst for leagues, and how the rejoicing colour leaped up towelcome the light and shot back a purple glow on the walls of thepalace of ivory while down in that incredible ravine the goldendragons still played in the darkness. 

At this moment a female slave came out by a door of the palace andtossed a basket-full of sapphires over the edge. And when day wasmanifest on those marvellous heights and the flare of the amethystprecipice filled the abyss, then the elephant-hunter arose in hisivory palace and took his terrific spear and going out by a landwarddoor went forth to avenge Perdóndaris

I turned then and looked upon the lands of Dream, and the thin whitemist that never rolls quite away was shifting in the morning. Risinglike isles above it I saw the Hills of Hap and the city of copper, old, deserted Bethmoora, and Utnar Véhi and Kyph and Mandaroon and thewandering leagues of Yann. Rather I guessed than saw the Hian Minwhose imperturbable and aged heads scarce recognize for more thanclustered mounds the round Acroctian hills, that are heaped abouttheir feet and that shelter, as I remembered, Durl and Duz. But mostclearly I discerned that ancient wood through which one going down tothe bank of Yann whenever the moon is old may come on _Bird of theRiver_ anchored there, waiting three days for travellers, as has beenprophesied of her. And as it was now that season I hurried down fromthe gap in the blue-grey hills by an elfin path that was coeval withfable, and came by means of it to the edge of the wood. Black thoughthe darkness was in that ancient wood the beasts that moved in it wereblacker still. It is very seldom that any dreamer travelling in Landsof Dream is ever seized by these beasts, and yet I ran; for if a man'sspirit is seized in the Lands of Dream his body may survive it formany years and well know the beasts that mouthed him far away and thelook in their little eyes and the smell of their breath; that is whythe recreation field at Hanwell is so dreadfully trodden into restlesspaths. 

And so I came at last to the sea-like flood of proud, tremendous Yann, with whom there tumbled streams from incredible lands--with these hewent by singing. Singing he carried drift-wood and whole trees, fallen in far-away, unvisited forests, and swept them mightily by, butno sign was there either out in the river or in the olden anchoragenear by of the ship I came to see. 

And I built myself a hut and roofed it over with the huge abundantleaves of a marvellous weed and ate the meat that grows on thetargar-tree and waited there three days. And all day long the rivertumbled by and all night long the tolulu-bird sang on and the hugefireflies had no other care than to pour past in torrents of dancingsparks, and nothing rippled the surface of the Yann by day and nothingdisturbed the tolulu-bird by night. I know not what I feared for theship I sought and its friendly captain who came from fair Belzoond andits cheery sailors out of Durl and Duz; all day long I looked for iton the river and listened for it by night until the dancing firefliesdanced me to sleep. Three times only in those three nights thetolulu-bird was scared and stopped his song, and each time I awokewith a start and found no ship and saw that he was only scared by thedawn. Those indescribable dawns upon the Yann came up like flames insome land over the hills where a magician burns by secret meansenormous amethysts in a copper pot. I used to watch them in wonderwhile no bird sang--till all of a sudden the sun came over a hill andevery bird but one began to sing, and the tolulu-bird slept fast, tillout of an opening eye he saw the stars. 

I would have waited three more days, but on the third day I had gonein my loneliness to see the very spot where first I met _Bird of theRiver_ at her anchorage with her bearded captain sitting on the deck. And as I looked at the black mud of the harbour and pictured in mymind that band of sailors whom I had not seen for two years, I saw anold hulk peeping from the mud. The lapse of centuries seemed partlyto have rotted and partly to have buried in the mud all but the prowof the boat and on the prow I faintly saw a name. I read it slowly--it was _Bird of the River. _ And then I knew that, while in Ireland andLondon two years had barely passed over my head, ages had gone overthe region of Yann and wrecked and rotted that once familiar ship, andburied years ago the bones of the youngest of my friends, who so oftensang to me of Durl and Duz or told the dragon-legends of Belzoond. For beyond the world we know there roars a hurricane of centurieswhose echo only troubles--though sorely--our fields; while elsewherethere is calm. I stayed a moment by that battered hulk and said aprayer for whatever may be immortal of those who were wont to sail itdown the Yann, and I prayed for them to the gods to whom they loved topray, to the little lesser gods that bless Belzoond. Then leaving thehut that I built to those ravenous years I turned my back to the Yannand entering the forest at evening just as its orchids were openingtheir petals to perfume the night came out of it in the morning, andpassed that day along the amethyst gulf by the gap in the blue-greymountains. I wondered if Singanee, that mighty elephant-hunter, hadreturned again with his spear to his lofty ivory palace or if his doomhad been one with that of Perdóndaris. I saw a merchant at a smallback door selling new sapphires as I passed the palace, then I went onand came as twilight fell to those small cottages where the elfinmountains are in sight of the fields we know. And I went to the oldwitch that I had seen before and she sat in her parlour with a redshawl round her shoulders still knitting the golden cloak, and faintlythrough one of her windows the elfin mountains shone and I saw againthrough another the fields we know. 

