 CHAPTER XXV It's a world of surprises. The king brooded—this was natural—but what would he brood about, should you say? Why, about the prodigious nature of his fall, of course, from the loftiest place in the world to the lowest, from the most illustrious station in the world to the obscurist, from the grandest vocation among men to the basest. No, I take my oath that the thing that graveled him most, to start with, was not this, but the price he had fetched. He couldn't seem to get over that seven dollars. Well, it stunned me so, when I first found it out, that I couldn't believe it. It didn't seem natural. But as soon as my mental sight cleared, and I got a right focus on it, I saw I was mistaken. It was natural. For this reason, a king is a mere artificiality, and so a king's feelings, like the impulses of an automatic doll, are mere artificialities. But as a man, he is a reality, and his feelings, as a man, are real, not phantoms. It shames the average man to be valued below his own estimate of his worth, and the king certainly wasn't anything more than an average man, if he was up that high. Confound him, he wearied me with arguments to show that in anything like a fair market he would have fetched twenty-five dollars, sure, a thing which was plainly nonsense and full of the baldest conceit. I wasn't worth it myself. But it was tender ground for me to argue on, and in fact I had to simply shirk argument and do the diplomatic instead. I had to throw conscience aside and brazenly concede that he ought to have brought twenty-five dollars, whereas I was quite well aware that in all the ages the world had never seen a king that was worth half the money, and during the next thirteen centuries wouldn't see one that was worth the fourth of it. Yes, he tired me. If he began to talk about the crops, or about the recent weather, or about the condition of politics, or about dogs or cats, or morals, or theology, no matter what, I sighed, for I knew what was coming. He was going to get out of it a palliation of that tiresome seven-dollar sale. Wherever we halted, where there was a crowd, he would give a look which said plainly, if that thing could be tried over again now with this kind of folk you would see a different result. Well, when he was first sold it secretly tickled me to see him go for seven dollars, but before he was done with his sweating and worrying I wished he had fetched a hundred. The thing never got a chance to die, for every day, at one place or another, possible purchasers looked us over, and, as often as any other way, their comment on the king was something like this. Here's a two-dollar-and-a-half chump with a thirty-dollar style. Pity, but style was marketable. At last this sort of remark produced an evil result. Our owner was a practical person, and he perceived that this defect must be mended if he hoped to find a purchaser for the king, so he went to work to take the style out of his sacred majesty. I could have given the man some valuable advice, but I didn't. You mustn't volunteer advice to a slave-driver unless you want to damage the cause you are arguing for. I had found it a sufficiently difficult job to reduce the king's style to a peasant style even when he was a willing and anxious pupil. Now, then, to undertake to reduce the king's style to a slave's style and by force—go to!—it was a stately contract. Never mind the details, it will save me trouble to let you imagine them. I will only remark that at the end of a week there was plenty of evidence that lash and club and fist had done their work well. The king's body was a sight to see and to weep over, but his spirit—it wasn't even phased. Even that dull clod of a slave-driver was able to see that there can be such a thing as a slave who will remain a man till he dies, whose bones you can break, at whose manhood you can't. This man found that from his first effort down to his latest he couldn't ever come within reach of the king, but the king was ready to plunge for him and did it. So he gave up at last and left the king in possession of his style unimpaired. The fact is the king was a good deal more than a king. He was a man. And when a man is a man you can't knock it out of him. We had a rough time for a month, tramping to and fro in the earth and suffering. And what English man was the most interested in the slavery question by that time? His grace the king. Yes, from being the most indifferent, he was become the most interested. He was become the bitterest hater of the institution I had ever heard talk. And so I ventured to ask once more a question which I had asked years before and had gotten such a sharp answer that I had not thought had prudent to meddle in a matter further. Would he abolish slavery? His answer was as sharp as before. But it was music this time. I shouldn't ever wish to hear pleasanter, though the profanity was not good, being awkwardly put together, and with the crash word almost in the middle instead of at the end, where of course it ought to have been. I was ready and willing to get free now. I hadn't wanted to get free any sooner. No, I cannot quite say that. I had wanted to, but had not been willing to take desperate chances and had always dissuaded the king from them. But now, ah, it was a new atmosphere. Liberty would be worth any cost that might be put upon it now. I set about a plan and was straightway charmed with it. It would require time, yes, and patience too, a great deal of both. One could invent quicker ways, and fully assure ones, but none that would be as picturesque as this. None that could be made so dramatic. And so I was not going to give this one up. It might delay as months, but no matter. I would carry it out or break something. Now and then we had an adventure. One night we were overtaken by a snowstorm while still a mile from the village we were making for. Almost instantly we were shut up as in a fog, the driving snow was so thick, you couldn't see a thing, and we were soon lost. The slave-driver lashed us desperately, for he saw ruin before him, but his lashings only made matters worse, for they drove us further from the road and from likelihood of sucker. So we had to stop at last and slump down in the snow where we were. The storm continued until toward midnight, then ceased. By this time two of our feebler men and three of our women were dead, and others passed moving and threatened with death. Our master was nearly beside himself. He stirred up the living and made a stand, jump, slap ourselves to restore our circulation, and he helped as well as he could with his whip. Now came a diversion. We heard shrieks and yells, and soon a woman came running and crying, and seeing our group she flung herself into our midst and begged for protection. A mob of people came tearing after her, some with torches, and they said she was a witch who had caused several cows to die by a strange disease, and practiced her arts by help of a devil in the form of a black cat. This poor woman had been stoned until she hardly looked human. She was so battered and bloody, the mob wanted to burn her. Well, now, what do you suppose our master did? When we closed around this poor creature to shelter her, he saw his chance. He said, burn her here, or they shouldn't have her at all. Imagine that. They were willing. They fastened her to a post. They brought wood and piled it about her. They applied the torch while she shrieked and pleaded and strained her two young daughters to her breast, and our brute, with a heart solely for business, lashed us into position about the stake and warmed us into life and commercial value by the same fire which took away the innocent life of that poor, harmless mother. That was the sort of master we had. I took his number. That snowstorm cost him nine of his flock, and he was more brutal to us than ever after that, for many days together. He was so enraged over his loss. We had adventures all along. One day we ran into a procession, and such a procession. All the riff-raff of the kingdom seemed to be comprehended in it, and all drunk at that. In the van was a cart with a coffin in it, and on the coffin sat a comely young girl of about eighteen, suckling a baby, which she squeezed to her breast in a passion of love every little while, and every little while wiped from its face the tears which her eyes rained down upon it, and always the foolish little things smiled up at her, happy and content, kneading her breast with its dimpled fat hand, which she patted and fondled right over her breaking heart. Men and women, boys and girls, trotted along beside or after the cart, hooting and shouting profane and ribbled remarks, singing snatches of foul song, skipping, dancing, a very holiday of hellions, a sickening sight. We had struck a suburb of London, outside the walls, and this was a sample of one sort of London society. Our master secured a good place for us near the gallows. A priest was in attendance, and he helped the girl climb up, and said comforting words to her, and made the undersherve provide a stool for her. Then he stood there by her on the gallows, and for a moment looked down upon the mass of upturned faces at his feet, then out over the solid pavement of heads, that stretched away on every side, occupying the vacancies far and near, and then began to tell the story of the case. And there was pity in his voice how seldom a sound that was in that ignorant and savage land. I remember every detail of what he said, except the words he said it in, and so I change it into my own words. Law is intended to meet out justice. Sometimes it fails. This cannot be helped. We can only grieve, and be resigned, and pray for the soul of him who falls unfairly by the arm of the law, and that his fellows may be few. A law sends this poor young thing to death, and it is right. But another law had placed her where she must commit her crime or starve with her child, and before God that law is responsible for both her crime and her ignominious death. A little while ago this young thing, this child of eighteen years, was as happy a wife and mother as any in England, and her lips were blithe with song, which is the native speech of glad and innocent hearts. Her young husband was as happy as she, for he was doing his whole duty. He worked early and late at his handicraft. His bread was honest bread, well and fairly earned. He was prospering. He was furnishing shelter and sustenance to his family. He was adding his might to the wealth of the nation. By consent of a treacherous law instant destruction fell upon his holy home and swept it away. That young husband was waylaid and impressed and sent to sea. The wife knew nothing of it. She sought him everywhere. She moved the hardest hearts with the supplications of her tears, the broken eloquence of her despair. Weeks dragged by, she watching, waiting, hoping, her mind going slowly to wreck under the burden of her misery. Little by little all her small possessions went for food. When she could no longer pay her rent they turned her out of doors. She begged while she had strength. When she was starving at last and her milk failing she stole a piece of linen cloth of the value of a fourth part of a cent, thinking to sell it and save her child. But she was seen by the owner of the cloth. She was put in jail and brought to trial. The man testified to the facts. A plea was made for her and her sorrowful story was told in her behalf. She spoke, too, by permission and said she did steal the cloth, but that her mind was so disordered of late by trouble that when she was overborn with hunger all acts criminal or other swam meaningless through her brain and she knew nothing rightly except that she was so hungry. For a moment all were touched, and there was disposition to deal mercifully with her, seeing that she was so young and friendless and her case so piteous and the law that robbed her of her support to blame as being the first and only cause of her transgression. But the prosecuting officer replied that whereas these things were all true and most pitiful as well, still there was much small theft in these days and mistimed mercy here would be a danger to property. Oh, my God, is there no property in ruined homes and orphaned babes and broken hearts that British law holds precious? And so he must require sentence. When the judge put on his black cap the owner of the stolen linen rose trembling up his lip quivering, his face as gray as ashes, and when the awful words came he cried out, Oh, poor child, poor child, I did not know it was death, and fell as a tree falls. When they lifted him up his reason was gone. Before the sun was set he had taken his own life, a kindly man, a man whose heart was right at bottom, add his murder to this, that is to be now done here, and charge them both where they belong, to the rulers, and the bitter laws of Britain. The time has come, my child, let me pray over