E. Nesbit

“ The earth trembled; ashes and sulphur showered down; a rain of fine pumice-stone fell like snow on all the dry land. The elephants from the forest rushed up towards the peaks; great lizards thirty yards long broke from the mountain pools and rushed down towards the sea. The snows melted and rushed down, first in avalanches, then in roaring torrents. Great rocks cast up by the volcano fell splashing in the sea miles away.
“Oh, this is horrible!” cried Anthea. “Come home, come home!”
“The end of the dream,” gasped the learned gentleman.
“Hold up the Amulet,” cried the Psammead suddenly. ”

“ The roof had been broken in at one side, and great slabs of it were being lifted off by two spears. As the children trembled and winked in the new light, large dark hands tore down the wall, and a dark face, with a blobby fat nose, looked over the gap. Even at that awful moment Anthea had time to think that it was very like the face of Mr Jacob Absalom, who had sold them the charm in the shop near Charing Cross.
“Here is their Amulet,” cried a harsh, strange voice; “it is this that makes them strong to fight and brave to die. And what else have we here—gods or demons?” ”

“ Outside the arch was the bedroom painted chest-of-drawers and the Kidderminster carpet, and the washhand-stand with the riveted willow-pattern jug, and the faded curtains, and the dull light of indoors on a wet day. Through the arch showed the gleam of soft green leaves and white blossoms. They stepped forward quite happily. Even Jane felt that this did not look like lions, and her hand hardly trembled at all as she held the charm for the others to go through, and last, slipped through herself, and hung the charm, now grown small again, round her neck. ”

“ Anthea asked.
“Great and deep learning,” said the Priest, without a moment’s hesitation. “A learning greater and deeper than that of any man of my land and my time. But learning too great is useless. If I go back to my own land and my own age, who will believe my tales of what I have seen in the future? Let me stay here, be the great knower of all that has been, in that our time, so living to me, so old to you, about which your learned men speculate unceasingly, and often, he tells me, vainly.”
“If I were you,” said the Psammead, “I should ask the Amulet about that. ”

“ There was something about this Tyrian adventure that was different from all the others. It was, somehow, calmer. And there was the undoubted fact that the charm was there on the neck of the Egyptian.
So they enjoyed everything to the full, the row from the Island City to the shore, the ride on the donkeys that the skipper hired at the gate of the mainland city, and the pleasant country—palms and figs and cedars all about. ”

“ A great city swept away by the sea, a beautiful country devastated by an active volcano—these are not the sort of things you see every day of the week. And when you do see them, no matter how many other wonders you may have seen in your time, such sights are rather apt to take your breath away. Atlantis had certainly this effect on the breaths of Cyril, Robert, Anthea, and Jane. ”

“ The Psammead said something about Rekh-marā not being able to live here, and if he can’t get back—” She stopped, her heart was beating desperately in her throat, as it seemed.
“Nobody can continue to live in a land and in a time not appointed,” said the voice of glorious sweetness. “But a soul may live, if in that other time and land there be found a soul so akin to it as to offer it refuge, in the body of that land and time, that thus they two may be one soul in one body.” ”

“ Cyril asked eagerly.
“Ah, you never would tell me that,” he said, “You always had your little mysteries. You dear children! What a difference you made to that old Bloomsbury house! I wish I could dream you oftener. Now you’re grown up you’re not like you used to be.”
“Grown up?” said Anthea.
The learned gentleman pointed to a frame with four photographs in it.
“There you are,” he said.
The children saw four grown-up people’s portraits—two ladies, two gentlemen—and looked on them with loathing.
“Shall we grow up like that?” whispered Jane. “How perfectly horrid!” ”

“ All sorts of people were passing up the steps to seek audience of the Queen. Ladies in richly-embroidered dresses with fringy flounces, poor folks in plain and simple clothes, dandies with beards oiled and curled.
And Cyril, Robert, Anthea and Jane, went with the crowd.
At the gate of the palace the Psammead put one eye cautiously out of the basket and whispered—
“I can’t be bothered with queens. I’ll go home with this lady. I’m sure she’ll get me some sand if you ask her to.”
“Oh! don’t leave us,” said Jane. ”

“ At the word “wish” the children knew that the Psammead would attend to that bit of magic. It did, and the floor was littered with a spreading heap of gold and precious stones.
“Any other little trick?” asked Cyril loftily. “Shall we become invisible? Vanish?”
“Yes, if you like,” said the soldier; “but not through the door, you don’t.”
He closed it carefully and set his broad Egyptian back against it.
“No! no!” cried a voice high up among the tops of the tall wooden pillars that stood against the wall. There was a sound of someone moving above. ”

“ All the rest of the courtyard was thick with people, seemingly of all classes, and all were shouting, “The sea—the sea!”
“Be calm,” said the most kingly of the Kings, he who had lassoed the bull. “Our town is strong against the thunders of the sea and of the sky!”
“I want to go home,” whined the Psammead.
“We can’t go without him,” said Anthea firmly.
“Jimmy,” she called, “Jimmy!” and waved to him. He heard her, and began to come towards her through the crowd.
They could see from the balcony the sea-captain edging his way out from among the people. ”

“ Let’s go to Atlantis,” he said.
“Let’s go to Atlantis and take the learned gentleman with us,” said Anthea; “he’ll think it’s a dream, afterwards, but it’ll certainly be a change of scene.”
“Why not take him to nice Egypt?” asked Jane.
“Too hot,” said Cyril shortly.
“Or Babylon, where he wants to go?”
“I’ve had enough of Babylon,” said Robert, “at least for the present. And so have the others. I don’t know why,” he added, forestalling the question on Jane’s lips, “but somehow we have. Squirrel, let’s take off these beastly bandages and get into flannels. We can’t go in our unders.” ”

