Yan Larri. The Extraordinary Adventures of Karik and Valya
---------------------------------------------------------------
Translated from the Russian by John P.Mandeville
Russian original title: Необычайные приключения Карика и Вали
Leningrad 1937
OCR: Tuocs
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Granny is difficult - Mother is worried - Jack gets on a hot scent - A
strange discovery is made in the Professor's study - The Professor
disappears
MOTHER SPREAD A BIG WHITE CLOTH ON THE TABLE. GRANNY went over towards
the sideboard. In the dining-room knives and forks jingled cheerfully and
plates clattered.
"Is it egg and onion pie?" asked Granny.
"Yes. The children have been begging and begging me for it," said
Mother, as she put out the plates.
"And is the sweet strawberries, and cream? "
"No. To-day we are going to have ice cream pudding for a sweet! The
children do love it so."
"All the same," mumbled Granny, "in the summer it is better for the
children to have berries and fruit. . . . When I was a little girl. . . ."
But Mother, apparently, was quite convinced Granny never had been a
little girl. Shrugging her shoulders she went over to the window and,
looking out into the courtyard, shouted loudly:
"Ka-a-ari-ik! Va-alya-ya! Lu-unch!"
"When I was a little girl . . . . " continued Granny, offended; but
Mother, not listening to her, leaned out on the window-sill and shouted
still louder:
"Karik! Valya! Where are you?"
In the courtyard all was silent.
"There you are," grumbled Granny. "I knew it would happen. . . ."
"Karik! Valya!" Mother shouted again, and not waiting for an answer sat
down on the window-sill and asked, "Didn't they tell you where they were
going to go?"
Granny bit her lip angrily. "When I was a little girl," she announced,
"I always said where I was going, but nowadays . . . ." She straightened the
cloth on the table, frowning. "Nowadays they just do as they like . . . if
they take the fancy they'll go off to the North Pole; and sometimes even
worse. . . . Why, only yesterday they announced on the radio. . . ."
"What did they announce?" asked Mother, hastily. "Oh, nothing! Just
that some boy was drowned - at least that was what they said."
Mother shuddered. "That's all nonsense," she said, sliding off the
window-sill. "Fiddlesticks! Rubbish! Karik and Valya would never go off and
bathe."
"I don't know, I don't know!" Granny shook her head. "Only they should
have been here ages ago and there is no sign of them. They ran off early and
haven't had anything to eat this morning."
Mother put her hand up to her face, and not saying anything more went
out of the dining-room quickly.
"When I was a little girl . . . ," sighed Granny.
But what Granny did when she was a little girl Mother just didn't hear,
she was already out in the courtyard and screwing up her eyes in the bright
sunlight was peering in all directions.
On a yellow mound of sand lay Valya's green spade with the bent handle,
and beside it was flung Karik's faded beret.
No sign of the children.
Under the rusty gutter pipe, warming herself in the sun, was the big
tortoise-shell cat - Anyuta. She lazily wrinkled her forehead and stretched
out her paws as if she wanted to give them to Mother.
"Karik! Valya!" shouted Mother, and actually stamped her foot.
Anyuta, the cat, opened her green eyes widely, stared at Mother, and
then, yawning luxuriously, turned over on the other side.
"What has become of them?" grumbled Mother.
She crossed the courtyard, glanced into the laundry room, peeped
through the dark windows of the cellar where the firewood was kept. No sign
of the children.
"Ka-ari-ik!" she shouted once again.
There was no reply. "Va-a-lya!" Mother cried out.
"Wough-ough, woof!" sounded quite close at hand. The door at a side
entrance slammed violently. A big sheep-dog with a sharp pointed nose leaped
out into the yard with his chain dragging behind him. With one rush he was
on the mound, rolling in the sand, raising a great cloud of dust; then up he
jumped, shook himself and with loud barking hurled himself at Mother.
Mother stepped back quickly.
"Back! No, you don't! Get away with you!" She shooed him off with her
hands.
"Down, Jack! To heel!" a loud voice resounded in the doorway.
A fat man wearing sandals on his bare feet and with a lighted cigarette
in his hand had come into the yard.
It was the tenant from the fourth floor, the photographer Schmidt.
"What are you up to, Jack, eh?" asked the fat man. Jack guiltily wagged
his tail.
"Such a fool you are!" grinned the photographer. Pretending to yawn,
Jack came up to his master, sat down and with a jingling chain set about
scratching his neck with his hind leg.
"Grand weather to-day!" smiled the fat man. "Aren't you going to your
country cottage?"
Mother stared first at the fat man, then at the dog and then said
rather crossly:
"You have let that dog out again, Comrade Schmidt, without his muzzle.
He behaves just like a wolf. He just looks around to see at whom he can
snap. . . ."
"What, Jack?" said the fat man, apparently most surprised. "Why, he
wouldn't harm a child! He is as peaceful as a dove. Would you like to stroke
him?"
Mother waved him away with her hand.
"You think I have nothing else to do but to stroke dogs! At home, lunch
is getting cold, none of the housework is done and here I am unable to get
hold of the children. Ka-a-ri-ik! Val-a-alya!" she shouted once more.
"You just stroke Jack and ask him nicely. Say: 'Now then Jack, go find
Karik and Valya.' He'll find them in a wink!" Schmidt bent down to his dog
and rubbed his neck affectionately. "You'll find them, won't you Jack?"
Jack made a little whimpering noise and, quite unexpectedly, jumped up
and licked the full lips of the photographer. The fat man staggered back,
fussily spat out and wiped his lips with his sleeve.
Mother laughed.
"You need not laugh," Schmidt gravely assured her, "this is a
sleuthhound. He follows the scent of a human being just like a train running
on rails. Would you like me to show you?"
"I believe you!" said Mother.
"No, no!" the fat man was getting agitated. "Allow me to assure you
that if I say it is true, it is true! Now then, just give me something
belonging to Karik or Valya - a toy - coat - beret. It does not matter what.
. . ."
Mother shrugged her shoulders, but all the same she stooped down,
picked up the spade and beret and, smiling, handed them to Schmidt.
"Splendid! Excellent!" said the fat man, and gave the beret to the dog
to smell. "Now, Jack," he continued loudly, "show them how you do it! Go
find them, boy!"
Jack whimpered, put his nose to the ground and, sticking up his tail,
started to run round the courtyard in large circles.
The photographer cheerfully puffed along behind him.
Having run up to the cat Anyuta, Jack stopped. The cat jumped up, bent
herself into a bow and flashing her green eyes hissed like a snake. Jack
tried to grab her by the tail.
The cat bristled up, gave Jack a box on the ear; the poor dog squealed
with pain, but at once recovered himself and with a loud bark flung himself
at Anyuta. The cat again hissed and raised one paw as if to say: "
Sh-sh-sh-shove off! I'll s-s-slap you s-s-such a one!"
"Now, now, Jack," said the photographer, "you mustn't get put off!" and
he tugged so hard at the lead that the dog sat back on his hind legs. "Get
on, now! Go find them!" he ordered.
With a parting bark at the cat, Jack ran on ahead. He ran around the
whole yard and once more stopped by the gutter pipe and loudly sniffed the
air, looking at his master.
"I understand, I understand!" said the photographer, nodding his head.
"They sat here, of course, playing with the cat! But where did they go
afterwards? Now, go find them, go find them, Jack!"