"Tell me something, " I said, "of this strange land!"

"How much do you know?" she said. "Do you know that dreams areillusion?"

"Of course I do, " I said. "Every one knows that. "

"Oh no they don't, " she said, "the mad don't know it. "

"That is true, " I said. 

"And do you know, " she said, "that Life is illusion?"

"Of course it is not, " I said. "Life is real, Life is earnest----. "

At that the witch and her cat (who had not moved from her old place bythe hearth) burst into laughter. I stayed some time, for there wasmuch that I wished to ask, but when I saw that the laughter would notstop I turned and went away. 

THE AVENGER OF PERDÓNDARIS

I was rowing on the Thames not many days after my return from the Yannand drifting eastwards with the fall of the tide away from WestminsterBridge, near which I had hired my boat. All kinds of things were onthe water with me--sticks drifting, and huge boats--and I waswatching, so absorbed the traffic of that great river that I did notnotice I had come to the City until I looked up and saw that part ofthe Embankment that is nearest to Go-by Street. And then I suddenlywondered what befell Singanee, for there was a stillness about hisivory palace when I passed it by, which made me think that he had notthen returned. And though I had seen him go forth with his terrificspear, and mighty elephant-hunter though he was, yet his was a fearfulquest for I knew that it was none other than to avenge Perdóndaris byslaying that monster with the single tusk who had overthrown itsuddenly in a day. So I tied up my boat as soon as I came to somesteps, and landed and left the Embankment, and about the third streetI came to I began to look for the opening of Go-by Street; it is verynarrow, you hardly notice it at first, but there it was, and soon Iwas in the old man's shop. But a young man leaned over the counter. He had no information to give me about the old man--he was sufficientin himself. As to the little old door in the back of the shop, "Weknow nothing about that, sir. " So I had to talk to him and humourhim. He had for sale on the counter an instrument for picking up alump of sugar in a new way. He was pleased when I looked at it and hebegan to praise it. I asked him what was the use of it, and he saidthat it was of no use but that it had only been invented a week agoand was quite new and was made of real silver and was being very muchbought. But all the while I was straying towards the back of theshop. When I enquired about the idols there he said that they weresome of the season's novelties and were a choice selection of mascots;and while I made a pretence of selecting one I suddenly saw thewonderful old door. I was through it at once and the youngshop-keeper after me. No one was more surprised than he when he sawthe street of grass and the purple flowers on it; he ran across in hisfrock-coat on to the opposite pavement and only just stopped in time, for the world ended there. Looking downward over the pavement's edgehe saw, instead of accustomed kitchen-windows, white clouds and awide, blue sky. I led him to the old back door of the shop, lookingpale and in need of air, and pushed him lightly and he went limplythrough, for I thought the air was better for him on the side of thestreet that he knew. As soon as the door was shut on that astonishedman I turned to the right and went along the street till I saw thegardens and the cottages, and a little red patch moving in a garden, which I knew to be the old witch wearing her shawl. 

"Come for a change of illusion again?" she said. 

"I have come from London, " I said. "And I want to see Singanee. Iwant to go to his ivory palace over the elfin mountains where theamethyst precipice is. "

"Nothing like changing your illusions, " she said, "or you grow tired. London's a fine place but one wants to see the elfin mountainssometimes. "

"Then you know London?" I said. 

"Of course I do, " she said. "I can dream as well as you. You are notthe only person that can imagine London. " Men were toiling dreadfullyin her garden; it was in the heat of the day and they were diggingwith spades; she suddenly turned from me to beat one of them over theback with a long black stick that she carried. "Even my poets go toLondon sometimes, " she said to me. 

