Bab Bab 5 · The Fight In The Village

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THE FIGHT IN THE VILLAGE

Here was a horrible position! Four English children, whose proper date

was A.D. 1905, and whose proper address was London, set down in Egypt

in the year 6000 B.C. with no means whatever of getting back into their

own time and place. They could not find the East, and the sun was of no

use at the moment, because some officious person had once explained to

Cyril that the sun did not really set in the West at all—nor rise in

the East either, for the matter of that.

The Psammead had crept out of the bass-bag when they were not looking

and had basely deserted them.

An enemy was approaching. There would be a fight. People get killed in

fights, and the idea of taking part in a fight was one that did not

appeal to the children.

The man who had brought the news of the enemy still lay panting on the

sand. His tongue was hanging out, long and red, like a dog’s. The

people of the village were hurriedly filling the gaps in the fence with

thorn-bushes from the heap that seemed to have been piled there ready

for just such a need. They lifted the cluster-thorns with long

poles—much as men at home, nowadays, lift hay with a fork.

Jane bit her lip and tried to decide not to cry.

Robert felt in his pocket for a toy pistol and loaded it with a pink

paper cap. It was his only weapon.

Cyril tightened his belt two holes.

And Anthea absently took the drooping red roses from the buttonholes of

the others, bit the ends of the stalks, and set them in a pot of water

that stood in the shadow by a hut door. She was always rather silly

about flowers.

“Look here!” she said. “I think perhaps the Psammead is really

arranging something for us. I don’t believe it would go away and leave

us all alone in the Past. I’m certain it wouldn’t.”

Jane succeeded in deciding not to cry—at any rate yet.

“But what can we do?” Robert asked.

“Nothing,” Cyril answered promptly, “except keep our eyes and ears

open. Look! That runner chap’s getting his wind. Let’s go and hear what

he’s got to say.”

The runner had risen to his knees and was sitting back on his heels.

Now he stood up and spoke. He began by some respectful remarks

addressed to the heads of the village. His speech got more interesting

when he said—

“I went out in my raft to snare ibises, and I had gone up the stream an

hour’s journey. Then I set my snares and waited. And I heard the sound

of many wings, and looking up, saw many herons circling in the air. And

I saw that they were afraid; so I took thought. A beast may scare one

heron, coming upon it suddenly, but no beast will scare a whole flock

of herons. And still they flew and circled, and would not light. So

then I knew that what scared the herons must be men, and men who knew

not our ways of going softly so as to take the birds and beasts

unawares. By this I knew they were not of our race or of our place. So,

leaving my raft, I crept along the river bank, and at last came upon

the strangers. They are many as the sands of the desert, and their

spear-heads shine red like the sun. They are a terrible people, and

their march is towards us. Having seen this, I ran, and did not stay

till I was before you.”

“These are _your_ folk,” said the headman, turning suddenly and angrily

on Cyril, “you came as spies for them.”

“We did _not_,” said Cyril indignantly. “We wouldn’t be spies for

anything. I’m certain these people aren’t a bit like us. Are they now?”

he asked the runner.

“No,” was the answer. “These men’s faces were darkened, and their hair

black as night. Yet these strange children, maybe, are their gods, who

have come before to make ready the way for them.”

A murmur ran through the crowd.

“No, _no_,” said Cyril again. “We are on your side. We will help you to

guard your sacred things.”

The headman seemed impressed by the fact that Cyril knew that there

_were_ sacred things to be guarded. He stood a moment gazing at the

children. Then he said—

“It is well. And now let all make offering, that we may be strong in

battle.”

The crowd dispersed, and nine men, wearing antelope-skins, grouped

themselves in front of the opening in the hedge in the middle of the

village. And presently, one by one, the men brought all sorts of

things—hippopotamus flesh, ostrich-feathers, the fruit of the date

palms, red chalk, green chalk, fish from the river, and ibex from the

mountains; and the headman received these gifts. There was another

hedge inside the first, about a yard from it, so that there was a lane

inside between the hedges. And every now and then one of the headmen

would disappear along this lane with full hands and come back with

hands empty.

“They’re making offerings to their Amulet,” said Anthea. “We’d better

give something too.”

The pockets of the party, hastily explored, yielded a piece of pink

tape, a bit of sealing-wax, and part of the Waterbury watch that Robert

had not been able to help taking to pieces at Christmas and had never

had time to rearrange. Most boys have a watch in this condition.

They presented their offerings, and Anthea added the red roses.

The headman who took the things looked at them with awe, especially at

the red roses and the Waterbury-watch fragment.

“This is a day of very wondrous happenings,” he said. “I have no more

room in me to be astonished. Our maiden said there was peace between

you and us. But for this coming of a foe we should have made sure.”

The children shuddered.

“Now speak. Are you upon our side?”

“_Yes_. Don’t I keep telling you we are?” Robert said. “Look here. I

will give you a sign. You see this.” He held out the toy pistol. “I

shall speak to it, and if it answers me you will know that I and the

others are come to guard your sacred thing—that we’ve just made the

offerings to.”

“Will that god whose image you hold in your hand speak to you alone, or

shall I also hear it?” asked the man cautiously.

“You’ll be surprised when you _do_ hear it,” said Robert. “Now, then.”

