第55章

He woke in terror unspeakable, and would have started up but the moment he moved, the legserpent drew his coils closer, and closer still, and drew and drew until the quaking traitor heard the joints of his bedstead grinding and gnarring.Presently he persuaded himself that it was only a horrid nightmare, and began to struggle with all his strength to throw it off.Thereupon the legserpent gave his hooked nose such a bite that his teeth met through it -but it was hardly thicker than the bowl of a spoon; and then the vulture knew that he was in the grasp of his enemy the snake, and yielded.

As soon as he was quiet the legserpent began to untwist and retwist, to uncoil and recoil himself, swinging and swaying, knotting and relaxing himself with strangest curves and convolutions, always, however, leaving at least one coil around his victim.At last he undid himself entirely, and crept from the bed.

Then first the lord chamberlain discovered that his tormentor had bent and twisted the bedstead, legs and canopy and all, so about him that he was shut in a silver cage out of which it was impossible for him to find a way.Once more, thinking his enemy was gone, he began to shout for help.But the instant he opened his mouth his keeper darted at him and bit him, and after three or four such essays, he lay still.

The master of the horse Curdie gave in charge to the tapir.When the soldier saw him enter - for he was not yet asleep - he sprang from his bed, and flew at him with his sword.But the creature's hide was invulnerable to his blows, and he pecked at his legs with his proboscis until he jumped into bed again, groaning, and covered himself up; after which the tapir contented himself with now and then paying a visit to his toes.

As for the attorney-general, Curdie led to his door a huge spider, about two feet long in the body, which, having made an excellent supper, was full of webbing.The attorney-general had not gone to bed, but sat in a chair asleep before a great mirror.He had been trying the effect of a diamond star which he had that morning taken from the jewel room.When he woke he fancied himself paralysed;every limb, every finger even, was motionless: coils and coils of broad spider ribbon bandaged his members to his body, and all to the chair.In the glass he saw himself wound about with slavery infinite.On a footstool a yard off sat the spider glaring at him.

Clubhead had mounted guard over the butler, where he lay tied hand and foot under the third cask.From that cask he had seen the wine run into a great bath, and therein he expected to be drowned.The doctor, with his crushed leg, needed no one to guard him.

And now Curdie proceeded to the expulsion of the rest.Great men or underlings, he treated them all alike.From room to room over the house he went, and sleeping or waking took the man by the hand.

Such was the state to which a year of wicked rule had reduced the moral condition of the court, that in it all he found but three with human hands.The possessors of these he allowed to dress themselves and depart in peace.When they perceived his mission, and how he was backed, they yielded.

Then commenced a general hunt, to clear the house of the vermin.

Out of their beds in their night clothing, out of their rooms, gorgeous chambers or garret nooks, the creatures hunted them.Not one was allowed to escape.Tumult and noise there was little, for fear was too deadly for outcry.Ferreting them out everywhere, following them upstairs and downstairs, yielding no instant of repose except upon the way out, the avengers persecuted the miscreants, until the last of them was shivering outside the palace gates, with hardly sense enough left to know where to turn.

When they set out to look for shelter, they found every inn full of the servants expelled before them, and not one would yield his place to a superior suddenly levelled with himself.Most houses refused to admit them on the ground of the wickedness that must have drawn on them such a punishment; and not a few would have been left in the streets all night, had not Derba, roused by the vain entreaties at the doors on each side of her cottage, opened hers, and given up everything to them.The lord chancellor was only too glad to share a mattress with a stableboy, and steal his bare feet under his jacket.

In the morning Curdie appeared, and the outcasts were in terror, thinking he had come after them again.But he took no notice of them: his object was to request Derba to go to the palace: the king required her services.She need take no trouble about her cottage, he said; the palace was henceforward her home: she was the king's chatelaine over men and maidens of his household.And this very morning she must cook His Majesty a nice breakfast.