"Why did you beat that man?" I said. 

"To make him work, " she answered. 

"But he is tired, " I said. 

"Of course he is, " said she. 

And I looked and saw that the earth was difficult and dry and thatevery spadeful that the tired men lifted was full of pearls; but somemen sat quite still and watched the butterflies that flitted about thegarden and the old witch did not beat them with her stick. And when Iasked her who the diggers were she said, "These are my poets, they aredigging for pearls. " And when I asked her what so many pearls werefor she said to me: "To feed the pigs of course. "

"But do the pigs like pearls?" I said to her. 

"Of course they don't, " she said. And I would have pressed the matterfurther but the old black cat had come out of the cottage and waslooking at me whimsically and saying nothing so that I knew I wasasking silly questions. And I asked instead why some of the poetswere idle and were watching butterflies without being beaten. And shesaid: "The butterflies know where the pearls are hidden and they arewaiting for one to alight above the buried treasure. They cannot diguntil they know where to dig. " And all of a sudden a faun came out ofa rhododendron forest and began to dance upon a disk of bronze inwhich a fountain was set; and the sound of his two hooves dancing onthe bronze was beautiful as bells. 

"Tea-bell, " said the witch; and all the poets threw down their spadesand followed her into the house, and I followed them; but the witchand all of us followed the black cat, who arched his back and liftedhis tail and walked along the garden-path of blue enamelled tiles andthrough the black-thatched porch and the open, oaken door and into alittle room where tea was ready. And in the garden the flowers beganto sing and the fountain tinkled on the disk of bronze. And I learnedthat the fountain came from an otherwise unknown sea, and sometimes itthrew gilded fragments up from the wrecks of unheard-of galleons, foundered in storms of some sea that was nowhere in the world; orbattered to bits in wars waged with we know not whom. Some said thatit was salt because of the sea and others that it was salt withmariners' tears. And some of the poets took large flowers out ofvases and threw their petals all about the room, and others talked twoat a time and other sang. "Why they are only children after all, " Isaid. 

"Only children!" repeated the old witch who was pouring out cowslipwine. 

_"Only_ children, " said the old black cat. And every one laughed atme. 

"I sincerely apologize, " I said. "I did not mean to say it. I didnot intend to insult any one. "

"Why he knows nothing at all, " said the old black cat. And everybodylaughed till the poets were put to bed. 

And then I took one look at the fields we know, and turned to theother window that looks on the elfin mountains. And the eveninglooked like a sapphire. And I saw my way though the fields weregrowing dim, and when I found it I went downstairs and through thewitch's parlour, and out of doors and came that night to the palace ofSinganee. 

Lights glittered through every crystal slab--and all wereuncurtained--in the palace of ivory. The sounds were those of atriumphant dance. Very haunting indeed was the booming of a bassoon, and like the dangerous advance of some galloping beast were the blowswielded by a powerful man on the huge, sonourous drum. It seemed tome as I listened that the contest of Singanee with the more thanelephantine destroyer of Perdóndaris had already been set to music. And as I walked in the dark along the amethyst precipice I suddenlysaw across it a curved white bridge. It was one ivory tusk. And Iknew it for the triumph of Singanee. I knew at once that this curvedmass of ivory that had been dragged by ropes to bridge the abyss wasthe twin of the ivory gate that once Perdóndaris had, and had itselfbeen the destruction of that once famous city--towers and walls andpeople. Already men had begun to hollow it and to carve human figureslife-size along its sides. I walked across it; and half way across, at the bottom of the curve, I met a few of the carvers fast asleep. Onthe opposite cliff by the palace lay the thickest end of the tusk andI came down a ladder which leaned against the tusk for they had notyet carved steps. 

