The Story of the Amulet, E. Nesbit [me reader .TXT] 📗

“It’s like the maze at Hampton Court,” whispered Anthea.

The lanes were all open to the sky, but the little hut in the middle of the maze was round-roofed, and a curtain of skins hung over the doorway.

“Here you may wait,” said their guide, “but do not dare to pass the curtain.” He himself passed it and disappeared.

“But look here,” whispered Cyril, “some of us ought to be outside in case the Psammead turns up.”

“Don’t let’s get separated from each other, whatever we do,” said Anthea. “It’s quite bad enough to be separated from the Psammead. We can’t do anything while that man is in there. Let’s all go out into the village again. We can come back later now we know the way in. That man’ll have to fight like the rest, most likely, if it comes to fighting. If we find the Psammead we’ll go straight home. It must be getting late, and I don’t much like this mazy place.”

They went out and told the headman that they would protect the treasure when the fighting began. And now they looked about them and were able to see exactly how a first-class worker in flint flakes and notches an arrow-head or the edge of an axe—an advantage which no other person now alive has ever enjoyed. The boys found the weapons most interesting. The arrow-heads were not on arrows such as you shoot from a bow, but on javelins, for throwing from the hand. The chief weapon was a stone fastened to a rather short stick something like the things gentlemen used to carry about and call life-preservers in the days of the garrotters. Then there were long things like spears or lances, with flint knives—horribly sharp—and flint battle-axes.

Everyone in the village was so busy that the place was like an ant-heap when you have walked into it by accident. The women were busy and even the children.

Quite suddenly all the air seemed to glow and grow red—it was like the sudden opening of a furnace door, such as you may see at Woolwich Arsenal if you ever have the luck to be taken there—and then almost as suddenly it was as though the furnace doors had been shut. For the sun had set, and it was night.

The sun had that abrupt way of setting in Egypt eight thousand years ago, and I believe it has never been able to break itself of the habit, and sets in exactly the same manner to the present day. The girl brought the skins of wild deer and led the children to a heap of dry sedge.

“My father says they will not attack yet. Sleep!” she said, and it really seemed a good idea. You may think that in the midst of all these dangers the children would not have been able to sleep—but somehow, though they were rather frightened now and then, the feeling was growing in them—deep down and almost hidden away, but still growing—that the Psammead was to be trusted, and that they were really and truly safe. This did not prevent their being quite as much frightened as they could bear to be without being perfectly miserable.

“I suppose we’d better go to sleep,” said Robert. “I don’t know what on earth poor old Nurse will do with us out all night; set the police on our tracks, I expect. I only wish they could find us! A dozen policemen would be rather welcome just now. But it’s no use getting into a stew over it,” he added soothingly. “Good night.”

And they all fell asleep.

They were awakened by long, loud, terrible sounds that seemed to come from everywhere at once—horrible threatening shouts and shrieks and howls that sounded, as Cyril said later, like the voices of men thirsting for their enemies’ blood.

“It is the voice of the strange men,” said the girl, coming to them trembling through the dark. “They have attacked the walls, and the thorns have driven them back. My father says they will not try again till daylight. But they are shouting to frighten us. As though we were savages! Dwellers in the swamps!” she cried indignantly.

All night the terrible noise went on, but when the sun rose, as abruptly as he had set, the sound suddenly ceased.

The children had hardly time to be glad of this before a shower of javelins came hurtling over the great thorn-hedge, and everyone sheltered behind the huts. But next moment another shower of weapons came from the opposite side, and the crowd rushed to other shelter. Cyril pulled out a javelin that had stuck in the roof of the hut beside him. Its head was of brightly burnished copper.

Then the sound of shouting arose again and the crackle of dried thorns. The enemy was breaking down the hedge. All the villagers swarmed to the point whence the crackling and the shouting came; they hurled stones over the hedges, and short arrows with flint heads. The children had never before seen men with the fighting light in their eyes. It was very strange and terrible, and gave you a queer thick feeling in your throat; it was quite different from the pictures of fights in the illustrated papers at home.

