CHAPTER XI
THE YANKEE IN SEARCH OF ADVENTURES

THERE never was such a country for wandering
liars; and they were of both sexes. Hardly a
month went by without one of these tramps arriving;
and generally loaded with a tale about some princess
or other wanting help to get her out of some far-away
castle where she was held in captivity by a lawless
scoundrel, usually a giant. Now you would think that
the first thing the king would do after listening to such
a novelette from an entire stranger, would be to ask
for credentials -- yes, and a pointer or two as to
locality of castle, best route to it, and so on. But
nobody ever thought of so simple and common-sense
a thing at that. No, everybody swallowed these peo-
ple's lies whole, and never asked a question of any
sort or about anything. Well, one day when I was
not around, one of these people came along -- it was a
she one, this time -- and told a tale of the usual pat-
tern. Her mistress was a captive in a vast and gloomy
castle, along with forty-four other young and beautiful
girls, pretty much all of them princesses; they had
been languishing in that cruel captivity for twenty-six
years; the masters of the castle were three stupendous
brothers, each with four arms and one eye -- the eye in
the center of the forehead, and as big as a fruit. Sort of
fruit not mentioned; their usual slovenliness in statistics.

Would you believe it? The king and the whole
Round Table were in raptures over this preposterous
opportunity for adventure. Every knight of the Table
jumped for the chance, and begged for it; but to their
vexation and chagrin the king conferred it upon me,
who had not asked for it at all.

By an effort, I contained my joy when Clarence
brought me the news. But he -- he could not contain
his. His mouth gushed delight and gratitude in a
steady discharge -- delight in my good fortune, grati-
tude to the king for this splendid mark of his favor for
me. He could keep neither his legs nor his body still,
but pirouetted about the place in an airy ecstasy of happiness.

On my side, I could have cursed the kindness that
conferred upon me this benefaction, but I kept my
vexation under the surface for policy's sake, and did
what I could to let on to be glad. Indeed, I SAID I
was glad. And in a way it was true; I was as glad as
a person is when he is scalped.

Well, one must make the best of things, and not
waste time with useless fretting, but get down to busi-
ness and see what can be done. In all lies there is
wheat among the chaff; I must get at the wheat in this
case: so I sent for the girl and she came. She was a
comely enough creature, and soft and modest, but, if
signs went for anything, she didn't know as much as a
lady's watch. I said:

"My dear, have you been questioned as to particulars?"

She said she hadn't.

"Well, I didn't expect you had, but I thought I
would ask, to make sure; it's the way I've been raised.
Now you mustn't take it unkindly if I remind you that
as we don't know you, we must go a little slow. You
may be all right, of course, and we'll hope that you
are; but to take it for granted isn't business. YOU
understand that. I'm obliged to ask you a few ques-
tions; just answer up fair and square, and don't be
afraid. Where do you live, when you are at home?"

"In the land of Moder, fair sir."

"Land of Moder. I don't remember hearing of it
before. Parents living?"

"As to that, I know not if they be yet on live, sith
it is many years that I have lain shut up in the castle."

"Your name, please?"

"I hight the Demoiselle Alisande la Carteloise, an it
please you."

"Do you know anybody here who can identify you?"

"That were not likely, fair lord, I being come hither
now for the first time."

"Have you brought any letters -- any documents --
any proofs that you are trustworthy and truthful?"

"Of a surety, no; and wherefore should I? Have
I not a tongue, and cannot I say all that myself?"

"But YOUR saying it, you know, and somebody
else's saying it, is different."

"Different? How might that be? I fear me I do
not understand."

"Don't UNDERSTAND? Land of -- why, you see --
you see -- why, great Scott, can't you understand a
little thing like that? Can't you understand the
difference between your -- WHY do you look so inno-
cent and idiotic!"

"I? In truth I know not, but an it were the will of God."

"Yes, yes, I reckon that's about the size of it.
Don't mind my seeming excited; I'm not. Let us
change the subject. Now as to this castle, with forty-
five princesses in it, and three ogres at the head of it,
tell me -- where is this harem?"

"Harem?"

"The CASTLE, you understand; where is the castle?"

"Oh, as to that, it is great, and strong, and well beseen,
and lieth in a far country. Yes, it is many leagues."

"HOW many?"

"Ah, fair sir, it were woundily hard to tell, they
are so many, and do so lap the one upon the other,
and being made all in the same image and tincted with
the same color, one may not know the one league from
its fellow, nor how to count them except they be taken
apart, and ye wit well it were God's work to do that,
being not within man's capacity; for ye will note --"

"Hold on, hold on, never mind about the distance;
WHEREABOUTS does the castle lie? What's the direction
from here?"

