Have you ever heard of the lost king? I, Bobby the Builder, along with some dear friends, had a grand time discovering what happened to him one sunny day. Jammy the Jumper, Wally the Wrench, Benny the Builder, and I decided to explore the old castle up on the hill. They say it was once alive with a king and his merry courtiers, but he mysteriously vanished and has never been seen since.
With spirits high and imaginations wild, we set off, armed with snacks and courage. Ariving at the castle, we gasped, for indeed it was old and very big, towering over us in a most impressive way. We pushed open the massive door, which creaked ominously, as if warning us to go back. The people who lived nearby claimed to have heard the music and laughter coming from the court of that castle, but no one ever dared pay a visit. That, however, wasn’t the case with us!
“This place is quite as I expected it to be!” said Jammy cheerfully, doing a little hop. “What do you say if we see which way leads to the king’s rooms first?”
We decided to light a large lamp, so that our way might be properly guided. When this was done, we started exploring; but everything was so mixed up that never did such a puzzle present itself to four curious children. Doors led to stairs, stairs to doors, until every place looked just like every other place, and we were certain we should never find our way out again.
At last a door opened from a long corridor into a large room. In the centre of this rose a big mound, like those we see in the country on the top of worm-eaten trees, where now and then a pretty bird builds its round nest. Up on the top was a large iron- or not very large, after all, but just the right size for the purpose-a pulley-frame, like the one we use when trying to lift up the big stone foot of the ruinous old pillar down by our streamlet. For some reason or other, I cannot explain, I felt sure that the lost king must be here, hidden away in disguise.
We all agreed with me, and so up we went into the mound.
As we were making our way surely but slowly to its very top, Jammy began dancing a little jig.
“Well, what are you doing that for?” asked Wally the Wrench.
“I thought I felt something moving beneath my feet. I thought it was a little grasping hand trying to pull me down,” answered Jammie; “but I suppose I was mistaken.”
At this moment the thing happened we were all of us expecting. With a loud rumble, the whole mound began revolving, slowly at first, but quicker and quicker, until it shook us off into the corner of the room. We uttered no shout of alarm. Why should we? It was all in the programme, and we were prepared for it. It stopped suddenly, seized with a sharp pain, apparently, for it was afraid it was going to become dizzy, I suppose. We saw, beneath where the mound had been, a little hole, through which we peeped. Taupe the Tramp, a friend of ours, once came to our house, and told us how the woodland animals used to furiously carry away a piece of reasoning wood, or a magic cow, when a very wicked giant sought to mow it down with a wooden knife. We had all read the Tale of the Gigantic Gnat, wherein a tiny fellow banks itself into a mossy brick up in the wilds of Norway, because it threatens to carry about with it people it meets on its stomatch, after having giddily twirled them around beneath its bewildered eyes for some time. Taupe said that the king who had so mysteriously disappeared must have something of this kind about him, and is living yet, like the others just mentioned. Discovery Ko’s very latest machine is really a nail with a little wooden foot to it, and when it is firmly hit into the earth, it will twizzle itself rapidly around, bringing with it all the loose pieces of matter sticking to the nail.
Do you wonder me told you all those things, and not one of them happened really, all for the sake of our “lost and found?” There was something else we wanted to say, but, feeling sure the king was here, we were in a hurry to find him. Taupe’s conjecture was likely to be correct, we thought; in any case, there could not be much doubt about it now.
We now beheld on the floor a number of spiders, tortoises, and things of that kind, running after one another, building, and building, and building-we saw them quite as the others did-reminding us of mine-diggers in the old mine, now deserted and desolated, where last summer we used to go fishing.
The light of our lamp’s rapidly dying, but Benny thinks it still bright enough; we can still see it quite in the same way. We noticed how the machines were pulling up mossy bricks by the dozen, mortared with very sticky clay, and repeatedly carried off to the flimsy web-work, twisting up and twisting down, just in the same way as we twist up and down the thickest and finest strings of pink, of white, of blue, etc., in the ladders of our extensive, still poorly furnished picture-frames.
Where are they all going to? we wondered, filled with astonishment.