Jack started wagging his tail, twisted himself around like a top,
scraped with his paws at the sand under the pipe and then, with a loud bark,
dashed to the main entrance to the flats.
"Ha-ha! he's got on the scent!" shouted Schmidt, and with his sandals
slithering he leaped after the dog.
"If you do find the children, send them home!" Mother called after him,
and started walking back through the yard. "Of course they are in one of the
neighbouring courtyards," she thought to herself.
Pulling hard on his lead, Jack hauled his master up a staircase.
"Not so fast! Not so fast!" puffed the fat man, barely able to keep up
with the dog.
On the landing of the fifth floor, Jack stopped for a second, gazed at
his master and with a short bark threw himself at a door which was covered
with oilcloth and felt.
On the door there hung a white enamelled plate with the inscription:
IVAN HERMOGENEVITCH ENOTOFF
Underneath was pinned a notice:
Bell does not work. Please knock.
Jack with a squeal jumped up, scratching at the oilcloth covering the
door.
"Down, Jack!" shouted the fat man. "It says knock, and not squeal."
The photographer Schmidt smoothed his hair with the palm of his hand,
carefully wiped the perspiration off his face with a handkerchief and then
knocked cautiously at the door with his knuckles.
Behind the door shuffling steps were heard.
The lock clicked.
The door opened. A face with shaggy eyebrows and a yellowish white
beard appeared in the widening gap.
"Do you want me?"
"Excuse me, Professor," said the photographer in some confusion, "I
only wanted to ask you - "
The stout man had not succeeded in finishing his sentence before Jack
tore the lead out of his hand and, almost knocking the Professor off his
feet, dashed into the flat.
"Come back! Jack! To heel!" shouted Schmidt.
But Jack was already rattling his chain somewhere at the end of the
corridor.
"I am so sorry, Professor, Jack is only young. . . . If you will let me
come in, I'll soon get hold of him."
"Yes, yes . . . of course," replied the Professor, absent-mindedly,
letting Schmidt into the flat. "Come in, please. I hope your dog does not
bite!"
"Hardly ever," Schmidt assured the Professor.
The photographer crossed the threshold and having closed the door
behind him, said quietly: "A thousand apologies! I won't be a minute. . . .
The children must be with you - Karik and Valya, from the second floor. . .
."
"Allow me, allow me! Karik and Valya? Yes, of course, I know them well.
Very fine children. Polite and eager to learn.. . "
"Are they here?"
"No, they haven't been here to-day; in fact I am waiting for them!"
"Very odd !" muttered the stout man. "Jack has so certainly followed
their trail. . . . ."
"But may be it is yesterday's trail?" politely suggested the Professor.
But Schmidt did not succeed in replying. In the further room, Jack was
barking resoundingly, then something rattled, crashed and jingled as if a
cupboard or table had fallen with crockery on it.
The Professor started.
"He may break up everything!" he shouted as if he was going to cry, and
seizing Schmidt by the sleeve pulled him along the dark corridor. "Here!
through here!" he barked, pushing open a door.
No sooner had the Professor and the photographer crossed the threshold
of the room than Jack threw himself at his master's chest with a whimper and
then at once dashed back with a bark. All around the room he darted with his
lead behind him, smelling the bookshelves, jumping on the leather armchair,
twisting himself under the table, all the time throwing himself from side to
side.
On the table, tubes and retorts jingled as they bounced up and down,
tall glass vessels swayed and fine glass tubes shivered. From one violent
jolt the microscope, with its brass sparkling in the sun, started to rock.
The Professor only just succeeded in catching it. But in saving the
microscope, he caught with his sleeve a gleaming nickel container full of
some sort of complicated weights. The container fell and the weights jumped
out and scattered with a jingle over the yellow parquet floor.
"What are you up to, Jack?" gruffly jerked out the photographer. "You
are making an ass of yourself. You're barking, but what is the use? Where
are the children?"
Jack put his head on one side. He pricked up his ears and looked most
attentively at his master, trying to understand what it was that they were
scolding him about.
The photographer shook his head disapprovingly.
"You should be ashamed of yourself, Jack! They said you were a
sleuthhound! With a diploma! And all you can do is to chase cats instead of
following a trail. Now, come home! Be generous enough to forgive us. Comrade
Professor, for this disturbance!"
The photographer bowed awkwardly and made towards the door. But here
Jack became possessed as of a devil. He seized his master by the breeches
with his teeth, and planting his feet on the slippery parquet floor, tugged
towards the table.
"What on earth is up with you?" complained the fat man in amazement.
Squealing, Jack once more darted around the table, but then leaped on
the small divan which stood in front of the open window and putting his paws
on the window-sill, barked with short, jerky barks.
Schmidt got angry.
"Come to heel!" he shouted, seizing the dog by the collar; but Jack
stubbornly shook his head and again darted to the divan. "I can't understand
it!" The photographer threw up his hands.
"Probably there is a mouse behind the divan!" the Professor guessed.
"Or maybe a crust of bread or a bone. I often have my dinner there."
He went up to the divan and pulled it towards him. At the back of the
divan, something rustled and softly padded to the ground.
"A crust!" said the Professor.
Jack at that moment tore himself forward and squeezed, with his tail
sticking up, between the wall, and just managed to shift the divan. He
seized something in his teeth.
"Come on, show us what it is!" shouted the photographer.
Jack backed out, shook his head, turned abruptly to his master, and
laid at his feet a child's down-at-heel sandal. The photographer perplexedly
turned the find over in his hand.
"Apparently some sort of a child's shoe. . . ."
"H'm . . . strange!" said the Professor, examining the sandal. "Very
strange!"
Whilst they were turning the find over in their hands. Jack pulled out
from behind the divan a further three sandals, one the same size and two
smaller ones.
Unable to follow what had happened, the Professor and the stout man
looked first at each other and then at the sandals. Schmidt knocked the hard
sole of one sandal with his knuckle, and for no apparent reason said:
"Strong enough! They're good sandals!"
But Jack meanwhile had pulled out from under the divan a pair of blue
shorts and, pressing them with his paws to the floor, barked softly.
"Something more?" said the Professor, quite perplexed.
He bent over, and would have stretched out his hand for the shorts, but
Jack bared his teeth and growled so threateningly that the Professor very
quickly withdrew his hand.
"What a very unfriendly nature he has, to be sure!" said the Professor
in some confusion.
"Yes, he is not over-polite to me!" agreed the photographer.
He took the shorts, shook them, and, folding them neatly, laid them
before the Professor.
"Please take them."
The Professor looked sideways at Jack.
"No, no, it is quite unnecessary," said he. "I can see everything. . .
. Well, now . . . well, now . . . there are the markings V and K. Valya and
Karik!" And he touched with his fingers big white letters sewn in the belts
of the shorts.
The stout man wiped his face with the palm of his hand.
"Is there a bathroom in the flat?" he asked in a businesslike way.
"No," replied the Professor, "there is no bathroom. But if you want to
wash your hands, there's. . . ."
"Oh, no," panted the stout man, "I can wash at home. But I thought they
might have undressed and were bathing themselves. Do you see what I mean?"
"Certainly." The Professor nodded his head.
"But where have they hidden themselves? Naked . . . without shorts,
without sandals? I don't understand it at all!" Schmidt made a gesture of
hopelessness.