thee, not for thee, dear abused poor heart and innocent, but for them that be guilty of thy ruin and death who needed more. After his prayer they put the noose around the young girl's neck, and they had great trouble to adjust the knot under her ear, because she was devouring the baby all the time, wildly kissing it and snatching it to her face and her breast, and drenching it with tears and half moaning, half shrieking all the while, and the baby crowing and laughing and kicking its feet with delight over what it took for romp and play. Even the hangman couldn't stand it, but turned away. When all was ready the priest gently pulled and tugged and forced the child out of the mother's arms, and stepped quickly out of her reach. But she clasped her hands and made a wild spring toward him with a shriek, but the rope and the undersheriff held her short. Then she went on her knees and stretched out her hands and cried, One more kiss, oh my God, one more, one more, it is the dying that begs it. She got it, she almost smothered the little thing, and when they got it away again she cried out, Oh my child, my darling, it will die! It has no home, it has no father, no friend, no mother! It has them all, said the good priest, all these will I be to it till I die. You should have seen her face, then. Gratitude! Lord, what do you want with words to express that? Words are only painted fire. A look is the fire itself. She gave that look and carried it away to the Treasury of Heaven, for all things that are divine belong. CHAPTER XXXVI London to a slave was a sufficiently interesting place. It was merely a great big village, and mainly mud and thatch. The streets were muddy, crooked, unpaved. The populace was an ever-flocking and drifting swarm of rags and splendors, of nodding plumes and shining armour. The King had a palace there. He saw the outside of it. It made him sigh, yes, and swear a little, in a poor, juvenile, sixth-century way. We saw knights and grandees whom we knew, but they didn't know us in our rags and dirt and raw welts and bruises, and wouldn't have recognized us if we had hailed them, nor stopped to answer either, it being unlawful to speak with slaves on a chain. Sandy passed within ten yards of me on a mule, hunting for me, I imagined. But the thing which clean broke my heart was something which happened in front of our old barrack in a square, while we were enduring the spectacle of a man being boiled to death in oil for counter-fitting pennies. It was the sight of a news-boy, and I couldn't get at him. Still I had one comfort. Here was proof that Clarence was still alive and banging away. I meant to be with him before long. The thought was full of cheer. I had one little glimpse of another thing one day which gave me a great uplift. It was a wire stretching from housetop to housetop, telegraph or telephone, sure. I did very much wish I had a little piece of it. It was just what I needed in order to carry out my project of escape. My idea was to get loose some night, along with the king, then gag and bind our master, change clothes with him, batter him into the aspect of a stranger, hitch him to the slave-chain, assume possession of the property, march to Camelot, and—but you get my idea. You see what a stunning dramatic surprise I would wind up with at the palace. It was all feasible if I could only get hold of a slender piece of iron which I could shape into a lockpick. I could then undo the lumbering padlocks with which our chains were fastened whenever I might choose. But I never had any luck. No such thing ever happened to fall in my way. However, my chance came at last. A gentleman who had come twice before to dicker for me without result, or indeed any approach to a result, came again. I was far from expecting ever to belong to him, for the price asked for me from the time I was first enslaved was exorbitant, and all was provoked either anger or derision, yet my master stuck stubbornly to it—twenty-two dollars. He wouldn't bait a cent. The king was greatly admired because of his grand physique, but his kingly style was against him, and he wasn't saleable. Nobody wanted that kind of a slave. I considered myself safe from parting from him because of my extravagant price. No, I was not expecting to ever belong to this gentleman whom I have spoken of, but he had something which I expected would belong to me eventually, if he would but visit us often enough. It was a steel thing with a long pin to it, with which his long cloth outside garment was fastened together in front. There were three of them. He had disappointed me twice, because he did not come quite close enough to me to make my project entirely safe. But this time I succeeded. I captured the lower clasp of the three, and when he missed it he thought he had lost it on the way. I had a chance to be glad about a minute, then straight away a chance to be sad again. For when the purchase was about to fail, as usual, the master suddenly spoke up and said, what would be worded thus in modern English? Tell you what I'll do. I'm tired supporting these two for no good. Give me twenty-two dollars for this one, and I'll throw the other one in." The king couldn't get his breath. He was in such a fury. He began to choke and gag, and meantime the master and the gentleman moved away, discussing, and he will keep the offer open to his open till tomorrow at this hour. Then I will answer you at that time, said the gentleman, and disappeared, the master following him. I had a time of it to cool the king down, but I managed it. I whispered in his ear to this effect, Your grace will go for nothing but after another fashion, and so shall I. Tonight we shall both be free. Ah! how is that? With this thing which I have stolen I will unlock these locks and cast off these chains to-night. When he comes about nine-thirty to inspect us for the night we will seize him, gag him, batter him, and early in the morning we will march out of this town, proprietors of this caravan of slaves. That was as far as I went, but the king was charmed and satisfied. That evening we waited patiently for our fellow slaves to get to sleep, and signify it by the usual sign, for you must not take many chances on those poor fellows if you can avoid it. It is best to keep your own secrets. No doubt they fidgeted only about as usual, but it didn't seem so to me. It seemed to me that they were going to be forever getting down to their regular snoring. As the time dragged on I got nervously afraid we shouldn't have enough of it left for our needs, so I made several premature attempts, and merely delayed things by it, for I couldn't seem to touch a padlock, there in the dark, without starting a rattle out of it which interrupted somebody's sleep and made him turn over and wake some more of the gang. But finally I did get my last iron off, and was a free man once more. I took a good breath of relief and reached for the king's irons. Too late, in comes the master, with a light in one hand and his heavy walking staff in the other. I snuggled close among the wallow of snorers to conceal as nearly as possible that I was naked of irons, and I kept a sharp lookout and prepared to spring for my man the moment he should bend over me. But he didn't approach. He stopped, gazed absently toward our dusky mass a minute, evidently thinking about something else, then sat down his light, moved musingly toward the door, and before a body could imagine what he was going to do he was out of the door and had closed it behind him. Quick, said the king, fetch him back! Of course it was the thing to do, and I was up and out in a moment. But, dear me, there were no lamps in those days, and it was a dark night. But I glimpsed a dim figure a few steps away. I darted for it, threw myself upon it, and then there was a state of things and lively. We fought and scuffled and struggled and drew a crowd in no time. They took an immense interest in the fight and encouraged us all they could, and in fact couldn't have been pleasanter or more cordial if it had been their own fight. Then a tremendous row broke out behind us, and as much as half of our audience left us, with a rush, to invest some sympathy in that. Lanterns began to swing in all directions. It was the watch gathering from far and near. Presently a halberd fell across my back as a reminder, and I knew what it meant. I was in custody. So was my adversary. We were marched off toward prison, one on each side of the watchman. Here was disaster. Here was a fine scheme gone to sudden destruction. I tried to imagine what would happen when the master should discover that it was I who had been fighting him, and what would happen if they jailed us together in the general apartment for brawlers and petty lawbreakers, as was the custom. And what might—just then my antagonist turned his face around in my direction. The freckled light from the watchman's tin lantern fell on it, and, by George, it was the wrong man. End of Chapter 36 This is Chapter 37. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, visit LibriVox.org. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, by Mark Twain, Chapter 37. An awful predicament. Sleep? It was impossible. It would naturally have been impossible in that noisome cavern of a jail, with its mangy crowd of drunken, quarrelsome, and song-singing rapscallions. But the thing that made sleep all the more a thing not to be dreamed of was my racking impatience to get out of this place and find out the whole size of what might have happened yonder in the slave quarters, in consequence of that intolerable miscarriage of mine. It was a long night, but the morning got around at last. I made a full and frank explanation to the court. I said I was a slave, the property of the great Earl Grip, who had arrived just after dark at the tabard inn in the village on the other side of the water, and had stopped there overnight by compulsion, he being taken deadly sick with a strange and sudden disorder. I had been ordered to cross to the city in all haste and bring the best physician. I was doing my best. Naturally I was running with all my might. The night was dark. I ran against this common person here, who seized me by the throat and began to pummel me. Although I told him my errand, and implored him for the sake of the great Earl, my master's mortal peril, the common person interrupted and said it was a lie, and was going to explain how I rushed upon him and attacked him without a word. Silence, sirrah, from the court. Take him hence, and give him a few stripes, whereby to teach him how to treat the servant of a nobleman after a different fashion another time. Go! Then the court begged my pardon, and hoped I would not fail to tell his lordship it was in no wise the court's fault that this high-handed thing had happened. I said I would make it all right, and so took my leave. Took it just in time, too. He was starting to ask me why I didn't fetch out these facts the moment I was arrested. I said I would if I had thought of it, which was true, but that I was so battered by that man that all my wit was knocked out of me, and so forth and so on, and I got myself away, still mumbling. I didn't wait for breakfast. No grass grew under my feet. I was soon at the slave-quarters. Empty. Everybody gone. That is, everybody except one body—the slave-masters. It lay there all battered to pulp, and all about were the evidences of a terrific fight. There was a rude, bored coffin on a cart at the door, and workmen, assisted by the police, were thinning a road through the gaping crowd in order that they might bring it in. I picked out a man humble enough in life to condescend to talk with one so shabby as I, and got his account of the matter. There were sixteen slaves here. They rose against their master in the night, and thou ceased how it ended. Yes, and how did it begin? There was no witness but the slaves. They said the slave that was most valuable got free of his bonds and escaped in some strange way, by magic arts to his thought, by reason that he had no key, and the locks were neither broke nor in any wise injured. When the master discovered his loss he was mad with a despair, and threw himself upon his people with his heavy stick, who resisted and break his back, and in other endeavours ways did give him hurts that brought him swiftly to his end. This is dreadful. It will go hard with the slaves, no doubt, upon the trial. Mary, the trial is over! Over? Would they be a weak thank you, and the matter so simple? They were not the half a quarter of an hour at it. Why, I don't see how they could determine which were the guilty ones in so short a time. Which ones? Indeed, they considered not particulars like to that. They condemned them in a body. Which ye not the law? Which men say the Romans left behind them here when they went? That if one slave killeth his master, all the slaves of that man must die for