The Wind on the Moon (33 page)

Heaving themselves on to the floor of the lower dungeon, they walked to the open side of it and looked at the view.

‘What a magnificent panorama, Mr. Stevens!' said one of them.

‘Remarkably fine,' said the other. ‘There is nothing like sapping, Notchy, for teaching you to appreciate the manifold beauties of the world. After several weeks in the bowels of the earth, you emerge with new eyes, refreshed and eager to enjoy the great works of Mother Nature.'

‘Perfectly true, Mr. Stevens, and very well expressed, if I may say so.'

Leaning down from the dungeon above, Major Palfrey suddenly addressed them: ‘Gentlemen! Who are you?'

The little old men were badly startled, and Mr. Stevens might have fallen over the edge and down the precipice if his friend had not caught and steadied him.

Major Palfrey continued: ‘We, like you, are English. We are prisoners, and I have been here for a long time. I am Major Palfrey, of the King's Own Brackenshire Light Infantry, and these'—he pointed to the others, of whom the little old men could see nothing but their heads—‘these are my daughters; a friend of theirs, Mr. Corvo; and another friend, who happens to be a Puma.'

‘A Major?' asked one of the old men. ‘Do I understand you to have said that you are a Major?'

‘That is correct.'

‘And we in our braces!' said the other old man. ‘Oh, dear, dear!'

‘Pardon us while we retire for a minute or two,' said the first one, and before anyone could reply they had disappeared through the hole in the floor.

‘Who can they be?' asked Dorinda.

‘Do you think they will come back?' said Dinah.

‘Let us go down to the lower dungeon,' said Major Palfrey.

They climbed down the ladder, and almost immediately the two old men reappeared. They were now wearing blue tunics, as old and patched and faded as their trousers, and low shakos of a sort that used to be worn very many years ago. As they came up out of the hole they stood side by side, very stiffly at attention, and saluted Major Palfrey with great dignity.

‘Very happy to see you here, sir,' they said. ‘Would you care to inspect our work?'

‘Thank you,' said Major Palfrey, ‘I shall be very interested indeed to see it. But will you not introduce yourselves? And shall we sit down, though there is nothing, I fear, but the floor to sit on?'

‘I am Mr. Stevens,' said one of the old men, ‘and this is my friend and faithful comrade, Notchy Knight. We are Sappers, humble but loyal members of Her Majesty's Corps of Royal Engineers.'

‘
His
Majesty's, you mean,' said Major Palfrey.

‘
Her
Majesty's,' said Mr. Stevens, rather angrily. ‘Her Glorious Majesty, Queen Victoria.'

‘But she is dead, you know. She died many years ago.'

‘Dead!' exclaimed Mr. Stevens.

‘Dead!' said Notchy. ‘The Queen
dead
!'

‘Oh!' they cried. ‘Oh, oh!' And burst into tears.

‘Come, come,' said Major Palfrey. ‘It happened quite a long time ago, and you owe your allegiance now to her successor, His Majesty King George the Sixth.'

‘George?' said Mr. Stevens, wiping his wet eyes with the back of his hand. ‘What a good name! My name is George.'

‘And he has two daughters,' said Dorinda.

‘Daughters!' exclaimed Notchy, drying his tears. ‘How delightful! I do like people to have daughters. And how pleased the dear Queen would have been! Mr. Stevens, I think this calls for an impromptu but none the less loyal and heartfelt demonstration.'

‘It does indeed,' said Mr. Stevens.

Again they stood stiffly at attention, and began to sing. The others joined in, and the dungeon echoed and re-echoed the anthem:

‘I doubt if it is wise to make so much noise,' said Major Palfrey, just as they were about to begin the second verse.

‘Noise?' said Mr. Stevens. ‘Do you call the National Anthem a Noise?'

‘It certainly isn't silence.'

‘It would be a very poor and ineffectual anthem if it were,' said Notchy stiffly.

‘Well, don't let us argue about that,' said Major Palfrey. ‘I want very much to know where you have come from, and how you happen to be here.'

‘It is a long story,' said Mr. Stevens.

‘Very long indeed,' said Notchy.

‘It began with our cutting a sap.' Turning politely to Dinah and Dorinda, Mr. Stevens explained: ‘A sap is, or may be, a sort or species of tunnel. It is frequently used in military operations, and we who, by cutting, digging, and blasting, make these tunnels or saps, are called Sappers. Is that perfectly clear? Good. Well, my friend Notchy and I were cutting a sap which was one of the longest and most beautiful saps we had then made; though since then, of course, we have made some which were very much longer indeed. But unhappily the sap of which I am now talking went in the wrong direction: not towards the enemy, but away from him. And so, when at last we emerged from the other end, we discovered to our great surprise and bewilderment that the war was over, the siege had been concluded, and all our troops had gone home.'

‘What siege was that?' asked Major Palfrey.

‘Sebastopol, of course.'

‘Sebastopol!' exclaimed Dinah. ‘But that was in the Crimean War, and the Crimean War was fought in—what was the date, Dorinda?'

‘It was a very long time ago,' said Dorinda.

‘Very, very long ago.'

‘And what of that?' asked Mr. Stevens angrily. ‘Many things happened long ago, didn't they? In fact, most things happened long ago. And how does that discredit them?'

‘I don't suppose it does,' said Dinah, ‘but you must be very old.'

‘We are,' said Notchy. ‘Very old indeed.'

‘But none the worse for that,' said Mr. Stevens.

‘All the better, in my opinion,' said Notchy.

‘And we're good for a few years yet, aren't we?'

‘I should think we are!'

The two of them, with great enjoyment, stood up once more, bowed to the others, and briskly sang:

After that Mr. Stevens went on with his story.