Then he put his hands behind his back, spread out his feet, lowered his
head and gazed solidly at the yellow rectangles of the parquet; then he
suddenly straightened himself up and said confidently:
"Don't worry! We'll find them any minute now. They are here, Professor.
They are simply hiding! You can be sure of that! My Jack has never been
mistaken yet."
The Professor and the photographer proceeded on a tour round all the
rooms; they examined the kitchen and even looked into the dark larder.
Jack listlessly tailed along behind them.
In the dining-room, the stout man opened the doors of the sideboard,
poked his head under the table, and in the bedroom searched with his hands
underneath the bed. But there was no trace of the children in the flat.
"Wherever can they have hidden themselves?" muttered the photographer.
"In my opinion," said the Professor, "they have not been here to-day."
"That's what you think?" questioned Schmidt thoughtfully. "You think
they have not been here? But what do you think, Jack? Are they here or
aren't they?"
Jack barked.
"Here?"
Jack barked again.
"Well, go find them! Go find them, you dog!"
Jack at once cheered up. He threw himself round and once more led the
Professor and Schmidt into the study. Here he again jumped on to the
window-sill and started to bark loudly, and then to whimper as if he wanted
to assure his master that the children had left the room through the window.
Schmidt got angry.
"You're nothing but a dunce ! Just a puppy ! You actually think that
the children jumped out into the yard through a window on the fifth floor?
Or perhaps you think they flew out of the window like flies or dragonflies?"
"What !" The Professor started. "They flew? What dragonfly?"
The photographer smiled.
"Well, that is what Jack thinks!"
The Professor seized his head in his hands.
"What an awful thing!" His voice was hoarse.
The photographer gazed at him in amazement and asked:
"What is the matter with you? Here, have a drink of water! You are not
well."
He stepped towards the table on which stood a glass jug full of water;
but here the Professor positively screamed as if he had trodden on red-hot
iron with bare feet.
"Stop! stop! stop!" he yelled.
The photographer, now frightened, froze in his tracks.
The Professor shot out his hand and grabbed a glass containing what
appeared to be water, hastily raised it to the level of his eyes and looked
through it towards the light. Then he hastily produced a huge magnifying
glass with a horn handle from his pocket and shouted to Schmidt:
"Don't move! For goodness' sake, don't move! And hold the dog tight !
Better take him in your arms. I beg you!"
The fat man, thoroughly frightened, was completely bewildered. Without
further ado, he picked up the dog in his arms and pressed him tightly to his
chest. "The old man has gone off his head!" he thought.
"Now, stay like that!" shouted the Professor.
Holding the magnifying glass in front of his eyes, crouching down, he
started to examine the rectangles of the floor carefully one after the
other.
"Shall I have to stand long like this, Professor?" timidly asked the
photographer as he followed with alarm the strange movements of the
Professor.
"Put one foot here!" the Professor yelled at him, pointing with his
finger at the nearest rectangles of the parquet.
Schmidt awkwardly moved his foot and pressed Jack so tightly that he
wriggled in his arms and started to whimper.
"Shut up!" whispered Schmidt, watching the Professor with growing
fright.
"Now - the other foot! Put it here!"
The fat man followed without protest.
Thus, step by step, the Professor conducted the photographer, who was
quite dumb with astonishment, to the doorway.
"And now," gruff-gruffed1 the Professor, throwing the door wide open,
"please go away!"
Schmidt had hardly got outside before the door banged in his face. He
could hear the lock being turned.
The fat man dropped Jack, spluttered with fright and dashed down the
stairway, losing his sandals, out of breath, looking over his shoulder every
minute.
Jack, with a great bark, plunged after him.
And they did not stop running until they reached the nearest militia
post.2
* * * * *
A motor-car with blue stripes on its sides drove at high speed into the
courtyard. Several militiamen sprang out, called out the caretaker and
hastened to the fifth floor home of Professor Enotoff.
1 Russians make use of words which show what they mean by their sound.
"Gruff-gruff" has been made up and is used in various places to illustrate
this. - Translator.
2 In the Soviet Union "policemen" no longer exist; in their place are
"Militiamen" who occupy "Militia posts," not "police stations."
But the Professor did not appear to be at home. On the door of his flat
there hung a note, pinned up with new drawing pins:
Don't look for me. It will be quite useless.
Professor J. H. Enotoff.
The wonder-working liquid - The bewildering behaviour of shorts and
sandals - A very ordinary room is transformed in a very extraordinary way -
Adventures on the window-sill - Karik and Valya set off on an amazing
journey
WHAT HAD HAPPENED WAS JUST THIS. On the evening of the day previous to
that on which the children had vanished, Karik was sitting in the study of
Professor Enotoff. The evening was a good time to have a chat with the old
man.
The study was in semi-darkness and long dark shadows appeared to be
climbing to the ceiling from the black corners of the room: it seemed as if
someone was hiding up there and was gazing down at the circle of light on
the big table. Blue flames of a spirit lamp leaped up, flickered and swayed
underneath the curved bottom of a glass retort. In the retort something
gurgled and bubbled. Transparent drops were falling slowly and musically
from a filter into a bottle.
Karik climbed up on to the biggest leather armchair.
Pressing his chin on the edge of the table, he gazed attentively at the
skilful hands of the Professor, trying hard not to breathe, and not to move.
The Professor worked away, whistling, or telling Karik amusing stories
of his childhood, but more often talking about what he had seen in Africa,
America or Australia - it was all very interesting, whatever he said.
Then, rolling up the white sleeves of his overall, he bent over the
table and slowly, drop by drop, he poured out a thicky oily liquid into
narrow little glasses. From time to time he threw into these glasses some
sparkling crystals, and then little clouds would appear in the liquid,
slowly circle round and drop to the bottom. After this, the old man poured
something blue out of a measure and the liquid became, for some reason, rose
coloured.
All this, naturally, was most interesting, and Karik was ready to stay
there all night.
But suddenly, the Professor hastily dried his hands on a towel, grasped
the large retort by the neck and rapidly covered it up with blue paper.
"Well, that's that!" he said. "At last I can congratulate myself on a
success."
"It's ready?" asked Karik, cheerfully.
"Yes. All that remains now is to take the colour out of it, and . . ."
The Professor snapped his fingers, and in a weird voice sang:
0 beauteous, miraculous fluid!
They'll all ask: How did you do it?
Karik could not help frowning: the Professor sang so loudly, but
unfortunately he had no ear for music and sang a melody which resembled the
wailing of the wind in a chimney pipe. "Suppose the rabbit won't drink it?"
questioned Karik. "Won't drink it!" The Professor just shrugged his
shoulders. "We'll make it drink . . . but that must wait for to-morrow . .
.but now. . . ." The old man looked at the clock and started to fuss:
"Oh-oh-oh, Karik! We've stayed up far too late. Eleven o'clock. Yes. It's
two minutes past eleven!"
Karik realised that it was time to go home. With a sigh, he climbed
down reluctantly from the armchair and demanded:
"You won't begin without me to-morrow?"
"Not under any circumstances," assured the Professor, shaking his head.
"That I promise you."
"And can Valya come?"
"Valya?" The Professor thought over this. "Well, why not . . . bring
Valya. . . ."
"Nothing will happen very suddenly?"
"Everything will happen," said the Professor confidently, as he blew
out the spirit lamp.
