The Story of the Amulet

‘The ten Kings are even now choosing the bull. It is not lawful for me to behold,’ said the priest, and fell face downward on the floor outside the gallery. The children looked down.

The roof was of ivory adorned with the three precious metals, and the walls were lined with the favourite oricalchum.

At the far end of the Temple was a statue group, the like of which no one living has ever seen.

It was of gold, and the head of the chief figure reached to the roof. That figure was Poseidon, the Father of the City. He stood in a great chariot drawn by six enormous horses, and round about it were a hundred mermaids riding on dolphins.

Ten men, splendidly dressed and armed only with sticks and ropes, were trying to capture one of some fifteen bulls who ran this way and that about the floor of the Temple. The children held their breath, for the bulls looked dangerous, and the great horned heads were swinging more and more wildly.

Anthea did not like looking at the bulls. She looked about the gallery, and noticed that another staircase led up from it to a still higher storey; also that a door led out into the open air, where there seemed to be a balcony.

So that when a shout went up and Robert whispered, ‘Got him,’ and she looked down and saw the herd of bulls being driven out of the Temple by whips, and the ten Kings following, one of them spurring with his stick a black bull that writhed and fought in the grip of a lasso, she answered the boy’s agitated, ‘Now we shan’t see anything more,’ with—

‘Yes we can, there’s an outside balcony.’

So they crowded out.

But very soon the girls crept back.

‘I don’t like sacrifices,’ Jane said. So she and Anthea went and talked to the priest, who was no longer lying on his face, but sitting on the top step mopping his forehead with his robe, for it was a hot day.

‘It’s a special sacrifice,’ he said; ‘usually it’s only done on the justice days every five years and six years alternately. And then they drink the cup of wine with some of the bull’s blood in it, and swear to judge truly. And they wear the sacred blue robe, and put out all the Temple fires. But this today is because the City’s so upset by the odd noises from the sea, and the god inside the big mountain speaking with his thunder-voice. But all that’s happened so often before. If anything could make ME uneasy it wouldn’t be THAT.’

‘What would it be?’ asked Jane kindly.

‘It would be the Lemmings.’

‘Who are they—enemies?’

‘They’re a sort of rat; and every year they come swimming over from the country that no man knows, and stay here awhile, and then swim away. This year they haven’t come. You know rats won’t stay on a ship that’s going to be wrecked. If anything horrible were going to happen to us, it’s my belief those Lemmings would know; and that may be why they’ve fought shy of us.’

‘What do you call this country?’ asked the Psammead, suddenly putting its head out of its bag.

‘Atlantis,’ said the priest.

‘Then I advise you to get on to the highest ground you can find. I remember hearing something about a flood here. Look here, you’—it turned to Anthea; ‘let’s get home. The prospect’s too wet for my whiskers.’ The girls obediently went to find their brothers, who were leaning on the balcony railings.

‘Where’s the learned gentleman?’ asked Anthea.

‘There he is—below,’ said the priest, who had come with them. ‘Your High Ji-jimmy is with the Kings.’

The ten Kings were no longer alone. The learned gentleman—no one had noticed how he got there—stood with them on the steps of an altar, on which lay the dead body of the black bull. All the rest of the courtyard was thick with people, seemingly of all classes, and all were shouting, ‘The sea—the sea!’

‘Be calm,’ said the most kingly of the Kings, he who had lassoed the bull. ‘Our town is strong against the thunders of the sea and of the sky!’

‘I want to go home,’ whined the Psammead.

‘We can’t go without HIM,’ said Anthea firmly.

‘Jimmy,’ she called, ‘Jimmy!’ and waved to him. He heard her, and began to come towards her through the crowd. They could see from the balcony the sea-captain edging his way out from among the people. And his face was dead white, like paper.

‘To the hills!’ he cried in a loud and terrible voice. And above his voice came another voice, louder, more terrible—the voice of the sea.

The girls looked seaward.

Across the smooth distance of the sea something huge and black rolled towards the town. It was a wave, but a wave a hundred feet in height, a wave that looked like a mountain—a wave rising higher and higher till suddenly it seemed to break in two—one half of it rushed out to sea again; the other—

‘Oh!’ cried Anthea, ‘the town—the poor people!’

‘It’s all thousands of years ago, really,’ said Robert but his voice trembled. They hid their eyes for a moment. They could not bear to look down, for the wave had broken on the face of the town, sweeping over the quays and docks, overwhelming the great storehouses and factories, tearing gigantic stones from forts and bridges, and using them as battering rams against the temples. Great ships were swept over the roofs of the houses and dashed down halfway up the hill among ruined gardens and broken buildings. The water ground brown fishing-boats to powder on the golden roofs of Palaces.

