CHAPTER FIFTEEN
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THE DISAPPEARANCE OF JILL THE patch of light did not show up anything down in the darkness where they were standing. The others could only hear, not see, Jills efforts to get on to the Marsh-wiggles back. That is, they heard him saying, "You put your finger in my eye," and, "Nor your foot in my mouth either," and, "Thats more like it," and, "Now, Ill hold on to ys. Thatll leave your arms free to steady yourself against the earth.”Then they looked up and soon they saw the black shape of Jills head against the patch of light.
"Well?" they all shouted up anxiously.
"Its a hole," called Jills voice. "I could get through it if I was a little bit higher.”
"What do you see through it?" asked Eustace.
"Nothing much yet," said Jill. "I say, Puddleglum, let go my legs so that I stand on your shoulders instead of sitting on them. I steady myself all right against the edge.”
They could hear her moving and then much more of her came into sight against the greyness of the opening; in fact all of her down to the waist.
"I say -" began Jill, but suddenly broke off with a cry: not a sharp cry. It sounded more as if her mouth had been muffled up or had something pushed into it. After that she found her void seemed to be shouting out as loud as she could, but they couldhe words. Two things then happe the same moment. The patch of light was pletely blocked up for a sed or so; and they heard both a scuffling, struggling sound and the voice of the Marsh-wiggle gasping: "Quick! Help! Hold on ts.
Someones pullihere! No, here. Too late!”
The opening, and the cold light which filled it, were now perfectly clear again. Jill had vanished.
"Jill! Jill!" they shouted frantically, but there was no answer.
"Why the dis couldnt you have held her feet?" said Eustace.
"I dont know, Scrubb," groaned Puddleglum. "Born to be a misfit, I shouldnt wonder.
Fated. Fated to be Poles death, just as I was fated to eat Talking Stag at Harfang. Not that it isnt my own fault as well, of course.”
&quo<bdo></bdo>t;This is the greatest shame and sorrow that could have fallen on us," said the Prince. "We have sent a brave lady into the hands of enemies and stayed behind in safety.”
"Dont paint it too black, Sir," said Puddleglum. "Were not very safe except for death by starvation in this hole.”
"I wonder am I small enough to get through where Jill did?" said Eustace.
What had really happeo Jill was this. As soon as she got her head out of the hole she found that she was looking down as if from an upstairs window, not up as if through a trap-door. She had been so long in the dark that her eyes couldnt at first take in what they were seeing: except that she was not looking at the daylit, sunny world which she so wao see. The air seemed to be deadly cold, and the light ale and blue. There was also a good deal of noise going on and a lot of white objects flying about in the air. It was at that moment that she had shouted down to Puddleglum to let her stand up on his shoulders.
When she had dohis, she could see and hear a<dfn>藏书网</dfn> good deal better. The noises she had been hearing turned out to be of two kinds: the rhythmical thump of several feet, and the music of four fiddles, three flutes, and a drum. She also got her own position clear. She was looking out of a hole in a steep bank which sloped down and reached the level about fourtee below her. Everything was very white. A lot of people were moving about.
Then she gasped! The people were trim little Fauns, and Dryads with leafed hair floating behind them. For a sed they looked as if they were moving anyhow; then she saw that they were really doing a dance - a dah so many plicated steps and figures that it took you some time to uand it. Then it came over her like a thunderclap that the pale, blue light was really moonlight, and the white stuff on the ground was really snow. And of course! There were the stars staring in a black frosty sky overhead. And the tall black things behind the dancers were trees. They had not only got out into the upper world at last, but had e out in the heart of Narnia. Jill felt she could have fainted with delight; and the music - the wild musitensely sweet a just the least bit eerie too, and full of good magic as the Witchs thrumming had been full of bad magic - made her feel it all the more.
All this takes a long time to tell, but of course it took a very short time to see. Jill turned almost at oo shout down to the others, "I say! Its all right. Were out, and were home." But the reason she never got further than "I say" was this. Cirg round and round the dancers was a ring of Dwarfs, all dressed in their fi clothes; mostly scarlet with fur-lined hoods and golden tassels and big furry top-boots. As they circled round they were all diligently throwing snowballs. (Those were the white things that Jill had
seen flying through the air.) They werent throwing them at the dancers as silly boys might have been doing in England. They were throwing them through the dance in such perfect time with the musid with such perfect aim that if all the dancers were ily the right places at exactly the right moments, no one would be hit. This is called the Great Snow Dand it is done every year in Narnia on the first moonlit night when there is snow on the ground. Of course it is a kind of game as well as a dance, because every now and then some dancer will be the least little bit wrong a a snowball in the face, and then everyone laughs. But a good team of dancers, Dwarfs, and musis will keep it up for hours without a si. On fine nights when the cold and the drum-taps, and the hooting of the owls, and the moonlight, have got into their wild, woodland blood and made it even wilder, they will daill daybreak. I wish you could see it for yourselves.