"And will the rabbit turn into a flea?"
"Oh, no," laughed the Professor. "The rabbit will remain a rabbit."
"But tell me, Professor. . . ."
"No, no, I will not tell you anything more. Quite enough. We can leave
our conversation until to-morrow. Go home, my young friend. I am tired, and
it is high time you were in bed."
All night long, Karik tossed from side to side. He dreamt he saw a pink
elephant, so tiny that you could put him in a thimble. The elephant was
eating jam, then ran along the table, round a saucer, playing such pranks
that he upset the salt and nearly got drowned in the mustard. Karik rescued
him from the mustard pot and started to clean him up, standing him in a
little dish, but the elephant wrenched himself away and gave Karik a blow on
the shoulder with his trunk. Then he suddenly jumped up on to Karik's head
and said in a queer girlish voice, vaguely familiar: "What is the matter,
Karik? Why are you shouting?"
Karik opened his eyes. Beside his bed, in a dressing-gown, stood Valya.
"Aha! you - awake already?" said Karik. "Grand! Dress yourself
quickly."
"What for?"
"We must start. Going to the Professor's. Oo-oo, what will happen
to-day . . .? Such wonders! . . . miracles!"
"But what?"
"Dress yourself quickly."
"I'll put on shorts and sandals," said Valya.
"And I'll do the same."
Looking under the bed for his sandals, Karik told her in a whisper:
"Understand: Professor John has invented a pink liquid."
"Does it taste nice?" asked Valya, buckling the strap of her sandals.
"I don't know . . . it's for rabbits . . . he is going to give it to
them to-day . . . make them drink it, and then. . . . Oo-oo, my word!"
Valya's eyes opened widely.
"And what will happen to them?" she asked in a whisper.
"He doesn't know yet. This is just an experiment. Come on quickly!"
The children quietly tiptoed through their mother's room. Mother
shouted something after them, but Karik grabbed Valya by the hand and raced
off with her.
"Keep quiet," he whispered, "or she'll make us clean our teeth, wash,
and wait for breakfast. Then we shall most certainly be late."
Having dashed across the courtyard, they darted into the main entrance
of the flats, up on to the fifth floor, stopping at last in front of the
door, where the bell did not work and callers were instructed to knock.
Karik knocked - no one answered. He pushed the door - it opened.
The children went into the semi-darkness of a hall. On the wall a large
mirror glittered. Immediately opposite the children, a bronze idol gazed out
of a glass case. The Professor had brought it from China, where some of the
Chinamen actually pray to these hideous dummies. In the Professor's
household it served as a doorkeeper. And a most excellent doorkeeper it was
and never grumbled "shut the door after you."
In all other respects, it was very like one of the living doorkeepers,
and like them could watch the door silently all day.
On the hall-stand there hung the Professor's heavy winter fur coat, his
overcoat and some sort of a raincoat with big checks like a chess board.
All was silent in the flat; except that the tick-tock of a clock
sounded a measured beat in the dining room, and in the kitchen, water was
dripping musically from the tap.
"We'll go in," said Karik. "The Professor is certain to be in his
study."
But in the study there was no Professor. The children decided to wait.
The windows of the study were wide open. The sun lit up the white
table, covered with curving jars, vessels and retorts. Fine glass tubing
stood up like flowers in the glass vessels. Nickel-plated cups gave blinding
reflections of the sun. The brass of the microscope sparkled cheerfully, and
on the ceiling the sunbeams frolicked.
Along the wall, there was fixed a glass case full of books - thick
books and thin books. The titles were hard to understand:
The Ecology of Animals, Hydrobiology, Chironomidae, Ascaridae. They
were the sort of books children do not touch.
The children wandered round the study, twisted the screws of the
microscope, sat in the leather armchair, on which, with its empty sleeves
flung apart, lay the white overall of the Professor; and then they started
to look at the jars.
Between two retorts, Valya noticed a tall, narrow glass. It was full to
the brim with a silvery clear liquid. Little bubbles, which glittered, rose
from the bottom and burst on the surface. It was very like soda water.
Valya carefully took the tall glass in her hand. It was as cold as ice.
She raised it to her face and smelt it. The liquid had a scent like peaches
and something else she could not recognise. It was very appetising.
"Oh, how good it smells!" cried out Valya.
"Put it back in its place," said Karik, crossly. "You mustn't touch
anything. That may be a poison. Come away from the table. Do you hear?"
Valya put the glass back in its place, but she did not leave the table;
the liquid smelt so delicious that she wanted to sniff it again.
"Valya, come away!" said Karik. "Or else I'll tell Mother. Honour
bright, I will!"
Valya went round the table, sat in the armchair, but quickly returned
and found herself once more opposite the delicious liquid.
"Do you know, Karik, it is soda water!" she said, and she suddenly
wanted desperately to drink it, just as if she had been eating salted
herrings all day long.
"Don't touch it!" shouted Karik.
"But if I want a drink?" asked Valya.
"Go home and drink tea."
Valya didn't answer a word. She went over to the window, looked out of
it, down at the courtyard; but when Karik turned away, she quickly skipped
over to the table, seized the tumbler and took a sip.
"I say, it's delicious!" she half-whispered.
"Valya, you are mad!" snapped Karik.
"Oh, Karik, it's so nice! Try it!" And she held out the tumbler to her
brother.
"Cold and so nice . . . never tasted anything like it."
"And suppose it suddenly poisons you!" said Karik, looking doubtfully
at the silvery fluid.
"Poison would be bitter," smiled Valya, "but this is so delicious."
Karik shifted from foot to foot.
"It is sure to be some sort of rubbish!" he said, stretching out his
hand for the glass in an undecided way.
"It is certainly not rubbish. You try it. It smells like peaches but
the taste is like lemonade. Only much nicer."
Karik looked round. If the Professor were to come in at this minute, a
rather unpleasant conversation would ensue. But as there was nobody in the
study except Valya, Karik hastily took a few gulps and put the glass back in
its former place.
"But it certainly tastes nice!" said he. "Only we mustn't drink any
more or the Professor will notice it. Let's sit in the window. He will
surely be back soon and we shall begin the experiments.
"All right," sighed Valya, and looked sadly at the glass and its tasty
contents.
The children climbed on to the divan and from thence on to the
window-sill. With their heads hanging out they lay, 'their feet dangling
behind them, and gazed down on the courtyard below.
"Oo, what a height!" said Valya, and actually spat so as to watch
something fall. "Would you jump down?"
"Jump?" answered Karik. "I would with a parachute."
"But without a parachute?"
"Without a parachute? No, without a parachute you cannot jump from such
heights."
Suddenly, against the window pane there banged a blue dragonfly which
fell on to the window-sill.
"A dragonfly!" shouted Valya. "Look, look!"
"Mine!" shouted Karik.
"No, mine!" screamed Valya. "I saw it first."
The dragonfly lay on the window-sill between Karik and Valya,
helplessly moving its tiny feet.
Karik stretched out his hand towards the dragonfly, and suddenly he
felt that his shorts were dropping off. He stooped quickly but could not
catch them: the shorts slid off and after them fell his sandals.
Karik then wanted to jump off the window-sill on to the divan standing
by the window, but the divan suddenly started to drop away down, just like a
lift leaving the top floor. Unable to grasp what was happening, Karik looked
around in confusion, and then saw that the whole room was suddenly expanding
both upwards and downwards.
