<SPAN name="chap12"></SPAN>
<h3 align="center"> CHAPTER 12 </h3>
<h3 align="center"> A Short Chapter About Curdie </h3>
<p>Curdie spent many nights in the mine. His father and he had taken Mrs.
Peterson into the secret, for they knew mother could hold her tongue,
which was more than could be said of all the miners' wives.</p>
<p>But Curdie did not tell her that every night he spent in the mine, part
of it went in earning a new red petticoat for her.</p>
<p>Mrs. Peterson was such a nice good mother! All mothers are nice and
good more or less, but Mrs. Peterson was nice and good all more and no
less. She made and kept a little heaven in that poor cottage on the
high hillside for her husband and son to go home to out of the low and
rather dreary earth in which they worked. I doubt if the princess was
very much happier even in the arms of her huge great-grandmother than
Peter and Curdie were in the arms of Mrs. Peterson. True, her hands
were hard and chapped and large, but it was with work for them; and
therefore, in the sight of the angels, her hands were so much the more
beautiful. And if Curdie worked hard to get her a petticoat, she
worked hard every day to get him comforts which he would have missed
much more than she would a new petticoat even in winter. Not that she
and Curdie ever thought of how much they worked for each other: that
would have spoiled everything.</p>
<p>When left alone in the mine Curdie always worked on for an hour or two
at first, following the lode which, according to Glump, would lead at
last into the deserted habitation. After that, he would set out on a
reconnoitring expedition. In order to manage this, or rather the
return from it, better than the first time, he had bought a huge ball
of fine string, having learned the trick from Hop-o'-my-Thumb, whose
history his mother had often told him. Not that Hop-o'-my-Thumb had
ever used a ball of string—I should be sorry to be supposed so far out
in my classics—but the principle was the same as that of the pebbles.
The end of this string he fastened to his pickaxe, which figured no bad
anchor, and then, with the ball in his hand, unrolling it as he went,
set out in the dark through the natural gangs of the goblins'
territory. The first night or two he came upon nothing worth
remembering; saw only a little of the home-life of the cobs in the
various caves they called houses; failed in coming upon anything to
cast light upon the foregoing design which kept the inundation for the
present in the background. But at length, I think on the third or
fourth night, he found, partly guided by the noise of their implements,
a company of evidently the best sappers and miners amongst them, hard
at work. What were they about? It could not well be the inundation,
seeing that had in the meantime been postponed to something else. Then
what was it? He lurked and watched, every now and then in the greatest
risk of being detected, but without success. He had again and again to
retreat in haste, a proceeding rendered the more difficult that he had
to gather up his string as he returned upon its course. It was not
that he was afraid of the goblins, but that he was afraid of their
finding out that they were watched, which might have prevented the
discovery at which he aimed. Sometimes his haste had to be such that,
when he reached home towards morning, his string, for lack of time to
wind it up as he 'dodged the cobs', would be in what seemed most
hopeless entanglement; but after a good sleep, though a short one, he
always found his mother had got it right again. There it was, wound in
a most respectable ball, ready for use the moment he should want it!</p>
<p>'I can't think how you do it, mother,' he would say.</p>
<p>'I follow the thread,' she would answer—'just as you do in the mine.'