it. True, I had forgotten, and when will these die? Be like within a four and twenty hours, albeit some say they will wait a pair of days more, if per adventure they may find the missing one meantime. The missing one! It made me feel uncomfortable. Is it likely they will find him? Before the day is spent, yes! They seek him everywhere. They stand at the gates of the town with certain of the slaves who will discover him to them if he cometh, and none can pass out, but he will be first examined. Might one see the place where the rest are confined? The outside of it, yes. The inside of it, but he will not want to see that. I took the address of that prison for future reference and then sauntered off. At the first second hand clothing shop I came to, up a back street, I got a rough rig suitable for a common seamen who might be going on a cold voyage, and bound up my face with a liberal bandage, saying I had a toothache. This concealed my worst bruises. It was a transformation. I no longer resembled my former self. Then I struck out for that wire, found it, and followed it to its den. It was a little room over a butcher's shop, which meant that business wasn't very brisk in the telegraphic line. The young chap in charge was drowsing at his table. I locked the door and put the vast key in my bosom. This alarmed the young fellow, and he was going to make a noise, but I said, Save your wind! If you open your mouth you are dead, sure. Tackle your instrument lively now, call Camelot. This does amaze me. How should such as you know ought of such matters as call Camelot? I am a desperate man. Call Camelot, or get away from the instrument and I will do it myself. What? You? Yes, certainly. Stop cabling. Call the palace. He made the call. Now then, call Clarence. Clarence, who? Never mind Clarence, who? Say you want Clarence. You'll get an answer. He did so. We waited five nerve-straining minutes, ten minutes. How long it did seem? And then came a click that was as familiar to me as a human voice, for Clarence had been my own pupil. Now, my lad, vacate. They would have known my touch, maybe, and so your call was surest. But I'm all right now. He vacated the place and cocked his ear to listen, but it didn't win. I used a cipher. I didn't waste any time in sociabilities with Clarence, but squared away for business, straight off, thus. The king is here and in danger. We were captured and brought here as slaves. We should not be able to prove our identity, and the fact is, I am not in a position to try. Send a telegram for the palace here, which will carry conviction with it. His answer came straight away. They don't know anything about the telegraph. They haven't had any experience yet. The line to London is so new. Better not venture that. They might hang you. Think up something else. Might hang us. Little he knew how closely he was crowding the facts. I couldn't think up anything for the moment. Then an idea struck me, and I started it along. Send five hundred picked knights with Lancelot in the lead, and send them on the jump. Let them enter by the south-west gate, and look out for the man with a white cloth around his right arm. The answer was prompt. They shall start in half an hour. All right, Clarence, now tell this lad here that I am a friend of yours and a deadhead, and that he must be discreet and say nothing about this visit of mine. The instrument began to talk to the youth, and I hurried away. I fell to ciphering. In half an hour it would be nine o'clock. Knights and horses in heavy armor couldn't travel very fast. These would make the best time they could, and now that the ground was in good condition, and no snow or mud, they would probably make a seven-mile gate. They would have to change horses a couple of times. They would arrive about six or a little after. It would still be plenty light enough. They would see the white cloth, which I should tie around my right arm, and I would take command. We would surround that prison and have the king out in no time. It would be showy and picturesque enough, all things considered, though I would have preferred noonday on account of the more theatrical aspect the thing would have. Now, then, in order to increase the strings to my bow, I thought I would look up some of those people whom I had formerly recognized and make myself known. That would help us out of our escape, without the knights. But I must proceed cautiously, for it was a risky business. I must get into sumptuous raiment, and it wouldn't do to run and jump into it. No, I must work up to it by degrees, buying suit after suit of clothes in shops wide apart, and getting a little finer article with each change until I should finally reach silk and velvet and be ready for my project. So I started. But the scheme fell through like scat. The first corner I turned, I came plump upon one of our slaves snooping around with a watchman. I coughed at the moment, and he gave me a sudden look that bit right into my marrow. I judge he thought he had heard that cough before. I turned immediately into a shop and worked along down the counter, pricing things and watching out at the corner of my eye. Those people had stopped and were talking together and looking in at the door. I made up my mind to get out the back way, if there was a back way, and I asked the shop woman if I could step out there and look for the escaped slave who was believed to be in hiding back there somewhere. And said I was an officer in disguise, and my part was yonder at the door with one of the murderers in charge, and would she be good enough to step there and tell him he needn't wait, but had better go at once to the further end of the back alley and be ready to head him off when I rousted him out. She was blazing with eagerness to see one of those already celebrated murderers, and she started on the errand at once. I slipped out the back way, locked the door behind me, put the key in my pocket, and started off chuckling to myself and comfortable. Well, I had gone and spoiled it again, made another mistake, a double one, in fact. There were plenty of ways to get rid of that officer by some simple and plausible device, but no, I must pick out a picturesque one. It is the crying defect of my character. And then I had ordered my procedure upon what the officer, being human, would naturally do. Whereas, when you are least expecting it, a man will now and then go and do the very thing which it's not natural for him to do. The natural thing for the officer to do, in this case, was to follow straight on my heels. He would find a stout oaken door securely locked between him and me. Before he could break it down, I should be far away and engaged in slipping into a succession of baffling disguises which would soon get me into a sort of raiment, which was a sureer protection from meddling law-dogs in Britain than any amount of mere innocence and purity of character. But instead of doing the natural thing, the officer took me at my word and followed my instructions. And so, as I came trotting out of that cul-de-sac, full of satisfaction with my own cleverness, he turned the corner and I walked right into his handcuffs. If I had known it was a cul-de-sac, however there isn't any excusing a blunder like that, let it go. Charge it up to profit and loss. Of course I was indignant, and swore I had just come ashore from a long voyage and all that sort of thing, just to see, you know, if it would deceive that slave. But it didn't. He knew me. Then I reproached him for betraying me. He was more surprised than hurt. He stretched his eyes wide and said, What? Wouldst have me let thee of all men escape and not hang with us when th' art the very cause of our hanging? Go to! Go to! was their way of saying I should smile, or I like that. Queer talkers, those people! Well, there was a sort of bastard justice in his view of the case, and so I dropped the matter. When you can't cure a disaster by argument, what is the use to argue? It isn't my way. So I only said, You're not going to be hanged? None of us are. Both men laughed, and the slave said, He have not ranked as a fool before. You might better keep your reputation seeing the strain would not be for long. It will stand it, I reckon. Before to-morrow we shall be out of prison and free to go where we will, besides. The witty officer lifted at his left ear with his thumb, made a rasping noise in his throat, and said, Out of prison, yes, he say, true, and free likewise to go where you will, so you wander not out of his grace, the devil's sultry realm. I kept my temper and said indifferently. Now I suppose you really think we are going to hang within a day or two. I thought it not many minutes ago, for so the thing was decided and proclaimed. Ah, then you've changed your mind, is that it? Even that, I only thought. Then, I know now. I felt sarcastical, so I said, O sapient servant of the law, condescend to tell us, then, what you know, that ye will all be hanged to-day at mid-afternoon. Oh, that shot hit home! Lean upon me! The fact is, I did need to lean upon somebody. My nights couldn't arrive in time. They would be as much as three hours too late. Nothing in the world could save the king of England, nor me, which was more important. More important not merely to me, but to the nation, the only nation on earth standing ready to blossom into civilization. I was sick. I said no more. There wasn't anything to say. I knew what the man meant, that if the missing slave was found, the postponement would be revoked, the execution take place to-day. Well, the missing slave was found. NEARING FOUR IN THE AFTERNOON The scene was just outside the walls of London, a cool, comfortable, superb day, with a brilliant sun, the kind of day to make one want to live, not die. The multitude was prodigious and far-reaching, and yet we fifteen poor devils hadn't a friend in it. There was something painful in that thought. Look at it how you might. There we sat, on our tall scaffold, the butt of the hate and mockery of all those enemies. We were being made a holiday spectacle. They had built a sort of grandstand for the nobility and gentry, and these were there in full force with their ladies. We recognized a good many of them. The crowd got a brief and unexpected dash of diversion out of the king. The moment we were freed of our bonds he sprang up in his fantastic rags, with face bruised out of all recognition, and proclaimed himself Arthur King of Britain, and denounced the awful penalties of treason upon every soul there present if hair of his sacred head were touched. It startled and surprised him to hear them break into a vast roar of laughter. It wounded his dignity, and he locked himself up in silence. Then, although the crowd begged him to go on and tried to provoke him to it, by cat-calls, jeers, and shouts of, Let him speak! The king! The king! His humble subjects hunger and thirst for words of wisdom out of the mouth of their master, his serene and sacred raggedness! But it went for nothing. He put on all his majesty and sat under this rain of contempt and insult unmoved. He certainly was great in his way. Absently I had taken off my white bandage and wound it about my right arm. When the crowd noticed this they began upon me. They said, Doubtless this sailor-man is his minister! Observe his costly badge of office! I let them go on until they got tired, and then I said, Yes, I am his minister, the boss, and to-morrow you will hear that from Camelot, which, I got no further, they drowned me out with joyous derision. But presently there was silence, for the sheriffs of London in their official robes with their subordinates began to make a stir which indicated that business was about to begin. In the hush which followed our crime was recited, the death warrant read, then everybody uncovered while a priest uttered a prayer. Then a slave was blindfolded, the hangman unslung his rope, there lay the smooth road below us, we upon one side of it, the banked multitude wailing its other side, a good clear road, and kept free by the police. How good it would be to see my five hundred horsemen come tearing down it! But no, it was out of the possibilities. I followed its receding thread out into the distance, not a horseman on it, or sign of one. There was a jerk, and the slave hung dangling, dangling and hideously squirming, for his limbs were not tied. A second rope was unslung, in a moment another slave was dangling. In a minute a third slave was struggling in the air, it was dreadful. I turned away my head a moment, and when I turned back I missed the king. They were blindfolding him. I was paralyzed. I couldn't move. I was choking. My tongue was petrified. They finished blindfolding him. They led him under the rope. I couldn't shake off that clinging impotence. But when I saw them put the noose around his neck, then everything let go in me, and I made a spring to the rescue. And as I made it I shot one more glance abroad. By George! Here they came! A tilting! Five hundred mailed and belted knights on bicycles! The grandest sight that ever was seen. Lord how the plume streamed, how the sun flamed and flashed from the endless procession of webby wheels! I waved my right arm as Lancelot swept in. He recognized my rag. I tore away noose and bandage and shouted, On your knees every rascal of you and salute the king, who fails shall sup in hell to-night! I always used that high style when I'm climaxing in effect. Well, it was noble to see Lancelot and the boys swarm up onto that scaffold and heave the sheriffs and such overboard. And it was fine to see that astonished multitude go down on their knees and beg their lives of the king they had just been deriding and insulting. And as he stood apart there, receiving this homage in rags, I thought to myself, Well, really there is something peculiarly grand about the gate and bearing of a king after all. I was immensely satisfied. Take the whole situation all round, it was one of the gaudiest effects I ever instigated. And presently up comes Clarence, his own self, and winks and says, very modernly, Good deal of a surprise, wasn't it? I knew you'd like it. I've had the boys practicing this long time privately and just hungry for a chance to show off. End of Chapter 38 This is Chapter 39. