Part 81 (2/2)
”O! they did nothing very particular, one turned himself into a tree and was chopped up and burned in a bonfire and walked out of the smoke, and little things like that; and he went spying everywhere, and learned everything, and--”
”Go on--what next?”
”He went on till he said it was all no good, because if you went into the biggest forest that ever was you walked through it in about three years--”
”Like they did through Africa?”
”Just like it; and if you climbed up a mountain, after a day or two you got to the top; and if you sailed across the sea, if it was the greatest sea there ever was, you came to the other side in six months or so; so that it did not matter what you did, there was always an end to it.”
”Very stupid.”
”Very stupid, very; and he got tired of it always coming to the other side. He did so hate the other side, and he used to dawdle through the forests and lose his way, and he used to pull down the sails and let the s.h.i.+p go anyhow, and never touch the helm. But it was no use he always dawdled through the forest after awhile, and--”
”The wind always took the s.h.i.+p somewhere.”
”Yes, to the hateful other side, and he got so miserable and what to do he did not know, and he could not stop still very well--n.o.body can stop still--and that's why people have got a way of spinning on their heels in some countries, I forget their names--”
”Dervishes?”
”Dervishes of course; well, he became a Dervish, and used to spin round and round furiously, but you know a top always runs down, and so he got to the other side again.”
”Stupid.”
”Awful stupid. Now tell me what else he did and could not help coming to the other side?” said Bevis.
”But it's you who are telling the story.”
”O! but you can put some of that in.”
”Well,” said Mark, ”if you walk across this island, you come to the other side, or sail down the New Sea in the Pinta, or if you swim out to Serendib, or if you climb up the fir-tree to the cones--”
”Always the other side,” continued Bevis, ”and so he said that this was such a little world he hated it, you could go all round the earth and come back to yourself and meet yourself in your own house at home in no time.”
”It's not very big, is it?” said Mark. ”Nothing is very big that you could go round like that.”
”No, and the quicker you get round the smaller it is, though it's thousands and thousands of miles, so he said; and so he set out again to find a place where he could wander and never get to the other side, and after he had walked across Persia and Khorasan and Beloochistan--”
”And Afghanistan?”
”Yes, and crossed the Indus and Ganges, and been over the Himalayas, and inquired at every temple and of all the wise men who live in caves and hang themselves up with hooks stuck through their backs--”
”Fakirs.”
”At last a very old man took pity on him, seeing how miserable he was, and whispered to him where to go, and so he went on--”
”Where?”
”To Thibet.”
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