From 'A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court':
copyright 1889, by Charles L. Webster and Company
My expedition was all the talk that day and that night, and the boys
were very good to me, and made much of me, and seemed to have forgotten
their vexation and disappointment, and come to be as anxious for me to
hive those ogres and set those ripe old virgins loose as if it were
themselves that had the contract. Well, they _were_ good children--but
just children, that is all. And they gave me no end of points about how
to scout for giants, and how to scoop them in; and they told me all
sorts of charms against enchantments, and gave me salves and other
rubbish to put on my wounds. But it never occurred to one of them to
reflect that if I was such a wonderful necromancer as I was pretending
to be, I ought not to need salves, or instructions, or charms against
enchantments, and least of all arms and armor, on a foray of any
kind--even against fire-spouting dragons and devils hot from perdition,
let alone such poor adversaries as these I was after, these commonplace
ogres of the back settlements.
I was to have an early breakfast, and start at dawn, for that was the
usual way; but I had the demon's own time with my armor, and this
delayed me a little. It is troublesome to get into, and there is so much
detail. First you wrap a layer or two of blanket around your body for a
sort of cushion, and to keep off the cold iron; then you put on your
sleeves and shirt of chain-mail--these are made of small steel links
woven together, and they form a fabric so flexible that if you toss your
shirt on to the floor it slumps into a pile like a peck of wet fish-net;
it is very heavy and is nearly the uncomfortablest material in the world
for a night shirt, yet plenty used it for that--tax collectors and
reformers, and one-horse kings with a defective title, and those sorts
of people; then you put on your shoes--flatboats roofed over with
interleaving bands of steel--and screw your clumsy spurs into the heels.
Next you buckle your greaves on your legs and your cuisses on your
thighs; then come your backplate and your breastplate, and you begin to
feel crowded; then you hitch on to the breastplate the half-petticoat of
broad overlapping bands of steel which hangs down in front but is
scolloped out behind so you can sit down, and isn't any real improvement
on an inverted coal-scuttle, either for looks, or for wear, or to wipe
your hands on; next you belt on your sword; then you put your stove-pipe
joints on to your arms, your iron gauntlets on to your hands, your iron
rat-trap on to your head, with a rag of steel web hitched on to it to
hang over the back of your neck--and there you are, snug as a candle in
a candle-mold. This is no time to dance. Well, a man that is packed away
like that is a nut that isn't worth the cracking, there is so little of
the meat, when you get down to it, by comparison with the shell.
The boys helped me, or I never could have got in. Just as we finished,
Sir Bedivere happened in, and I saw that as like as not I hadn't chosen
the most convenient outfit for a long trip. How stately he looked; and
tall and broad and grand. He had on his head a conical steel casque that
only came down to his ears, and for visor had only a narrow steel bar
that extended down to his upper lip and protected his nose; and all the
rest of him, from neck to heel, was flexible chain-mail, trousers and
all. But pretty much all of him was hidden under his outside garment,
which of course was of chain-mail, as I said, and hung straight from his
shoulders to his ankles; and from his middle to the bottom, both before
and behind, was divided, so that he could ride and let the skirts hang
down on each side. He was going grailing, and it was just the outfit for
it, too. I would have given a good deal for that ulster, but it was too
late now to be fooling around. The sun was just up; the king and the
court were all on hand to see me off and wish me luck; so it wouldn't be
etiquette for me to tarry. You don't get on your horse yourself; no, if
you tried it you would get disappointed. They carry you out, just as
they carry a sun-struck man to the drug-store, and put you on, and help
get you to rights, and fix your feet in the stirrups; and all the while
you do feel so strange and stuffy and like somebody else--like somebody
that has been married on a sudden, or struck by lightning, or something
like that, and hasn't quite fetched around yet, and is sort of numb, and
can't just get his bearings. Then they stood up the mast they called a
spear in its socket by my left foot, and I gripped it with my hand;
lastly they hung my shield around my neck, and I was all complete and
ready to up anchor and get to sea. Everybody was as good to me as they
could be, and a maid of honor gave me the stirrup-cup her own self.
There was nothing more to do now but for that damsel to get up behind me
on a pillion, which she did, and put an arm or so around me to hold on.