"What's happened?" he screamed.
Walls, floor and ceiling were moving away from each other like the
bellows of a huge concertina. The electric light was hurrying away up with
the ceiling. The floor was falling precipitately down.
Hardly a minute had passed, but the room was already almost
unrecognisable.
High above overhead, there swung a gigantic glass balloon hung around
with huge transparent icicles which gleamed in the sunlight.
This was the chandelier.
Far below, there stretched a boundless yellow field divided into
regular rectangles. On the rectangles were piled square wooden blocks with
burnt ends. By them lay a long white tube on which there was printed in huge
letters "Navy cut." One end of this was burnt and covered by a great cap of
grey ash. Nearby, like immense leather mountains, stood the dark armchairs,
on one of which lay the Professor's white overall looking like snow covering
the mountain.
Where lately had been the bookcase there now stood a skyscraper of
glass and brown beams. Through the glass could be seen books as big as
five-storied houses.
"Karik, what is all this?" Valya asked quite calmly, looking with
curiosity at the amazing transformation of the room.
It was only then that Karik noticed Valya. She was standing beside him
without sandals and without shorts.
"Look, Karik, isn't it funny!" she giggled. "It must be the experiment
beginning. Ooh!"
Before Karik succeeded in answering, something beside them started to
make a noise and to thump. Thick clouds of dust rose from the window-sill.
Valya clung on to Karik's shoulder. At that moment there was a puff of wind.
Dust flew up and slowly started to settle.
"Ooh!" shouted Valya.
In the spot where just a moment or two ago there had lain a tiny
dragonfly, there now moved a thick, long, log-like, jointed body with a huge
hook at the end of it.
The brown body, covered with turquoise blue splashes, was contracting
in spasms. The joints moved, sometimes sliding over each other, sometimes
turning sideways. Four huge transparent wings, covered with a dense web of
glittering threads, trembled in the air. A monstrous head hammered upon the
window-sill.
"Kari-ik!" whispered Valya. "What is this?"
"Sh-sh-sh!"
Treading carefully, Karik started to cross the window-sill which now
was like a wooden motor road, but, having taken a few steps, he stopped
aghast.
He was standing on the edge of a precipice. It seemed to him that he
was looking down from the height of the St. Isaac's Cathedral. It was then
that Karik realised what had happened. He returned to Valya, took her by the
hand and, hiccupping with fright, said:
"It... it must have been the water for the rabbits... do you understand
. . . the Professor's experiment has succeeded . . . only you and I have got
small and not the rabbits."
Valya didn't understand anything.
"But what is this?" she asked, pointing at the monster which was now
lying motionless on the window-sill.
"That? The dragonfly!
"So enormous?"
"Not at all enormous," gloomily replied Karik, "it is the same as it
was. On the contrary it is we who have become tiny . . . like fleas. . . ."
"Isn't that interesting?" said Valya cheerfully.
"You fool!" Karik was really angry. "There is nothing at all
interesting about it. They'll put us in ajar and start looking at us under a
microscope."
"In my opinion," said Valya confidently, "they will not have a chance
to look at us. The Professor will come and make us big again."
"Oh, yes, big again! He won't even notice us!"
"But we'll shout!"
"He won't hear us!"
"Won't hear us? Why? He is not deaf, is he?"
"No, he is not deaf, but our voices are just about as strong as a
midge's voice."
"Is that so?" Valya smiled unconvinced, and then shouted at the top
other voice: "Oho! Here we are!" She looked at Karik and asked: "What about
it? Difficult to hear?"
"All right for us, but no good for the Professor."
"But what will happen to us?"
"Nothing particular. They'll whisk us off the window-sill with a duster
and trample us underfoot, that's all. . . ."
"Who will whisk us off?"
"The Professor himself."
"Whisk us off with a duster?"
"Yes, certainly! He'll start to clear up the dust with his whisk! And
off we'll go with the dust!"
"But we . . . but . . . we - Listen, Karik, I have already thought of
something . . . . Do you know what - we can sit on the dragonfly. The
Professor will notice the dead dragonfly and most certainly will take it
over to his table, and then we can get on to his microscope and he will
catch sight of us - of course he will catch sight of us! And then he will
make us big again. Let's climb on to the dragonfly quickly."
Valya clutched Kari& by the hand and they ran to the dragonfly.
"Get up on to it!"
Helping one another, the children nimbly clambered up on to the
dragonfly, but they had only just sat down when the dragonfly started to
quiver, to beat its lumbering wings, to turn heavily and pant and puff like
some machine. The children could feel a strong muscular body bending beneath
them.
"Oy, it's still alive. Jump down quickly!" screamed Valya.
"Don't worry, don't worry. Hold on tighter."
The children clung with hands and legs to the body of the dragonfly,
but it wriggled its whole body, endeavouring to free itself from the
unpleasant burden. Karik and Valya rocked and bounced as if they were on
springs.
"It will throw us off! Oh, it will throw us off any minute!" whimpered
Valya.
"Just wait!" shouted Karik. "I'll throw it off. . . . There, stop it!"
He slid up to the head of the dragonfly, bent over and hit it with all
his strength several times in its eye with his fist.
The dragonfly shuddered, twisted itself and sank down.
"It appears to be dead again," said Valya.
"We shall see."
Karik slid off the dragonfly, went all around it and then seized with
both hands one of the clear, mice-like wings and tried to raise it. The
dragonfly didn't stir.
"It's dead," said Karik, confidently clambering up on to the dragonfly.
For some time the children sat silently, looking every now and then at
the door, but they soon became bored and began to examine the dragonfly.
Karik perched himself on the wing and tried to tear it away from the body.
But the wing was too strong. Then he jumped on the head of the dragonfly and
knocked its eyes with his heels.
"0-ooch, what huge eyes! Look, Val! Aha!"
Valya timidly stretched out her hand and touched an eye which was as
cold as if it had been moulded out of crystal glass.
"Dreadful things!"
The dragonfly certainly had wonderful eyes - huge and protruding like
glass lanterns. Covered with thousands of even facets, they seemed to be lit
with bluey-green light from within.
These strange eyes looked at both Karik and Valya at one and the same
time, and indeed were looking also at the courtyard, at the sky, at the
ceiling of the room and at the floor. It seemed that in each eye there shone
a thousand separate greenish eyes, all of which were watching attentively
like a hawk. In front of those enormous eyes, on the very edge of the head,
were three more small brown eyes, and these also attentively followed the
children.
"Do you know," said Valya, "it is alive in spite of everything. It's
watching, Karik, don't you see?"
"Well, what about it?"
"You must kill it again. It will suddenly come to life. Do you know
what dragonflies feed on?"
"On grass or the sap of flowers, I should think," said Karik, rather
uncertainly. "I don't really remember. Why?"
"I was afraid that if it came to life it might eat us. Who knows what
it really does eat. It would be better for us to kill it once again."
Valya was getting down in order to get away from the dragonfly when
there appeared to be the noise of some explosion in the room. Then there
sounded regular heavy thuds.
"What is that?" Valya stood stock-still.
"That . . . hurrah! It's - the Professor. He is coming!" shouted Karik
at the top of his voice.
