The Seven Dragons | Page 8

of the rock went into a hole that just fitted it in the stony sea-bottom,
and there it spun round the wrong way seven times and then lay still.
And that round piece of land became, after millions of years, the
Kingdom of Rotundia.
This is the end of the geography lesson. And now for just a little natural
history, so that we may not feel that we are quite wasting our time. Of
course, the consequence of the island having spun round the wrong way
was that when the animals began to grow on the island they all grew
the wrong sizes. The guinea-pig, as you know, was as big as our
elephants, and the elephant--dear little pet--was the size of the silly,
tiny, black-and-tan dogs that ladies carry sometimes in their muffs. The
rabbits were about the size of our rhinoceroses, and all about the wild
parts of the island they had made their burrows as big as railway
tunnels. The dormouse, of course, was the biggest of all the creatures. I
can't tell you how big he was. Even if you think of elephants it will not
help you at all. Luckily there was one of him, and he was always asleep.
Otherwise I don't think the Rotundians could have borne with him. As
it was, they made him a house, and it saved the expense of a brass band,
because no band could possibly have been heard when the dormouse
was talking in his sleep.
The men and women and children in this wonderful island were quite
the right size, because their ancestors had come over with the
Conqueror long after the island had settled down and the animals
grown on it.

Now the natural history lesson is over, and if you have been attending,
you know more about Rotundia than anyone there did, except three
people: the Lord Chief Schoolmaster, and the Princess's uncle--who
was a magician, and knew everything without learning it--and Tom, the
gardener's son.
Tom had learned more at school than anyone else, because he wished to
take a prize. The prize offered by the Lord Chief Schoolmaster was a
'History of Rotundia', beautifully bound, with the Royal arms on the
back. But after that day when the Princess said she meant to marry Tom,
the gardener's boy thought it over, and he decided that the best prize in
the world would be the Princess, and this was the prize Tom meant to
take; and when you are a gardener's son, and have decided to marry a
Princess, you will find that the more you learn at school the better.
The Princess always played with Tom on the days when the little dukes
and marquises did not come to tea--and when he told her he was almost
sure of the first prize, she clapped her hands and said:-
"Dear Tom, dear, good, clever Tom, you deserve all the prizes. And I
will give you my pet elephant--and you can keep him till we're
married."
The pet elephant was called Fido, and the gardener's son took him away
in his coat-pocket. He was the dearest little elephant you ever
saw--about six inches long. But he was very, very wise--he could not
have been wiser if he had been a mile high. He lay down comfortably
in Tom's pocket, and when Tom put in his hand, Fido curled his little
trunk round Tom's fingers with an affectionate confidence that made
the boy's heart warm to his new little pet. What with the elephant, and
the Princess's affection, and the knowledge that the very next day he
would receive the "History of Rotundia", beautifully bound, with the
Royal arms on the cover, Tom could hardly sleep a wink. And, besides,
the dog did bark so terribly. There was only one dog in Rotundia--the
kingdom could not afford to keep more than one: he was a Mexican
lap-dog of the kind that in most parts of the world only measures seven
inches from the end of his dear nose to the tip of his darling tail--but in
Rotundia he was bigger than I can possibly expect you to believe. And

when he barked, his bark was so large that it filled up all the night and
left no room for sleep or dreams or polite conversation, or anything else
at all. He never barked at things that went on in the island--he was too
large-minded for that; but when ships went blundering by in the dark,
tumbling over the rocks at the end of the island, he would bark once or
twice, just to let the ships know that they couldn't come playing about
there just as they liked.
But on this particular night he barked, and barked, and barked--and the
Princess said, "Oh dear, oh dear, I