CHAPTER XXIII
RESTORATION OF THE FOUNTAIN

SATURDAY noon I went to the well and looked on
a while. Merlin was still burning smoke-powders,
and pawing the air, and muttering gibberish as hard as
ever, but looking pretty down-hearted, for of course
he had not started even a perspiration in that well yet.
Finally I said:

"How does the thing promise by this time, partner?"

"Behold, I am even now busied with trial of the
powerfulest enchantment known to the princes of the oc-
cult arts in the lands of the East; an it fail me, naught
can avail. Peace, until I finish."

He raised a smoke this time that darkened all the
region, and must have made matters uncomfortable for
the hermits, for the wind was their way, and it rolled
down over their dens in a dense and billowy fog. He
poured out volumes of speech to match, and contorted
his body and sawed the air with his hands in a most
extraordinary way. At the end of twenty minutes he
dropped down panting, and about exhausted. Now
arrived the abbot and several hundred monks and nuns,
and behind them a multitude of pilgrims and a couple
of acres of foundlings, all drawn by the prodigious smoke,
and all in a grand state of excitement. The abbot
inquired anxiously for results. Merlin said:

"If any labor of mortal might break the spell that
binds these waters, this which I have but just essayed
had done it. It has failed; whereby I do now know
that that which I had feared is a truth established; the
sign of this failure is, that the most potent spirit known
to the magicians of the East, and whose name none
may utter and live, has laid his spell upon this well.
The mortal does not breathe, nor ever will, who can
penetrate the secret of that spell, and without that
secret none can break it. The water will flow no more
forever, good Father. I have done what man could.
Suffer me to go."

Of course this threw the abbot into a good deal of a
consternation. He turned to me with the signs of it in
his face, and said:

"Ye have heard him. Is it true?"

"Part of it is."

"Not all, then, not all! What part is true?"

"That that spirit with the Russian name has put his
spell upon the well."

"God's wownds, then are we ruined!"

"Possibly."

"But not certainly? Ye mean, not certainly?"

"That is it."

"Wherefore, ye also mean that when he saith none
can break the spell --"

"Yes, when he says that, he says what isn't neces-
sarily true. There are conditions under which an effort
to break it may have some chance -- that is, some
small, some trifling chance -- of success."

"The conditions --"

"Oh, they are nothing difficult. Only these: I
want the well and the surroundings for the space of
half a mile, entirely to myself from sunset to-day until
I remove the ban -- and nobody allowed to cross the
ground but by my authority."

"Are these all?"

"Yes."

"And you have no fear to try?"

"Oh, none. One may fail, of course; and one
may also succeed. One can try, and I am ready to
chance it. I have my conditions?"

"These and all others ye may name. I will issue
commandment to that effect."

"Wait," said Merlin, with an evil smile. "Ye
wit that he that would break this spell must know that
spirit's name?"

"Yes, I know his name."

"And wit you also that to know it skills not of
itself, but ye must likewise pronounce it? Ha-ha!
Knew ye that?"

"Yes, I knew that, too."

"You had that knowledge! Art a fool? Are ye
minded to utter that name and die?"

"Utter it? Why certainly. I would utter it if it was Welsh."

"Ye are even a dead man, then; and I go to tell Arthur."

"That's all right. Take your gripsack and get
along. The thing for YOU to do is to go home and
work the weather, John W. Merlin."

It was a home shot, and it made him wince; for he
was the worst weather-failure in the kingdom. When-
ever he ordered up the danger-signals along the coast
there was a week's dead calm, sure, and every time he
prophesied fair weather it rained brickbats. But I kept
him in the weather bureau right along, to undermine
his reputation. However, that shot raised his bile, and
instead of starting home to report my death, he said
he would remain and enjoy it.

My two experts arrived in the evening, and pretty
well fagged, for they had traveled double tides. They
had pack-mules along, and had brought everything I
needed -- tools, pump, lead pipe, Greek fire, sheaves
of big rockets, roman candles, colored fire sprays,
electric apparatus, and a lot of sundries -- everything
necessary for the stateliest kind of a miracle. They
got their supper and a nap, and about midnight we
sallied out through a solitude so wholly vacant and
complete that it quite overpassed the required condi-
tions. We took possession of the well and its sur-
roundings. My boys were experts in all sorts of
things, from the stoning up of a well to the construct-
ing of a mathematical instrument. An hour before
sunrise we had that leak mended in ship-shape fashion,
and the water began to rise. Then we stowed our fire-
works in the chapel, locked up the place, and went home to bed.

