The Book of Dragons Part 19

KIND LITTLE EDMUND]

VIII. Kind Little Edmund, or The Caves and the c.o.c.katrice

Edmund was a boy. The people who did not like him said that he was the most tiresome boy that ever lived, but his grandmother and his other friends said that he had an inquiring mind. And his granny often added that he was the best of boys. But she was very kind and very old.

Edmund loved to find out about things. Perhaps you will think that in that case he was constant in his attendance at school, since there, if anywhere, we may learn whatever there is to be learned. But Edmund did not want to learn things: He wanted to find things out, which is quite different. His inquiring mind led him to take clocks to pieces to see what made them go, to take locks off doors to see what made them stick.

It was Edmund who cut open the India rubber ball to see what made it bounce, and he never did see, any more than you did when you tried the same experiment.

Edmund lived with his grandmother. She loved him very much, in spite of his inquiring mind, and hardly scolded him at all when he frizzled up her tortoisesh.e.l.l comb in his anxiety to find out whether it was made of real tortoisesh.e.l.l or of something that would burn. Edmund went to school, of course, now and then, and sometimes he could not prevent himself from learning something, but he never did it on purpose.

"It is such waste of time," said he. "They only know what everybody knows. I want to find out new things that n.o.body has thought of but me."

"I don't think you're likely to find out anything that none of the wise men in the whole world have thought of all these thousands of years,"

said Granny.

But Edmund did not agree with her. He played truant whenever he could, for he was a kindhearted boy, and could not bear to think of a master's time and labor being thrown away on a boy like himself--who did not wish to learn, only to find out--when there were so many worthy lads thirsting for instruction in geography and history and reading and ciphering, and Mr. Smiles's "Self-Help."

Other boys played truant too, of course--and these went nutting or blackberrying or wild plum gathering, but Edmund never went on the side of the town where the green woods and hedges grew. He always went up the mountain where the great rocks were, and the tall, dark pine trees, and where other people were afraid to go because of the strange noises that came out of the caves.

Edmund was not afraid of these noises--though they were very strange and terrible. He wanted to find out what made them.

One day he did. He had invented, all by himself, a very ingenious and new kind of lantern, made with a turnip and a tumbler, and when he took the candle out of Granny's bedroom candlestick to put in it, it gave quite a splendid light.

He had to go to school next day, and he was caned for being absent without leave--although he very straightforwardly explained that he had been too busy making the lantern to have time to come to school.

But the day after he got up very early and took the lunch Granny had ready for him to take to school--two boiled eggs and an apple turnover--and he took his lantern and went off as straight as a dart to the mountains to explore the caves.

The caves were very dark, but his lantern lighted them up beautifully; and they were most interesting caves, with stalact.i.tes and stalagmites and fossils, and all the things you read about in the instructive books for the young. But Edmund did not care for any of these things just then. He wanted to find out what made the noises that people were afraid of, and there was nothing in the caves to tell him.

Presently he sat down in the biggest cave and listened very carefully, and it seemed to him that he could distinguish three different sorts of noises. There was a heavy rumbling sound, like a very large old gentleman asleep after dinner; and there was a smaller sort of rumble going on at the same time; and there was a sort of crowing, clucking sound, such as a chicken might make if it happened to be as big as a haystack.

"It seems to me," said Edmund to himself, "that the clucking is nearer than the others." So he started up again and explored the caves once more. He found out nothing, but about halfway up the wall of the cave, he saw a hole. And, being a boy, he climbed up to it and crept in; and it was the entrance to a rocky pa.s.sage. And now the clucking sounded more plainly than before, and he could hardly hear the rumbling at all.

"I _am_ going to find out something at last," said Edmund, and on he went. The pa.s.sage wound and twisted, and twisted and turned, and turned and wound, but Edmund kept on.

"My lantern's burning better and better," said he presently, but the next minute he saw that all the light did not come from his lantern. It was a pale yellow light, and it shone down the pa.s.sage far ahead of him through what looked like the c.h.i.n.k of a door.

"I expect it's the fire in the middle of the earth," said Edmund, who had not been able to help learning about that at school.

But quite suddenly the fire ahead gave a pale flicker and went down; and the clucking ceased.

The next moment Edmund turned a corner and found himself in front of a rocky door. The door was ajar. He went in, and there was a round cave, like the dome of St. Paul's. In the middle of the cave was a hole like a very big hand-was.h.i.+ng basin, and in the middle of the basin Edmund saw a large pale person sitting.

This person had a man's face and a griffin's body, and big feathery wings, and a snake's tail, and a c.o.c.k's comb and neck feathers.

"Whatever are you?" said Edmund.

"I'm a poor starving c.o.c.katrice," answered the pale person in a very faint voice, "and I shall die--oh, I know I shall! My fire's gone out! I can't think how it happened; I must have been asleep. I have to stir it seven times round with my tail once in a hundred years to keep it alight, and my watch must have been wrong. And now I shall die."

I think I have said before what a kindhearted boy Edmund was.