‘Imagine us,' he said, ‘alone in the Crimea. Abandoned in a foreign country, far from England, Home, and Beauty! But did we despair? Not for a moment. We saw in front of us an impassable mountain. Did that create in us even a minute of doubt or perturbation? Of course it didn't. We sapped! We sapped and sapped until we had sapped right through it and come out on the other side. When we saw level country before us, we marched. We often marched, but I must confess that we preferred to find ourselves confronted by an insurmountable barrier, for then we could prove the great merit and virtue of our profession by going underneath it.'

‘But how did you live?' asked Dinah. ‘Had you a lot of money?'

‘To begin with,' said Notchy, ‘Mr. Stevens had four shillings, and I had two and ninepence. But that didn't last very long.'

‘And what did you do then?' asked Dorinda.

‘We put our heads together,' said Mr. Stevens, ‘and asked ourselves: How shall we make some more money? That led to another question: How can a great number of people most easily be persuaded to give us money? And that suggested a third question: What do most people mostly suffer from? The answer to that was easy. The answer was: Toothache and Anxiety. So my friend and comrade Notchy Knight set up as a Dentist, and I became a Fortune Teller.'

‘Like Professor Bultek,' said Dinah.

‘Who is he?'

‘A friend of Mr. Corvo's.'

‘I have not the pleasure of his acquaintance,' said Mr. Stevens.

‘Will you tell my fortune?' asked Dorinda. ‘I want to know when we are going to escape.'

‘Have you got any money?' asked Mr. Stevens.

‘None,' said Dorinda.

‘Then I cannot tell your fortune. If you have no money, you have no fortune. That's obvious, isn't it? I wish you wouldn't waste my time in this way. As I was saying, before you interrupted me, we became Dentist and Fortune Teller, and our livelihood was made secure. Set free from carking care and amply provided for, we were able to give most of our time and energy to our real profession—which, of course, is Sapping—and so moving northward and then westward we presently arrived, after a leisurely but eventful journey, much of it very comfortably underground, at the eastern border of Bombardy. That was quite recently: eight or nine years ago, I think. We have had an instructive and agreeable sojourn in this country, not the least pleasant of our exploits being the driving of a sap into this beautiful Castle.'

‘A labour which has been further rewarded,' said Notchy Knight, bowing in turn to Major Palfrey, Dinah, Dorinda, and Mr. Corvo, ‘by making
your
acquaintance.'

‘But how extraordinary,' said Dinah, ‘that you should find your way here. To this very dungeon, I mean.'

‘I see nothing extraordinary about it,' said Notchy.

‘Neither do I,' said Mr. Stevens.

‘You know what our motto is, don't you? It's
ubique
. There are several ways of pronouncing it, but I think my way is the right way: Yoo-be-kway.'

‘That's my way too,' said Mr. Stevens.

‘Now
ubique
means Everywhere. And if our habit and custom is to go everywhere, why shouldn't we come here?'

‘It would be very extraordinary if we didn't,' said Mr. Stevens.

‘You ought to think more carefully and try not to make rash observations,' said Notchy.

‘I'm sorry,' said Dinah. ‘I hadn't thought of it that way.'

‘If you were a Sapper,' said Mr. Stevens, ‘you would learn to think of everything every way.'

‘What I am thinking of,' said Major Palfrey, ‘is whether we can use your sap to get out of the Castle.'

‘Of course you can, if you want to get out.'

‘We do indeed.'

‘Then why didn't you say so before? Come along!'

Before anyone could say a word Mr. Stevens had jumped down the hole, and was quickly followed by Notchy Knight, who, just as he was disappearing, shouted, ‘Last man replace the stone!'

‘They are certainly eccentric,' said Major Palfrey, ‘but we shall have to trust them, I think.'

‘We have nothing to lose by it,' said Mr. Corvo.

‘Then you will lead the way, and I shall replace the flagstone. That is an obvious precaution to take against pursuit.'

The passage was quite dark and in some places so low that none of them, except the Puma, could walk upright. It twisted and turned, and here it was narrow, there surprisingly broad. On their right-hand side they felt a surface of jagged stone, on their left some patches of cold clay. The old men, it was evident, had found and followed a long continuous fault in the Castle rock.

Though Mr. Corvo had been the first to enter the passage, it was the Puma who led the way after they had gone a few yards. She alone could see in the dark. Dinah followed, holding her tail. Behind Dinah came Mr. Corvo, then Dorinda, and last of all Major Palfrey. The darkness was complete, unrelieved by any glimmer of light, and very soon they began to wonder if the old men had deserted them and left them to wander unguided, perhaps to get hopelessly lost, in the bowels of the rock. Nobody spoke of this dreadful fear, but they all felt it. They lost all sense of direction, and only knew that they were going downhill.

Then round a corner they saw light, and found the two old men sitting with a lantern between them.

There they found the two old men

‘Come along,' said Mr. Stevens. ‘Where have you been all this time?'

‘We thought you were in a hurry to get away,' said Notchy. ‘But instead of hurrying, you've been dawdling.'

‘Even with a lantern this would not be an easy route,' said Major Palfrey, rather breathlessly, ‘and in total darkness we found it very difficult to move at all.'

‘Difficult?' said Mr. Stevens with a cackle of laughter. ‘You ought to see some of the places that Notchy and I have come through. This is as easy as Constitution Hill compared with a lot of saps that we've used.'

‘That may be so,' said Major Palfrey, ‘but we haven't the benefit of your unique experience. Perhaps you would tell us where this passage ends?'

‘At the foot of the hill on the far side from the town,' said Mr. Stevens.

‘You come out into a cave,' said Notchy. ‘It was the cave that attracted our attention and gave us the idea of sapping into the Castle. We're always attracted by holes in the ground.'