He looked at the pistol and said—

“If we are to guard the sacred treasure within”—he pointed to the

hedged-in space—“speak with thy loud voice, and we shall obey.”

He pulled the trigger, and the cap went off. The noise was loud, for it

was a two-shilling pistol, and the caps were excellent.

Every man, woman, and child in the village fell on its face on the

sand.

The headman who had accepted the test rose first.

“The voice has spoken,” he said. “Lead them into the ante-room of the

sacred thing.”

So now the four children were led in through the opening of the hedge

and round the lane till they came to an opening in the inner hedge, and

they went through an opening in that, and so passed into another lane.

The thing was built something like this, and all the hedges were of

brushwood and thorns:

[Illustration]

“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 lifted off by two spears. As the

children trembled and winked in the new light, large dark hands tore

down the wall, and a dark face, with a blobby fat nose, looked over the

gap. Even at that awful moment Anthea had time to think that it was

very like the face of Mr Jacob Absalom, who had sold them the charm in

the shop near Charing Cross.

“Here is their Amulet,” cried a harsh, strange voice; “it is this that

makes them strong to fight and brave to die. And what else have we

here—gods or demons?”

He glared fiercely at the children, and the whites of his eyes were

very white indeed. He had a wet, red copper knife in his teeth. There

was not a moment to lose.

“Jane, _Jane_, QUICK!” cried everyone passionately.

Jane with trembling hands held up the charm towards the East, and Cyril

spoke the word of power. The Amulet grew to a great arch. Out beyond it

was the glaring Egyptian sky, the broken wall, the cruel, dark,

big-nosed face with the red, wet knife in its gleaming teeth. Within

the arch was the dull, faint, greeny-brown of London grass and trees.

“Hold tight, Jane!” Cyril cried, and he dashed through the arch,

dragging Anthea and the Psammead after him. Robert followed, clutching

Jane. And in the ears of each, as they passed through the arch of the

charm, the sound and fury of battle died out suddenly and utterly, and

they heard only the low, dull, discontented hum of vast London, and the

peeking and patting of the sparrows on the gravel and the voices of the

ragged baby children playing Ring-o’-Roses on the yellow trampled

grass. And the charm was a little charm again in Jane’s hand, and there

was the basket with their dinner and the bathbuns lying just where they

had left it.

“My hat!” said Cyril, drawing a long breath; “that was something like

an adventure.”

“It was rather like one, certainly,” said the Psammead.

They all lay still, breathing in the safe, quiet air of Regent’s Park.

“We’d better go home at once,” said Anthea presently. “Old Nurse will

be most frightfully anxious. The sun looks about the same as it did

when we started yesterday. We’ve been away twenty-four hours.”

“The buns are quite soft still,” said Cyril, feeling one; “I suppose

the dew kept them fresh.”

They were not hungry, curiously enough.

They picked up the dinner-basket and the Psammead-basket, and went

straight home.

Old Nurse met them with amazement.

“Well, if ever I did!” she said. “What’s gone wrong? You’ve soon tired

of your picnic.”

The children took this to be bitter irony, which means saying the exact

opposite of what you mean in order to make yourself disagreeable; as

when you happen to have a dirty face, and someone says, “How nice and

clean you look!”

“We’re very sorry,” began Anthea, but old Nurse said—

“Oh, bless me, child, I don’t care! Please yourselves and you’ll please

me. Come in and get your dinners comf’table. I’ve got a potato on

a-boiling.”

When she had gone to attend to the potatoes the children looked at each

other. Could it be that old Nurse had so changed that she no longer

cared that they should have been away from home for twenty-four

hours—all night in fact—without any explanation whatever?

But the Psammead put its head out of its basket and said—

“What’s the matter? Don’t you understand? You come back through the

charm-arch at the same time as you go through it. This isn’t tomorrow!”

“Is it still yesterday?” asked Jane.

“No, it’s today. The same as it’s always been. It wouldn’t do to go

mixing up the present and the Past, and cutting bits out of one to fit

into the other.”

“Then all that adventure took no time at all?”

“You can call it that if you like,” said the Psammead. “It took none of

the modern time, anyhow.”

That evening Anthea carried up a steak for the learned gentleman’s

dinner. She persuaded Beatrice, the maid-of-all-work, who had given her

the bangle with the blue stone, to let her do it. And she stayed and

talked to him, by special invitation, while he ate the dinner.

She told him the whole adventure, beginning with—

“This afternoon we found ourselves on the bank of the River Nile,” and

ending up with, “And then we remembered how to get back, and there we

were in Regent’s Park, and it hadn’t taken any time at all.”

She did not tell anything about the charm or the Psammead, because that

was forbidden, but the story was quite wonderful enough even as it was

to entrance the learned gentleman.

“You are a most unusual little girl,” he said. “Who tells you all these

things?”

“No one,” said Anthea, “they just happen.”

“Make-believe,” he said slowly, as one who recalls and pronounces a

long-forgotten word.

He sat long after she had left him. At last he roused himself with a

start.

“I really must take a holiday,” he said; “my nerves must be all out of

order. I actually have a perfectly distinct impression that the little

girl from the rooms below came in and gave me a coherent and graphic

picture of life as I conceive it to have been in pre-dynastic Egypt.

Strange what tricks the mind will play! I shall have to be more

careful.”

He finished his bread conscientiously, and actually went for a mile

walk before he went back to his work.