The Book of Wonder | Page 8

crack
in the World until the others came out with the golden box, and, should

they cry for help, he was to threaten at once to unfasten the iron clamp
that kept the crack together. When the box was secured they were to
travel all night and all the following day, until the cloud-banks that
wrapped the slopes of Mluna were well between them and the Owner
of the Box.
The door in the cliff was open. They passed without a murmur down
the cold steps, Slith leading them all the way. A glance of longing, no
more, each gave to the beautiful berries. The guardian upon his pedestal
was still asleep. Slorg climbed by a ladder, that Slith knew where to
find, to the iron clamp across the crack in the World, and waited beside
it with a chisel in his hand, listening closely for anything untoward,
while his friends slipped into the house; and no sound came. And
presently Slith and Sippy found the golden box: everything seemed
happening as they had planned, it only remained to see if it was the
right one and to escape with it from that dreadful place. Under the
shelter of the pedestal, so near to the guardian that they could feel his
warmth, which paradoxically had the effect of chilling the blood of the
boldest of them, they smashed the emerald hasp and opened the golden
box; and there they read by the light of ingenious sparks which Slith
knew how to contrive, and even this poor light they hid with their
bodies. What was their joy, even at that perilous moment, as they
lurked between the guardian and the abyss, to find that the box
contained fifteen peerless odes in the alcaic form, five sonnets that
were by far the most beautiful in the world, nine ballads in the manner
of Provence that had no equal in the treasuries of man, a poem
addressed to a moth in twenty-eight perfect stanzas, a piece of blank
verse of over a hundred lines on a level not yet known to have been
attained by man, as well as fifteen lyrics on which no merchant would
dare to set a price. They would have read them again, for they gave
happy tears to a man and memories of dear things done in infancy, and
brought sweet voices from far sepulchres; but Slith pointed imperiously
to the way by which they had come, and extinguished the light; and
Slorg and Sippy sighed, then took the box.
The guardian still slept the sleep that survived a thousand years.

As they came away they saw that indulgent chair close by the edge of
the World in which the Owner of the Box had lately sat reading
selfishly and alone the most beautiful songs and verses that poet ever
dreamed.
They came in silence to the foot of the stairs; and then it befell that as
they drew nearer safely, in the night's most secret hour, some hand in
an upper chamber lit a shocking light, lit it and made no sound.
For a moment it might have been an ordinary light, fatal as even that
could very well be at such a moment as this; but when it began to
follow them like an eye and to grow redder and redder as it watched
them, then even optimism despaired.
And Sippy very unwisely attempted flight, and Slorg even as unwisely
tried to hide; but Slith, knowing well why that light was lit in that
secret chamber and who it was that lit it, leaped over the edge of the
World and is falling from us still through the unreverberate blackness
of the abyss.

THE INJUDICIOUS PRAYERS OF POMBO THE IDOLATER
Pombo the idolater had prayed to Ammuz a simple prayer, a necessary
prayer, such as even an idol of ivory could very easily grant, and
Ammuz has not immediately granted it. Pombo had therefore prayed to
Tharma for the overthrow of Ammuz, an idol friendly to Tharma, and
in doing this offended against the etiquette of the gods. Tharma refused
to grant the little prayer. Pombo prayed frantically to all the gods of
idolatry, for though it was a simple matter, yet it was very necessary to
a man. And gods that were older than Ammuz rejected the prayers of
Pombo, and even gods that were younger and therefore of greater
repute. He prayed to them one by one, and they all refused to hear him;
nor at first did he think at all of the subtle, divine etiquette against
which he had offended. It occurred to him all at once as he prayed to
his fiftieth idol, a little green-jade god whom the Chinese know, that all
the idols were in league against him. When Pombo