PROBABLE ADVENTURE OF THE THREE LITERARY MEN
When the nomads came to El Lola they had no more songs, and thequestion of stealing the golden box arose in all its magnitude. On theone hand, many had sought the golden box, the receptacle (as theAethiopians know) of poems of fabulous value; and their doom is stillthe common talk of Arabia. On the other hand, it was lonely to sitaround the camp-fire by night with no new songs.
It was the tribe of Heth that discussed these things one evening uponthe plains below the peak of Mluna. Their native land was the trackacross the world of immemorial wanderers; and there was trouble amongthe elders of the nomads because there were no new songs; while,untouched by human trouble, untouched as yet by the night that washiding the plains away, the peak of Mluna, calm in the after-glow,looked on the Dubious Land. And it was there on the plain upon theknown side of Mluna, just as the evening star came mouse-like intoview and the flames of the camp-fire lifted their lonely plumesuncheered by any song, that that rash scheme was hastily planned bythe nomads which the world has named The Quest of the Golden Box.
No measure of wiser precaution could the elders of the nomads havetaken than to choose for their thief that very Slith, that identicalthief that (even as I write) in how many school-rooms governessesteach stole a march on the King of Westalia. Yet the weight of the boxwas such that others had to accompany him, and Sippy and Slorg were nomore agile thieves than may be found today among vendors of theantique.
So over the shoulder of Mluna these three climbed next day and sleptas well as they might among its snows rather than risk a night in thewoods of the Dubious Land. And the morning came up radiant and thebirds were full of song, but the forest underneath and the wastebeyond it and the bare and ominous crags all wore the appearance of anunuttered threat.
Though Slith had an experience of twenty years of theft, yet he saidlittle; only if one of the others made a stone roll with his foot, or,later on in the forest, if one of them stepped on a twig, he whisperedsharply to them always the same words: "That is not business." He knewthat he could not make them better thieves during a two days' journey,and whatever doubts he had he interfered no further.
From the shoulder of Mluna they dropped into the clouds, and from theclouds to the forest, to whose native beasts, as well the threethieves knew, all flesh was meat, whether it were the flesh of fish orman. There the thieves drew idolatrously from their pockets each one aseparate god and prayed for protection in the unfortunate wood, andhoped therefrom for a threefold chance of escape, since if anythingshould eat one of them it were certain to eat them all, and theyconfided that the corollary might be true and all should escape if onedid. Whether one of these gods was propitious and awake, or whetherall of the three, or whether it was chance that brought them throughthe forest unmouthed by detestable beasts, none knoweth; but certainlyneither the emissaries of the god that most they feared, nor the wrathof the topical god of that ominous place, brought their doom to thethree adventurers there or then. And so it was that they came toRumbly Heath, in the heart of the Dubious Land, whose stormy hillockswere the ground-swell and the after-wash of the earthquake lulled fora while. Something so huge that it seemed unfair to man that it shouldmove so softly stalked splendidly by them, and only so barely did theyescape its notice that one word rang and echoed through their threeimaginations--"If--if--if." And when this danger was at last gone bythey moved cautiously on again and presently saw the little harmlessmipt, half fairy and half gnome, giving shrill, contented squeaks onthe edge of the world. And they edged away unseen, for they said thatthe inquisitiveness of the mipt had become fabulous, and that,harmless as he was, he had a bad way with secrets; yet they probablyloathed the way that he nuzzles dead white bones, and would not admittheir loathing; for it does not become adventurers to care who eatstheir bones. Be this as it may, they edged away from the mipt, andcame almost at once to the wizened tree, the goal-post of theiradventure, and knew that beside them was the crack in the world andthe bridge from Bad to Worse, and that underneath them stood the rockyhouse of Owner of the Box.
This was their simple plan: to slip into the corridor in the uppercliff; to run softly down it (of course with naked feet) under thewarning to travellers that is graven upon stone, which interpreterstake to be "It Is Better Not"; not to touch the berries that are therefor a purpose, on the right side going down; and so to come to theguardian on his pedestal who had slept for a thousand years and shouldbe sleeping still; and go in through the open window. One man was towait outside by the crack in the World until the others came out withthe golden box, and, should they cry for help, he was to threaten atonce to unfasten the iron clamp that kept the crack together. When thebox was secured they were to travel all night and all the followingday, until the cloud-banks that wrapped the slopes of Mluna were wellbetween them and Owner of the Box.
The door in the cliff was open. They passed without a murmur down thecold steps, Slith leading them all the way. A glance of longing, nomore, each gave to the beautiful berries. The guardian upon hispedestal was still asleep. Slorg climbed by a ladder, that Slith knewwhere to find, to the iron clamp across the crack in the World, andwaited beside it with a chisel in his hand, listening closely foranything untoward, while his friends slipped into the house; and nosound came. And presently Slith and Sippy found the golden box:everything seemed happening as they had planned, it only remained tosee if it was the right one and to escape with it from that dreadfulplace. Under the shelter of the pedestal, so near to the guardian thatthey could feel his warmth, which paradoxically had the effect ofchilling the blood of the boldest of them, they smashed the emeraldhasp and opened the golden box; and there they read by the light ofingenious sparks which Slith knew how to contrive, and even this poorlight they hid with their bodies. What was their joy, even at thatperilous moment, as they lurked between the guardian and the abyss, tofind that the box contained fifteen peerless odes in the alcaic form,five sonnets that were by far the most beautiful in the world, nineballads in the manner of Provence that had no equal in the treasuriesof man, a poem addressed to a moth in twenty-eight perfect stanzas, apiece of blank verse of over a hundred lines on a level not yet knownto have been attained by man, as well as fifteen lyrics on which nomerchant would dare to set a price. They would have read them again,for they gave happy tears to a man and memories of dear things done ininfancy, and brought sweet voices from far sepulchres; but Slithpointed imperiously to the way by which they had come, andextinguished the light; and Slorg and Sippy sighed, then took the box.
The guardian still slept the sleep that survived a thousand years.
As they came away they saw that indulgent chair close by the edge ofthe World in which Owner of the Box had lately sat readingselfishly and alone the most beautiful songs and verses that poet everdreamed.
They came in silence to the foot of the stairs; and then it befellthat as they drew near safely, in the night's most secret hour, somehand in an upper chamber lit a shocking light, lit it and made nosound.
For a moment it might have been an ordinary light, fatal as even thatcould very well be at such a moment as this; but when it began tofollow them like an eye and to grow redder and redder as it watchedthem, then even optimism despaired.
And Sippy very unwisely attempted flight, and Slorg even as unwiselytried to hide; but Slith, knowing well why that light was lit in thatsecret upper chamber and _who_ it was that lit it, leaped over the edgeof the World and is falling from us still through the unreverberateblackness of the abyss.