What had stopped Jill whe as far as the say of "I say" was of course simply a fine big snowball that came sailing through the dance from a Dwarf on the far side and got her fair and square in the mouth. She didnt in the least mind; twenty snowballs would not have damped her spirits at that moment. But however happy you are feeling, you t talk with your mouth full of snow. And when, after siderable spluttering, she could speak again, she quite fot in her excitement that the others, down in the dark, behind her, still didnt know the good news. She simply leaned as far out of the hole as she could, and yelled to the dancers.
"Help! Help! Were buried in the hill. e and dig us out.”
The Narnians, who had not even noticed the little hole in the hillside, were of course very surprised, and looked about in several wrong dires before they found out where the voice was ing from. But when they caught sight of Jill they all came running towards her, and as many as could scrambled up the bank, and a dozen or more hands were stretched up to help her. And Jill caught hold of them and thus got out of the hole and came slithering down the bank head first, and then picked herself up and said: "Oh, do go and dig the others out. There are three others, besides the horses. And one of them is Prince Rilian.”
She was already in the middle of a crowd when she said this, for besides the dancers all sorts of people who had been watg the dance, and whom she had not seen at first, came running up. Squirrels came out of the trees in showers, and so did Owls. Hedgehogs came waddling as fast as their short legs would carry them. Bears and Badgers followed at a slower pace. A great Pawitg its tail iement, was the last to join the party.
But as soon as they uood what Jill was saying, they all became active. "Pid shovel, boys, pid shovel. Off for our tools!" said the Dwarfs, and dashed away into the woods at top speed. "Wake up some Moles, theyre the chaps fging. Theyre quite as good as Dwarfs," said a voice. "What was that she said about Prince Rilian?" said another. "Hush!" said the Panther. "The poor childs crazed, and no wonder after being
lost ihe hill. She doesnt know what shes saying." "Thats right," said an old Bear.
"Why, she said Prince Rilian was a horse!" "No, she didnt," said a Squirrel, very pert.
"Yes, she did," said another Squirrel, eveer.
"Its quite t-t-t-true. D-d-dont be so silly," said Jill. She spoke like that because her teeth were now chattering with the cold.
Immediately one of the Dryads flung round her a furry cloak whie Dwarf had dropped when he rushed to fetch his mining tools, and an obliging Faun trotted off among the trees to a place where Jill could see firelight in the mouth of a cave, to get her a hot drink. But before it came, all the Dwarfs reappeared with spades and pick- axes and charged at the hillside. Then Jill heard cries of "Hi! What are you doing? Put that sword down," and "Now, young un: none of that," and, "Hes a vicious one, now, isnt he?" Jill hurried to the spot and didnt know whether to laugh or cry when she saw Eustaces face, very pale and dirty, projeg from the blaess of the hole, aaces right hand brandishing a sword with which he made lu anyone who came near him.
For of course Eustace had been having a very different time from Jill during the last few minutes. He had heard Jill cry out and seen her disappear into the unknown. Like the Prind Puddleglum, he thought that some enemies had caught her. And from down below he didhat the pale, blueish light was moonlight. He thought the hole would lead only into some other cave, lit by some ghostly phosphoresd filled with goodness-knows-what evil creatures of the Underworld. So that when he had persuaded Puddleglum to give him a back, and drawn his sword, and poked out his head, he had really been doing a very brave thing. The others would have do first if they could, but the hole was too small for them to climb through. Eustace was a little bigger, and a lot clumsier, than Jill, so that when he looked out he bumped his head against the top of the hole and brought a small avalanche of snow down on his face. And so, when he could see again, and saw dozens of figures ing at him as hard as they could run, it is not surprising that he tried to ward them off.
"Stop, Eustace, stop," cried Jill. "Theyre all friends. t you see? Weve e up in Narnia. Everythings all right.”
Theace did see, and apologized to the Dwarfs (and the Dwarfs said not to mention it), and dozens of thick, hairy, dwarfish hands helped him out just as they had helped Jill out a few minutes before. Then Jill scrambled up the bank and put her head in at the dark opening and shouted the good news in to the prisoners. As she turned away she heard Puddleglum mutter. "Ah, poor Pole. Its been too much for her, this last bit. Turned her head, I shouldnt wonder. Shes beginning to see things.”