And so we started; and everybody gave us a good-by and waved their
handkerchiefs or helmets. And everybody we met, going down the hill and
through the village, was respectful to us except some shabby little boys
on the outskirts. They said:--
"Oh, what a guy!" and hove clods at us.
In my experience boys are the same in all ages. They don't respect
anything, they don't care for anything or anybody. They say "Go up,
bald-head!" to the prophet going his unoffending way in the gray of
antiquity; they sass me in the holy gloom of the Middle Ages; and I had
seen them act the same way in Buchanan's administration; I remember,
because I was there and helped. The prophet had his bears and settled
with his boys; and I wanted to get down and settle with mine, but it
wouldn't answer, because I couldn't have got up again. I hate a country
without a derrick.
Straight off, we were in the country. It was most lovely and pleasant in
those sylvan solitudes in the early cool morning in the first freshness
of autumn. From hilltops we saw fair green valleys lying spread out
below, with streams winding through them, and island groves of trees
here and there, and huge lonely oaks scattered about and casting black
blots of shade; and beyond the valleys we saw the ranges of hills, blue
with haze, stretching away in billowy perspective to the horizon, with
at wide intervals a dim fleck of white or gray on a wave-summit, which
we knew was a castle. We crossed broad natural lawns sparkling with dew,
and we moved like spirits, the cushioned turf giving out no sound of
footfall; we dreamed along through glades in a mist of green light that
got its tint from the sun-drenched roof of leaves overhead, and by our
feet the clearest and coldest of runlets went frisking and gossiping
over its reefs and making a sort of whispering music comfortable to
hear; and at times we left the world behind and entered into the solemn
great deeps and rich gloom of the forest, where furtive wild things
whisked and scurried by and were gone before you could even get your eye
on the place where the noise was; and where only the earliest birds were
turning out and getting to business, with a song here and a quarrel
yonder and a mysterious far-off hammering and drumming for worms on a
tree-trunk away somewhere in the impenetrable remoteness of the woods.
And by-and-by out we would swing again into the glare.
About the third or fourth or fifth time that we swung out into the
glare--it was along there somewhere, a couple of hours or so after
sun-up--it wasn't as pleasant as it had been. It was beginning to get
hot. This was quite noticeable. We had a very long pull, after that,
without any shade. Now it is curious how progressively little frets grow
and multiply after they once get a start. Things which I didn't mind at
all at first, I began to mind now--and more and more, too, all the time.
The first ten or fifteen times I wanted my handkerchief I didn't seem to
care; I got along, and said never mind, it isn't any matter, and dropped
it out of my mind. But now it was different: I wanted it all the time;
it was nag, nag, nag, right along, and no rest; I couldn't get it out of
my mind; and so at last I lost my temper, and said hang a man that
would make a suit of armor without any pockets in it. You see I had my
handkerchief in my helmet, and some other things; but it was that kind
of a helmet that you can't take off by yourself. That hadn't occurred to
me when I put it there; and in fact I didn't know it. I supposed it
would be particularly convenient there. And so now the thought of its
being there, so handy and close by, and yet not get-at-able, made it all
the worse and the harder to bear. Yes, the thing that you can't get is
the thing that you want, mainly; every one has noticed that. Well, it
took my mind off from everything else; took it clear off and centred it
in my helmet; and mile after mile there it stayed, imagining the
handkerchief, picturing the handkerchief; and it was bitter and
aggravating to have the salt sweat keep trickling down into my eyes, and
I couldn't get at it. It seems like a little thing on paper, but it was
not a little thing at all; it was the most real kind of misery. I would
not say it if it was not so. I made up my mind that I would carry along
a reticule next time, let it look how it might and people say what they
would. Of course these iron dudes of the Round Table would think it was
scandalous, and maybe raise sheol about it, but as for me, give me
comfort first and style afterwards. So we jogged along, and now and then
we struck a stretch of dust, and it would tumble up in clouds and get
into my nose and make me sneeze and cry; and of course I said things I
oughtn't to have said,--I don't deny that. I am not better than others.