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, visit LibriVox.org. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain. Chapter 39. The Yankees Fight with the Knights Home again at Camelot. A morning or two later I found the paper damp from the press by my plate at the breakfast table. I turned to the advertising columns, knowing I should find something of personal interest to me there. It was this. DE PAR LE ROIS Know that the great Lord and illustrious Knight, Sir Sagramor Ledizaris, having condescended to meet the King's Minister, Hank Morgan, the which is surnamed The Boss, for satisfaction of offence anciently given, these will engage in the lists by Camelot about the fourth hour of the morning of the sixteenth day of this next succeeding month. The battle will be one outrance, sith the said offence was of a deadly sort, admitting of no composition. Clarence's editorial reference to this affair was to this effect. It will be observed, by a glance at our advertising columns, that the community is to be favored with a treat of unusual interest in the tournament line. The names of the artists are warrant of good entertainment. The box office will be open at noon of the thirteenth, admission three cents, reserved seats five. Proceeds to go to the hospital fund. The royal pair and all the court will be present. With these exceptions, and the press, and the clergy, the free list is strictly suspended. Parties are hereby warned against buying tickets of speculators. They will not be good at the door. Everybody knows and likes The Boss. Everybody knows and likes Sir Sag. Come, let us give the lads a good send-off. Remember, the proceeds go to a great and free charity, and one whose broad begevalence stretches out its helping hand, warm with the blood of a loving heart, to all that suffer, regardless of race, creed, condition, or color. The only charity yet established in the earth, which has no politico-religious stopcock on its compassion, but says, here flows the stream, let all come and drink. Turn out, all hands, fetch along your dough-nuts, and your gum-drops, and have a good time. Pie for sale on the grounds, and rocks to crack it with, and circus lemonade, three drops of lime juice to a barrel of water. N. B. This is the first tournament under the new law, which allow each combatant to use any weapon he may prefer. You may want to make a note of that. Up to the day set, there was no talk in all Britain of anything but this combat. All other topics sank into insignificance and passed out of men's thoughts and interest. It was not because a tournament was a great matter. It was not because Sir Sagremore had found the Holy Grail, for he had not, but had failed. It was not because the second official personage in the kingdom was one of the dualists. No, all these features were commonplace. Yet there was abundant reason for the extraordinary interest which this coming fight was creating. It was born of the fact that all the nation knew that this was not to be a duel between mere men, so to speak, but a duel between two mighty magicians. A duel not of muscle, but of mind. Not of human skill, but of superhuman art and craft. A final struggle for supremacy between the two master enchanters of the age. It was realized that the most prodigious achievements of the most renowned knights could not be worthy of comparison with a spectacle like this. They could be but child's play, contrasted with this mysterious and awful battle of the gods. Yes, all the world knew it was going to be in reality a duel between Merlin and me, a measuring of his magic powers against mine. It was known that Merlin had been busy whole days and nights together, imbuing Sir Sagremore's arms and armor with supernal powers of offense and defense, and that he had procured for him, from the spirits of the air, a fleecy veil which would render the wearer invisible to his antagonist while still visible to other men. Against Sir Sagremore, so weaponed and protected, a thousand knights could accomplish nothing. Against him no known enchantments could prevail. These facts were sure. Regarding them there was no doubt, no reason for doubt. There was but one question, might there be still other enchantments unknown to Merlin which could render Sir Sagremore's veil transparent to me and make his enchanted male vulnerable to my weapons. This was the one thing to be decided in the lists. Until then the world must remain in suspense. So the world thought there was a vast matter at stake here, and the world was right, but it was not the one they had in their minds. No, a far vaster one was upon the cast of this die, the life of knight errantry. I was a champion, it was true, but not the champion of the frivolous black arts. I was the champion of hard, unsentimental common sense and reason. I was entering the lists to either destroy knight errantry or be its victim. Vast as the show-grounds were, there were no vacant spaces in them outside of the lists at ten o'clock on the morning of the sixteenth. The mammoth grandstand was closed in flags, streamers and rich tapestries, and packed with several acres of small-fried tributary kings, their suites, and the British aristocracy. With our own royal gang in the chief place, and each and every individual a flashing prism of gaudy silks and velvets—well, I never saw anything to begin with it but a fight between an Upper Mississippi Sunset and the Aurora Borealis. The huge camp of beflagged and gay-colored tents at one end of the lists, with a stiff-standing sentinel at every door and a shining shield hanging by him for challenge, was another fine sight. You see, every knight was there who had any ambition or any cast feeling. For my feeling toward their order was not much of a secret, and so here was their chance. If I won my fight with Sir Sagramore, others would have the right to call me out as long as I might be willing to respond. Down at our end there were but two tents, one for me, and another for my servants. At the appointed hour the king made a sign, and the heralds in their tabards appeared and made proclamation, naming the combatants and stating the cause of quarrel. There was a pause, then a ringing bugle blast, which was the signal for us to come forth. All the multitude caught their breath, and an eager curiosity flashed into every face. Out from his tent rode great Sir Sagramore, an imposing tower of iron, stately and rigid, his huge spear standing upright in its socket, and grasped in his strong hand, his grand horse's face, and breast cased in steel, his body closed in rich trappings that almost dragged the ground. Oh, a most noble picture! A great shout went up of welcome and admiration. And then out I came. But I didn't get any shout. There was a wondering and eloquent silence for a moment, then a great wave of laughter began to sweep along that human sea, but a warning bugle blast cut its career short. I was in the simplest and comfort-blist of gymnast costumes, flesh-colored tights from neck to heel with blue silk puffings about my loins, and bare-headed. My horse was not above medium size, but he was alert, slender-limbed, muscled with watch springs, and just a greyhound to go. He was a beauty glossy as silk and naked as he was when he was born, except for bridal and ranger saddle. The iron tower, and the gorgeous bed-quilt, came cumbersly, but gracefully pirouetting down the lists, and we tripped lightly up to meet them. We halted, the tower saluted. I responded. Then we wheeled, and rode side by side to the grandstand, and faced our king and queen, to whom we made abeasance. The queen exclaimed, "'A lax, boss! We'll fight naked, and without lance or sword or—' But the king checked her and made her understand, with a polite phrase or two, that this was none of her business. The bugles rang again, and we separated, and rode to the ends of the lists, and took position. Now old Merlin stepped into view, and cast a dainty web of gossamer threads over Sir Sagramore, which turned him into Hamlet's ghost. The king made a sign. The bugles blew. Sir Sagramore laid his great lance in rest, and the next moment here he came thundering down the course with his veil flying out behind, and I went whistling through the air like an arrow to meet him, cocking my ear the while, as if noting the invisible knight's position and progress by hearing, not sight. A chorus of encouraging shouts burst out for him, and one brave voice flung out a heartening word for me, said, "'Go it, Slim Jim!' It was an even bet that Clarence had procured that favour for me, and furnished the language too. When that formidable lance-point was within a yard and a half of my breast, I twitched my horse aside without an effort, and the big knight swept by, scoring a blank. I got plenty of applause that time. We turned, braced up, and down we came again. Another blank for the knight, a roar of applause for me. This same thing was repeated once more, and it fetched such a whirlwind of applause that Sir Sagramore lost his temper, and it once changed his tactics and set himself the task of chasing me down. Why, he hadn't any show in the world at that. It was a game of tag, with all the advantage on my side. I whirled out of his path with ease whenever I chose, and once I slapped him on the back as I went to the rear. Finally I took the chase into my own hands, and after that, turn or twist or do what he would, he was never able to get behind me again. He found himself always in front at the end of his manoeuvre. So he gave up that business and retired to his end of the lists. His temper was clear gone now, and he forgot himself and flung an insult at me which disposed of mine. I slipped my lasso from the horn of my saddle and grasped the coil in my right hand. This time you should have seen him come. It was a business trip, sure. By his gait there was blood in his eye. I was sitting my horse at ease, and swinging the great loop of my lasso in wide circles about my head. The moment he was under way I started for him. When the space between us had narrowed to forty feet, I sent the snaky spirals of the rope a-cleaving through the air, then darted aside and faced about and brought my trained animal to a halt with all his feet braced under him for a surge. The next moment the rope sprang taut and yanked Sir Sagromore out of the saddle. Great scot, but there was a sensation! Unquestionably the popular thing in this world is novelty. These people had never seen anything of that cowboy business before, and it carried them clear off their feet with delight. From all around and everywhere the shout went up, Encore! Encore! I wondered where they got the word, but there was no time to cipher on philological matters, because the whole night air-entry hive was just humming now, and my prospect for trade couldn't have been better. The moment my lasso was released and Sir Sagromore had been assisted to his tent, I hauled in the slack, took my station, and began to swing my loop around my head again. I was sure to have use for it as soon as they could elect a successor for Sir Sagromore, and that couldn't take long, or there were so many hungry candidates. Indeed, they elected one straight off. Sir hervised the revel. Here he came, like a house of fire. I dodged. He passed like a flash, with my horse-hair coils settling around his neck. A second or so later, his saddle was empty. I got another Encore, and another, and another, and still another. When I had snaked five men out, things began to look serious to the iron clads, and they stopped and consulted