Then the wave swept back towards the sea.

‘I want to go home,’ cried the Psammead fiercely.

‘Oh, yes, yes!’ said Jane, and the boys were ready—but the learned gentleman had not come.

Then suddenly they heard him dash up to the inner gallery, crying—

‘I MUST see the end of the dream.’ He rushed up the higher flight.

The others followed him. They found themselves in a sort of turret—roofed, but open to the air at the sides.

The learned gentleman was leaning on the parapet, and as they rejoined him the vast wave rushed back on the town. This time it rose higher—destroyed more.

‘Come home,’ cried the Psammead; ‘THAT’S the LAST, I know it is! That’s the last—over there.’ It pointed with a claw that trembled.

‘Oh, come!’ cried Jane, holding up the Amulet.

‘I WILL SEE the end of the dream,’ cried the learned gentleman.

‘You’ll never see anything else if you do,’ said Cyril. ‘Oh, JIMMY!’ appealed Anthea. ‘I’ll NEVER bring you out again!’

‘You’ll never have the chance if you don’t go soon,’ said the Psammead.

‘I WILL see the end of the dream,’ said the learned gentleman obstinately.

The hills around were black with people fleeing from the villages to the mountains. And even as they fled thin smoke broke from the great white peak, and then a faint flash of flame. Then the volcano began to throw up its mysterious fiery inside parts. The earth trembled; ashes and sulphur showered down; a rain of fine pumice-stone fell like snow on all the dry land. The elephants from the forest rushed up towards the peaks; great lizards thirty yards long broke from the mountain pools and rushed down towards the sea. The snows melted and rushed down, first in avalanches, then in roaring torrents. Great rocks cast up by the volcano fell splashing in the sea miles away.

‘Oh, this is horrible!’ cried Anthea. ‘Come home, come home!’

‘The end of the dream,’ gasped the learned gentleman.

‘Hold up the Amulet,’ cried the Psammead suddenly. The place where they stood was now crowded with men and women, and the children were strained tight against the parapet. The turret rocked and swayed; the wave had reached the golden wall.

Jane held up the Amulet.

‘Now,’ cried the Psammead, ‘say the word!’

And as Jane said it the Psammead leaped from its bag and bit the hand of the learned gentleman.

At the same moment the boys pushed him through the arch and all followed him.

He turned to look back, and through the arch he saw nothing but a waste of waters, with above it the peak of the terrible mountain with fire raging from it.

He staggered back to his chair.

‘What a ghastly dream!’ he gasped. ‘Oh, you’re here, my—er—dears. Can I do anything for you?’

‘You’ve hurt your hand,’ said Anthea gently; ‘let me bind it up.’

The hand was indeed bleeding rather badly.

The Psammead had crept back to its bag. All the children were very white.

‘Never again,’ said the Psammead later on, ‘will I go into the Past with a grown-up person! I will say for you four, you do do as you’re told.’

‘We didn’t even find the Amulet,’ said Anthea later still.

‘Of course you didn’t; it wasn’t there. Only the stone it was made of was there. It fell on to a ship miles away that managed to escape and got to Egypt. I could have told you that.’

‘I wish you had,’ said Anthea, and her voice was still rather shaky. ‘Why didn’t you?’

‘You never asked me,’ said the Psammead very sulkily. ‘I’m not the sort of chap to go shoving my oar in where it’s not wanted.’

‘Mr Ji-jimmy’s friend will have something worth having to put in his article now,’ said Cyril very much later indeed.

‘Not he,’ said Robert sleepily. ‘The learned Ji-jimmy will think it’s a dream, and it’s ten to one he never tells the other chap a word about it at all.’

Robert was quite right on both points. The learned gentleman did. And he never did.

CHAPTER 10. THE LITTLE BLACK GIRL AND JULIUS CAESAR

A great city swept away by the sea, a beautiful country devastated by an active volcano—these are not the sort of things you see every day of the week. And when you do see them, no matter how many other wonders you may have seen in your time, such sights are rather apt to take your breath away. Atlantis had certainly this effect on the breaths of Cyril, Robert, Anthea, and Jane.

They remained in a breathless state for some days. The learned gentleman seemed as breathless as anyone; he spent a good deal of what little breath he had in telling Anthea about a wonderful dream he had. ‘You would hardly believe,’ he said, ‘that anyone COULD have such a detailed vision.’

