The Story of the Amulet, E. Nesbit [free ebook reader for iphone txt] 📗

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.

X 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