Before the noon mass was over, we were at the well
again; for there was a deal to do yet, and I was deter-
mined to spring the miracle before midnight, for busi-
ness reasons: for whereas a miracle worked for the
Church on a week-day is worth a good deal, it is worth
six times as much if you get it in on a Sunday. In
nine hours the water had risen to its customary level --
that is to say, it was within twenty-three feet of the
top. We put in a little iron pump, one of the first
turned out by my works near the capital; we bored
into a stone reservoir which stood against the outer
wall of the well-chamber and inserted a section of lead
pipe that was long enough to reach to the door of the
chapel and project beyond the threshold, where the
gushing water would be visible to the two hundred and
fifty acres of people I was intending should be present
on the flat plain in front of this little holy hillock at
the proper time.

We knocked the head out of an empty hogshead and
hoisted this hogshead to the flat roof of the chapel,
where we clamped it down fast, poured in gunpowder
till it lay loosely an inch deep on the bottom, then we
stood up rockets in the hogshead as thick as they
could loosely stand, all the different breeds of rockets
there are; and they made a portly and imposing sheaf,
I can tell you. We grounded the wire of a pocket
electrical battery in that powder, we placed a whole
magazine of Greek fire on each corner of the roof --
blue on one corner, green on another, red on another,
and purple on the last -- and grounded a wire in each.

About two hundred yards off, in the flat, we built a
pen of scantlings, about four feet high, and laid planks
on it, and so made a platform. We covered it with
swell tapestries borrowed for the occasion, and topped
it off with the abbot's own throne. When you are
going to do a miracle for an ignorant race, you want
to get in every detail that will count; you want to
make all the properties impressive to the public eye;
you want to make matters comfortable for your head
guest; then you can turn yourself loose and play your
effects for all they are worth. I know the value of
these things, for I know human nature. You can't
throw too much style into a miracle. It costs trouble,
and work, and sometimes money; but it pays in the
end. Well, we brought the wires to the ground at the
chapel, and then brought them under the ground to
the platform, and hid the batteries there. We put a
rope fence a hundred feet square around the platform
to keep off the common multitude, and that finished
the work. My idea was, doors open at 10:30, per-
formance to begin at 11:25 sharp. I wished I could
charge admission, but of course that wouldn't answer.
I instructed my boys to be in the chapel as early as
10, before anybody was around, and be ready to man
the pumps at the proper time, and make the fur fly.
Then we went home to supper.

The news of the disaster to the well had traveled far
by this time; and now for two or three days a steady
avalanche of people had been pouring into the valley.
The lower end of the valley was become one huge
camp; we should have a good house, no question
about that. Criers went the rounds early in the eve-
ning and announced the coming attempt, which put
every pulse up to fever heat. They gave notice that
the abbot and his official suite would move in state and
occupy the platform at 10:30, up to which time all the
region which was under my ban must be clear; the
bells would then cease from tolling, and this sign
should be permission to the multitudes to close in and
take their places.

I was at the platform and all ready to do the honors
when the abbot's solemn procession hove in sight --
which it did not do till it was nearly to the rope fence,
because it was a starless black night and no torches
permitted. With it came Merlin, and took a front seat
on the platform; he was as good as his word for once.
One could not see the multitudes banked together be-
yond the ban, but they were there, just the same.
The moment the bells stopped, those banked masses
broke and poured over the line like a vast black wave,
and for as much as a half hour it continued to flow,
and then it solidified itself, and you could have walked
upon a pavement of human heads to -- well, miles.

We had a solemn stage-wait, now, for about twenty
minutes -- a thing I had counted on for effect; it is
always good to let your audience have a chance to
work up its expectancy. At length, out of the silence
a noble Latin chant -- men's voices -- broke and
swelled up and rolled away into the night, a majestic
tide of melody. I had put that up, too, and it was one
of the best effects I ever invented. When it was finished
I stood up on the platform and extended my hands
abroad, for two minutes, with my face uplifted -- that
always produces a dead hush -- and then slowly pro-
nounced this ghastly word with a kind of awfulness which
caused hundreds to tremble, and many women to faint:

"Constantinopolitanischerdudelsackspfeifenmachersgesellschafft!"