"Cheer up," said he. "I'll light your fire for you." And off he went, and in a few minutes he came back with a great armful of sticks from the pine trees outside, and with these and a lesson book or two that he had forgotten to lose before, and which, quite by an oversight, were safe in his pocket, he lit a fire all around the c.o.c.katrice. The wood blazed up, and presently something in the basin caught fire, and Edmund saw that it was a sort of liquid that burned like the brandy in a snapdragon. And now the c.o.c.katrice stirred it with his tail and flapped his wings in it so that some of it splashed out on Edmund's hand and burnt it rather badly. But the c.o.c.katrice grew red and strong and happy, and its comb grew scarlet, and its feathers glossy, and it lifted itself up and crowed "c.o.c.k-a-trice-a-doodle-doo!" very loudly and clearly.

Edmund's kindly nature was charmed to see the c.o.c.katrice so much improved in health, and he said: "Don't mention it; delighted, I'm sure," when the c.o.c.katrice began to thank him.

"But what can I do for you?" said the creature.

"Tell me stories," said Edmund.

"What about?" said the c.o.c.katrice.

"About true things that they don't know at school," said Edmund.

So the c.o.c.katrice began, and he told him about mines and treasures and geological formations, and about gnomes and fairies and dragons, and about glaciers and the Stone Age and the beginning of the world, and about the unicorn and the phoenix, and about Magic, black and white.

And Edmund ate his eggs and his turnover, and listened. And when he got hungry again he said good-bye and went home. But he came again the next day for more stories, and the next day, and the next, for a long time.

He told the boys at school about the c.o.c.katrice and his wonderful true tales, and the boys liked the stories; but when he told the master he was caned for untruthfulness.

"But it's true," said Edmund. "Just you look where the fire burnt my hand."

"I see you've been playing with fire--into mischief as usual," said the master, and he caned Edmund harder than ever. The master was ignorant and unbelieving: but I am told that some schoolmasters are not like that.

Now, one day Edmund made a new lantern out of something chemical that he sneaked from the school laboratory. And with it he went exploring again to see if he could find the things that made the other sorts of noises.

And in quite another part of the mountain he found a dark pa.s.sage, all lined with bra.s.s, so that it was like the inside of a huge telescope, and at the very end of it he found a bright green door. There was a bra.s.s plate on the door that said MRS. D. KNOCK AND RING, and a white label that said CALL ME AT THREE. Edmund had a watch: It had been given to him on his birthday two days before, and he had not yet had time to take it to pieces and see what made it go, so it was still going. He looked at it now. It said a quarter to three.

Did I tell you before what a kindhearted boy Edmund was? He sat down on the bra.s.s doorstep and waited till three o'clock. Then he knocked and rang, and there was a rattling and puffing inside. The great door flew open, and Edmund had only just time to hide behind it when out came an immense yellow dragon, who wriggled off down the bra.s.s cave like a long, rattling worm--or perhaps more like a monstrous centipede.

Edmund crept slowly out and saw the dragon stretching herself on the rocks in the sun, and he crept past the great creature and tore down the hill into the town and burst into school, crying out: "There's a great dragon coming! Somebody ought to do something, or we shall all be destroyed."

He was caned for untruthfulness without any delay. His master was never one for postponing a duty.

"But it's true," said Edmund. "You just see if it isn't."

He pointed out of the window, and everyone could see a vast yellow cloud rising up into the air above the mountain.

"It's only a thunder shower," said the master, and caned Edmund more than ever. This master was not like some masters I know: He was very obstinate, and would not believe his own eyes if they told him anything different from what he had been saying before his eyes spoke.

So while the master was writing _Lying is very wrong, and liars must be caned. It is all for their own good_ on the black-board for Edmund to copy out seven hundred times, Edmund sneaked out of school and ran for his life across the town to warn his granny, but she was not at home. So then he made off through the back door of the town, and raced up the hill to tell the c.o.c.katrice and ask for his help. It never occurred to him that the c.o.c.katrice might not believe him. You see, he had heard so many wonderful tales from him and had believed them all--and when you believe all a person's stories they ought to believe yours. This is only fair.

At the mouth of the c.o.c.katrice's cave Edmund stopped, very much out of breath, to look back at the town. As he ran he had felt his little legs tremble and shake, while the shadows of the great yellow cloud fell upon him. Now he stood once more between warm earth and blue sky, and looked down on the green plain dotted with fruit trees and red-roofed farms and plots of gold corn. In the middle of that plain the gray town lay, with its strong walls with the holes pierced for the archers, and its square towers with holes for dropping melted lead on the heads of strangers; its bridges and its steeples; the quiet river edged with willow and alder; and the pleasant green garden place in the middle of the town, where people sat on holidays to smoke their pipes and listen to the band.

Edmund saw it all; and he saw, too, creeping across the plain, marking her way by a black line as everything withered at her touch, the great yellow dragon--and he saw that she was many times bigger than the whole town.

"Oh, my poor, dear granny," said Edmund, for he had a feeling heart, as I ought to have told you before.