But Anthea could believe it, she said, quite easily.

He had ceased to talk about thought-transference. He had now seen too many wonders to believe that.

In consequence of their breathless condition none of the children suggested any new excursions through the Amulet. Robert voiced the mood of the others when he said that they were ‘fed up’ with Amulet for a bit. They undoubtedly were.

As for the Psammead, it went to sand and stayed there, worn out by the terror of the flood and the violent exercise it had had to take in obedience to the inconsiderate wishes of the learned gentleman and the Babylonian queen.

The children let it sleep. The danger of taking it about among strange people who might at any moment utter undesirable wishes was becoming more and more plain.

And there are pleasant things to be done in London without any aid from Amulets or Psammeads. You can, for instance visit the Tower of London, the Houses of Parliament, the National Gallery, the Zoological Gardens, the various Parks, the Museums at South Kensington, Madame Tussaud’s Exhibition of Waxworks, or the Botanical Gardens at Kew. You can go to Kew by river steamer—and this is the way that the children would have gone if they had gone at all. Only they never did, because it was when they were discussing the arrangements for the journey, and what they should take with them to eat and how much of it, and what the whole thing would cost, that the adventure of the Little Black Girl began to happen.

The children were sitting on a seat in St James’s Park. They had been watching the pelican repulsing with careful dignity the advances of the seagulls who are always so anxious to play games with it. The pelican thinks, very properly, that it hasn’t the figure for games, so it spends most of its time pretending that that is not the reason why it won’t play.

The breathlessness caused by Atlantis was wearing off a little. Cyril, who always wanted to understand all about everything, was turning things over in his mind.

‘I’m not; I’m only thinking,’ he answered when Robert asked him what he was so grumpy about. ‘I’ll tell you when I’ve thought it all out.’

‘If it’s about the Amulet I don’t want to hear it,’ said Jane.

‘Nobody asked you to,’ retorted Cyril mildly, ‘and I haven’t finished my inside thinking about it yet. Let’s go to Kew in the meantime.’

‘I’d rather go in a steamer,’ said Robert; and the girls laughed.

‘That’s right,’ said Cyril, ‘BE funny. I would.’

‘Well, he was, rather,’ said Anthea.

‘I wouldn’t think, Squirrel, if it hurts you so,’ said Robert kindly.

‘Oh, shut up,’ said Cyril, ‘or else talk about Kew.’

‘I want to see the palms there,’ said Anthea hastily, ‘to see if they’re anything like the ones on the island where we united the Cook and the Burglar by the Reverend Half-Curate.’

All disagreeableness was swept away in a pleasant tide of recollections, and ‘Do you remember…?’ they said. ‘Have you forgotten…?’

‘My hat!’ remarked Cyril pensively, as the flood of reminiscence ebbed a little; ‘we have had some times.’

‘We have that,’ said Robert.

‘Don’t let’s have any more,’ said Jane anxiously.

‘That’s what I was thinking about,’ Cyril replied; and just then they heard the Little Black Girl sniff. She was quite close to them.

She was not really a little black girl. She was shabby and not very clean, and she had been crying so much that you could hardly see, through the narrow chink between her swollen lids, how very blue her eyes were. It was her dress that was black, and it was too big and too long for her, and she wore a speckled black-ribboned sailor hat that would have fitted a much bigger head than her little flaxen one. And she stood looking at the children and sniffing.

‘Oh, dear!’ said Anthea, jumping up. ‘Whatever is the matter?’

She put her hand on the little girl’s arm. It was rudely shaken off.

‘You leave me be,’ said the little girl. ‘I ain’t doing nothing to you.’

‘But what is it?’ Anthea asked. ‘Has someone been hurting you?’

‘What’s that to you?’ said the little girl fiercely. ‘YOU’RE all right.’

‘Come away,’ said Robert, pulling at Anthea’s sleeve. ‘She’s a nasty, rude little kid.’

‘Oh, no,’ said Anthea. ‘She’s only dreadfully unhappy. What is it?’ she asked again.

‘Oh, YOU’RE all right,’ the child repeated; ‘YOU ain’t agoin’ to the Union.’

‘Can’t we take you home?’ said Anthea; and Jane added, ‘Where does your mother live?’

‘She don’t live nowheres—she’s dead—so now!’ said the little girl fiercely, in tones of miserable triumph. Then she opened her swollen eyes widely, stamped her foot in fury, and ran away. She ran no further than to the next bench, flung herself down there and began to cry without even trying not to.