“ The creeping cowards who follow shall go down as slaves—and slaves they shall be to us—when we live again. Tyre, Tyre for ever!”
A great shout went up, and the slaves below joined in it.
“Quick, the Amulet,” cried Anthea, and held it up. Rekh-marā held up the one he had snatched from Pheles. The word was spoken, and the two great arches grew on the plunging ship in the shrieking wind under the dark sky. From each Amulet a great and beautiful green light streamed and shone far out over the waves. ”

“ Anthea persisted, “and we remember that all right.”
“Oh, that isn’t what’s happened, my good child,” said the Psammead, rather crossly, “that’s prophetic vision. And you remember dreams, don’t you? So why not visions? You never do seem to understand the simplest thing.”
It went to sand again at once.
Anthea crept down in her nightgown to give one last kiss to old Nurse, and one last look at the beautiful testimonial hanging, by its tapes, its glue now firmly set, in glazed glory on the wall of the kitchen. ”

“ The Queen looked bewildered.
“She means,” explained Robert, “that English kings only have one wife—at least, Henry the Eighth had seven or eight, but not all at once.”
“In our country,” said the Queen scornfully, “a king would not reign a day who had only one wife. No one would respect him, and quite right too.”
“Then are all the other thirteen alive?” asked Anthea.
“Of course they are—poor mean-spirited things! I don’t associate with them, of course, I am the Queen: they’re only the wives.” ”

“ And then Jane felt that her hand was on a slab or table of stone, and, under her hand, something that felt like the charm that had so long hung round her neck, only it was thicker. Twice as thick.
“It’s here!” she said, “I’ve got it!” And she hardly knew the sound of her own voice.
“Come away,” repeated Rekh-marā.
“I wish we could see more of this Temple,” said Robert resistingly.
“Come away,” the Priest urged, “there is death all about, and strong magic. Listen.”
The chanting voices seemed to have grown louder and fiercer, and light stronger.
“They are coming!” cried Rekh-marā. ”

“ It’s very difficult to make you understand things. Time and space are only forms of thought.”
“I see,” said Cyril.
“No, you don’t,” said the Psammead, “and it doesn’t matter if you don’t, either. What I mean is that if you were only made the right way, you could see everything happening in the same place at the same time. Now do you see?”
“I’m afraid I don’t,” said Anthea; “I’m sorry I’m so stupid.”
“Well, at any rate, you see this. That lost half of the Amulet is in the Past. Therefore it’s in the Past we must look for it. I mustn’t speak to the charm myself. Ask it things! Find out!” ”

“ I had just decided that Britain was not worth the bother of invading. But what you tell me decides me that it is very much worth while.”
“But it’s all nonsense,” said Anthea. “Britain is just a savage sort of island—all fogs and trees and big rivers. But the people are kind. We know a little girl there named Imogen. And it’s no use your making guns because you can’t fire them without gunpowder, and that won’t be invented for hundreds of years, and we don’t know how to make it, and we can’t tell you. Do go straight home, dear Caesar, and let poor little Britain alone.” ”

“ Pheles looked thinner, and his face was rugged and anxious.
“Ha!” he cried, “the charm has brought you back! I have prayed to it daily these nine months—and now you are here? Have you no magic that can help?”
“What is your need?” asked the Egyptian quietly.
“I need a great wave that shall whelm away the foreign ship that follows us. A month ago it lay in wait for us, by the pillars of the gods, and it follows, follows, to find out the secret of Tyre—the place of the Tin Islands. If I could steer by night I could escape them yet, but tonight there will be no stars.” ”

“ And now from the window of a four-wheeled cab the Queen of Babylon beheld the wonders of London. Buckingham Palace she thought uninteresting; Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament little better. But she liked the Tower, and the River, and the ships filled her with wonder and delight.
“But how badly you keep your slaves. How wretched and poor and neglected they seem,” she said, as the cab rattled along the Mile End Road.
“They aren’t slaves; they’re working-people,” said Jane. ”

“ And there they all were in the dining-room at 300, Fitzroy Street.
“Jane,” cried Cyril with great presence of mind, “go and get the plate of sand down for the Psammead.”
Jane went.
“Look here!” he said quickly, as the sound of her boots grew less loud on the stairs, “don’t let’s tell her about the dungeon and all that. It’ll only frighten her so that she’ll never want to go anywhere else.”
“Righto!” said Cyril; but Anthea felt that she could not have said a word to save her life.
“Why did you want to come back in such a hurry?” asked Jane, returning with the plate of sand. ”

“ You know, the slave of the great names?”
“Wait a sec,” said Robert, “though I don’t know why you want it. Nusroch—Nisrock—Nisroch—that’s it.”
Then Anthea pulled herself together. All her muscles tightened, and the muscles of her mind and soul, if you can call them that, tightened too.
“UR HEKAU SETCHEH,” she cried in a fervent voice. “Oh, Nisroch, servant of the Great Ones, come and help us!”
There was a waiting silence. Then a cold, blue light awoke in the corner where the straw was—and in the light they saw coming towards them a strange and terrible figure. ”

“ It’s Tyre that rules the waves!” the voices of the doomed rose in a triumphant shout. The children scrambled through the arch, and stood trembling and blinking in the Fitzroy Street parlour, and in their ears still sounded the whistle of the wind, and the rattle of the oars, the crash of the ships bow on the rocks, and the last shout of the brave gentlemen-adventurers who went to their deaths singing, for the sake of the city they loved.
“And so we’ve lost the other half of the Amulet again,” said Anthea, when they had told the Psammead all about it. ”