Outside the ivory palace it was as I had supposed and the sentry atthe gate slept heavily; and though I asked of him permission to enterthe palace he only muttered a blessing on Singanee and fell asleepagain. It was evident that he had been drinking bak. Inside the ivoryhall I met with servitors who told me that any stranger was welcomethere that night, because they extolled the triumph of Singanee. Andthey offered me bak to drink to commemorate the splendour but I didnot know its power nor whether a little or much prevailed over a manso I said that I was under an oath to a god to drink nothingbeautiful; and they asked me if he could not be appeased by a prayer, and I said, "In nowise, " and went towards the dance; and theycommiserated me and abused that god bitterly, thinking to please methereby, and then they fell to drinking bak to the glory of Singanee. Outside the curtains that hung before the dance there stood achamberlain and when I told him that though a stranger there, yet Iwas well known to Mung and Sish and Kib, the gods of Pegana, whosesigns I made, he bade me ample welcome. Therefore I questioned himabout my clothes asking if they were not unsuitable to so august anoccasion and he swore by the spear that had slain the destroyer ofPerdóndaris that Singanee would think it a shameful thing that anystranger not unknown to the gods should enter the dancing hallunsuitably clad; and therefore he led me to another room and tooksilken robes out of an old sea-chest of black and seamy oak with greencopper hasps that were set with a few pale sapphires, and requested meto choose a suitable robe. And I chose a bright green robe, with anunder-robe of light blue which was seen here and there, and a lightblue sword-belt. I also wore a cloak that was dark purple with twothin strips of dark-blue along the border and a row of large darksapphires sewn along the purple between them; it hung down from myshoulders behind me. Nor would the chamberlain of Singanee let metake any less than this, for he said that not even a stranger, on thatnight, could be allowed to stand in the way of his master'smunificence which he was pleased to exercise in honour of his victory. As soon as I was attired we went to the dancing hall and the firstthing that I saw in that tall, scintillant chamber was the huge formof Singanee standing among the dancers and the heads of the men nohigher than his waist. Bare were the huge arms that had held thespear that had avenged Perdóndaris. The chamberlain led me to him andI bowed, and said that I gave thanks to the gods to whom he looked forprotection; and he said that he had heard my gods well spoken of bythose accustomed to pray but this he said only of courtesy, for heknew not whom they were. 

Singanee was simply dressed and only wore on his head a plain goldband to keep his hair from falling over his forehead, the ends of thegold were tied in the back with a bow of purple silk. But all hisqueens wore crowns of great magnificence, though whether they werecrowned as the queens of Singanee or whether queens were attractedthere from the thrones of distant lands by the wonder of him and thesplendour I did not know. 

All there wore silken robes of brilliant colours and the feet of allwere bare and very shapely for the custom of boots was unknown inthose regions. And when they saw that my big toes were deformed inthe manner of Europeans, turning inwards towards the others instead ofbeing straight, one or two asked sympathetically if an accident hadbefallen me. And rather than tell them truly that deforming out bigtoes was our custom and our pleasure I told them that I was under thecurse of a malignant god at whose feet I had neglected to offerberries in infancy. And to some extent I justified myself, forConvention is a god though his ways are evil; and had I told them thetruth I would not have been understood. They gave me a lady to dancewith who was of marvellous beauty, she gold me that her name wasSaranoora, a princess from the North, who had been sent as tribute tothe palace of Singanee. And partly she danced as Europeans dance andpartly as the fairies of the waste who lure, as legend has it, losttravellers to their doom. And if I could get thirty heathen men out offantastic lands, with their long black hair and little elfin eyes andinstruments of music even unknown to Nebuchadnezzar the King; and if Icould make them play those tunes that I heard in the ivory palace onsome lawn, gentle reader, at evening near your house then you wouldunderstand the beauty of Saranoora and the blaze of light and colourin that stupendous hall and the lithesome movement of those mysteriousqueens that danced round Singanee. Then gentle reader you would begentle no more but the thoughts that run like leopards over the farfree lands would come leaping into your head even were it London, yes, even in London: you would rise up then and beat your hands on the wallwith its pretty pattern of flowers, in the hope that the bricks mightbreak and reveal the way to that palace of ivory by the amethyst gulfwhere the golden dragons are. For there have been men who have burnedprisons down that the prisoners might escape, and even suchincendiaries those dark musicians are who dangerously burn down customthat the pining thoughts may go free. Let your elders have no fear, have no fear. I will not play those tunes in any streets we know. Iwill not bring those strange musicians here, I will only whisper theway to the Lands of Dream, and only a few frail feet shall find theway, and I shall dream alone of the beauty of Saranoora and sometimessigh. We danced on and on at the will of the thirty musicians, butwhen the stars were paling and the wind that knew the dawn wasruffling up the edge of the skirts of night, then Saranoora theprincess of the North led me out into a garden. Dark groves of treeswere there which filled the night with perfume and guarded night'smysteries from the arising dawn. There floated over us, wandering inthat garden, the triumphant melody of those dark musicians, whoseorigin was unguessed even by those that dwelt there and knew the Landsof Dream. For only a moment once sang the tolulu-bird, for thefestival of that night had scared him and he was silent. For only amoment once we heard him singing in some far grove because themusicians rested and our bare feet made no sound; for a moment weheard that bird of which once our nightingale dreamed and handed onthe tradition to his children. And Saranoora told me that they havenamed the bird the Sister of Song; but for the musicians, whopresently played again, she said they had no name, for no one knew whothey were or from what country. Then some one sang quite near us inthe darkness to an instrument of strings telling of Singanee and hisbattle against the monster. And soon we saw him sitting on the groundand singing to the night of that spear-thrust that had found thethumping heart of the destroyer of Perdóndaris; and we stopped awhileand asked him who had seen so memorable a struggle and he answerednone but Singanee and he whose tusk had scattered Perdóndaris, and nowthe last was dead. And when we asked him if Singanee had told him ofthe struggle he said that that proud hunter would say no word about itand that therefore his mighty deed was given to the poets and becometheir trust forever, and he struck again his instrument of strings andsang on. 

