Part 21 (1/2)
But, all of a sudden, somebody shut off the steam below, and the hole was left empty in an instant: and then down rushed the water into the hole, in such a whirlpool that the bogy spun round and round as fast as a teetotum. But that was all in his day's work, like a fair fall with the hounds; so all he did was to say to Tom--
”Now is your time, youngster, to get down, if you are in earnest, which I don't believe.”
”You'll soon see,” said Tom; and away he went, as bold as Baron Munchausen, and shot down the rus.h.i.+ng cataract like a salmon at Ballisodare.
And, when he got to the bottom, he swam till he was washed on sh.o.r.e safe upon the Other-end-of-Nowhere; and he found it, to his surprise, as most other people do, much more like This-End-of-Somewhere than he had been in the habit of expecting.
And first he went through Waste-paper-land, where all the stupid books lie in heaps, up hill and down dale, like leaves in a winter wood; and there he saw people digging and grubbing among them, to make worse books out of bad ones, and thras.h.i.+ng chaff to save the dust of it; and a very good trade they drove thereby, especially among children.
Then he went by the sea of slops, to the mountain of messes, and the territory of tuck, where the ground was very sticky, for it was all made of bad toffee, and full of deep cracks and holes choked with wind-fallen fruit, and green goose-berries, and sloes, and crabs, and whinberries, and hips and haws, and all the nasty things which little children will eat, if they can get them. But the fairies hide them out of the way in that country as fast as they can, and very hard work they have, and of very little use it is. For as fast as they hide away the old trash, foolish and wicked people make fresh trash full of lime and poisonous paints, and actually go and steal receipts out of old Madame Science's big book to invent poisons for little children, and sell them at wakes and fairs and tuck-shops. Very well. Let them go on. Dr. Letheby and Dr.
Ha.s.sall cannot catch them, though they are setting traps for them all day long. But the Fairy with the birch-rod will catch them all in time, and make them begin at one corner of their shops, and eat their way out at the other: by which time they will have got such stomachaches as will cure them of poisoning little children.
Then came Tom to the great land of Hearsay.
When Tom came into that land, he found them all, high and low, man, woman, and child, running for their lives day and night continually, and entreating not to be told they didn't know what: only the land being an island, and they having a dislike to the water (being a musty lot for the most part), they ran round and round the sh.o.r.e for ever, which was hard work.
[Ill.u.s.tration]
And running after them, day and night, came such a poor, lean, seedy, hard-worked old giant, as ought to have been c.o.c.kered up, and had a good dinner given him, and a good wife found him, and been set to play with little children; and then he would have been a very presentable old fellow after all; for he had a heart, though it was considerably overgrown with brains.
He was made up princ.i.p.ally of fish bones and parchment, put together with wire and Canada balsam; and smelt strongly of spirits, though he never drank anything but water: but spirits he used somehow, there was no denying. He had a great pair of spectacles on his nose, and a b.u.t.terfly-net in one hand, and a geological hammer in the other; and was hung all over with pockets, full of collecting boxes, bottles, microscopes, telescopes, barometers, ordnance maps, scalpels, forceps, photographic apparatus, and all other tackle for finding out everything about everything, and a little more too. And, most strange of all, he was running not forwards but backwards, as fast as he could.
Away all the good folks ran from him, except Tom, who stood his ground and dodged between his legs; and the giant, when he had pa.s.sed him, looked down, and cried, as if he was quite pleased and comforted,--
”What? who are you? And you actually don't run away, like all the rest?”
But he had to take his spectacles off, Tom remarked, in order to see him plainly.
Tom told him who he was; and the giant pulled out a bottle and a cork instantly, to collect him with.
But Tom was too sharp for that, and dodged between his legs and in front of him; and then the giant could not see him at all.
”No, no, no!” said Tom, ”I've not been round the world, and through the world, and up to Mother Carey's haven, beside being caught in a net and called a Holothurian and a Cephalopod, to be bottled up by any old giant like you.”
And when the giant understood what a great traveller Tom had been, he made a truce with him at once, and would have kept him there to this day to pick his brains, so delighted was he at finding any one to tell him what he did not know before.
”Ah, you lucky little dog!” said he at last, quite simply--for he was the simplest, pleasantest, honestest, kindliest old Dominie Sampson of a giant that ever turned the world upside down without intending it--”ah, you lucky little dog! If I had only been where you have been, to see what you have seen!”
”Well,” said Tom, ”if you want to do that, you had best put your head under water for a few hours, as I did, and turn into a water-baby, or some other baby, and then you might have a chance.”
”Turn into a baby, eh? If I could do that, and know what was happening to me for but one hour, I should know everything then, and be at rest.
But I can't; I can't be a little child again; and I suppose if I could, it would be no use, because then I should know nothing about what was happening to me. Ah, you lucky little dog!” said the poor old giant.
”But why do you run after all these poor people?” said Tom, who liked the giant very much.
”My dear, it's they that have been running after me, father and son, for hundreds and hundreds of years, throwing stones at me till they have knocked off my spectacles fifty times, and calling me a malignant and a turbaned Turk, who beat a Venetian and traduced the State--goodness only knows what they mean, for I never read poetry--and hunting me round and round--though catch me they can't, for every time I go over the same ground, I go the faster, and grow the bigger. While all I want is to be friends with them, and to tell them something to their advantage: only somehow they are so strangely afraid of hearing it. But, I suppose I am not a man of the world, and have no tact.”
”But why don't you turn round and tell them so?”
”Because I can't. You see, I must go backwards, if I am to go at all.”