Anthea, quite at once, went to the little girl and put her arms as tight as she could round the hunched-up black figure.

‘Oh, don’t cry so, dear, don’t, don’t!’ she whispered under the brim of the large sailor hat, now very crooked indeed. ‘Tell Anthea all about it; Anthea’ll help you. There, there, dear, don’t cry.’

The others stood at a distance. One or two passers-by stared curiously.

The child was now only crying part of the time; the rest of the time she seemed to be talking to Anthea.

Presently Anthea beckoned Cyril.

‘It’s horrible!’ she said in a furious whisper, ‘her father was a carpenter and he was a steady man, and never touched a drop except on a Saturday, and he came up to London for work, and there wasn’t any, and then he died; and her name is Imogen, and she’s nine come next November. And now her mother’s dead, and she’s to stay tonight with Mrs Shrobsall—that’s a landlady that’s been kind—and tomorrow the Relieving Officer is coming for her, and she’s going into the Union; that means the Workhouse. It’s too terrible. What can we do?’

‘Let’s ask the learned gentleman,’ said Jane brightly.

And as no one else could think of anything better the whole party walked back to Fitzroy Street as fast as it could, the little girl holding tight to Anthea’s hand and now not crying any more, only sniffing gently.

The learned gentleman looked up from his writing with the smile that had grown much easier to him than it used to be. They were quite at home in his room now; it really seemed to welcome them. Even the mummy-case appeared to smile as if in its distant superior ancient Egyptian way it were rather pleased to see them than not.

Anthea sat on the stairs with Imogen, who was nine come next November, while the others went in and explained the difficulty.

The learned gentleman listened with grave attention.

‘It really does seem rather rough luck,’ Cyril concluded, ‘because I’ve often heard about rich people who wanted children most awfully—though I know I never should—but they do. There must be somebody who’d be glad to have her.’

‘Gipsies are awfully fond of children,’ Robert hopefully said. ‘They’re always stealing them. Perhaps they’d have her.’

‘She’s quite a nice little girl really,’ Jane added; ‘she was only rude at first because we looked jolly and happy, and she wasn’t. You understand that, don’t you?’

‘Yes,’ said he, absently fingering a little blue image from Egypt. ‘I understand that very well. As you say, there must be some home where she would be welcome.’ He scowled thoughtfully at the little blue image.

Anthea outside thought the explanation was taking a very long time.

She was so busy trying to cheer and comfort the little black girl that she never noticed the Psammead who, roused from sleep by her voice, had shaken itself free of sand, and was coming crookedly up the stairs. It was close to her before she saw it. She picked it up and settled it in her lap.

‘What is it?’ asked the black child. ‘Is it a cat or a organ-monkey, or what?’

And then Anthea heard the learned gentleman say—

‘Yes, I wish we could find a home where they would be glad to have her,’ and instantly she felt the Psammead begin to blow itself out as it sat on her lap.

She jumped up lifting the Psammead in her skirt, and holding Imogen by the hand, rushed into the learned gentleman’s room.

‘At least let’s keep together,’ she cried. ‘All hold hands—quick!’

The circle was like that formed for the Mulberry Bush or Ring-o’-Roses. And Anthea was only able to take part in it by holding in her teeth the hem of her frock which, thus supported, formed a bag to hold the Psammead.

‘Is it a game?’ asked the learned gentleman feebly. No one answered.

There was a moment of suspense; then came that curious upside-down, inside-out sensation which one almost always feels when transported from one place to another by magic. Also there was that dizzy dimness of sight which comes on these occasions.

The mist cleared, the upside-down, inside-out sensation subsided, and there stood the six in a ring, as before, only their twelve feet, instead of standing on the carpet of the learned gentleman’s room, stood on green grass. Above them, instead of the dusky ceiling of the Fitzroy Street floor, was a pale blue sky. And where the walls had been and the painted mummy-case, were tall dark green trees, oaks and ashes, and in between the trees and under them tangled bushes and creeping ivy. There were beech-trees too, but there was nothing under them but their own dead red drifted leaves, and here and there a delicate green fern-frond.

And there they stood in a circle still holding hands, as though they were playing Ring-o’-Roses or the Mulberry Bush. Just six people hand in hand in a wood. That sounds simple, but then you must remember that they did not know WHERE the wood was, and what’s more, they didn’t know WHEN then wood was. There was a curious sort of feeling that made the learned gentleman say—

‘Another dream, dear me!’ and made the children almost certain that they were in a time a very long while ago. As for little Imogen, she said, ‘Oh, my!’ and kept her mouth very much open indeed.