When the strings of pearls that hung down from her neck began to gleamall over Saranoora I knew that dawn was near and that that memorablenight was all but gone. And at last we left the garden and came tothe abyss to see the sunrise shine on the amethyst cliff. And at firstit lit up the beauty of Saranoora and then it topped the world andblazed upon those cliffs of amethyst until it dazzled our eyes, and weturned from it and saw the workman going out along the tusk to hollowit and to carve a balustrade of fair professional figures. And thosewho had drunken bak began to awake and to open their dazzled eyes atthe amethyst precipice and to rub them and turn them away. And nowthose wonderful kingdoms of song that the dark musicians establishedall night by magical chords dropped back again to the sway of thatancient silence who ruled before the gods, and the musicians wrappedtheir cloaks about them and covered up their marvellous instrumentsand stole away to the plains; and no one dared ask them whither theywent or why they dwelt there, or what god they served. And the dancestopped and all the queens departed. And then the female slave cameout again by a door and emptied her basket of sapphires down the abyssas I saw her do before. Beautiful Saranoora said that those greatqueens would never wear their sapphires more than once and that everyday at noon a merchant from the mountains sold new ones for thatevening. Yet I suspected that something more than extravagance lay atthe back of that seemingly wasteful act of tossing sapphires into anabyss, for thee were in the depths of it those two dragons of gold ofwhom nothing seemed to be known. And I thought, and I think so still, that Singanee, terrific though he was in war with the elephants, fromwhose tusks he had built his palace, well knew and even feared thosedragons in the abyss, and perhaps valued those priceless jewels lessthan he valued his queens, and that he to whom so many lands paidbeautiful tribute out of their dread of his spear, himself paidtribute to the golden dragons. Whether those dragons had wings I couldnot see; nor, if they had, could I tell if they could bear that weightof solid gold from the abyss; nor by what paths they could crawl fromit did I know. And I know not what use to a golden dragon shouldsapphires be or a queen. Only it seemed strange to me that so muchwealth of jewels should be thrown by command of a man who had nothingto fear--to fall flashing and changing their colours at dawn into anabyss. 