Do you see where the light comes from? asked Benny.
Upon examination, we found he was right. A number of the machines were rolling about in giddy circles on a row of bricks while dragging after them bits of fur and long hair, and also parts of a thing which appeared to be alive-all, however, quickly stuck down to the ground, while gradually creeping further and further into the inviting hole which caused our lamp-light again to widen into a fierce flame; or, in fact, it did little more than follow them quite as a doing body was obliged to do, however loathsome it may have been, to the abode of an impolite, but in the main amiable, and cleanly, ugly goblin.
Borrowing, perhaps, a ray now and then from our lamp, or fresh as there was in his apartment now to hold ont our hands is impossible to say, but be the case as it may, everything we saw seemed most coloured, long before the plants, half-man and woman, are come alive, and have designed the pleasant apartment to bring forth children by means of juicy apples.
“Take care! we are going to move now!” said Taupe. Be wise enough to follow suit!
Where are we to go to? we want to know. Even the light gives us no answer, much less our friends.
“All you have to do is to go to,” calmly expostulates Taupe. “Well, lose no more time, otherwise you are not rewarded by discovering the most joyous work, perhaps the happiest one that could possibly be, however strange it may may sound in saying so to you-would you believe it?”
We would be dumb if we did so, thought Jammy.
“Then it isn’t true. It’s not odd, Bobby?”
No, I don’t think it strange at all.
Oh, you are wrong, but mine is a polite answer to tish inquiry.
Well now, it won’t pay anyone to come and see for himself, that’s all-and would all surprise him, perhaps, however little it may appear so at first.
This place within a place contained a palace one day, where the king was wont to live, after having knelt down with all his people, and decked the stone-cold floor all round with silk, with velvet, with various-coloured linen, and with satins rare-
Well, what did we do next? Guess! do guess, I say.
“Look there, what are you people in your respect that say to what I have proposed to one of my workers,” asked the tail of an animal-I presume he is one of those terribly-long ones we see (in summer hours) in old trees; they remind us, we have so often been told, of raisins and of liquorice, and which in days of yore, perhaps centuries ago, lived-kind o’. We, at any rate, are always told they usually do-curl up and die inside the noise and nice little tin gates with glass windows, when, early in ‘June, or late in ‘May, the fashionable curers take it into their heads to squirt out their insides.”
“Oh, you don’t suppose because I did so I am worse than you?” said the thing, curling himself round and having it stoutly washed by what I should call a-tank.
“Regarding your adage, you live and learn. That doesn’t hold good in all cases,” replied the answer, which he got big brains to it. “Well, can it be adapted, do you think, to explain to him what the king’s position was!?”
So with one of his stained claws, he divided the piece into half a long, aged book-thrown round the interior, a la-laic, a la-genma, a la-joannis-of a peculiar kind of chest, which you will see exposed at all the revered exhibitions of fishes, oars, monkeys, and whales, gaping and astounding us with their oviferous, dermic, and pleure-folding wonders.
Well! directly in front of these insects, wearing milk-white aprons, a large tinned pan was shining in the centre of the room, stuck right down almost into the substances there carefully grating (they had procured from somewhere).
They were real-looking and must have smelt deliciously, too; such sweet perfume wafted up our noses, but we-well, about us, for certain reasons, my dear little readers, it can be of no use-the people we saw did not make themselves at all uneasy.
Their huge doublets, such as those of a corporation of ceremoniously-trained cosmopolites, came cheap des gerns-a-carpe, you know, with as huge a fleece on it as a sheep may boast; our petticoats made out of cows’ afterbirth, of calves’-and goats’-hidden petticoats real metals-how? by constantly wriggling to bring it home.
Well, I really have no more to say. As we now know all sorts of things you can simply call pounds when weighing greens, one of those which are subject to sale by weight, is, I believe, used chiefly for the same purpose in chemical laboratories; small chewing luxuries where what is shot into the mouth has not been coughed or sneezed out once a day.
But the evening was swiftly passing into the night; the light and the labourers to rest! Sigh. Now your task, Bobby, is complete; your excursion done, now you must get back to the foreman first of all.