‘Where are we?’ Cyril asked the Psammead.

‘In Britain,’ said the Psammead.

‘But when?’ asked Anthea anxiously.

‘About the year fifty-five before the year you reckon time from,’ said the Psammead crossly. ‘Is there anything else you want to know?’ it added, sticking its head out of the bag formed by Anthea’s blue linen frock, and turning its snail’s eyes to right and left. ‘I’ve been here before—it’s very little changed.’ ‘Yes, but why here?’ asked Anthea.

‘Your inconsiderate friend,’ the Psammead replied, ‘wished to find some home where they would be glad to have that unattractive and immature female human being whom you have picked up—gracious knows how. In Megatherium days properly brought-up children didn’t talk to shabby strangers in parks. Your thoughtless friend wanted a place where someone would be glad to have this undesirable stranger. And now here you are!’

‘I see we are,’ said Anthea patiently, looking round on the tall gloom of the forest. ‘But why HERE? Why NOW?’

‘You don’t suppose anyone would want a child like that in YOUR times—in YOUR towns?’ said the Psammead in irritated tones. ‘You’ve got your country into such a mess that there’s no room for half your children—and no one to want them.’

‘That’s not our doing, you know,’ said Anthea gently.

‘And bringing me here without any waterproof or anything,’ said the Psammead still more crossly, ‘when everyone knows how damp and foggy Ancient Britain was.’

‘Here, take my coat,’ said Robert, taking it off. Anthea spread the coat on the ground and, putting the Psammead on it, folded it round so that only the eyes and furry ears showed.

‘There,’ she said comfortingly. ‘Now if it does begin to look like rain, I can cover you up in a minute. Now what are we to do?’

The others who had stopped holding hands crowded round to hear the answer to this question. Imogen whispered in an awed tone—

‘Can’t the organ monkey talk neither! I thought it was only parrots!’

‘Do?’ replied the Psammead. ‘I don’t care what you do!’ And it drew head and ears into the tweed covering of Robert’s coat.

The others looked at each other.

‘It’s only a dream,’ said the learned gentleman hopefully; ‘something is sure to happen if we can prevent ourselves from waking up.’

And sure enough, something did.

The brooding silence of the dark forest was broken by the laughter of children and the sound of voices.

‘Let’s go and see,’ said Cyril.

‘It’s only a dream,’ said the learned gentleman to Jane, who hung back; ‘if you don’t go with the tide of a dream—if you resist—you wake up, you know.’

There was a sort of break in the undergrowth that was like a silly person’s idea of a path. They went along this in Indian file, the learned gentleman leading.

Quite soon they came to a large clearing in the forest. There were a number of houses—huts perhaps you would have called them—with a sort of mud and wood fence.

‘It’s like the old Egyptian town,’ whispered Anthea.

And it was, rather.

Some children, with no clothes on at all, were playing what looked like Ring-o’-Roses or Mulberry Bush. That is to say, they were dancing round in a ring, holding hands. On a grassy bank several women, dressed in blue and white robes and tunics of beast-skins sat watching the playing children.

The children from Fitzroy Street stood on the fringe of the forest looking at the games. One woman with long, fair braided hair sat a little apart from the others, and there was a look in her eyes as she followed the play of the children that made Anthea feel sad and sorry.

‘None of those little girls is her own little girl,’ thought Anthea.

The little black-clad London child pulled at Anthea’s sleeve.

‘Look,’ she said, ‘that one there—she’s precious like mother; mother’s ‘air was somethink lovely, when she ‘ad time to comb it out. Mother wouldn’t never a-beat me if she’d lived ‘ere—I don’t suppose there’s e’er a public nearer than Epping, do you, Miss?’

In her eagerness the child had stepped out of the shelter of the forest. The sad-eyed woman saw her. She stood up, her thin face lighted up with a radiance like sunrise, her long, lean arms stretched towards the London child.

‘Imogen!’ she cried—at least the word was more like that than any other word—‘Imogen!’

There was a moment of great silence; the naked children paused in their play, the women on the bank stared anxiously.

‘Oh, it IS mother—it IS!’ cried Imogen-from-London, and rushed across the cleared space. She and her mother clung together—so closely, so strongly that they stood an instant like a statue carved in stone.