together. As a result, they decided that it was time to wave etiquette, and send their greatest and best against me. To the astonishment of that little world, I lassoed Sir Lamarac de Gallis, and after him Sir Gala had. So you see, there was simply nothing to be done now, but play their right bower, bring out the superbest of the superb, the mightiest of the mighty, the great Sir Lancelot himself. A proud moment for me? I should think so. Yonder was Arthur, King of Britain. Yonder was Guinevere, yes, and whole tribes of little provincial kings and kinglets, and in the Tented Camp Yonder renounced knights from many lands, and likewise the selectest body known to chivalry, the knights of the Table Round, the most illustrious in Christendom. And biggest fact of all, the very sun of their shining system was Yonder couching his lance, the focal point of forty thousand adoring eyes, and all by myself, here was I laying for him. Across my mind flitted the dear image of a certain hello-girl of West Hartford, and I wish she could see me now. In that moment down came the invincible, with the rush of a whirlwind. The courtly world rose to its feet and bent forward. The fateful coils went circling through the air, and before you could wink, I was towing Sir Lancelot across the field on his back, and kissing my hand to the storm of waving kerchiefs, and the thunder-crash of applause that greeted me. Said I to myself, as I coiled my lariat, and hung it on my saddle-horn, and sat there drunk with glory. The victory is perfect, no other will venture against me. Night air entry is dead. Now imagine my astonishment, and everybody else's, too, to hear the peculiar bugle call which announces that another competitor is about to enter the list. There was a mystery here. I couldn't account for this thing. Next I noticed Merlin gliding away from me, and then I noticed that my lasso was gone. The old sleight of hand expert had stolen it, sure, and slipped it under his robe. The bugle blew again. I looked, and down came Sagramour riding again with his dust brushed off and his veil nicely rearranged. I trotted up to meet him, and pretended to find him by the sound of his horse's hoofs. He said, Thou art quick of ear, but it will not save thee from this, and he touched the hilt of his great sword. And ye are not able to see it because of the influence of the veil. Know that it is no cumbersome lance but a sword, and, I wean, ye will not be able to avoid it. His visor was up, and there was death in his smile. I should never be able to dodge his sword—that was plain. Somebody was going to die this time. If he got the drop on me, I could name the corpse. We rode forward together and saluted the royalties. This time the king was disturbed. He said, Where is thy strange weapon? It is stolen, Sire. Hast another at hand? No, Sire, I brought only the one. Then Merlin mixed in. He brought but the one because there was but the one to bring. There exists none other but that one. It belongeth to the king of the demons of the sea. This man is a pretender, an ignorant. Else he had known that that weapon can be used in but eight bouts only, and then it vanisheth away to its home under the sea. Then he is weaponless, said the king. Sir Sagromore, he will grant him leave to borrow. And I will lend, said Sir Lancelot, limping up. He is as brave a night of his hands as any that be on live, and he shall have mine. He put his hand on his sword to draw it, but Sir Sagromore said, Stay, it may not be. He shall fight with his own weapons. It was his privilege to choose them and bring them, if he has aired on his head be it. Night, said the king, Thou art overwrought with passion. It disorders thy mind. Wouldst kill a naked man? And he do it, he shall answer to me, said Sir Lancelot. I will answer it to any he that desireeth, retorted Sir Sagromore hotly. Merlin broke in, rubbing his hands and smiling his low down a smile of malicious gratification. Tis well said, right well said, and tis enough of parlaying, let my lord the king deliver the battle-signal. The king had to yield. The bugle made proclamation, and we turned apart and rode to our stations. There we stood a hundred yards apart facing each other, rigid and motionless, like horse statues. And so we remained in a soundless hush, as much as a full minute. Everybody gazing, nobody stirring. It seemed as if the king could not take heart to give the signal. But alas he lifted his hand, the clear note of the bugle followed. Sir Sagromore's long blade described a flashing curve in the air, and it was superb to see him come. I sat still. On he came. I did not move. People got so excited that they shouted to me, Fly! Fly! Save thyself! This is mirthur! I never budged so much as an inch till that thundering apparition had got within fifteen paces of me. Then I snatched a dragoon revolver out of my holster. There was a flash and a roar, and the revolver was back in the holster before anybody could tell what had happened. Here was a riderless horse plunging by, and yonder lay, Sir Sagromore, stone dead. The people that ran to him were stricken dumb to find that the life was actually gone out of the man, and no reason for it visible, no hurt upon his body, nothing like a wound. There was a hole through the breast of his chain-mail, but they attached no importance to a little thing like that, and as a bullet wound there produced his but little blood, none came in sight because of the clothing and the swaddlings under the armour. The body was dragged over to let the king and the swells look down upon it. They were stupefied with astonishment naturally. I was requested to come and explain the miracle. But I remained in my tracks like a statue and said, If it is a command I will come, but my Lord the King knows that I am where the laws of combat require me to remain while any desire to come against me. I waited. Nobody challenged. Then I said, If there are any who doubt that this field is well and fairly one, I do not wait for them to challenge me. I challenge them. It is a gallant offer, said the King, and well besiems you. Whom will you name first? I name none. I challenge all. Here I stand, and dare the chivalry of England to come against me, not by individuals, but in mass. What! shouted a score of knights. You have heard the challenge, take it, or I proclaim you Recreant Knights and vanquished every one. It was a bluff, you know. At such a time it is sound judgment to put on a bold face and play your hand for a hundred times what it is worth. Forty-nine times out of fifty nobody dares to call, and you rake in the chips. But just this once, well, things looked squally. In just no time five hundred knights were scrambling into their saddles, and before you could wink, a widely scattering drove were under way and clattering down upon me. I snatched both revolvers from the holsters, and began to measure distances and calculate chances. Bang! one saddle empty, bang another one, bang, bang, and a bag too. Well, it was nip and tuck with us, and I knew it. If I spent the eleventh shot without convincing these people, the twelfth man would kill me, sure. And so I never did feel so happy as I did when my ninth downed its man, and I detected the wavering in the crowd, which was premonitory of panic. An instant lost now could knock out my last chance. But I didn't lose it. I raised both revolvers and pointed them. The halted host stood their ground just about one good square moment. Then broken fled. The day was mine. Knight air-entry was a doomed institution. The march of civilization was begun. How did I feel? Ha! You never could imagine it. And Brear Merlin, his stock was flat again. Somehow every time the magic of Falderall tried conclusions with the magic of science, the magic of Falderall got left. End of Chapter 39 This is Chapter 40. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, visit LibriVox.org. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain. Chapter 40. Three years later. When I broke the back of Knight air-entry that time, I no longer felt obliged to work in secret. So the very next day I exposed my hidden schools, my mines, and my vast system of clandestine factories and workshops to an astonished world. That is to say, I exposed the nineteenth century to the inspection of the sixth. Well, it is always a good plan to follow up an advantage promptly. The knights were temporarily down. But if I would keep them so, I must just simply paralyze them. Nothing short of that would answer. You see, I was bluffing that last time in the field. It would be natural for them to work around to that conclusion if I gave them a chance, so I must not give them time, and I didn't. I renewed my challenge, engraved it on brass, posted it up where any priest could read it to them, and also kept it standing in the advertising columns of the paper. I not only renewed it, but added to its proportions. I said, named the day, and I would take fifty assistants and stand up against the massed chivalry of the whole earth, and destroy it. I was not bluffing this time. I meant what I said. I could do what I promised. There wasn't any way to misunderstand the language of that challenge. Even the dullest of the chivalry perceived that this was a plain case of put up or shut up. They were wise and did the latter. In all the next three years they gave me no trouble worth mentioning. Consider the three years' sped. Now look around on England, a happy and prosperous country, and strangely altered schools everywhere and several colleges, a number of pretty good newspapers. Even authorship was taking a start. Sir Dinadon, the humorist, was first in the field with a volume of grey-headed jokes, which I had been familiar with during thirteen centuries. If he had left out that old rancid one about the lecturer, I wouldn't have said anything. But I couldn't stand that one. I suppressed the book and hanged the author. Slavery was dead and gone. All men were equal before the law. Taxation had been equalized. The telegraph, the telephone, the phonograph, the typewriter, the sewing machine, and all the thousand willing and handy servants of steam and electricity were working their way into favour. We had a steamboat or two on the Thames. We had steam warships and the beginnings of a steam commercial marine. I was getting ready to send out an expedition to discover America. We were building several lines of railway, and our line from Camelot to London was already finished and in operation. I was shrewd enough to make all offices connected with the passenger service places of high and distinguished honour. My idea was to attract the chivalry and nobility and make them useful and keep them out of mischief. The plan worked very well. The competition for the places was hot. The conductor of the 433 Express was a Duke. There wasn't a passenger conductor on the line below the degree of Earl. They were a good man, every one. But they had two defects which I couldn't cure, so had to wink at. They wouldn't lay aside their armour, and they would knock down fare, I mean rob the company. There was hardly a night in all the land who wasn't in some useful employment. They were going from end to end of the country in all manner of useful missionary capacities. Their penchant for wandering and their experience in it made them all together the most effective spreaders of civilisation we had. They went closed in steel and equipped with sword and lance and battle-axe, and if they couldn't persuade a person to try a sewing machine on the instalment plan, or a melodian, or a barbed wire fence, or a prohibition journal, or any of the other thousand and one things they canvassed for, they removed him and passed on. I was very happy. Things were working steadily toward a secretly longed-for point. You see, I had two schemes in my head which were the vastest of all my projects. The one was to overthrow the Catholic Church and set up the Protestant faith on its ruins, not as an established church, but a go-as-you-please one. And the other project was to get a decree issued by and by, commanding that upon Arthur's death unlimited suffrage should be introduced, and given to men and women alike, at any rate to all men, wise or unwise, and to all mothers who at middle age should be found to know nearly as much as their sons at 21. Arthur was good for thirty years yet, he being about my own age, that is to say forty, and I believed that in that time I could easily have the active part of the population of that day ready and eager for an event which should be the first of its kind in the history of the world, a rounded and complete governmental revolution without bloodshed. The result to be a republic. Well, I may as well confess, though I do feel ashamed when I think of it, I was beginning to have a base hankering to be its first president myself. Yes, there was more or less human nature in me. I found that