The Phoenix and the Carpet, E. Nesbit [best summer reads .TXT] 📗

and gone out. ‘Stand off—we’ll push some more stones down!’

They did, amid deep excitement. And now the stone heap was almost gone—and before them the girls saw the dark archway leading to unknown things. All doubts and fears as to getting home were forgotten in this thrilling moment. It was like Monte Cristo—it was like—

‘I say,’ cried Anthea, suddenly, ‘come out! There’s always bad air in places that have been shut up. It makes your torches go out, and then you die. It’s called fire-damp, I believe. Come out, I tell you.’

The urgency of her tone actually brought the boys out—and then every one took up its jacket and fanned the dark arch with it, so as to make the air fresh inside. When Anthea thought the air inside ‘must be freshened by now,’ Cyril led the way into the arch.

The girls followed, and Robert came last, because Jane refused to tail the procession lest ‘something’ should come in after her, and catch at her from behind. Cyril advanced cautiously, lighting match after match, and peering before him.

‘It’s a vaulting roof,’ he said, ‘and it’s all stone—all right, Panther, don’t keep pulling at my jacket! The air must be all right because of the matches, silly, and there are—look out—there are steps down.’

‘Oh, don’t let’s go any farther,’ said Jane, in an agony of reluctance (a very painful thing, by the way, to be in). ‘I’m sure there are snakes, or dens of lions, or something. Do let’s go back, and come some other time, with candles, and bellows for the fire-damp.’

‘Let me get in front of you, then,’ said the stern voice of Robert, from behind. ‘This is exactly the place for buried treasure, and I’m going on, anyway; you can stay behind if you like.’

And then, of course, Jane consented to go on.

So, very slowly and carefully, the children went down the steps—there were seventeen of them—and at the bottom of the steps were more passages branching four ways, and a sort of low arch on the right-hand side made Cyril wonder what it could be, for it was too low to be the beginning of another passage.

So he knelt down and lit a match, and stooping very low he peeped in.

‘There’s SOMETHING,’ he said, and reached out his hand. It touched something that felt more like a damp bag of marbles than anything else that Cyril had ever touched.

‘I believe it IS a buried treasure,’ he cried.

And it was; for even as Anthea cried, ‘Oh, hurry up, Squirrel—fetch it out!’ Cyril pulled out a rotting canvas bag—about as big as the paper ones the greengrocer gives you with Barcelona nuts in for sixpence.

‘There’s more of it, a lot more,’ he said.

As he pulled the rotten bag gave way, and the gold coins ran and span and jumped and bumped and chinked and clinked on the floor of the dark passage.

I wonder what you would say if you suddenly came upon a buried treasure? What Cyril said was, ‘Oh, bother—I’ve burnt my fingers!’ and as he spoke he dropped the match. ‘AND IT WAS THE LAST!’ he added.

There was a moment of desperate silence. Then Jane began to cry.

‘Don’t,’ said Anthea, ‘don’t, Pussy—you’ll exhaust the air if you cry. We can get out all right.’

‘Yes,’ said Jane, through her sobs, ‘and find the Phoenix has come back and gone away again—because it thought we’d gone home some other way, and—Oh, I WISH we hadn’t come.’

Every one stood quite still—only Anthea cuddled Jane up to her and tried to wipe her eyes in the dark.

‘D-DON’T,’ said Jane; ‘that’s my EAR—I’m not crying with my ears.’

‘Come, let’s get on out,’ said Robert; but that was not so easy, for no one could remember exactly which way they had come. It is very difficult to remember things in the dark, unless you have matches with you, and then of course it is quite different, even if you don’t strike one.

Every one had come to agree with Jane’s constant wish—and despair was making the darkness blacker than ever, when quite suddenly the floor seemed to tip up—and a strong sensation of being in a whirling lift came upon every one. All eyes were closed—one’s eyes always are in the dark, don’t you think? When the whirling feeling stopped, Cyril said ‘Earthquakes!’ and they all opened their eyes.

They were in their own dingy breakfast-room at home, and oh, how light and bright and safe and pleasant and altogether delightful it seemed after that dark underground tunnel! The carpet lay on the floor, looking as calm as though it had never been for an excursion in its life. On the mantelpiece stood the Phoenix, waiting with an air of modest yet sterling worth for the thanks of the children.

‘But how DID you do it?’ they asked, when every one had thanked the Phoenix again and again.

‘Oh, I just went and got a wish from your friend the Psammead.’

‘But how DID you know where to find it?’

‘I found that out from the carpet; these wishing creatures always know all about each other—they’re so clannish; like the Scots, you know—all related.’

‘But, the carpet can’t talk, can it?’

‘No.’

‘Then how—’

‘How did I get the Psammead’s address? I tell you I got it from the carpet.’

‘DID it speak then?’

‘No,’ said the Phoenix, thoughtfully, ‘it didn’t speak, but I gathered my information from something in its manner. I was always a singularly observant bird.’

It was not till after the cold mutton and the jam tart, as well as the tea and bread-and-butter, that any one found time to regret the golden treasure which had been left scattered on the floor of the underground passage, and which, indeed, no one had thought of till now, since the moment when Cyril burnt his fingers at the flame of the last match.

‘What owls and goats we were!’ said Robert. ‘Look how we’ve always wanted treasure—and now—’

‘Never mind,’ said Anthea, trying as usual to make the best of it. ‘We’ll go back again and get it all, and then we’ll give everybody presents.’

More than a quarter of an hour passed most agreeably in arranging what presents should be given to whom, and, when the claims of generosity had been satisfied, the talk ran for fifty minutes on what they would buy for themselves.

It was Cyril who broke in on Robert’s almost too technical account of the motor-car on which he meant to go to and from school—

‘There!’ he said. ‘Dry up. It’s no good. We can’t ever go back. We don’t know where it is.’