Valya hastened to occupy her former place. The door banged. A wave of
air from the window struck them. A man-mountain with a beard like a stack of
white flax came into the study.
Then Karik and Valya screamed with all their strength.
"Professor!"
"Professor!"
The man-mountain stopped. The palm of a hand the size of a dining-room
table shot upwards and stopped at a twisted, shell-like ear out of which
there protruded tufts of grey hair as big as drawing pencils. He looked all
around, listened carefully and shrugged his shoulders perplexedly.
"Professor! Pro-fess-ess-or!" Karik and Valya shouted together.
The man-mountain sighed noisily. In the rooms everything buzzed. The
children were both very nearly thrown off the dragonfly into the stone
courtyard below.
"He-ere we are! Over here!"
The man-mountain stepped towards the window.
"Hurrah!" shouted Karik. "He has heard us!"
The man-mountain stopped.
"Come here! Here we are! Here! We are here!" screamed the children.
The man-mountain came over to the window.
But suddenly the dragonfly started to move. It started beating its
mica-like wings, raised a cloud of dust on the window-sill and then - with
Karik and Valya on its back - it swooped away down into the blue airy ocean.
"Hold tight!" screamed Karik, clutching Valya by the neck.
Adventures in the airy ocean - The gluttonous aeroplane - The unwilling
parachutists - After the big splash - The submarine prison - In the clutches
of an eight-eyed monster
THE DRAGONFLY FLEW ON, ITS TRANSPARENT RIGID WINGS BEATING as noisily
as if they had been made of sheet iron.
The wind they met seemed like elastic, it plucked at their hair and
whistled shrilly in their ears. It beat in their faces and blinded their
eyes.
It became difficult to breathe.
Clinging desperately to the dragonfly, gripping it with their arms and
legs, the children rode on in mortal fright.
"Karik!" shouted Valya amid the howling of the wind. "How can I hold
on, it's pulling me off - pulling me down - the wind!"
"Shut up! We'll fall off!" screamed Karik, and nearly choked in the
wind.
The wind was blowing so hard that it seemed that it would either tear
the heads off the children or sweep them away. They bent down to the very
back of the dragonfly but that did not help.
"Lie flat, Vally!" shouted Karik, stretching himself out full length.
Valya followed his example.
"How's that?" shouted Karik, "better now?"
"A little!"
And certainly the blast of the wind seemed to have lessened at that
moment. It was even possible to open their eyes and look around.
Not raising her head, Valya shouted, "This if too awful'"
Amid the noise of the wind, Karik could only hear one word, "awful." He
turned slightly back and said as loud and calmly as he could: "Its all
right, hold on tighter!"
The dragonfly hurried on, smoothly swooping up the sides of aerial
mountains and then rapidly plunging down again.
"Oy, Karik," screamed Valya, "it's like an American switchback."
But Karik didn't hear.
He was watching attentively the way in which the dragonfly's mica-like
wings worked.
The two front wings stood out in the air practically motionless. Their
movement could barely be seen. From time to time they curved, now up and now
down, and then the insect either flew lower or higher. By these wings it
directed its flight. At the same time they supported it in the air.
The rear wings on the other hand flashed like propellers. They droned
and roared as they quickly cut through the air and, flinging it behind them,
drove the dragonfly ahead.
Then the rear wings started to lift upwards until they stood vertically
on edge like a sail.
The wind now blew evenly along its back. The dragonfly was noiselessly
floating in the air like an aerial yacht.
"Oh, how interesting!" whispered Valya, "they should build an aeroplane
like this."
Karik looked sideways at his sister and sniffed with displeasure. Her
lightheartedness was making him angry.
"Sit tighter and shut up!" he commanded. But Valya could not sit
silently. How indeed could she be silent. Past them like trains coming to
meet them huge winged beasts bore on their way swirling the children with
gusts of air. They flew past so quickly that it was impossible to grasp what
they were. Birds? Bees? Dragonflies?
Valya every now and then shouted.
"What's that one? What is it? You saw it, Karik?"
They as near as anything collided with something as big as an
aerial-tank - a beetle. It was all adorned with gold and purple colouring
and shone so blindingly in the sun that it was impossible to look at it.
The beetle flew straight at the dragonfly. A collision seemed
inevitable. But suddenly the beetle without even turning around started to
whirl backwards at the same speed.
"It is going backwards!" screamed Valya. "It can actually fly
backwards. Do you see?"
Suddenly underneath the wings something buzzed and sang. I From
somewhere below there came plunging a round striped animal. With hairy feet
drawn up against itself it was hurrying, droning in the opposite direction,
changing direction, now this way, now that. The greenish wings of the animal
shone in the sunlight, bursting into rich green and blue flames.
"Whatever is that?" asked Valya.
"A fly! Only very big! Like under a microscope !"
The distance between the fly and the dragonfly became less and less.
Now even Valya could recognize the fly. It was as big as the fly on the
poster "Beware of flies - they spread infection."
But Valya had not succeeded in remembering what infection it was that
flies carried when the fly swerved aside and plunged down somewhere.
The dragonfly turned its great head just as if it had been on a
spindle. To the right, to the left, upwards, downwards flashed its huge,
bluey-green, glassy eyes and then it shot after the fly.
"Oh!" screamed Valya, seizing Karik by his foot.
"Hold on!" answered Karik.
Then started a series of steep turns, sudden plunges and rises.
Following the fly, the dragonfly now fell like a stone, now described loops,
now slid sideways, and at last flew up to the fly and stretched towards it
huge pincer-like claws covered with spikes.
The fly turned over and whirled on to its back, feet upwards. It
stretched its legs threateningly trying to push off the dragonfly's pincers.
However, this did not help the fly.
The dragonfly caught up with it. The pincers closed.
zz zz zz beat the wings of the fly. The pincers clicked like scissors.
Clip!
Clop!
And down towards the ground slowly spinning in the air there dropped
the wings and feet of the unfortunate fly.
Again the strong hard pincers closed. They crumpled, crushed and
flattened the fly into a sort of cake and then thrust it into a broad dark
mouth.
Karik and Valya silently gazed at one another and gently sighed.
So that was what dragonflies fed on. "You said, 'The sap of flowers'! "
croaked Valya.
She was terrified. For if the dragonfly gorged on such big flies then
Karik and Valya would be just swallowed as a joke and not noticed.
The children became very quiet.
Far ahead there appeared huge coloured wings. On the ends of the wings
there were dark, velvet-like splashes. On the edges there stretched an even
stripe just like a hem. The wings danced a id jumped in the air supporting a
flexible cigar-shaped body, like a striped airship. Long whiskers with knobs
at the end trembled and reached now upwards and now downwards.
On flying closer the children saw on the wings beautiful scales covered
with coloured powdery dust.
The wings whirled aimlessly in the air and fluttered like a sail in the
breeze.
But then the rainbow-like creature saw the dragonfly. It began to get
nervous, hesitated in the beat of its wings, then, closing them, started to
drop headlong downwards.
However, it did not succeed in evading the dragonfly.
The latter darted after it, hit it in flight with its chest, flung it
On one side and, when it turned over in the air, the dragonfly seized it,
turned its own head and, having torn off the wings, devoured it in an
instant.
And once again the dragonfly hurried on like an aeroplane: its powerful
wings hummed and overhead the wind sang incessantly.
"What was that?" asked Valya.