out. Clarence was with me as concerned the revolution, but in a modified way. His idea was a republic without privileged orders, but with a hereditary royal family at the head of it instead of an elective chief magistrate. He believed that no nation that had ever known the joy of worshipping a royal family could ever be robbed of it and not fade away and die of melancholy. I urged that kings were dangerous. He said, then have cats. He was sure that a royal family of cats would answer every purpose. They would be as useful as any other royal family. They would know as much. They would have the same virtues and the same treacheries, the same disposition to get up shindies with other royal cats. They would be laughably vain and absurd and never know it. They would be wholly inexpensive. Finally they would have as sound a divine right as any other royal house. And Tom VII or Tom XI or Tom XIV by the Grace of God King would sound as well as it would when applied to the ordinary royal tomcat with tights on. And as a rule, said he in his neat modern English, the character of these cats would be considerably above the character of the average king. And this would be an immense moral advantage to the nation for the reason that a nation always models its morals after its monarchs. The worship of royalty being founded in unreason these graceful and harmless cats would easily become as sacred as any other royalties, and indeed more so because it would presently be noticed that they hanged nobody, beheaded nobody, imprisoned nobody, inflicted no cruelties or injustices of any sort, and so must be worthy of a deeper love and reverence than the customary human king, and would certainly get it. The eyes of the whole harried world would soon be fixed upon this humane and gentle system, and the royal butchers would presently begin to disappear. Their subjects would fill the vacancies with catlings from our own royal house. We should become a factory. We should supply the thrones of the world. Within forty years all Europe would be governed by cats, and we should furnish the cats. The reign of universal peace would begin then to end no more for ever. Meow! Wow! Hang him, I suppose, till he was in earnest, and was beginning to be persuaded by him until he exploded that cat-howl and startled me almost out of my clothes. But he never could be in earnest. He didn't know what it was. He had pictured a distinct and perfectly rational and feasible improvement upon constitutional monarchy, but he was too feather-headed to know it, or care anything about it, either. I was going to give him a scolding, but Sandy came flying in at that moment wild with terror, and so choked with sobs that for a minute she could not get her voice. I ran and took her in my arms and lavished caresses upon her and said beseechingly, Speak, darling, speak, what is it? Her head fell limp upon my bosom, and she gasped almost inaudibly. Hello, Central! Quick, I shouted to Clarence, Telephone the King's homeapath to come! In two minutes I was kneeling by the child's crib, and Sandy was dispatching servants here, there, and everywhere all over the palace. I took in the situation almost at a glance. Membranas croop. I bent down and whispered, Wake up, sweetheart! Hello, Central! She opened her soft eyes languidly and made out to say, Papa! That was a comfort. She was far from dead yet. I sent for preparations of sulfur. I rusted out the croop kettle myself, for I don't sit down and wait for doctors when Sandy or the child is sick. I knew how to nurse both of them and had had experience. This little chap had lived in my arms a good part of its small life, and often I could soothe away its troubles and get it to laugh through the tear-dos on its eyelashes when even its mother couldn't. Sir Lancelot in his richest armor came striding along the great hall now on his way to the stockboard. He was president of the stockboard and occupied the siege perilous, which he had bought of Sir Gallahad, for the stockboard consisted of the knights of the round table, and they used the round table for business purposes now. Seats at it were worth—well, you would never believe the figure, so it is no use to state it. Sir Lancelot was a bear, and he had put up a corner in one of the new lines, and was just getting ready to squeeze the shorts to-day. But what of that? He was the same old Lancelot, and when he glanced in as he was passing the door and found out that his pet was sick, that was enough for him. Bulls and bears might fight it out their own way for all him. He would come right in here and stand by little hello central for all he was worth, and that was what he did. He shied his helmet into the corner, and in half a minute he had a new wick in the alcohol lamp, and was firing up the croup kettle. By this time Sandy had built a blanket canopy over the crib, and everything was ready. Sir Lancelot got up steam, he and I loaded up the kettle with unslaked lime and carbolic acid, with a touch of lactic acid added there, too, then filled the thing up with water, and inserted the steam-pout under the canopy. Everything was ship-shaped now, and we sat down on either side of the crib to stand our watch. Sandy was so grateful and so comforted that she charged a couple of church-wartens with willow-bark and sumac tobacco for us, and told us to smoke as much as we pleased. It couldn't get under the canopy, and she was used to smoke, being the first lady in the land who had ever seen a cloud blown. Well, there couldn't be a more contented or comfortable sight than Sir Lancelot in his noble armor sitting in gracious serenity at the end of a yard of snowy church-warden. He was a beautiful man, a lovely man, and was just intended to make a wife and children happy. But, of course, Guinevere—however, it's no use to cry over what's done and can't be helped. Well, he stood watch and watch with me, right straight through for three days and nights till the child was out of danger. Then he took her up in his great arms and kissed her, with his plumes falling about her golden head, then laid her softly in Sandy's lap again, and took his stately way down the vast hall between the ranks of admiring men-at-arms and menials, and so disappeared. And no instinct warned me that I should never look upon him again in this world. Lord, what a world of heartbreak it is! The doctor said we must take the child away, if we would coax her back to health and strength again. And she must have sea air. So he took a man of war and a suite of two hundred and sixty persons and went cruising about, and after a fortnight of this we stepped ashore on the French coast, and the doctors thought it would be a good idea to make something of a stay there. The little king of that region offered us his hospitalities, and we were glad to accept. If we had had as many conveniences as he lacked, we should have been plenty comfortable enough. Even as it was, we made out very well, in his queer old castle, by the help of comforts and luxuries from the ship. At the end of a month I sent the vessel home for fresh supplies and for news. We expected her back in three or four days. She would bring me, along with other news, the result of a certain experiment which I had been starting. It was a project of mine to replace the tournament with something which might furnish an escape for the extra steam of the chivalry, keep those bucks entertained and out of mischief, and at the same time preserve the best thing in them which was their hearty spirit of emulation. I had had a choice band of them in private training for some time, and the date was now arriving for their first public effort. This experiment was baseball. In order to give the thing vogue from the start, and place it out of the reach of criticism, I chose my nines by rank, not capacity. There wasn't a knight in either team who wasn't deceptored sovereign. As for material of this sort, there was a glut of it always around Arthur. You couldn't throw a brick in any direction and not cripple a king. Of course, I couldn't get these people to leave off their armor, they wouldn't do that when they bathed. They consented to differentiate the armor so that a body could tell one team from the other, but that was the most they would do. So one of the teams wore chainmail ulsters, and the other wore plate armor made of my new Bessemer steel. Their practice in the field was the most fantastic thing I ever saw. Being ball-proof, they never skipped out of the way, but stood still and took the result. When a Bessemer was at the bat and a ball hit him, it would bound 150 yards sometimes. And when a man was running and threw himself on his stomach to slide to his base, it was like an iron clad coming into port. At first, I appointed men of no rank to act as umpires, but I had to discontinue that. These people were no easier to please than other nines. The umpire's first decision was usually his last. They broke him in two with a bat, and his friends toted him home on a shutter. When it was noticed that no umpire ever survived a game, umpiring got to be unpopular. So I was obliged to appoint somebody whose rank and lofty position under the government would protect him. Here are the names of the nines. Bessemers, King Arthur, King Lot of Lothian, King of North Dallas, King Marsil, King of Little Britain, King Labor, King Pelham of Lysinges, King Bagdemagus, King Ptolemy Laphaintus, Ulsters, Emperor Lucius, King Logris, King Markle of Ireland, King Morganor, King Mark of Cornwall, King Nentris of Garlott, King Melodius of Lannes, King of the Lake, the Soudon of Syria, umpire, Clarence. The first public game would certainly draw fifty thousand people, and for solid fun would be worth going round the world to see. Everything would be favourable. It was balmy and beautiful spring weather now, and nature was all tailored out in her new clothes. End of Chapter 40 This is Chapter 41. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, visit LibriVox.org. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain. Chapter 41. The Interdict However, my attention was suddenly snatched from such matters. Our child began to lose ground again, and we had to go to sitting up with her her case became so serious. We couldn't bear to allow anybody to help in this service, so we too stood watch and watch, day in and day out. Ah, Sandy, what a right heart she had, how simple and genuine and good she was. She was a flawless wife and mother, and yet I had married her for no other particular reasons except that by the customs of chivalry she was my property until some night should win her from me in the field. She had hunted Britain over for me, had found me at the hanging bout outside of London, and had straightway resumed her old place at my side in the placidest way and as of right. I was a New Englander, and in my opinion this sort of partnership would compromise her sooner or later. She couldn't see how, but I cut argument short, and we had a wedding. Now I didn't know I was drawing a prize, yet that was what I did draw. Within the 12 month I became her worshipper, and ours was the dearest and perfectest comradeship that ever was. People talk about beautiful friendships between two persons of the same sex. What is the best of that sort, as compared with the friendship of man and wife, where the best impulses and highest ideals of both are the same? There is no place for comparison between the two friendships. The one is earthly, the other divine. In my dreams along at first I still wandered thirteen centuries away, and my unsatisfied spirit went calling and harking all up and down the unreplying vacancies of a vanished world. Many a time Sandy heard that imploring cry come from my lips in my sleep. With a grand magnanimity she saddled that cry of mine upon our child, conceiving it to be the name of some lost darling of mine. It touched me two tears, and it also nearly knocked me off my feet too, when she smiled up in my face for an earned reward and played her quaint and pretty surprise upon me. The name of one who was dear to thee is here preserved, here made holy, and the music of it will abide always in our ears. Now thou dost kiss me, as knowing the name I have given the child. But I didn't know it all the same. I hadn't an idea in the world. But it would have been cruel to confess it and spoil her pretty game, so I never let on, but said, Yes, I know, sweetheart, how dear and good it is of you too. But I want to hear these lips of yours, which are also mine, utter at first. Then its music will be perfect. Pleased to the marrow, she murmured, Hello, central! I didn't laugh. I'm always thankful for that. But the strain ruptured every cartilage in me, and for weeks afterward I could hear my bones clack when I walked. She never found out her mistake. The first time she heard that form of salute used at the telephone she was surprised, and not pleased. But I told