CHAPTER XXIII.
THE fatiguing and protracted ceremonial of the Trial By Jury which Daffodil had, unaware of its nature, inflicted on herself, had made the despatch of her condemnation and execution, bewildering as it would have been at any rate to her unprepared mind, yet more bewildering. She had scarcely been able to feel that it was really her own sentence of death that was being pronounced, that was being carried into effect. All had been to her a confusion and a whirlwind, and it was as if in a dream that she passed into the stillness of the end. Her seat, descending at violent speed, touched the ground with a jerk, she fell forward on something soft and slippery, and knew that she lay on the very creature whose prey she was to be; but the shock was too great for conscious terror, she was stupefied.
In a few minutes she became very much surprised that she still existed, and then, encouraged by nothing happening, she got off the Boa Constrictor and wondered if it would let her alone long. It lay outstretched between her and the water‐barrier, as if to cut off the possibility of her egress, but it seemed not to be thinking about her; it did not so much as page: 345 turn its head, lying indeed so inert, and looking so much the same swollen bulk all along its expanse, that she could not tell which end was its head. She would have thought it a stuffed serpent skin but that it panted heavily and its breathing sounded like snores.
When some time had passed and still the Boa Constrictor showed no signs of stirring, Daffodil began to ponder over the desirability of trying to stride over it and run out through the water‐barrier. Her main fear, of course, was that it would at once arouse itself and seize her into its crushing coils: and she did not know, after all, that she should gain much by getting out of its cage; for what was to prevent its pursuing her? As to the getting out of the cage into the open part of the rock‐chamber, she saw no difficulty in that for either herself or the snake; there was evidently no separation but the two waterfalls, the red one which was in front of her, brightening and fading till it seemed almost fire instead of water, and the clear white one she knew to be beyond it. But whether, even if the Boa would let her, she could flee from the rock‐chamber she did not know: it might now be closed or guarded. And how, if she did get out of the rock‐chamber, to escape from the Royal Justice Hall and its precincts, and where to turn for a final refuge, were matters past all calculation.
“I can but try,” she said, speaking aloud to give herself the more cheer. At the sound of her voice the Boa made a cumbrous movement, as if to turn at one end—the end which, it was thus made apparent to her, was its head—but it gave it up and lay outspread again.
page: 346With her mind made up to the venture, Daffodil remained some time waiting, as she hoped, for the Boa to have relapsed into his disregard of her. And, as she gazed through the water, she became aware of a figure still seated in the niche, face fixed towards her. The Witness for Grachidichika was continuing at his post. Faint as her hopes had been, this sudden disappointment of them was too much, and she burst into irrepressible sobs. Again the Boa’s head began to turn; but again it relapsed into straightness and quiet.
After much reflection, Daffodil resolved to try the desperate venture of escaping in the sight of the Witness. He, like the Boa Constrictor, seemed of a sedate habit of body, so that perhaps she might rush past him and be she didn’t know where before he could interfere. If that failed, she would throw herself on his mercy and so beseech him that he must wish to spare her if he could. She nerved herself for a supreme effort, and sprang over the Boa Constrictor. The monster just twisted his head and gazed at her; he might have been paralysed for any sign of pursuit he gave. She flew towards the unsubstantial barrier, but, ere she could touch it, she stopped by a sudden constraint. A slight but firm tether fastened round her waist was secured to the seat in which she was sent down, and made her fast prisoner within the Boa’s cage.
She could not break the tether nor undo it; she had no means of severing it. Yet it seemed impossible that a little twist of fibres and fish‐bones was to deprive her of her last hopes of life. She sat down on a smooth corner of rock, and tried per‐ page: 347 severingly to gnaw the bond asunder. She made little way in her attempt, but the occupation at least enabled her to bear the suspense of her situation, and what barely perceptible progress she did make was proof that her final success was only a question of the duration of her opportunity for the work and her power of endurance of the starvation which threatened her if, now that she was considered to have perished, she continued to live. The duration of her opportunity was, however, not to be reckoned on. The snake might continue pacific, she began to count upon it that it would; but there was the Witness for Grachidichika. Even if he did not frustrate her purpose, his presence made it probable that attendants of some sort would enter the rock‐chamber: they would have to escort him thence, or at the least to bring him food, and he had now sat there so long that she feared their arrival at every moment. Hours wore on, however, and she was still unmolested, nibbling at the cord, which at last was visibly fretted where her teeth had been. She was not afraid now of the Boa; it had once or twice curved its head round sufficiently to gaze at her with a deeply mournful resignation which moved her to pity. Obviously the poor thing could not eat her. “It’s very hard for you, you unhappy creature,” she said sympathisingly, “after you’ve been starving so long, to be tantalised with me, when no doubt you can only eat Croäxaxicans and Grachidichikans. Poor sorrowful old fellow! But what can I do for you? I couldn’t make myself nice for you, even if I didn’t want to escape.” And the Boa Constrictor looked at her piteously, as if it understood, and big tears rolled from its eyes.
