The Gibbelins eat, as is well known, nothing less good than man. Their
evil tower is joined to Terra Cognita, to the lands we know, by a
bridge. Their hoard is beyond reason; avarice has no use for it; they
have a separate cellar for emeralds and a separate cellar for
sapphires; they have filled a hole with gold and dig it up when they
need it. And the only use that is known for their ridiculous wealth is
to attract to their larder a continual supply of food. In times of
famine they have even been known to scatter rubies abroad, a little
trail of them to some city of Man, and sure enough their larders would
soon be full again.
Their tower stands on the other side of that river known to Homer--_ho
rhoos okeanoio_, as he called it--which surrounds the world. And where
the river is narrow and fordable the tower was built by the Gibbelins'
gluttonous sires, for they liked to see burglars rowing easily to
their steps. Some nourishment that common soil has not the huge trees
drained there with their colossal roots from both banks of the river.
There the Gibbelins lived and discreditably fed.
Alderic, Knight of the Order of the City and the Assault, hereditary
Guardian of the King's Peace of Mind, a man not unremembered among
makers of myth, pondered so long upon the Gibbelins' hoard that by now
he deemed it his. Alas that I should say of so perilous a venture,
undertaken at dead of night by a valorous man, that its motive was
sheer avarice! Yet upon avarice only the Gibbelins relied to keep their
larders full, and once in every hundred years sent spies into the cities
of men to see how avarice did, and always the spies returned again to
the tower saying that all was well.
It may be thought that, as the years went on and men came by fearful
ends on that tower's wall, fewer and fewer would come to the
Gibbelins' table: but the Gibbelins found otherwise.
Not in the folly and frivolity of his youth did Alderic come to the
tower, but he studied carefully for several years the manner in which
burglars met their doom when they went in search of the treasure that
he considered his. _In every case they had entered by the door_.
He consulted those who gave advice on this quest; he noted every
detail and cheerfully paid their fees, and determined to do nothing
that they advised, for what were their clients now? No more than
examples of the savoury art, and mere half-forgotten memories of a
meal; and many, perhaps, no longer even that.
These were the requisites for the quest that these men used to advise:
a horse, a boat, mail armour, and at least three men-at-arms. Some
said, "Blow the horn at the tower door"; others said, "Do not touch
it."
Alderic thus decided: he would take no horse down to the river's edge,
he would not row along it in a boat, and he would go alone and by way
of the Forest Unpassable.
How pass, you may say, the unpassable? This was his plan: there was a
dragon he knew of who if peasants' prayers are heeded deserved to die,
not alone because of the number of maidens he cruelly slew, but
because he was bad for the crops; he ravaged the very land and was the
bane of a dukedom.
Now Alderic determined to go up against him. So he took horse and
spear and pricked till he met the dragon, and the dragon came out
against him breathing bitter smoke. And to him Alderic shouted, "Hath
foul dragon ever slain true knight?" And well the dragon knew that
this had never been, and he hung his head and was silent, for he was
glutted with blood. "Then," said the knight, "if thou would'st ever
taste maiden's blood again thou shalt be my trusty steed, and if not,
by this spear there shall befall thee all that the troubadours tell of
the dooms of thy breed."
And the dragon did not open his ravening mouth, nor rush upon the
knight, breathing out fire; for well he knew the fate of those that
did these things, but he consented to the terms imposed, and swore to
the knight to become his trusty steed.
It was on a saddle upon this dragon's back that Alderic afterwards
sailed above the unpassable forest, even above the tops of those
measureless trees, children of wonder. But first he pondered that
subtle plan of his which was more profound than merely to avoid all
that had been done before; and he commanded a blacksmith, and the
blacksmith made him a pickaxe.
Now there was great rejoicing at the rumour of Alderic's quest, for
all folk knew that he was a cautious man, and they deemed that he
would succeed and enrich the world, and they rubbed their hands in the
cities at the thought of largesse; and there was joy among all men in
Alderic's country, except perchance among the lenders of money, who
feared they would soon be paid. And there was rejoicing also because
men hoped that when the Gibbelins were robbed of their hoard, they
would shatter their high-built bridge and break the golden chains that
bound them to the world, and drift back, they and their tower, to the
moon, from which they had come and to which they rightly belonged.
There was little love for the Gibbelins, though all men envied their
hoard.
So they all cheered, that day when he mounted his dragon, as though he
was already a conqueror, and what pleased them more than the good that
they hoped he would do to the world was that he scattered gold as he
rode away; for he would not need it, he said, if he found the
Gibbelins' hoard, and he would not need it more if he smoked on the
Gibbelins' table.
When they heard that he had rejected the advice of those that gave it,
some said that the knight was mad, and others said he was greater than
those what gave the advice, but none appreciated the worth of his
plan.
He reasoned thus: for centuries men had been well advised and had gone
by the cleverest way, while the Gibbelins came to expect them to come
by boat and to look for them at the door whenever their larder was
empty, even as a man looketh for a snipe in a marsh; but how, said
Alderic, if a snipe should sit in the top of a tree, and would men
find him there? Assuredly never! So Alderic decided to swim the river
and not to go by the door, but to pick his way into the tower through
the stone. Moreover, it was in his mind to work below the level of the
ocean, the river (as Homer knew) that girdles the world, so that as
soon as he made a hole in the wall the water should pour in,
confounding the Gibbelins, and flooding the cellars, rumoured to be
twenty feet in depth, and therein he would dive for emeralds as a
diver dives for pearls.
And on the day that I tell of he galloped away from his home
scattering largesse of gold, as I have said, and passed through many
kingdoms, the dragon snapping at maidens as he went, but being unable
to eat them because of the bit in his mouth, and earning no gentler
reward than a spurthrust where he was softest. And so they came to the
swart arboreal precipice of the unpassable forest. The dragon rose at
it with a rattle of wings. Many a farmer near the edge of the world
saw him up there where yet the twilight lingered, a faint, black,
wavering line; and mistaking him for a row of geese going inland from
the ocean, went into their houses cheerily rubbing their hands and
saying that winter was coming, and that we should soon have snow. Soon
even there the twilight faded away, and when they descended at the
edge of the world it was night and the moon was shining. Ocean, the
ancient river, narrow and shallow there, flowed by and made no murmur.
Whether the Gibbelins banqueted or whether they watched by the door,
they also made no murmur. And Alderic dismounted and took his armour
off, and saying one prayer to his lady, swam with his pickaxe. He did
not part from his sword, for fear that he meet with a Gibbelin. Landed
the other side, he began to work at once, and all went well with him.
Nothing put out its head from any window, and all were lighted so that
nothing within could see him in the dark. The blows of his pickaxe
were dulled in the deep walls. All night he worked, no sound came to
molest him, and at dawn the last rock swerved and tumbled inwards, and
the river poured in after. Then Alderic took a stone, and went to the
bottom step, and hurled the stone at the door; he heard the echoes
roll into the tower, then he ran back and dived through the hole in
the wall.
He was in the emerald-cellar. There was no light in the lofty vault
above him, but, diving through twenty feet of water, he felt the floor
all rough with emeralds, and open coffers full of them. By a faint ray
of the moon he saw that the water was green with them, and, easily
filling a satchel, he rose again to the surface; and there were the
Gibbelins waist-deep in the water, with torches in their hands! And,
without saying a word, _or even smiling_, they neatly hanged him on
the outer wall--and the tale is one of those that have not a happy
ending.