He got up on to his feet, and looked down at his empty plate: there was
not a scrap left on it. Then he put his hands to his sides, and
shrieked, "I feel as if a windmill were turning round inside me! And I'm
so light! Wife, hold me down--I'm going off my feet!" And as he spoke,
he swung sideway, and began rising with a wobbling motion into the air.
His wife caught him by the head, while his feet swung like the pendulum
of a clock, and all the time a voice inside him kept calling, "Cuckoo!
cuckoo! cuckoo! cuckoo!"
Presently it seemed to the unfortunate man as if the windmill had
stopped, and he was able to strike the ground with his feet once more.
"Oh, blessed Mother Earth!" he cried, and began rubbing it up and down
with his feet, and caressing it as if it had been a pet animal. But his
face had grown very white.
"Put me to bed," he said to his wife; and she put him to bed on the top
of the great feather-mattress which she had made only that morning from
the cuckoo-pluckings.
The cuckoo kept him awake far into the night, and his wife herself could
get no sleep; but towards morning he dozed off into a disturbed sort of
slumber, and began to dream.
He felt his eyes turning inwards, so that he could see into the middle
of his body. And there sat the cuckoo, like an unpleasant nestling, with
great red eyes staring at him, and the wound on its head burning a blue
flame. It seemed to grow and grow and grow, dislocating his bones, and
thrusting aside his heart to make room for itself. Its wings seemed to
be sawing out his ribs, and its head was pushed far up into his throat,
where with its angry beak it seemed reaching to peck out his eyes. "I
will torment you for ever," said the bird. "You shall have no peace
until you let me go. I am the King of the Cuckoos; I will give you no
rest. You will be surprised at what I can do to you; even in your
despair you will be surprised." Then it drew down its head and pecked
his heart, so that he woke in great pain. And as his eyes turned
outwards he saw that it was morning.
"Wife," he said, before going out, "I feel as though, if I went out, I
might be carried away, like a worm in a bird's beak. Fasten a chain
round me, and drive it with a stake into the ground, and let me see if
so I be able to work safely in my garden."
So his wife did as he told her; but whenever he caught hold of a spade
the bird lifted him off his feet, so that he could not drive it into the
ground. He wrung his hands and wailed, "Alas, alas! now my occupation is
gone, and my wife and I shall become beggars!"
The villagers came and looked over the hedge, wagging their heads. "Ah,
you are the man who killed the cuckoo yesterday! and already you are
come to this!"
Every day things got worse and worse. His wife used to have to hold him
down and feed him with a spoon, for if he took up a knife to eat with,
the bird hurled him upon it so violently as to put him in danger of his
life. Also it kept him ceaselessly awake with its cry, so that he was
worn to a shadow.
One day in the end of the month of June he heard a change come in its
horrible singing; instead of crying "Cuckoo" as before, it now broke its
note as is the cuckoo's habit to do before it goes abroad for the
winter, and cried "Cuck-cuck-Cuckoo, cuck-cuck-Cuckoo!" Some sort of a
hope came into the man's heart at that. "Presently it will be winter,"
he thought to himself, "and the cuckoo must die then, even if I have to
eat ice and snow to make him! if only I do not die first," he added, and
groaned, for he was now indeed but a shadow.
Soon after this the cuckoo left off its crying altogether. "Is he dead
already?" thought the man. All the other cuckoos had gone out of the
country: he grew quite happy with this new idea and began to put on
flesh.
[Illustration]
But one night, at the dead of night, the cuckoo felt a longing to be in
lands oversea come into its wings. The man woke with a loud cry, and
found himself sailing along through the air with only the stars
overhead, and the feeling of a great windmill inside him. And the cuckoo
was crying with a new note into the darkness: the cry it makes in far
lands oversea which is never heard in this country at all: a cry so
strange and terrible and wonderful that we have no word that will give
the sound of it. This man heard it, and at the sound his hair went quite
white with fright.
When his wife woke up in the morning, her husband was nowhere to be
seen. "So!" she said to herself, "the cuckoo has picked him up and
thrown him away somewhere; and I suppose he is dead. Well, he was an
uncomfortable husband to have; and it all came of being greedy."
She drew down the front blinds, and dressed herself in widow's mourning
all through the winter; and the next spring told another man he might
marry her if he liked. The other man happened to like the idea well
enough, for there was a house and a nice garden for anyone who would
have her. So the first fine day they went off to the Parson and got
married.
It was a very fine day, and well on in spring: and just as they were
coming back from the church they heard the note of a cuckoo.
The widow-bride felt a cold shiver go down her marrow. "It does make one
feel queer," she said; "that sound gave me quite a turn." "Hullo! look
at him up there!" cried the man. She stared up, and there was her
husband sailing through the air, looking more of a shadow than ever, and
very miserable with the voice of the cuckoo calling across the land from
the inside of him.
The cuckoo deposited him at his own doorstep in front of the bridal
couple.
"O you miserable scare-crow!" said his wife, "whatever brought you
back?" The unhappy man pointed below the surface, and the shut-up cuckoo
spoke for him.
"And here I find you marrying yourself to another!" cried her returned
spouse: but the other man had shrunk away in disgust and disappeared, so
there was no more trouble with him.
But the old trouble was as bad as ever, the cuckoo was just as
industrious in his cuckooings, and just as untimely: and the man went on
wearing himself to a shadow with vexation and grief.
So all the summer went by, till again the cuckoo was heard to break its
note into a double sound. But this time, no glimmer of hope came to the
man's mind. "Tie me fast to the bed," he said sorrowfully to his wife,
"and keep me there, lest this demon of a bird carry me away again as he
did last year; a thing which I could never survive a second time. Nay,
give me a sheath-knife to keep always with me, for if he carry me away
again I am resolved that he or I shall die."
So his wife gave him the sheath-knife, and by-and-by the bird became
very quiet, so that they almost hoped he was dead from old age.
But one night, at the dead of night, into the birds wings came the
longing to be once more in lands oversea. He stretched out his wings,
and the man woke with a loud cry. And behold, there were he and his
wife, sailing along under the stars tied into the feather-bed together,
all complete and compact; and inside him was the feeling of a great
windmill going round and round and round.
Then in despair he drew out his sheath-knife and cut himself open like
a haggis. And on a sudden out flew the cuckoo, all plucked and bald and
ready to roast. At the very same moment the bed-ticking burst, and away
went the cuckoo with his feathers trailing after him, uttering through
the darkness that strange terrible cry of the lands oversea.
But the man and his wife and the empty bed-ticking, they fell and they
fell and they fell right down, till they got to the bottom of the deep
blue sea; and there was an end of them.