She never had more to say about it; but the less clever she was with
her words, the more clever she was with her hands; and the less his
mother said, the more Curdie believed she had to say. But still he had
made no discovery as to what the goblin miners were about.</p>
<br/><br/><br/>
<SPAN name="chap13"></SPAN>
<h3 align="center"> CHAPTER 13 </h3>
<h3 align="center"> The Cobs' Creatures </h3>
<p>About this time the gentlemen whom the king had left behind him to
watch over the princess had each occasion to doubt the testimony of his
own eyes, for more than strange were the objects to which they would
bear witness. They were of one sort—creatures—but so grotesque and
misshapen as to be more like a child's drawings upon his slate than
anything natural. They saw them only at night, while on guard about
the house. The testimony of the man who first reported having seen one
of them was that, as he was walking slowly round the house, while yet
in the shadow, he caught sight of a creature standing on its hind legs
in the moonlight, with its forefeet upon a window-ledge, staring in at
the window. Its body might have been that of a dog or wolf, he
thought, but he declared on his honour that its head was twice the size
it ought to have been for the size of its body, and as round as a ball,
while the face, which it turned upon him as it fled, was more like one
carved by a boy upon the turnip inside which he is going to put a
candle than anything else he could think of. It rushed into the
garden. He sent an arrow after it, and thought he must have struck it;
for it gave an unearthly howl, and he could not find his arrow any more
than the beast, although he searched all about the place where it
vanished. They laughed at him until he was driven to hold his tongue,
and said he must have taken too long a pull at the ale-jug.</p>
<p>But before two nights were over he had one to side with him, for he,
too, had seen something strange, only quite different from that
reported by the other. The description the second man gave of the
creature he had seen was yet more grotesque and unlikely. They were
both laughed at by the rest; but night after night another came over to
their side, until at last there was only one left to laugh at all his
companions. Two nights more passed, and he saw nothing; but on the
third he came rushing from the garden to the other two before the
house, in such an agitation that they declared—for it was their turn
now—that the band of his helmet was cracking under his chin with the
rising of his hair inside it. Running with him into that part of the
garden which I have already described, they saw a score of creatures,
to not one of which they could give a name, and not one of which was
like another, hideous and ludicrous at once, gambolling on the lawn in
the moonlight. The supernatural or rather subnatural ugliness of their
faces, the length of legs and necks in some, the apparent absence of
both or either in others, made the spectators, although in one consent
as to what they saw, yet doubtful, as I have said, of the evidence of
their own eyes—and ears as well; for the noises they made, although
not loud, were as uncouth and varied as their forms, and could be
described neither as grunts nor squeaks nor roars nor howls nor barks
nor yells nor screams nor croaks nor hisses nor mews nor shrieks, but
only as something like all of them mingled in one horrible dissonance.
Keeping in the shade, the watchers had a few moments to recover
themselves before the hideous assembly suspected their presence; but
all at once, as if by common consent, they scampered off in the
direction of a great rock, and vanished before the men had come to
themselves sufficiently to think of following them.</p>
<p>My readers will suspect what these were; but I will now give them full
information concerning them. They were, of course, household animals
belonging to the goblins, whose ancestors had taken their ancestors
many centuries before from the upper regions of light into the lower
regions of darkness. The original stocks of these horrible creatures
were very much the same as the animals now seen about farms and homes
in the country, with the exception of a few of them, which had been
wild creatures, such as foxes, and indeed wolves and small bears, which
the goblins, from their proclivity towards the animal creation, had
caught when cubs and tamed. But in the course of time all had
undergone even greater changes than had passed upon their owners. They
had altered—that is, their descendants had altered—into such
creatures as I have not attempted to describe except in the vaguest
manner—the various parts of their bodies assuming, in an apparently
arbitrary and self-willed manner, the most abnormal developments.
Indeed, so little did any distinct type predominate in some of the
bewildering results, that you could only have guessed at any known
animal as the original, and even then, what likeness remained would be
more one of general expression than of definable conformation. But
what increased the gruesomeness tenfold was that, from constant
domestic, or indeed rather family association with the goblins, their
countenances had grown in grotesque resemblance to the human.</p>
<p>No one understands animals who does not see that every one of them,
even amongst the fishes, it may be with a dimness and vagueness
infinitely remote, yet shadows the human: in the case of these the
human resemblance had greatly increased: while their owners had sunk
towards them, they had risen towards their owners. But the conditions
of subterranean life being equally unnatural for both, while the
goblins were worse, the creatures had not improved by the
approximation, and its result would have appeared far more ludicrous
than consoling to the warmest lover of animal nature. I shall now
explain how it was that just then these animals began to show
themselves about the king's country house.</p>
<p>The goblins, as Curdie had discovered, were mining on—at work both day
and night, in divisions, urging the scheme after which he lay in wait.