"A butterfly!" shouted Karik, above the noise of the wind. "It must
have been a butterfly!"
The dragonfly was evidently very hungry that day.
It quickly overtook and swallowed another fly, yet another butterfly -
this time white and blue splashes - and then a gnat. "What a glutton,"
yelled Karik.
Valya only shrank into herself, feeling chilly. Clouds were passing
across the sky.
From time to time they shut out the sun and then the ground was covered
with cold blue shadows.
The children noticed with astonishment how strangely the dragonfly
behaved when clouds crossed the sun.
No sooner was the sun shut out than the dragonfly became somehow limp
and slowly, like a glider, swooped downwards.
But directly the sun peeped from behind the clouds, {he dragonfly
became lively. A light beat of the wings - and it soared upwards and once
again started to hunt.
"Karik," shouted Valya. "Do you see what is happening to it?"
"Yes, yes!" Karik nodded his head. He also noticed something else.
On coming into the stream of the sun's rays the body of the dragonfly
expanded and became hard and smooth. But as soon as there came the cold
shade from the clouds it contracted and became wrinkled like a balloon which
has been punctured with a pin.
What caused this effect the children did not know, and they were quite
unable to understand the strange behaviour of the dragonfly.
The hunt continued.
The dragonfly devoured flies, butterflies and gnats without tiring. If
the children had decided to give their living aeroplane any name, a better
name1 than "Death to gnats and flies" would ., certainly be hard to think
of.
In chasing after a white butterfly the dragonfly made a steep turn.
Valya slid from the back of the winged glutton and would have undoubtedly
fallen to the ground had not Karik seized her foot.
But Karik himself could barely hold on to the dragonfly.
"Help!" shouted Valya.
"I ca-can't," yelled Karik.
Valya hung down from him like a heavy weight. It was vain for him to
clutch the smooth, springy sides of the dragonfly. His hands grew stiff. His
fingers slipped. With the despair of one about to perish, he hooked his chin
under the wing of the insect and put one arm around the springy body of the
glutton.
But to pull back was quite beyond his strength.
"No! I can't do any more," screamed Karik.
He hastily peered downwards. Far below as if in a fathomless abyss
there floated underneath the blue surface of an immense lake. Green rushes
stuck out of the water crowding along the shore. The white cups of water
lilies stood out as if they had been glued on to the blue background of the
lake.
The dragonfly made a sharp, rolling turn.
A powerful blast of air hit Karik in the chest, his hands slipped for
the last time along the smooth sides of the dragonfly.
He shut his eyes. His heart throbbed and then stood still. There was
nothing under his legs! He was falling!
With the wind whistling in their ears the children plunged downwards.
"Ee-ee-ee," squealed Valya.
"Ah-ah-ah," screamed Karik.
As they fell they turned somersaults.
Several times sky and earth changed places.
Sky.
Earth.
Sky.
Earth.
Oo-ouch!
With great fountains of spray the children plunged into the water like
shells and sank like stones to the bottom.
Having struck the bottom with their feet they bobbed back to the
surface like corks. They struck out desperately with their hands and feet.
Stunned by the fall, having swallowed a lot of water, they circled around in
one place unable to imagine what had happened.
Karik came to, first.
"Must swim to the shore quickly.'" he shouted, spitting out water.
"Where is the shore?" choked Valya.
Karik turned his head to one side where, far away, could be seen a high
green wall of forest.
"Do you think we can ever reach it?" asked Valya.
"Of course we shall be able to swim there!" said Karik, confidently,
"but we must not hurry. Now directly you feel tired - tell me! We'll rest on
our backs. Come on, swim after me!"
Thus they swam towards the shore, splashing, spitting and blowing.
Suddenly Valya yelled out:
"Look! What is that? It is coming right after us."
A strange sort of animal was sliding over the water on half-bent legs.
"What is it?"
"I don't know!" whispered Karik, with his head back between his
shoulders.
"Will it bite?"
"I don't know. "
The animal slid along like a skater on the ice getting nearer to the
children every minute.
"But this - isn't like the dragonfly, is it?" questioned Valya, in a
whisper.
"I don't know - but we must prepare for anything . . . if it attacks,
dive as deep as you can."
With its long legs widely separated, the animal whisked along the
mirror of water, cleverly manoeuvring in its course through the water weeds.
The skate-floats of its feet left a wave track which was hardly
noticeable.
"Yes, it is . . . it's a water skater," shouted Karik. "That's what it
is! An ordinary water skater, only much bigger."
The giant water skater was approaching with unbelievable swiftness. The
brown body, covered on the underside with whitish hairs, rocked slightly as
it moved. Great globe-like eyes fixedly gazed at the children. When turning
sharply, the water skater flung its rear legs backwards and sideways,
dragging them behind, pulling them first to the right and then to the left.
It was clearly using them as a rudder.
The water skater now came rushing straight at them.
"Ah ee!" screamed Valya.
The water skater bent its head back raising a long spear-like snout,
sharp as a needle. It was covered with what appeared to be rust but was
brown, dried, blood. Its tip quivered, just as if it was on a steel spring.
"That is what it kills with !" screamed Valya.
The water skater jerked nearer and raising its front legs aimed its
spear straight at Valya. At that moment Karik seized his sister by the hand
and dragged her under water.
The children dived down. Where a moment ago Karik and Valya had been
swimming there now remained a few ripples and small bubbles.
The water skater perplexedly looked around with its globe-like eyes. It
couldn't understand what had happened. One moment its prey was under its
very nose and next. . . .
What did it mean?
The water skater once more looked around and then, pressing its snout
against its white waistcoat, hurried on sliding along the watery film.
Blowing and spitting the children bobbed up to the surface again.
"Where is it?" Valya was breathing heavily.
"Oo-ouch! Don't know!" replied Karik, quietly, "apparently it has
skated away."
"Where to?"
"Come on to the shore now!" Karik grew angry. "Swim and don't talk!"
For some time the children swam silently looking cautiously from side
to side.
"Oh ! What is this?"
Valya had got caught in some tangled net under the water. She tugged
once, but it held, she tugged harder but the net seemed to put out feelers
and it wound them round her left leg up to her knees. Valya tried to help
with her right leg, but numbers of fine, strong threads wound themselves
round this leg too.
"Now what's up with you?" Karik turned towards his sister.
"Nets!" yelled Valya. "Something has caught me! There is a net under
the water! . . .
Karik snorting, turned back and stretched his hand out to Valya. "Here!
Catch hold!"
But no sooner than he had caught Valya by the hand than he felt that
his legs were in fetters.
The children were soon thrashing the water with every bit of strength
they could muster.
The water bubbled round them like a boiling kettle.
"Oh! Oh!" whimpered Valya, "I can't do anything. I can't."
"Harder! harder! Don't give in!"
But it was all useless. The children could not move from the spot.
Strong clinging nets entangled now not only their legs but their bodies and
were dragging them down . . . under the water.
Next minute the water closed over their heads with a quiet splash.
Choking and bubbling, the children were dragged deeper and deeper.
Then suddenly from somewhere strong hands slid over their arms and
legs, tore them out of the nets and squeezing them tightly dragged them
down, down into the dark depths.
The children were swallowing filthy, warmish water.
Before their eyes there started to float yellow, spotted circles. In
their ears a singing started.
Gently, gently, a ringing commenced:
"Te-ee-ee-ee-eet!"
