CHAPTER 26
The Goblin-Miners
That same night several of the servants were having a chat togetherbefore going to bed.
'What can that noise be?' said one of the housemaids, who had beenlistening for a moment or two.
'I've heard it the last two nights,' said the cook. 'If there were anyabout the place, I should have taken it for rats, but my Tom keeps themfar enough.'
'I've heard, though,' said the scullery-maid, 'that rats move about ingreat companies sometimes. There may be an army of them invading us.I've heard the noises yesterday and today too.'
'It'll be grand fun, then, for my Tom and Mrs Housekeeper's Bob,' saidthe cook. 'They'll be friends for once in their lives, and fight onthe same side. I'll engage Tom and Bob together will put to flight anynumber of rats.'
'It seems to me,' said the nurse, 'that the noises are much too loudfor that. I have heard them all day, and my princess has asked meseveral times what they could be. Sometimes they sound like distantthunder, and sometimes like the noises you hear in the mountain fromthose horrid miners underneath.'
'I shouldn't wonder,' said the cook, 'if it was the miners after all.They may have come on some hole in the mountain through which thenoises reach to us. They are always boring and blasting and breaking,you know.'
As he spoke, there came a great rolling rumble beneath them, and thehouse quivered. They all started up in affright, and rushing to thehall found the gentlemen-at-arms in consternation also. They had sentto wake their captain, who said from their description that it musthave been an earthquake, an occurrence which, although very rare inthat country, had taken place almost within the century; and then wentto bed again, strange to say, and fell fast asleep without oncethinking of Curdie, or associating the noises they had heard with whathe had told them. He had not believed Curdie. If he had, he would atonce have thought of what he had said, and would have takenprecautions. As they heard nothing more, they concluded that SirWalter was right, and that the danger was over for perhaps anotherhundred years. The fact, as discovered afterwards, was that thegoblins had, in working up a second sloping face of stone, arrived at ahuge block which lay under the cellars of the house, within the line ofthe foundations.
It was so round that when they succeeded, after hard work, indislodging it without blasting, it rolled thundering down the slopewith a bounding, jarring roll, which shook the foundations of thehouse. The goblins were themselves dismayed at the noise, for theyknew, by careful spying and measuring, that they must now be very near,if not under the king's house, and they feared giving an alarm. They,therefore, remained quiet for a while, and when they began to workagain, they no doubt thought themselves very fortunate in coming upon avein of sand which filled a winding fissure in the rock on which thehouse was built. By scooping this away they came out in the king'swine cellar.
No sooner did they find where they were, than they scurried back again,like rats into their holes, and running at full speed to the goblinpalace, announced their success to the king and queen with shouts oftriumph.
In a moment the goblin royal family and the whole goblin people were ontheir way in hot haste to the king's house, each eager to have a sharein the glory of carrying off that same night the Princess Irene.
The queen went stumping along in one shoe of stone and one of skin.
This could not have been pleasant, and my readers may wonder that, withsuch skilful workmen about her, she had not yet replaced the shoecarried off by Curdie. As the king, however, had more than one groundof objection to her stone shoes, he no doubt took advantage of thediscovery of her toes, and threatened to expose her deformity if shehad another made. I presume he insisted on her being content with skinshoes, and allowed her to wear the remaining granite one on the presentoccasion only because she was going out to war.
They soon arrived in the king's wine cellar, and regardless of its hugevessels, of which they did not know the use, proceeded at once, but asquietly as they could, to force the door that led upwards.