Just as I was moaning out the closing hunks of that
word, I touched off one of my electric connections
and all that murky world of people stood revealed in a
hideous blue glare! It was immense -- that effect!
Lots of people shrieked, women curled up and quit in
every direction, foundlings collapsed by platoons. The
abbot and the monks crossed themselves nimbly and
their lips fluttered with agitated prayers. Merlin held
his grip, but he was astonished clear down to his
corns; he had never seen anything to begin with that,
before. Now was the time to pile in the effects. I
lifted my hands and groaned out this word -- as it were
in agony:

"Nihilistendynamittheaterkaestchensspreng-
ungsattentaetsversuchungen!"

-- and turned on the red fire! You should have heard
that Atlantic of people moan and howl when that
crimson hell joined the blue! After sixty seconds I shouted:

"Transvaaltruppentropentransporttrampelthier-
treibertrauungsthraenentragoedie!"

-- and lit up the green fire! After waiting only forty
seconds this time, I spread my arms abroad and
thundered out the devastating syllables of this word of
words:

"Mekkamuselmannenmassenmenchenmoerdermohrenmutter-
marmormonumentenmacher!"

-- and whirled on the purple glare! There they were,
all going at once, red, blue, green, purple! -- four
furious volcanoes pouring vast clouds of radiant smoke
aloft, and spreading a blinding rainbowed noonday to
the furthest confines of that valley. In the distance
one could see that fellow on the pillar standing rigid
against the background of sky, his seesaw stopped for
the first time in twenty years. I knew the boys were
at the pump now and ready. So I said to the abbot:

"The time is come, Father. I am about to pro-
nounce the dread name and command the spell to dis-
solve. You want to brace up, and take hold of some-
thing." Then I shouted to the people: "Behold, in
another minute the spell will be broken, or no mortal
can break it. If it break, all will know it, for you will
see the sacred water gush from the chapel door!"

I stood a few moments, to let the hearers have a
chance to spread my announcement to those who
couldn't hear, and so convey it to the furthest ranks,
then I made a grand exhibition of extra posturing and
gesturing, and shouted:

"Lo, I command the fell spirit that possesses the
holy fountain to now disgorge into the skies all the
infernal fires that still remain in him, and straightway
dissolve his spell and flee hence to the pit, there to lie
bound a thousand years. By his own dread name I
command it -- BGWJJILLIGKKK!"

Then I touched off the hogshead of rockets, and a
vast fountain of dazzling lances of fire vomited itself
toward the zenith with a hissing rush, and burst in
mid-sky into a storm of flashing jewels! One mighty
groan of terror started up from the massed people --
then suddenly broke into a wild hosannah of joy -- for
there, fair and plain in the uncanny glare, they saw
the freed water leaping forth! The old abbot could not
speak a word, for tears and the chokings in his throat;
without utterance of any sort, he folded me in his arms
and mashed me. It was more eloquent than speech.
And harder to get over, too, in a country where there
were really no doctors that were worth a damaged nickel.

You should have seen those acres of people throw
themselves down in that water and kiss it; kiss it, and
pet it, and fondle it, and talk to it as if it were alive,
and welcome it back with the dear names they gave
their darlings, just as if it had been a friend who was
long gone away and lost, and was come home again.
Yes, it was pretty to see, and made me think more of
them than I had done before.

I sent Merlin home on a shutter. He had caved in
and gone down like a landslide when I pronounced that
fearful name, and had never come to since. He never
had heard that name before, -- neither had I -- but to
him it was the right one. Any jumble would have
been the right one. He admitted, afterward, that
that spirit's own mother could not have pronounced
that name better than I did. He never could under-
stand how I survived it, and I didn't tell him. It is
only young magicians that give away a secret like that.
Merlin spent three months working enchantments to
try to find out the deep trick of how to pronounce that
name and outlive it. But he didn't arrive.

When I started to the chapel, the populace un-
covered and fell back reverently to make a wide way
for me, as if I had been some kind of a superior being
-- and I was. I was aware of that. I took along a
night shift of monks, and taught them the mystery of
the pump, and set them to work, for it was plain that
a good part of the people out there were going to sit
up with the water all night, consequently it was but
right that they should have all they wanted of it. To
those monks that pump was a good deal of a miracle
itself, and they were full of wonder over it; and of
admiration, too, of the exceeding effectiveness of its
performance.

It was a great night, an immense night. There was
reputation in it. I could hardly get to sleep for glorying
over it.

****

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