page: 348“It will get over its distaste to me,” flashed suddenly into her mind with renewed apprehension. But she saw it close its eyes in a lethargic snooze, and felt sure that for the present she was preserved from its appetite. And at last, for it was past bedtime and the Boa Constrictor’s snoring made her overpoweringly drowsy, she succumbed unawares to her fatigue and dropped sound asleep.
She was awakened in the middle of the night by voices calling her. “Heigh‐ho My! Can the Boa have taken her after all?” exclaimed some one, in a startled tone. Some one replied—could it be Croässaquagha?—“No; there she is, fallen asleep on the ground.” She roused herself with an effort and asked “Who wants me?”
“We do,” cried Brekekex, Croässaquagha, the Regius Professor of Everything, the Head Royal Physician, and Number Seventy Seven And A Half. She rubbed her eyes, and saw them all standing at the other side of the water‐barrier.
“Does the Boa Constrictor stir much?” asked Brekekex
“A little more than it did,” Daffodil replied. For, disturbed by the voices, it had lifted its head from the ground and, twisting it towards her more promptly than hitherto, was gazing at her with pensive yearning.
“Oh well, then, we won’t come in, thank you,” said Brekekex. “You must manage to saw through the tether yourself. Catch this.” And he threw her an implement such as the Croäxaxicans use for sawing through their ropes.
“Some of us might help her,” said Croässaquagha.
page: 349“It’s not a masculine sort of danger,” replied her husband. “Of course if it were I would face it myself, as Your Majesty knows.”
“Of course you would, my dear noble Your Majesty,” said Croässaquagha enthusiastically. “But I’ll go in to help her. And Seventy Seven And A Half may come with me.”
“Oh please, no,” cried the Under Royal Wardrobe‐maid, “I should scream if I went near the Boa, I’m quite sure.”
“No, no!” said Brekekex firmly. “A wife’s place in danger is under her husband’s shelter. Your Majesty can’t go in. The Regius Professor and the Head Royal Physician may help Daffodil.”
But the Regius Professor and the Head Royal Physician hesitated.
“There is positively no risk,” said King Brekekex.
“Never mind anybody coming in to help me,” interposed Daffodil. “It wouldn’t be a comfortable experiment; and I am getting on capitally—the cord will soon be sawn through.”
In a little while she was freed of her tether. “What shall I do now?” she asked.
“Come out,” was the reply.
In fact she had merely to advance and be in safety among her rescuers. Their chatter of delight drowned her fervent words of thanks, and covered the silence of her religious gratitude. But presently alarm revived in her. The Boa Constrictor was making a slight writhing, and regarding her with manifest emotion. “Look!” she exclaimed, catching King Brekekex’s arm. “It will follow me.”
They all burst out laughing at her panic. “Well! page: 350 You are easily frightened!” said King Brekekex. “Why, where do you think it would get out of its cage?”
Daffodil had not known that the flame‐like water through which she moved so easily was to the Boa Constrictor an impassable barrier; rather than touch it, or even approach it closely, it would have let itself be killed in agonies.
“But it can’t move now, even inside its cage,” said Brekekex triumphantly. “It is filled too full. It won’t be able to crawl for days. Wasn’t it a splendid idea?”
“Ah, my generous Your Majesty, do not rate my humble, though singular, imaginativeness too highly,” said Croässaquagha diffidently.
“Ah! to be sure—it was Your Majesty that proposed the trial and the mushrooms,” said Brekekex. “But it was I that thought of our finding out some plan to save her.”
“It was,” said Croässaquagha. “Daffodil, it was. Thus did my husband’s poetic genius forgive your well‐nigh fatal aberration. Thus did his lofty genius combine with what the too partial world is willing to call my genius too. He has saved you.”
“I hope no one is in danger for helping me,” Daffodil said anxiously.
“Not unless we are found out,” said Brekekex. “And we shan’t be, for no one will ever suspect us, and we are not likely to tell of ourselves.”
Daffodil was by this time growing faint for want of food. Croässaquagha observed it. “There are still a few mushrooms in the Speaker’s footstool,” she said to Seventy Seven And A Half. “Get them out and give them to Her defunct Pre‐eminence.” And, while Seventy Seven And A Half was removing a tall hollow stool from under the feet of the Witness for Grachidichika, to get out the mushrooms, Daffodil perceived that he was no other than the Speaker.