In the course of their tunnelling they had broken into the channel of a
small stream, but the break being in the top of it, no water had
escaped to interfere with their work. Some of the creatures, hovering
as they often did about their masters, had found the hole, and had,
with the curiosity which had grown to a passion from the restraints of
their unnatural circumstances, proceeded to explore the channel. The
stream was the same which ran out by the seat on which Irene and her
king-papa had sat as I have told, and the goblin creatures found it
jolly fun to get out for a romp on a smooth lawn such as they had never
seen in all their poor miserable lives. But although they had partaken
enough of the nature of their owners to delight in annoying and
alarming any of the people whom they met on the mountain, they were, of
course, incapable of designs of their own, or of intentionally
furthering those of their masters.</p>
<p>For several nights after the men-at-arms were at length of one mind as
to the fact of the visits of some horrible creatures, whether bodily or
spectral they could not yet say, they watched with special attention
that part of the garden where they had last seen them. Perhaps indeed
they gave in consequence too little attention to the house. But the
creatures were too cunning to be easily caught; nor were the watchers
quick-eyed enough to descry the head, or the keen eyes in it, which,
from the opening whence the stream issued, would watch them in turn,
ready, the moment they should leave the lawn, to report the place clear.</p>
<br/><br/><br/>
<SPAN name="chap14"></SPAN>
<h3 align="center"> CHAPTER 14 </h3>
<h3 align="center"> That Night Week </h3>
<p>During the whole of the week Irene had been thinking every other moment
of her promise to the old lady, although even now she could not feel
quite sure that she had not been dreaming. Could it really be that an
old lady lived up in the top of the house, with pigeons and a
spinning-wheel, and a lamp that never went out? She was, however, none
the less determined, on the coming Friday, to ascend the three stairs,
walk through the passages with the many doors, and try to find the
tower in which she had either seen or dreamed her grandmother.</p>
<p>Her nurse could not help wondering what had come to the child—she
would sit so thoughtfully silent, and even in the midst of a game with
her would so suddenly fall into a dreamy mood. But Irene took care to
betray nothing, whatever efforts Lootie might make to get at her
thoughts. And Lootie had to say to herself: 'What an odd child she
is!' and give it up.</p>
<p>At length the longed-for Friday arrived, and lest Lootie should be
moved to watch her, Irene endeavoured to keep herself as quiet as
possible. In the afternoon she asked for her doll's house, and went on
arranging and rearranging the various rooms and their inhabitants for a
whole hour. Then she gave a sigh and threw herself back in her chair.
One of the dolls would not sit, and another would not stand, and they
were all very tiresome. Indeed, there was one would not even lie down,
which was too bad. But it was now getting dark, and the darker it got
the more excited Irene became, and the more she felt it necessary to be
composed.</p>
<p>'I see you want your tea, princess,' said the nurse: 'I will go and get
it. The room feels close: I will open the window a little. The evening
is mild: it won't hurt you.'</p>
<p>'There's no fear of that, Lootie,' said Irene, wishing she had put off
going for the tea till it was darker, when she might have made her
attempt with every advantage.</p>
<p>I fancy Lootie was longer in returning than she had intended; for when
Irene, who had been lost in thought, looked up, she saw it was nearly
dark, and at the same moment caught sight of a pair of eyes, bright
with a green light, glowering at her through the open window. The next
instant something leaped into the room. It was like a cat, with legs
as long as a horse's, Irene said, but its body no bigger and its legs
no thicker than those of a cat. She was too frightened to cry out, but
not too frightened to jump from her chair and run from the room.</p>
<p>It is plain enough to every one of my readers what she ought to have
done—and indeed, Irene thought of it herself; but when she came to the
foot of the old stair, just outside the nursery door, she imagined the
creature running up those long ascents after her, and pursuing her
through the dark passages—which, after all, might lead to no tower!
