Anthea absently took the drooping red roses from the buttonholes of the others, bit the ends of the stalks, and set them in a pot of water that stood in the shadow by a hut door. She was always rather silly about flowers.
‘Look here!’ she said. ‘I think perhaps the Psammead is really arranging something for us. I don’t believe it would go away and leave us all alone in the Past. I’m certain it wouldn’t.’
Jane succeeded in deciding not to cry – at any rate yet.
‘But what can we do?’ Robert asked.
‘Nothing,’ Cyril answered promptly, ‘except keep our eyes and ears open. Look! That runner chap’s getting his wind. Let’s go and hear what he’s got to say.’
The runner had risen to his knees and was sitting back on his heels. Now he stood up and spoke. He began by some respectful remarks addressed to the heads of the village. His speech got more interesting when he said:
‘I went out in my raft to snare ibises, and I had gone up the stream an hour’s journey. Then I set my snares and waited. And I heard the sound of many wings, and looking up, saw many herons circling in the air. And I saw that they were afraid; so I took thought. A beast may scare one heron, coming upon it suddenly, but no beast will scare a whole flock of herons. And still they flew and circled, and would not alight. So then I knew that what scared the herons must be men, and men who knew not our ways of going softly so as to take the birds and beasts unawares. By this I knew they were not of our race or of our place. So, leaving my raft, I crept along the river bank, and at last came upon the strangers. They are many as the sands of the desert, and their spear-heads shine red like the sun. They are a terrible people, and their march is towards us. Having seen this, I ran, and did not stay till I was before you.’
‘These are your folk,’ said the headman, turning suddenly and angrily on Cyril, ‘you came as spies for them.’
‘We did not,’ said Cyril indignantly. ‘We wouldn’t be spies for anything. I’m certain these people aren’t a bit like us. Are they now?’ he asked the runner.
‘No,’ was the answer. ‘these men’s faces were darkened, and their hair black as night. Yet these strange children, maybe, are their gods, who have come before to make ready the way for them.’
A murmur ran through the crowd.
‘No, no,’ said Cyril again. ‘We are on your side. We will help you to guard your sacred things.’
The headman seemed impressed by the fact that Cyril knew that there were sacred things to be guarded. He stood a moment gazing at the children. Then he said:
‘It is well. And now let all make offering, that we may be strong in battle.’
The crowd dispersed, and nine men, wearing antelope-skins, grouped themselves in front of the opening in the hedge in the middle of the village. And presently, one by one, the men brought all sorts of things – hippopotamus flesh, ostrich-feathers, the fruit of the date palms, red chalk, green chalk, fish from the river, and ibex from the mountains; and the headman received these gifts. There was another hedge inside the first, about a yard from it, so that there was a lane inside between the hedges. And every now and then one of the headmen would disappear along this lane with full hands and come back with hands empty.
‘They’re making offerings to their Amulet,’ said Anthea. ‘We’d better give something too.’
The pockets of the party, hastily explored, yielded a piece of pink tape, a bit of sealing-wax, and part of the Waterbury watch that Robert had not been able to help taking to pieces at Christmas and had never had time to rearrange. Most boys have a watch in this condition.
They presented their offerings, and Anthea added the red roses.
The headman who took the things looked at them with awe, especially at the red roses and the Waterbury-watch fragment.
‘This is a day of very wondrous happenings,’ he said. ‘I have no more room in me to be astonished. Our maiden said there was peace between you and us. But for this coming of a foe we should have made sure.’
The children shuddered.
‘Now speak. Are you upon our side?’
‘Yes. Don’t I keep telling you we are?’ Robert said. ‘Look here. I will give you a sign. You see this.’ He held out the toy pistol. ‘I shall speak to it, and if it answers me you will know that I and the others are come to guard your sacred thing – that we’ve just made the offerings to.’
‘Will that god whose image you hold in your hand speak to you alone, or shall I also hear it?’ asked the man cautiously.
‘You’ll be surprised when you do hear it,’ said Robert. ‘Now, then.’ He looked at the pistol and said:
‘If we are to guard the sacred treasure within’ – he pointed to the hedged-in space – ‘speak with thy loud voice, and we shall obey.’
He pulled the trigger, and the cap went off. The noise was loud, for it was a two-shilling pistol, and the caps were excellent.
Every man, woman, and child in the village fell on its face on the sand.
The headman who had accepted the test rose first.
‘The voice has spoken,’ he said. ‘Lead them into the ante-room of the sacred thing.’
So now the four children were led in through the opening of the hedge and round the lane till they came to an opening in the inner hedge, and they went through an opening in that, and so passed into another lane.
The thing was built something like this, and all the hedges were of brushwood and thorns:
‘It’s like the maze at Hampton Court,’ whispered Anthea.
The lanes were all open to the sky, but the little hut in the middle of the maze was round-roofed, and a curtain of skins hung over the doorway.
‘Here you may wait,’ said their guide, ‘but do not dare to pass the curtain.’ He himself passed it and disappeared.
‘But look here,’ whispered Cyril, ‘some of us ought to be outside, in case the Psammead turns up.’
‘Don’t let’s get separated from each other, whatever we do,’ said Anthea. ‘It’s quite bad enough to be separated from the Psammead. We can’t do anything while that man is in there. Let’s all go out into the village again. We can come back later now we know the way in. That man’ll have to fight like the rest, most likely, if it comes to fighting. If we find the Psammead we’ll go straight home. It must be getting late, and I don’t much like this mazy place.’
They went out and told the headman that they would protect the treasure when the fighting began. And now they looked about them and were able to see exactly how a first-class worker in flint flakes and notches an arrow-head or the edge of an axe – an advantage which no other person now alive has ever enjoyed. The boys found the weapons most interesting. The arrow-heads were not on arrows such as you shoot from a bow, but on javelins, for throwing from the hand. The chief weapon was a stone fastened to a rather short stick something like the things gentlemen used to carry about and call life-preservers in the days of the garrotters. Then there were long things like spears or lances, with flint heads to them, and there were flint knives – horribly sharp – and flint battle-axes.
Everyone in the village was so busy that the place was like an ant-heap when you have walked into it by accident. The women were busy and even the children.
Quite suddenly all the air seemed to glow and grow red – it was like the sudden opening of a furnace door, such as you may see at Woolwich Arsenal if you ever have the luck to be taken there