It seemed that the shower of stones had driven back the besiegers. The besieged drew breath, but at that moment the shouting and the crackling arose on the opposite side of the village and the crowd hastened to defend that point, and so the fight swayed to and fro across the village, for the besieged had not the sense to divide their forces as their enemies had done.

Cyril noticed that every now and then certain of the fighting-men would enter the maze, and come out with brighter faces, a braver aspect, and a more upright carriage.

“I believe they go and touch the Amulet,” he said. “You know the Psammead said it could make people brave.”

They crept through the maze, and watching they saw that Cyril was right. A headman was standing in front of the skin curtain, and as the warriors came before him he murmured a word they could not hear, and touched their foreheads with something that they could not see. And this something he held in his hands. And through his fingers they saw the gleam of a red stone that they knew.

The fight raged across the thorn-hedge outside. Suddenly there was a loud and bitter cry.

“They’re in! They’re in! The hedge is down!”

The headman disappeared behind the deer-skin curtain.

“He’s gone to hide it,” said Anthea. “Oh, Psammead dear, how could you leave us!”

Suddenly there was a shriek from inside the hut, and the headman staggered out white with fear and fled out through the maze. The children were as white as he.

“Oh! What is it? What is it?” moaned Anthea. “Oh, Psammead, how could you! How could you!”

And the sound of the fight sank breathlessly, and swelled fiercely all around. It was like the rising and falling of the waves of the sea.

Anthea shuddered and said again, “Oh, Psammead, Psammead!”

“Well?” said a brisk voice, and the curtain of skins was lifted at one corner by a furry hand, and out peeped the bat’s ears and snail’s eyes of the Psammead.

Anthea caught it in her arms and a sigh of desperate relief was breathed by each of the four.

“Oh! which is the East!” Anthea said, and she spoke hurriedly, for the noise of wild fighting drew nearer and nearer.

“Don’t choke me,” said the Psammead, “come inside.”

The inside of the hut was pitch dark.

“I’ve got a match,” said Cyril, and struck it. The floor of the hut was of soft, loose sand.

“I’ve been asleep here,” said the Psammead; “most comfortable it’s been, the best sand I’ve had for a month. It’s all right. Everything’s all right. I knew your only chance would be while the fight was going on. That man won’t come back. I bit him, and he thinks I’m an Evil Spirit. Now you’ve only got to take the thing and go.”

The hut was hung with skins. Heaped in the middle were the offerings that had been given the night before, Anthea’s roses fading on the top of the heap. At one side of the hut stood a large square stone block, and on it an oblong box of earthenware with strange figures of men and beasts on it.

“Is the thing in there?” asked Cyril, as the Psammead pointed a skinny finger at it.

“You must judge of that,” said the Psammead. “The man was just going to bury the box in the sand when I jumped out at him and bit him.”

“Light another match, Robert,” said Anthea. “Now, then quick! which is the East?”

“Why, where the sun rises, of course!”

“But someone told us—”

“Oh! they’ll tell you anything!” said the Psammead impatiently, getting into its bass-bag and wrapping itself in its waterproof sheet.

“But we can’t see the sun in here, and it isn’t rising anyhow,” said Jane.

“How you do waste time!” the Psammead said. “Why, the East’s where the shrine is, of course. There!”

It pointed to the great stone.

And still the shouting and the clash of stone on metal sounded nearer and nearer. The children could hear that the headmen had surrounded the hut to protect their treasure as long as might be from the enemy. But none dare to come in after the Psammead’s sudden fierce biting of the headman.

“Now, Jane,” said Cyril, very quickly. “I’ll take the Amulet, you stand ready to hold up the charm, and be sure you don’t let it go as you come through.”

He made a step forward, but at that instant a great crackling overhead ended in a blaze of sunlight. The roof had been broken in at one side, and great slabs of it were being