I do not know how long we lingered there watching the sunrise on thosemiles of amethyst. And it is strange that that great and famouswonder did not move me more than it did, but my mind was dazzled bythe fame of it and my eyes were actually dazzled by the blaze, and asoften happens I thought more of little things and remember watchingthe daylight in the solitary sapphire that Saranoora had and that shewore upon her finger in a ring. Then, the dawn wind being all abouther, she said that she was cold and turned back into the ivory palace. And I feared that we might never meet again, for time movesdifferently over the Lands of Dream than over the fields we know; likeocean-currents going different ways and bearing drifting ships. Andat the doorway of the ivory palace I turned to say farewell and yet Ifound no words that were suitable to say. And often now when I standin other lands I stop and think of many things to have said; yet all Isaid was "Perhaps we shall meet again. " And she said that it waslikely that we should often meet for that this was a little thing forthe gods to permit not knowing that the gods of the Lands of Dreamhave little power upon the fields we know. Then she went in throughthe doorway. And having exchanged for my own clothes again the raimentthat the chamberlain had given me I turned from the hospitality ofmighty Singanee and set my face towards the fields we know. I crossedthat enormous tusk that had been the end of Perdóndaris and met theartists carving it as I went; and some by way of greeting as I passedextolled Singanee, and in answer I gave honour to his name. Daylighthad not yet penetrated wholly to the bottom of the abyss but thedarkness was giving place to a purple haze and I could faintly see onegolden dragon there. Then looking once towards the ivory palace, andseeing no one at the windows, I turned sorrowfully away, and going bythe way that I knew passed through the gap in the mountains and downtheir slopes till I came again in sight of the witch's cottage. Andas I went to the upper window to look for the fields we know, thewitch spoke to me; but I was cross, as one newly waked from sleep, andI would not answer her. Then the cat questioned me as to whom I hadmet, and I answered him that in the fields we know cats kept theirplace and did not speak to man. And then I came downstairs and walkedstraight out of the door, heading for Go-by Street. "You are goingthe wrong way, " the witch called through the window; and indeed I hadsooner gone back to the ivory palace again, but I had no right totrespass any further on the hospitality of Singanee and one cannotstay always in the Lands of Dream, and what knowledge had that oldwitch of the call of the fields we know or the little though manysnares that bind our feet therein? So I paid no heed to her, but kepton, and came to Go-by Street. I saw the house with the green doorsome way up the street but thinking that the near end of the streetwas closer to the Embankment where I had left my boat I tried thefirst door I came to, a cottage thatched like the rest, with littlegolden spires along the roof-ridge, and strange birds sitting thereand preening marvellous feathers. The door opened, and to my surpriseI found myself in what seemed like a shepherd's cottage; a man who wassitting on a log of wood in a little low dark room said something tome in an alien language. I muttered something and hurried through tothe street. The house was thatched in front as well as behind. Therewere not golden spires in front, no marvellous birds; but there was nopavement. There was a row of houses, byres, and barns but no othersign of a town. Far off I saw one or two little villages. Yet therewas the river--and no doubt the Thames, for it was the width of theThames and had the curves of it, if you can imagine the Thames in thatparticular spot without a city around it, without any bridges, and theEmbankment fallen in. I saw that there had happened to me permanentlyand in the light of day some such thing as happens to a man, but to achild more often, when he awakes before morning in some strange roomand sees a high, grey window where the door ought to be and unfamiliarobjects in wrong places and though knowing where he is yet knows nothow it can be that the place should look like that. 