her I'd give an order for it, that henceforth and forever the telephone must always be invoked with that reverent formality, in perpetual honor and remembrance of my lost friend and her small namesake. This was not true, but it answered. Well, during two weeks and a half we watched by the crib, and in our deep solicitude we were unconscious of any world outside of that sick room. Then our reward came. The center of the universe turned the corner and began to mend. Grateful? It isn't the term. There isn't any term for it. You know that yourself, if you've watched your child through the valley of the shadow, and seen it come back to life and sweep night out of the earth with one all illuminating smile that you could cover with your hand. Why, we were back in this world in one instant. Then we looked the same startled thought into each other's eyes at the same moment, more than two weeks gone, and that ship not back yet. In another minute I appeared in the presence of my train. They had been steeped in troubled boatings all this time, their faces showed it. I called an escort, and we galloped five miles to a hilltop overlooking the sea. Where was my great commerce that so lately had made these glistening expanses populous and beautiful with its white-winged flocks? Vanished, every one. Not a sail from verge to verge, not a smoke-bank, just a dead and empty solitude, in place of all that brisk and breezy life. I went swiftly back, saying not a word to anybody. I told Sandy this ghastly news, we could imagine no explanation that would begin to explain. Had there been an invasion, an earthquake, a pestilence? Had the nation been swept out of existence? But guessing was profitless. I must go at once. I borrowed the king's navy, a ship no bigger than a steam-launch, and was soon ready. The parting—yes, that was hard. As I was devouring the child with last kisses, it brisked up and jabbered out its vocabulary, the first time in more than two weeks, and it made fools of us for joy. The darling mispronunciations of childhood, dear me, there's no music that can touch it, and how one grieves when it wastes away and dissolves into correctness, knowing it will never visit his bereaved ear again. Well, how good it was to be able to carry that gracious memory away with me. I approached England the next morning, with a wide highway of salt water all to myself. There were ships in the harbour at Dover, but they were naked as to sails, and there was no sign of life about them. It was Sunday, yet at Canterbury the streets were empty. Strangest of all, there was not even a priest in sight, and no stroke of a bell fell upon my ear. The mournfulness of death was everywhere. I couldn't understand it. At last in the further edge of that town I saw a small funeral procession, just a family and a few friends following a coffin, no priest, a funeral without bell, book, or candle. There was a church there, close at hand, but they passed it by, weeping, and did not enter it. I glanced up at the bell free, and there hung the bell, shrouded in black, and its tongue tied back. Now I knew. Now I understood the stupendous calamity that had overtaken England. Invasion? Invasion is a triviality to it. It was the interdict. I asked no questions, I didn't need to ask any. The church had struck. The thing for me to do was to get into a disguise and go warily. One of my servants gave me a suit of clothes, and when we were safe beyond the town I put them on, and from that time I travelled alone. I could not risk the embarrassment of company. A miserable journey, a desolate silence everywhere, even in London itself. Traffic had ceased. Men did not talk or laugh, or go in groups, or even in couples. They moved aimlessly about each man by himself, with his head down, and woe and terror in his heart. The tower showed recent war scars. Verily much had been happening. Of course I meant to take the train to Camelot. Train. Why, the station was as vacant as a cavern. I moved on. The journey to Camelot was a repetition of what I had already seen, the Monday and the Tuesday different in no way from the Sunday. I arrived far in the night, from being the best electric lighted town in the kingdom and the most like a recumbent sun of anything you ever saw. It was become simply a blot. A blot upon darkness. That is to say, it was darker and solider than the rest of the darkness. And so you could see it a little better. It made me feel as if—maybe it was symbolical, a sort of sign that the church was going to keep the upper hand now and snuff out all my beautiful civilization just like that. I found no life stirring in the somber streets. I groped my way with a heavy heart. The vast castle loomed black upon the hilltop, not a spark visible upon it. The drawbridge was down. The great gate stood wide. I entered without challenge, my own heels making the only sound I heard, and it was supple-cruel enough in those huge vacant courts. I found Clarence, alone in his quarters, drowned in melancholy, and in place of the electric light he had reinstituted the ancient rag-lamp and sat there in a grisly twilight with all curtains drawn tight. He sprang up and rushed for me eagerly, saying, Oh! it's worth a billion mill-rays to look upon a live person again. He knew me as easily as if I hadn't been disguised at all, which frightened me one may easily believe that. Quick now, tell me the meaning of this fearful disaster, I said. How did it come about? Well, if there hadn't been any Queen Guinevere it wouldn't have come so early. But it would have come, anyway. It would have come on our own account by and by—by luck it happened to come on the Queens. And Sir Lancelot's? Just so. Give me the details. I reckon you will grant that during some years there has been only one pair of eyes in these kingdoms that has not been looking steadily a scant at the Queen and Sir Lancelot—yes, King Arthur's—and only one heart that was without suspicion. Yes, the King's—a heart that isn't capable of thinking evil of a friend. Well, the King might have gone on still happy and unsuspecting to the end of his days, but for one of your modern improvements—the stockboard. When you left, three miles of the London, Canterbury and Dover were ready for the rails, and also ready and ripe for manipulation in the stock market. It was wildcat, and everybody knew it. The stock was for sale at a giveaway. What does Sir Lancelot do? But—yes, I know. He quietly picked up nearly all of it for a song. Then he bought about twice as much more, deliverable upon call. And he was about to call when I left. Very well, he did call. The boys couldn't deliver. Oh, he had them, and he just settled his grip and squeezed them. They were laughing in their sleeves over their smartness in selling stock to him at fifteen and sixteen and along there that wasn't worth ten. Well, when they had laughed long enough on that side of their mouths they rested up that side by shifting the laugh to the other side. That was when they compromised with the invincible at 283. Good land! He skinned them alive, and they deserved it. Anyway, the whole kingdom rejoiced. Well, among the flade were Sir Agrivene and Sir Mordred, nephews to the king. End of the first act. Act II, seen first, an apartment in Carlisle Castle where the court had gone for a few days hunting. Person's present, the whole tribe of the king's nephews. Mordred and Agrivene proposed to call the guile as Arthur's attention to Gwynevere and Sir Lancelot. Sir Gwywayne, Sir Gareth, and Sir Gaharis will have nothing to do with it. A dispute ensues with loud talk. In the midst of it enter the king. Mordred and Agrivene spring their devastating tale upon him. Tablo, a trap is laid for Lancelot by the king's command, and Sir Lancelot walks into it. He made it sufficiently uncomfortable for the ambushed witnesses to it, Mordred, Agrivene, and twelve knights of Lesser Rank, for he killed every one of them but Mordred. But of course that couldn't straighten matters between Lancelot and the king, and didn't. Oh, dear! Only one thing could result, I see that. War! and the knights of the realm divided into a king's party and a Sir Lancelot's party. Yes, that was the way of it. The king sent the queen to the stake, proposing to purify her with fire. Lancelot and his knights rescued her, and in doing it slew certain good old friends of yours and mine. In fact, some of the best we ever had. To it, Sir Bellius Leorgolus, Sir Seguaredus, Sir Griflet La Fisse de Dieu, Sir Brandilis, Sir Agloval. Oh, you tear out my heartstrings. Wait, I'm not done yet. Sir Tor, Sir Gauter, Sir Gillimer, the very best man in my subordinate nine. What a handy right-fielder he was. Sir Reynolds' three brothers, Sir Damus, Sir Priamus, Sir Kay the Stranger, my peerless shortstop. I've seen him catch a daisy-cutter in his teeth. Come, I can't stand this. Sir Adreon, Sir Lembagus, Sir Hermendi, Sir Pyrtonlope, Sir Pyramonus, and—whom do you think? Rush, go on. Sir Geharus and Sir Gareth, both. Oh, incredible! Their love for Lancelot was indestructible. Well, it was an accident. They were simply onlookers. They were unarmed, and were merely there to witness the Queen's punishment. Sir Lancelot smoked down whoever came in the way of his blind fury, and he killed these without noticing who they were. Here is an instantaneous photograph one of our boys got of the battle. It's for sale on every newsstand. There, the figures nearest the Queen are Sir Lancelot, with his sword up, and Sir Gareth gasping his last breath. You can catch the agony in the Queen's face through the curling smoke. It's a rattling battle-picture. Indeed it is. We must take good care of it. Its historical value is incalculable. Go on. Well, the rest of the tale is just war, pure and simple. Lancelot retreated to his town and Castle of Joyous Guard, and gathered there a great following of knights. The King, with a great host, went there, and there was desperate fighting during several days, and, as a result, all the plain around was paved with corpses and cast iron. Then the Church patched up a piece between Arthur and Lancelot, and the Queen, and everybody—everybody but Sir Gawain. He was bitter about the slaying of his brothers Gareth and Gareth, and would not be appeased. He notified Lancelot to get him thence, and make swift preparation, and look to be soon attacked. So Lancelot sailed to his Duchy of Guyenne with his following, and Gawain soon followed with an army, and he beguiled Arthur to go with him. Arthur left the Kingdom in Sir Mordred's hands until you should return. Ah, a King's customary wisdom. Yes. Sir Mordred set himself at once to work to make his kingship permanent. He was going to marry Guinevere as a first move, but she fled and shut herself up in the Tower of London. Mordred attacked. The Bishop of Canterbury dropped down on him with the interdict. The King returned. Mordred fought him at Dover, at Canterbury, and again at Barham Down. Then there was talk of peace and a composition. Terms? Mordred to have Cornwall and Kent during Arthur's life, and the whole Kingdom afterward. Well, upon my word. My dream of a republic to be a dream, and so remain. Yes. The two armies lay near Salisbury. Guine—Gawain's head is at Dover Castle, he fell in the fight there—Gawain appeared to Arthur in a dream, at least his ghost did, and warned him to refrain from conflict for a month, let the delay cost what it might. But battle was precipitated by an accident. Arthur had given order that if a sword was raised during the consultation over the proposed treaty with Mordred, sound the trumpet and fall on, for he had no confidence in Mordred. Mordred had given a similar order to his people. Well, by and by an adder bit a knight's heel, the knight forgot all about the order and made a slash at the adder with his sword. Inside, of half a minute, those two prodigious hosts came together with a crash. They butchered away all day. Then the King—however, we have started something fresh since you left. Our paper has. No. What is that? War correspondence. Why, that's good. Yes, the paper was booming right along, for the interdict made no impression, got no grip, while the war lasted. I had war correspondence with both armies. I will finish that battle by reading you what one of the boys says. Then the King looked about him, and then was he where of all his hosts and all of his good knights were left no more on live but two knights, that was Sir Lucan de Butler and his brother Sir Bedivere. And they were full sore wounded. Ye zoom, mercy, said the King. Where are all my noble knights becoming? Alas, that ever I should see this doleful day. For now, said Arthur, I am coming to my end. But wood to God, I wist where were that traitor, Sir Mordred, that hath cost all this mischief. Then was King Arthur where, where Sir Mordred leaned upon his sword among a great heap of dead men. Now give me my spear, said