“It is lucky for you that he had to come because of the Ambassador’s being wanted at the wedding,” she was told in answer to her exclamation of surprise. And, while she made her much needed meal, they told her of what service he had been to her.
Croässaquagha and Seventy Seven And A Half had secretly repaired to Grachidichika, and, with the assistance of the Head Royal Physician, unsewed the Speaker, removed the material with which he was stuffed, and sewed him up again full of mushrooms brought them by Seventy Seven And A Half’s page: 352 Grachidichikan lover, who was easily persuaded to assist her in a conspiracy under the auspices of the Croäxaxican Prince about to be King of Grachidichika, and whose secrecy was, like Seventy Seven And A Half’s own, secured by the certainty that, even if there were chance of a pardon or a mitigation of punishment for Brekekex and his Queen, there would be no such chance for servants sharing in their offence. The Speaker’s chair, which had a hollow base, these conspirators heightened, as if to give it more dignity, by placing beneath it a square armless seat which was hollow; the platform on which it was to be carried was also hollow, and so was the footstool: all these they crammed with mushrooms. Then, when all was ready and Croässaquagha and her attendant had slipped quietly home by backways to Croässaquagha’s retired palace, Brekekex came, himself, with the State Escort from Croäxaxica which was to conduct the Speaker to the Croäxaxican Hall of Justice at the earliest possible moment, in order not to call public attention to the fact of the approaching execution at such a joyous time and to keep his venerable person safe from the jostling of the crowds the expectation of the wedding would presently gather in every canal. When the Speaker had been placed at his post as Witness for Grachidichika, Prince Brekekex expressed his intention of giving him his company for a while, and, refusing other attendance in this act of courtesy, sent for the Head Royal Physician and the Regius Professor of Everything. It was usual that these learned personages should inspect the State Boa Constrictor before and after an execution, so there page: 353 was no surprise at the Prince’s desiring their presence; it was supposed that he wished, while, as Heir Apparent of Grachidichika, he displayed a condescending deference to the Speaker by remaining with him, to take the opportunity of observing the creature in their instructive society.
But, when the Prince and the Regius Professor of Everything and the Head Royal Physician were alone with the Speaker and the Boa Constrictor, their conduct was very different from what was supposed. One of them, by turns, kept watch at the entrance of the rock‐chamber, the other two were steadily at work getting out the mushrooms from the Speaker and his appurtenances and giving them to the Boa Constrictor by means of two long poles of joined reeds with bowls at the end of them, which were kept for the purpose of feeding him. The Boa Constrictor was for some time much pleased. The time for feeding it, in order to keep it alive for its State duty, was, unless it had a High Traitor within the period, at the expiration of every third year, and they usually gave it mushrooms, which it rather liked. The three years had almost expired, and it was ravenously hungry. So it swallowed its welcome meal with satisfaction, and had soon taken in enough to feel agreeably encumbered. Then it became doubtful at each helping; yet its natural greediness led it to accept what was given it, till it grew so burdened with overfulness that it shut its mouth determinedly. But they tempted it with a mushroom of such extra size that it could not resist, and then, instead of withdrawing the pole, they managed to keep its mouth page: 354 open with it, and with the other pole they persevered in inserting more and more mushrooms, ramming them down tight into its body so that they could go on packing it as full as its skin could swell to hold, until it was quite stiff and unable to move. That was why it could not touch Daffodil. And the reason Brekekex and Croässaquagha had got Daffodil to ask for a trial was that there might be time for thus feeding the Boa Constrictor till it was disabled.
They had had difficulty in setting up the Speaker again. They had fastened him together and blown into him till he was puffed out enough to pass muster, seated in his niche, but they had been terribly afraid that some chance touch might make him collapse. And he did collapse now on their moving him.
He was to be Daffodil’s helper still. The plan for her escape was that she was to be sewn inside him, instead of his stuffing. She demurred, but there was no other possible way for removing her to safety and concealing that the Boa Constrictor had been fed with something that was not she. The Speaker was much shorter than Daffodil, and her limbs would not have been sufficiently hidden but that Croässaquagha and Seventy Seven And A Half had carefully arrayed him in extra large robes and a mantle of Royal dimensions which they now arranged and secured so as completely to cover her as she sat in his chair. The arrangements being completed, her friends withdrew: for day was at hand, and they feared that some one might enter. at an early hour in the morning Brekekex would page: 355 return with a Guard and retinue which were to escort the Speaker back to Grachidichika. So, with encouraging words, they left her in the niche; and she was still so weary that she soon fell asleep again.