We couldn't seem to meet anybody in this lonesome Britain, not even an
ogre; and in the mood I was in then, it was well for the ogre; that is,
an ogre with a handkerchief. Most knights would have thought of nothing
but getting his armor; but so I got his bandana, he could keep his
hardware for all me.
Meantime it was getting hotter and hotter in there. You see the sun was
beating down and warming up the iron more and more all the time. Well,
when you are hot, that way, every little thing irritates you. When I
trotted I rattled like a crate of dishes, and that annoyed me; and
moreover I couldn't seem to stand that shield slatting and banging, now
about my breast, now around my back; and if I dropped into a walk my
joints creaked and screeched in that wearisome way that a wheelbarrow
does, and as we didn't create any breeze at that gait, I was like to get
fried in that stove; and besides, the quieter you went the heavier the
iron settled down on you, and the more and more tons you seemed to weigh
every minute. And you had to be always changing hands and passing your
spear over to the other foot, it got so irksome for one hand to hold it
long at a time.
Well, you know when you perspire that way, in rivers, there comes a time
when you--when you--well, when you itch. You are inside, your hands are
outside: so there you are; nothing but iron between. It is not a light
thing, let it sound as it may. First it is one place; then another; then
some more; and it goes on spreading and spreading, and at last the
territory is all occupied, and nobody can imagine what you feel like,
nor how unpleasant it is. And when it had got to the worst, and it
seemed to me that I could not stand anything more, a fly got in through
the bars and settled on my nose, and the bars were stuck and wouldn't
work, and I couldn't get the visor up; and I could only shake my head,
which was baking hot by this time, and the fly--well, you know how a fly
acts when he has got a certainty: he only minded the shaking enough to
change from nose to lip, and lip to ear, and buzz and buzz all around in
there, and keep on lighting and biting in a way that a person already so
distressed as I was simply could not stand. So I gave in, and got
Alisande to unship the helmet and relieve me of it. Then she emptied the
conveniences out of it and fetched it full of water, and I drank and
then stood up and she poured the rest down inside the armor. One cannot
think how refreshing it was. She continued to fetch and pour until I was
well soaked and thoroughly comfortable.
It was good to have a rest--and peace. But nothing is quite perfect in
this life at any time. I had made a pipe a while back, and also some
pretty fair tobacco; not the real thing, but what some of the Indians
use: the inside bark of the willow, dried. These comforts had been in
the helmet, and now I had them again, but no matches.
Gradually, as the time wore along, one annoying fact was borne in upon
my understanding--that we were weather-bound. An armed novice cannot
mount his horse without help and plenty of it. Sandy was not enough; not
enough for me, anyway. We had to wait until somebody should come along.
Waiting in silence would have been agreeable enough, for I was full of
matter for reflection, and wanted to give it a chance to work. I wanted
to try and think out how it was that rational or even half-rational men
could ever have learned to wear armor, considering its inconveniences;
and how they had managed to keep up such a fashion for generations when
it was plain that what I had suffered to-day they had had to suffer all
the days of their lives. I wanted to think that out; and moreover I
wanted to think out some way to reform this evil and persuade the people
to let the foolish fashion die out: but thinking was out of the question
in the circumstances. You couldn't think where Sandy was. She was a
quite biddable creature and good-hearted, but she had a flow of talk
that was as steady as a mill and made your head sore like the drays and
wagons in a city. If she had had a cork she would have been a comfort.
But you can't cork that kind; they would die. Her clack was going all
day, and you would think something would surely happen to her works
by-and-by; but no, they never got out of order; and she never had to
slack up for words. She could grind and pump and churn and buzz by the
week, and never stop to oil up or blow out. And yet the result was just
nothing but wind. She never had any ideas, any more than a fog has. She
was a perfect blatherskite; I mean for jaw, jaw, jaw, talk, talk, talk,
jabber, jabber, jabber;--but just as good as she could be. I hadn't
minded her mill that morning, on account of having that hornet's nest of
other troubles; but more than once in the afternoon I had to say:--
"Take a rest, child; the way you are using up all the domestic air, the
kingdom will have to go to importing it by to-morrow, and it's a low
enough treasury without that."
By permission of S. L. Clemens and his publishers.