A flock of sheep came by me presently looking the same as ever, butthe man who led them had a wild, strange look. I spoke to him and hedid not understand me. Then I went down to the river to see if myboat was there and at the very spot where I had left it, in the mud(for the tide was low) I saw a half-buried piece of blackened woodthat might have been part of a boat, but I could not tell. I began tofeel that I had missed the world. It would be a strange thing totravel from far away to see London and not be able to find it amongall the roads that lead there, but I seemed to have travelled in Timeand to have missed it among the centuries. And when as I wanderedover the grassy hills I came on a wattled shrine that was thatchedwith straw and saw a lion in it more worn with time than even theSphinx at Gizeh and when I knew it for one of the four in TrafalgarSquare then I saw that I was stranded far away in the future with manycenturies of treacherous years between me and anything that I hadknown. And then I sat on the grass by the worn paws of the lion tothink out what to do. And I decided to go back through Go-by Streetand, since there was nothing left to keep me any more to the fields weknow, to offer myself as a servant in the palace of Singanee, and tosee again the face of Saranoora and those famous, wonderful, amethystine dawns upon the abyss where the golden dragons play. And Istayed no longer to look for remains of the ruins of London; for thereis little pleasure in seeing wonderful things if there is no one atall to hear of them and to wonder. So I returned at once to Go-byStreet, the little row of huts, and saw no other record that Londonhad been except that one stone lion. I went to the right house thistime. It was very much altered and more like one of those huts thatone sees on Salisbury plain than a shop in the city of London, but Ifound it by counting the houses in the street for it was still a rowof houses though pavement and city were gone. And it was still a shop. A very different shop to the one I knew, but things were for salethere--shepherd's crooks, food, and rude axes. And a man with longhair was there who was clad in skins. I did not speak to him for I didnot know his language. He said to me something that sounded like"Everkike. " It conveyed no meaning to me; but when he looked towardsone of his buns, light suddenly dawned in my mind, and I knew thatEngland was even England still and that still she was not conquered, and that though they had tired of London they still held to theirland; for the words that the man had said were, "Av er kike, " and thenI knew that that very language that was carried to distant lands bythe old, triumphant cockney was spoken still in his birthplace andthat neither his politics nor his enemies had destroyed him after allthese thousand years. I had always disliked the Cockney dialect--andwith the arrogance of the Irishman who hears from rich and poor theEnglish of the splendour of Elizabeth; and yet when I heard thosewords my eyes felt sore as with impending tears--it should beremembered how far away I was. I think I was silent for a littlewhile. Suddenly I saw that the man who kept the shop was asleep. That habit was strangely like the ways of a man who if he were thenalive would be (if I could judge from the time-worn look of the lion)over a thousand years old. But then how old was I? It is perfectlyclear that Time moves over the Lands of Dream swifter or slower thanover the fields we know. For the dead, and the long dead, live againin our dreams; and a dreamer passes through the events of days in asingle moment of the Town-Hall's clock. Yet logic did not aid me andmy mind was puzzled. While the old man slept--and strangely like inface he was to the old man who had shown me first the little, oldbackdoor--I went to the far end of his wattled shop. There was a doorof a sort on leather hinges. I pushed it open and there I was againunder the notice-board at the back of the shop, at least the back ofGo-by Street had not changed. Fantastic and remote though this grassstreet was with its purple flowers and the golden spires, and theworld ending at its opposite pavement, yet I breathed more happily tosee something again that I had seen before. I thought I had lostforever the world I knew, and now that I was at the back of Go-byStreet again I felt the loss less than when I was standing wherefamiliar things ought to be; and I turned my mind to what was left mein the vast Lands of Dream and thought of Saranoora. And when I sawthe cottages again I felt less lonely even at the thought of the catthough he generally laughed at the things I said. And the first thingthat I saw when I saw the witch was that I had lost the world and wasgoing back for the rest of my days to the palace of Singanee. And thefirst thing that she said was: "Why! You've been through the wrongdoor, " quite kindly for she saw how unhappy I looked. And I said, "Yes, but it's all the same street. The whole street's altered andLondon's gone and the people I used to know and the houses I used torest in, and everything; and I'm tired. "

"What did you want to go through the wrong door for?" she said. 

"O, that made no difference, " I said. 

"O, didn't it?" she said in a contradictory way. 

"Well I wanted to get to the near end of the street so as to find myboat quickly by the Embankment. And now my boat, and the Embankmentand--and----. "

"Some people are always in such a hurry, " said the old black cat. AndI felt too unhappy to be angry and I said nothing more. 

And the old witch said, "Now which way do you want to go?" and she wastalking rather like a nurse to a small child. And I said, "I havenowhere to go. "

And she said, "Would you rather go home or go to the ivory palace ofSinganee. " And I said, "I've got a headache, and I don't want to goanywhere, and I'm tired of the Lands of Dream. "

"Then suppose you try going in through the right door, " she said. 

"That's no good, " I said. "Everyone's dead and gone, and they'reselling buns there. "

"What do you know about Time?" she said. 

"Nothing, " answered the old, black cat, though nobody spoke to him. 

"Run along, " said the old witch. 

So I turned and trudged away to Go-by Street again. I was very tired. "What does he know about anything?" said the old black cat behind me. I knew what he was going to say next. He waited a moment and thensaid, "Nothing. " When I looked over my shoulder he was strutting backto the cottage. And when I got to Go-by Street I listlessly openedthe door through which I had just now come. I saw no use in doing it, I just did wearily as I was told. And the moment I got inside I sawit was just the same as of old, and the sleepy old man was there whosold idols. And I bought a vulgar thing that I did not want, for thesheer joy of seeing accustomed things. And when I turned from Go-byStreet which was just the same as ever, the first thing that I saw wasa taximeter running into a hansom cab. And I took off my hat andcheered. And I went to the Embankment and there was my boat, and thestately river full of dirty, accustomed things. And I rowed back andbought a penny paper, (I had been away it seemed for one day) and Iread it from cover to cover--patent remedies for incurable illnessesand all--and I determined to walk, as soon as I was rested, in all thestreets that I knew and to call on all the people that I had ever met, and to be content for long with the fields we know.