Jill rejoiad they shook one another by both hands and took in great deep breaths of the free midnight air. And a warm cloak was brought for Eustace and hot drinks, for both. While they were sipping it, the Dwarfs had already got all the snow and all the sods off a large strip of the hillside round the inal hole, and the pickaxes and spades were now going as merrily as the feet of Fauns and Dryads had been going in the
daen minutes before. Only ten minutes! Yet already it felt to Jill aace as if all their dangers in the dark a and general smotheriness of the earth must have been only a dream. Out here, in the cold, with the moon and the huge stars overhead (Narnian stars are han stars in our world) and with kind, merry faces all round them, one couldnt quite believe in Underland.
Before they had fiheir hot drinks, a dozen or so Moles, newly waked and still very sleepy, and not well pleased, had arrived. But as soon as they uood what it was all about, they joined in with a will. Even the Fauns made themselves useful by carting away the earth in little barrows, and the Squirrels danced and leaped to and fro i excitement, though Jill never found out exactly what they thought they were doing.
The Bears and Owls tehemselves with giving advice, a on asking the children if they wouldnt like to e into the cave (that was where Jill had seen the firelight) a warm and have supper. But the children couldo go without seeing their friends set free.
No one in our world work at a job of that sort as Dwarfs and Talking Moles work in Narnia; but then, of course, Moles and Dwarfs dont look on it as work. They like digging. It was therefore not really long before they had opened a great black chasm in the hillside. And out from the blaess into the moonlight - this would have been rather dreadful if one hadnt known who they were came, first, the long, leggy, steeple-hatted figure of the Marsh-wiggle, and then, leading two great horses, Rilian the Prince himself.
As Puddleglum appeared shouts broke out on every side: "Why, its a Wiggle - why, its old Puddleglum - old Puddleglum from the Eastern Marshes - what ever have you been doing, Puddleglum? - thereve been search-parties out for you - the Lord Trumpkin has been putting up notices theres a reward offered!" But all this died away, all in one moment, into dead silence, as quickly as the noise dies away in a rowdy dormitory if the Headmaster opens the door. For now they saw the Prince.
No one doubted for a moment who he was. There were plenty of Beasts and Dryads and Dwarfs and Fauns who remembered him from the days before his enting. There were some old ones who could just remember how his father, King Caspian, had looked when he was a young man, and saw the likeness. But I think they would have known him anyale though he was from long impriso in the Deep Lands, dressed in black, dusty, dishevelled, and weary, there was something in his fad air whio one could mistake. That look is in the face of all true kings of Narnia, who rule by the will of Aslan and sit at Cair Paravel ohrone of Peter the High King.
Instantly every head was bared and every knee was bent; a moment later such cheering and shouting, such jumps and reels of joy, such hand-shakings and kissings and embrags of everybody by everybody else broke out that the tears came into Jills eyes.
Their quest had been worth all the pains it cost.
"Please it yhness," said the oldest of the Dwarfs, "there is some attempt at a supper in the cave yonder, prepared against the ending of the snow-dance -”
"With a good will, Father," said the Prince. "For never had any Prince, Knight, Gentleman, or Bear so good a stomach to his victuals as we four wanderers have tonight.”
The whole crowd began to move away throu<bdo>..</bdo>gh the trees towards the cave. Jill heard Puddleglum saying to those who pressed round him. "No, no, my story wait.
Nothing worth talking about has happeo me. I want to hear the news. Dont try breaking it to me gently, for Id rather have it all at once. Has the King been shipwrecked? Any forest fires? No wars on the en border? Or a few dragons, I shouldnt wonder?" And all the creatures laughed aloud and said, "Isnt that just like a Marshwiggle?”
The two children were nearly dropping with tiredness and hunger, but the warmth of the cave, and the very sight of it, with the firelight dang on the walls and dressers and cups and saucers and plates and on the smooth stone floor, just as it does in a farmhouse kit, revived them a little. All the same they went fast asleep while supper was being got ready. And while they slept Prince Rilian was talking over the whole adveh the older and wiser Beasts and Dwarfs. And now they all saw what it meant; how a wicked Witch (doubtless the same kind as that White Witch who had brought the Great Winter on Narnia long?? ago) had trived the whole thing, first killing Rilians mother and enting Rilian himself. And they saw how she had dug right under Narnia and was going to break out and rule it through Rilian: and how he had never dreamed that the try of which she would make him king (king in name, but really her slave) was his own try. And from the childrens part of the story they saw how she was in league and friendship with the dangerous giants of Harfang. "And the lesson of it all is, yhness," said the oldest Dwarf, "that those Northern Witches always mean the same thing, but in every age they have a different plan fetting it.”
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