"Ah, please you sir, it hath no direction from
here; by reason that the road lieth not straight, but
turneth evermore; wherefore the direction of its place
abideth not, but is some time under the one sky and
anon under another, whereso if ye be minded that it is
in the east, and wend thitherward, ye shall observe that
the way of the road doth yet again turn upon itself by
the space of half a circle, and this marvel happing
again and yet again and still again, it will grieve you
that you had thought by vanities of the mind to thwart
and bring to naught the will of Him that giveth not a
castle a direction from a place except it pleaseth Him,
and if it please Him not, will the rather that even all
castles and all directions thereunto vanish out of the
earth, leaving the places wherein they tarried desolate
and vacant, so warning His creatures that where He
will He will, and where He will not He --"

"Oh, that's all right, that's all right, give us a rest;
never mind about the direction, HANG the direction -- I
beg pardon, I beg a thousand pardons, I am not well
to-day; pay no attention when I soliloquize, it is an
old habit, an old, bad habit, and hard to get rid of
when one's digestion is all disordered with eating food
that was raised forever and ever before he was born;
good land! a man can't keep his functions regular on
spring chickens thirteen hundred years old. But come
-- never mind about that; let's -- have you got such
a thing as a map of that region about you? Now a
good map --"

"Is it peradventure that manner of thing which of
late the unbelievers have brought from over the great
seas, which, being boiled in oil, and an onion and salt
added thereto, doth --"

"What, a map? What are you talking about?
Don't you know what a map is? There, there, never
mind, don't explain, I hate explanations; they fog a
thing up so that you can't tell anything about it. Run
along, dear; good-day; show her the way, Clarence."

Oh, well, it was reasonably plain, now, why these
donkeys didn't prospect these liars for details. It
may be that this girl had a fact in her somewhere, but
I don't believe you could have sluiced it out with a
hydraulic; nor got it with the earlier forms of blasting,
even; it was a case for dynamite. Why, she was a
perfect ass; and yet the king and his knights had
listened to her as if she had been a leaf out of the
gospel. It kind of sizes up the whole party. And
think of the simple ways of this court: this wandering
wench hadn't any more trouble to get access to the
king in his palace than she would have had to get into
the poorhouse in my day and country. In fact, he
was glad to see her, glad to hear her tale; with that
adventure of hers to offer, she was as welcome as a
corpse is to a coroner.

Just as I was ending-up these reflections, Clarence
came back. I remarked upon the barren result of my
efforts with the girl; hadn't got hold of a single point
that could help me to find the castle. The youth
looked a little surprised, or puzzled, or something, and
intimated that he had been wondering to himself what
I had wanted to ask the girl all those questions for.

"Why, great guns," I said, "don't I want to find
the castle? And how else would I go about it?"

"La, sweet your worship, one may lightly answer
that, I ween. She will go with thee. They always
do. She will ride with thee."

"Ride with me? Nonsense!"

"But of a truth she will. She will ride with thee.
Thou shalt see."

"What? She browse around the hills and scour the
woods with me -- alone -- and I as good as engaged to
be married? Why, it's scandalous. Think how it would look."

My, the dear face that rose before me! The boy
was eager to know all about this tender matter. I
swore him to secresy and then whispered her name --
"Puss Flanagan." He looked disappointed, and said
he didn't remember the countess. How natural it was
for the little courtier to give her a rank. He asked me
where she lived.

"In East Har--" I came to myself and stopped,
a little confused; then I said, "Never mind, now; I'll
tell you some time."

And might he see her? Would I let him see her some day?

It was but a little thing to promise -- thirteen hun-
dred years or so -- and he so eager; so I said Yes.
But I sighed; I couldn't help it. And yet there was
no sense in sighing, for she wasn't born yet. But that
is the way we are made: we don't reason, where we
feel; we just feel.

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 vexa-
tion and disappointment, and come to be as anxious
for me to hive those ogres and set those ripe old vir-
gins loose as if it were themselves that had the con-
tract. Well, they WERE good children -- but just chil-
dren, 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 en-
chantments, 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 necro-
mancer 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 onto 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
-- flat-boats 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 onto 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 onto your arms, your iron
gauntlets onto your hands, your iron rat-trap onto
your head, with a rag of steel web hitched onto it to
hang over the back of your neck -- and there you are,
snug as a candle in a candle-mould. 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 con-
venient 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 dis-
appointed. 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 mar-
ried 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-
bye 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 any-
thing or anybody. They say "Go up, baldhead" 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.

****

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