MORE CREATURES.
One day from morning till night they had been passing through a forest.
As soon as the sun was down Curdie began to be aware that there were
more in it than themselves. First he saw only the swift rush of a figure
across the trees at some distance. Then he saw another and then another
at shorter intervals. Then he saw others both further off and nearer. At
last, missing Lina and looking about after her, he saw an appearance
almost as marvellous as herself steal up to her, and begin conversing
with her after some beast fashion which evidently she understood.
Presently what seemed a quarrel arose between them, and stranger noises
followed, mingled with growling. At length it came to a fight, which had
not lasted long, however, before the creature of the wood threw itself
upon its back, and held up its paws to Lina. She instantly walked on,
and the creature got up and followed her. They had not gone far before
another strange animal appeared, approaching Lina, when precisely the
same thing was repeated, the vanquished animal rising and following with
the former. Again, and yet again and again, a fresh animal came up,
seemed to be reasoned and certainly was fought with and overcome by
Lina, until at last, before they were out of the wood, she was followed
by forty-nine of the most grotesquely ugly, the most extravagantly
abnormal animals imagination can conceive. To describe them were a
hopeless task. I knew a boy who used to make animals out of heather
roots. Wherever he could find four legs, he was pretty sure to find a
head and a tail. His beasts were a most comic menagerie, and right
fruitful of laughter. But they were not so grotesque and extravagant as
Lina and her followers. One of them, for instance, was like a boa
constrictor walking on four little stumpy legs near its tail. About the
same distance from its head were two little wings, which it was for ever
fluttering as if trying to fly with them. Curdie thought it fancied it
did fly with them, when it was merely plodding on busily with its four
little stumps. How it managed to keep up he could not think, till once
when he missed it from the group: the same moment he caught sight of
something at a distance plunging at an awful serpentine rate through
the trees, and presently, from behind a huge ash, this same creature
fell again into the group, quietly waddling along on its four stumps.
Watching it after this, he saw that, when it was not able to keep up any
longer, and they had all got a little space ahead, it shot into the wood
away from the route, and made a great round, serpenting along in huge
billows of motion, devouring the ground, undulating awfully, galloping
as if it were all legs together, and its four stumps nowhere. In this
mad fashion it shot ahead, and, a few minutes after, toddled in again
amongst the rest, walking peacefully and somewhat painfully on its few
fours.
From the time it takes to describe one of them it will be readily seen
that it would hardly do to attempt a description of each of the
forty-nine. They were not a goodly company, but well worth contemplating
nevertheless; and Curdie had been too long used to the goblins'
creatures in the mines and on the mountain, to feel the least
uncomfortable at being followed by such a herd. On the contrary the
marvellous vagaries of shape they manifested amused him greatly, and
shortened the journey much. Before they were all gathered, however, it
had got so dark that he could see some of them only a part at a time,
and every now and then, as the company wandered on, he would be startled
by some extraordinary limb or feature, undreamed of by him before,
thrusting itself out of the darkness into the range of his ken.
Probably there were some of his old acquaintances among them, although
such had been the conditions of semi-darkness in which alone he had ever
seen any of them, that it was not likely he would be able to identify
any of them.
On they marched solemnly, almost in silence, for either with feet or
voice the creatures seldom made any noise. By the time they reached the
outside of the wood it was morning twilight. Into the open trooped the
strange torrent of deformity, each one following Lina. Suddenly she
stopped, turned towards them, and said something which they understood,
although to Curdie's ear the sounds she made seemed to have no
articulation. Instantly they all turned, and vanished in the forest, and
Lina alone came trotting lithely and clumsily after her master.