Arthur, unto Sir Lucan, for yonder I have aspired the traitor that all this woe hath wrought. Sir, let him be, said Sir Lucan, for he is unhappy. If he pass this unhappy day, he shall be right well revenged upon him. Good Lord, remember ye of your knight's dream, and what the spirit of Sir Gawain told you this night, yet God of his great goodness hath preserved you hither too. Therefore, for God's sake, my Lord, leave off by this. For blessed be God ye have won the field, for here we be three on live, and with Sir Mordred is none on live. And if ye leave off now, this wicked day of destiny is past. Tide me death, betide me life, said the King. Now I see him yonder alone. He shall never escape mine hands. For I to better avail shall I never have him. God speed ye well, said Sir Bedivere. Then the King got his spear in both his hands, and ran towards Sir Mordred, crying, Traitor, now is thy death day come! And when Sir Mordred heard Sir Arthur, he ran until him with his sword drawn in his hand. And then King Arthur smote Sir Mordred under the shield, with a foin of his spear throughout the body more than a fathom. And when Sir Mordred felt that he had his death wound, he thrust himself with the might that he had up to the butt of King Arthur's spear. And right so he smote his father Arthur with his sword holding in both his hands, on the side of the head, that the sword pierced the helmet and the brain-pan, and therewithal Sir Mordred fell stark-dead to the earth, and the noble Arthur fell in a swoon to the earth, and there he swooned off times. That is a good piece of war correspondence, Clarence. You are a first-rate newspaper man. Well, is the King all right? Did he get well? Poor soul, no. He is dead. I was utterly stunned. It had not seemed to me that any wound could be mortal to him. And the Queen, Clarence. She is a nun in Almsbury. What changes? In such a short while. It is inconceivable. What next, I wonder? I can tell you what next. Well, stake our lives and stand by them. What do you mean by that? The Church is master now. The Interdict included you with Mordred. It is not to be removed while you remain alive. The clans are gathering. The Church has gathered all the knights that are left alive, and as soon as you are discovered we shall have business on our hands. Stuff! With our deadly scientific war-material, with our hosts of trained, save your breath we haven't sixty faithful left. What are you saying? Our schools, our colleges, our vast workshops, our—when those knights come, those establishments will empty themselves and go over to the enemy. Did you think you had educated the superstition out of those people? I certainly did think it. Well, then you may unthink it. They stood every strain easily until the Interdict. Since then they merely put on a bold outside. At heart they are quaking. Make up your mind to it when the armies come the mask will fall. It's hard news. We are lost. They will turn our own science against us. No, they won't. Why? Because I, and a handful of the faithful, have blocked that game. I'll tell you what I've done, and what moved me to it. Smart as you are the Church was smarter. It was the Church that sent you cruising through her servants the doctors. Clarence! It is the truth. I know it. Every officer of your ship was the Church's picked servant, and so was every man of the crew. Oh, come! It is just as I tell you, I did not find out these things at once, but I found them out finally. Did you send me verbal information by the commander of the ship to the effect that upon his return to you, with supplies, you were going to leave caddies? Caddies? I haven't been at caddies at all. Going to leave caddies and crews in distances indefinitely for the health of your family? Did you send me that word? Of course not. I would have written, wouldn't I? Naturally. I was troubled and suspicious. When the commander sailed again I managed to ship a spy with him. I have never heard a vessel or spy since. I gave myself two weeks to hear from you in. Then I resolved to send a ship to caddies. There was a reason why I didn't. Why was that? Our navy had suddenly and mysteriously disappeared. Also as suddenly and as mysteriously the railway and telegraph and telephone service ceased. The men all deserted. Polls were cut down. The Church laid a ban upon the electric light. I had to be up and doing and straight off. Your life was safe. Nobody in these kingdoms but Merlin would venture to touch such a magician as you without ten thousand men at his back. I had nothing to think of but how to put preparations in the best trim against your coming. I felt safe myself. Nobody would be anxious to touch a pet of yours. So this is what I did. From our various works I selected all the men, boys I mean, whose faithfulness under whatsoever pressure I could swear to, and I called them together secretly and gave them their instructions. There are fifty-two of them, none younger than fourteen, and none above seventeen years old. Why did you select boys? Because all the others were born in an atmosphere of superstition and reared in it. It is in their blood and bones. We imagined we had educated it out of them. They thought so too. The interdict woke them up like a thunder clap. It revealed them to themselves, and it revealed them to me, too. With boys, it was different. Such as have been under our training from seven to ten years have had no acquaintance with the church's terrors, and it was among these that I found my fifty-two. As a next move I paid a private visit to that old cave of Merlin's, not the small one, the big one. Yes, the one where we secretly established our first great electric plant when I was projecting a miracle. Just so. And as that miracle hadn't become necessary then I thought it might be a good idea to utilize the plant now. I've provisioned the cave for a siege. A good idea, a first rate idea. I think so. I placed four of my boys there as a guard, inside and out of sight. Nobody was to be hurt while outside, but any attempt to enter—well, we said just let anybody try it. Then I went out into the hills and uncovered and cut the secret wires which connected your bedroom with the wires that go to the dynamite deposits, under all our vast factories, mills, workshops, magazines, etc. And about midnight I and my boys turned out and connected that wire with the cave. And nobody but you and I suspects where the other end of it goes to. We laid it underground, of course, and it was all finished in a couple of hours or so. We shan't have to leave our fortress now when we want to blow up our civilization. It was the right move and the natural one, military necessity, in the changed condition of things. Well, what changes have come? We expected to be besieged in the palace some time or other, but—however—go on. Next we built a wire fence. Wire fence? Yes, you dropped the hint of it yourself two or three years ago. Oh, I remember, the time the church tried her strength against us the first time, and presently thought it wise to wait for a hopefuler season. Well, how have you arranged the fence? I start twelve immensely strong wires, naked, not insulated, from a big dynamo in the cave, dynamo with no brushes except a positive and a negative one. Yes, that's right. The wires go out from the cave and fence in a circle of level ground a hundred yards in diameter. They make twelve independent fences, ten feet apart, that is to say, twelve circles within circles, and their ends come into the cave again. Right. Go on. The fences are fastened to heavy, oaken posts only three feet apart, and these posts are sunk five feet in the ground. That is good and strong. Yes, the wires have no ground connection outside the cave. They go out from the positive brush of the dynamo, there is a ground connection through the negative brush, the other ends of the wire return to the cave, and each is grounded independently. No, no, that won't do. Why? It's too expensive, uses up force for nothing. You don't want any ground connection except the one through the negative brush. The other end of every wire must be brought back into the cave and fastened independently and without any ground connection. Now then, observe the economy of it. A cavalry charge hurls itself against the fence. You are using no power. You are spending no money. For there is only one ground connection till those horses come against the wire. The moment they touch it they form a connection with a negative brush through the ground and drop dead. Don't you see? You are using no energy until it is needed. Your lightning is there and ready like the load in a gun, but it isn't costing you a cent till you touch it off. Oh yes, the single ground connection. Of course! I don't know how I overlooked that. It's not only cheaper, but it's more effectual than the other way, where if wires break or get tangled no harm is done. No, especially if we have a tell-tale in the cave and disconnect the broken wire. Well, go on. The Gatlings? Yes, that's arranged. In the center of the inner circle on a spacious platform six feet high I've grouped a battery of thirteen Gatling guns and provided plenty of ammunition. That's it. They command every approach and when the church's knights arrive there's going to be music. The brow of the precipice over the cave. I've got a wire fence there and a Gatling. They won't drop any rocks down on us. Well, and the glass cylinder dynamite torpedoes? That's attended to. It's the prettiest garden that was ever planted. It's a belt forty feet wide and goes around the outer fence. Distance between it and the fence one hundred yards. Kind of neutral ground that space is. There isn't a single square yard of that whole belt but is equipped with a torpedo. We laid them on the surface of the ground and sprinkled a layer of sand over them. It's an innocent looking garden but you let a man start in to hoe it once and you'll see. You tested the torpedoes? Well, I was going to but—but what? Why it's an immense oversight not to apply a test? Yes, I know. But they're all right. I laid a few in the public road beyond our lines and they've been tested. Oh, that alters the case. Who did it? A church committee? How kind. Yes, they came to command us to make submission. You see, they didn't really come to test the torpedoes. That was merely an incident. Did the committee make a report? Yes, they made one. You could have heard it a mile. Unanimous? That was the nature of it. After that I put up some signs for the protection of future committees and we've had no intruders since. Clarence, you've done a world of work and done it perfectly. We had plenty of time for it. There wasn't any occasion for hurry. We sat silent a while, thinking. Then my mind was made up and I said, Yes, everything is ready. Everything is ship shape. No detail is wanting. I know what to do now. So do I. Sit down and wait. No, sir. Rise up and strike. Do you mean it? Yes, indeed. The D. offensive isn't in my line and the off-fensive is. That is, when I hold a fair hand, two thirds as good a hand as the enemy, oh yes, we'll rise up and strike. That's our game. A hundred one, you are right. When does the performance begin? Now. We'll proclaim the Republic. Well, that will precipitate things, sure enough. It will make them buzz, I tell you. England will be a hornet's nest before noon to-morrow. If the church's hand hasn't lost its cunning, and we know it hasn't, now you write, and I'll dictate thus. Proclamation. Be it known unto all, whereas the king, having died and left no air, it becomes my duty to continue the executive authority vested in me until a government shall have been created and set in motion. The monarchy has lapsed. It no longer exists. By consequence all political power has reverted to its original source, the people of the nation. With the monarchy, its several adjuncts died also. Wherefore there is no longer a nobility, no longer a privileged class, no longer an established church. All men are become exactly equal. They are upon one common level, and religion is free. A Republic is hereby proclaimed, as being the natural estate of a nation when other authority has ceased. It is the duty of the British people to meet together immediately, and by their votes elect representatives, and deliver into their hands the government. I signed it, the boss, and dated it from Merlin's Cave. Clarence said, Why, that tells where we are, and invites them to call right away. That is the idea. We strike, by the proclamation, then it's their innings. Now have the thing set up and printed and posted, right off. That is, give the order. Then, if you got a couple of bicycles handy at the foot of the hill, hold for Merlin's Cave. I shall be ready in ten minutes. What a cyclone there is going to be tomorrow when this piece of paper gets to work. It's a pleasant old palace this is. I wonder if we shall ever again. But never mind about that.