That thought was too much. Her heart failed her, and, turning from the
stair, she rushed along to the hall, whence, finding the front door
open, she darted into the court pursued—at least she thought so—by
the creature. No one happening to see her, on she ran, unable to think
for fear, and ready to run anywhere to elude the awful creature with
the stilt-legs. Not daring to look behind her, she rushed straight out
of the gate and up the mountain. It was foolish indeed—thus to run
farther and farther from all who could help her, as if she had been
seeking a fit spot for the goblin creature to eat her in his leisure;
but that is the way fear serves us: it always sides with the thing we
are afraid of.</p>
<p>The princess was soon out of breath with running uphill; but she ran
on, for she fancied the horrible creature just behind her, forgetting
that, had it been after her such long legs as those must have overtaken
her long ago. At last she could run no longer, and fell, unable even
to scream, by the roadside, where she lay for some time half dead with
terror. But finding nothing lay hold of her, and her breath beginning
to come back, she ventured at length to get half up and peer anxiously
about her. It was now so dark she could see nothing. Not a single
star was out. She could not even tell in what direction the house lay,
and between her and home she fancied the dreadful creature lying ready
to pounce upon her. She saw now that she ought to have run up the
stairs at once. It was well she did not scream; for, although very few
of the goblins had come out for weeks, a stray idler or two might have
heard her. She sat down upon a stone, and nobody but one who had done
something wrong could have been more miserable. She had quite
forgotten her promise to visit her grandmother. A raindrop fell on her
face. She looked up, and for a moment her terror was lost in
astonishment. At first she thought the rising moon had left her place,
and drawn nigh to see what could be the matter with the little girl,
sitting alone, without hat or cloak, on the dark bare mountain; but she
soon saw she was mistaken, for there was no light on the ground at her
feet, and no shadow anywhere. But a great silver globe was hanging in
the air; and as she gazed at the lovely thing, her courage revived. If
she were but indoors again, she would fear nothing, not even the
terrible creature with the long legs! But how was she to find her way
back? What could that light be? Could it be—? No, it couldn't. But
what if it should be—yes—it must be—her great-great-grandmother's
lamp, which guided her pigeons home through the darkest night! She
jumped up: she had but to keep that light in view and she must find the
house. Her heart grew strong. Speedily, yet softly, she walked down
the hill, hoping to pass the watching creature unseen. Dark as it was,
there was little danger now of choosing the wrong road. And—which was
most strange—the light that filled her eyes from the lamp, instead of
blinding them for a moment to the object upon which they next fell,
enabled her for a moment to see it, despite the darkness. By looking
at the lamp and then dropping her eyes, she could see the road for a
yard or two in front of her, and this saved her from several falls, for
the road was very rough. But all at once, to her dismay, it vanished,
and the terror of the beast, which had left her the moment she began to
return, again laid hold of her heart. The same instant, however, she
caught the light of the windows, and knew exactly where she was. It
was too dark to run, but she made what haste she could, and reached the
gate in safety. She found the house door still open, ran through the
hall, and, without even looking into the nursery, bounded straight up
the stair, and the next, and the next; then turning to the right, ran
through the long avenue of silent rooms, and found her way at once to
the door at the foot of the tower stair.</p>
<p>When first the nurse missed her, she fancied she was playing her a
trick, and for some time took no trouble about her; but at last,
getting frightened, she had begun to search; and when the princess
entered, the whole household was hither and thither over the house,
hunting for her. A few seconds after she reached the stair of the
tower they had even begun to search the neglected rooms, in which they
would never have thought of looking had they not already searched every
other place they could think of in vain. But by this time she was
knocking at the old lady's door.</p>
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