Another second and they would have been suffocated but, just then,
something threw Karik and Valya violently upwards and their lungs were
suddenly filled with air.
Having breathed deeply several times, Karik opened his eyes. He could
see the wet frightened face of Valya. She had her mouth wide open, was
struggling to say something, but nothing but water came out.
The children were dangling in the air. A huge hairy paw held them high
above the water.
It was now possible to breathe, but above their heads instead of the
friendly blue sky and jolly sun, there hung a dark vault covered with mould.
Black sinister walls rose from the water.
Valya started to cry.
"Now, now! What's the use?" said Karik, mournfully. "Everyone has to
die some time. Don't cry, Valya."
But he started to sob himself, and Valya cried all the louder.
The dark water started to bubble. It appeared to be raising itself into
a lump. The lump split open and slowly there appeared a fat, dripping
carcass. Streams of water ran off its huge rounded sides. Then beside the
monster there appeared hairy legs and at last the children saw through their
tears - a giant spider !
It was rocking in the water looking at the children with cold, wicked
eyes.
Eight small, unwinking, snake-like eyes gazed at the children, noticing
their every movement.
Karik and Valya tried to tear themselves away but the spider squeezed
them so rightly in its claw that they could not even cry out.
The eight-eyed monster turned the children upside down and then quickly
turned them back again and started to whirl them about.
Everything went dark about them, their ears sang.
Karik and Valya lost consciousness.
Professor Enotoff goes into another world - The problem of a simple
spider's web - The first hunt - The coat of armour and the spear - The trap
- The Professor in danger
PROFESSOR ENOTOFF STOOD AT THE TOP OF A GREEN HILLOCK.
His white trousers were smeared with tar and clay. His tie stuck out
sideways. A crumpled hat sat on the back of his head revealing a red and
perspiring forehead. Dry twigs were sticking out of his beard.
In one hand he held a small plywood box. In the other, a long thin
pole. At the end of this pole a red handkerchief was tied, which fluttered
in the breeze like a flag.
"Oo-oof!" puffed the Professor, looking around. "This appears to be the
place."
Below at the foot of the green hillock a quiet, sleepy pond was shining
in the sun. The water-lilies on the blue motionless surface hardly stirred.
Beyond thick clumps of reeds fish were rising.
The Professor put the box on the ground and stuck the pole in beside
it.
"Now we must begin," he sighed, and having thrown his hat on to the
ground started to tear out grass with both hands.
Having torn out a whole armful he carefully covered the plywood box
with grass then went up to the pole and thrust it in deeper, then pulled it
from side to side.
The pole stood up firmly.
"Excellent," said the Professor to himself.
Thrusting a hand into his pocket, he pulled out a small round bottle.
Silvery bubbles were rising from the bottom colliding and bursting.
He then undressed, throwing his clothes carelessly on the grass and
opened the bottle with the silvery liquid.
"I think this should be quite sufficient," he said aloud, looking all
around. Then he sighed sadly and, throwing his head back, drank the contents
of the bottle in one gulp.
"Well, that's that," he muttered, and, with a swing of the arm, threw
the empty bottle into the pond.
For a little while he stood thoughtfully gazing at the broad circles
which were chasing each other on the surface of the water close by. Then he
walked down towards the pond and . . . melted as it were into nothing.
There, where quite a large man had been standing a moment ago, was now
just a pole sticking up with a small red flag on it. Around the foot of this
pole were strewn a crumpled coat, waistcoat, trousers, shirt, boots and
striped socks.
* * * * *
What had become of the Professor?
Having swallowed the liquid he had stood for a while and then started
to move step by step in his bare feet.
Soon everything around him had started to change in a miraculous
fashion.
The grass had shot up with amazing swiftness. Each blade had grown up,
ballooned out, becoming all the time thicker and taller.
Hardly had a minute passed before a thick forest was rustling around
him. Shining green trunks surrounded him on all sides.
Each tree was like a gigantic bamboo.
High above the tops of the trees huge cups were swinging - red, yellow,
blue in colour, scattering over the forest a golden powder from which there
came a spicy, intoxicating smell.
"Well, well!" said the Professor, wiping his hands. "I knew it would be
like this. This grass forest, of course, puts one in mind of the tropics."
In this extraordinary forest there was neither the shade nor quiet of a
pinewood, nor was there as in a birch wood the murmur and rustle of leaves.
No, this was a peculiar forest.
It gleamed green and sunny. Bare glistening trunks rose from hillocks
or disappeared into ravines.
A blue lake was shining and streams could be heard quietly gurgling.
The silence was now and then broken by strange rustles. It seemed as if
somewhere quite close beside some beast was stalking the Professor.
The going was difficult. Sharp leaves scratched his body. Every few
minutes he fell into some hole. The sun was baking and it seemed to the
Professor that he was taking a walk in an oven. The surface of the earth in
the forest was like a battlefield torn up by artillery shells.
In the thick undergrowth here and there hung sticky nets and he had to
be very careful getting around these traps.
"Spiders' work," muttered the Professor, forcing his way through a
thicket.
Now and again he stopped and stood for some time watching with
curiosity the skilful work of this forest weaver. But in particular he
examined attentively the countless blobs which were liberally scattered all
over the web. He naturally was aware that it was not the net which caught
the insects but these tiny, sticky blobs. The wings and legs of an insect
stuck to them just as if the blobs had been carpenters' glue, after which
the insect was an easy prey for the spider.
The Professor knew all this a long time ago, but it is one thing to
know and another thing to see it all with ones' own eyes.
Thus a whole hour passed, but he had quite forgotten where he was and
why he was there.
It seemed to him that he was back in his study bent over a microscope
and in front of him his old acquaintances were passing, one after the other.
But what a microscope ! You can hardly see a whole spider at once
through the eye-piece of a microscope.
Certainly not.
A microscope just allows one to see the eye of the spider, or a tip of
its legs, or its claw resembling a comb, or the blob in its web.
But here in front of the Professor was sitting the whole spider, big as
an ox, and it was possible to see at one and the same time all its eight
eyes, two jaws, eight legs with comb-claws, as well as its soft distended
belly.
But what pleased the Professor most of all was that the spider was
alive and was hunting.
Under a microscope, even the most perfect microscope, it was impossible
to see how a spider hunted its prey, but now the Professor was able to watch
this from arm's-length.
The spider was hunting.
It hid itself, huge and soft, near the spread-out web from which there
stretched directly to it a sentry thread. The spider sat like a fisherman on
the bank and waited.
There, there! the thread was shaking and the spider hurled itself on
its prey, drove its poison-carrying beak into it, killed it, and sucked the
blood out of it.
The Professor gazed at the spreading net and forgot everything else in
the world.
Suddenly in the air above his head something buzzed like a shell from a
gun and crashed into the net with a whine.
The net shook and danced up and down.
"Aha," snorted the Professor, "that's a fine one."
In the net a huge-winged animal struggled, twisting and floundering.
It was bigger than the spider, certainly longer; transparent wings
covered with veins bent into an arch trying to tear away from the sticky
blobs of the web; but tearing away from such a net was not so simple.
"A wasp! Ah, yes, the very thing," announced the Professor to a class
which was not there, and walked right up to the net.
The spider resting on its comb-like feet quickly slid across the web,
combing it with his feet as one does one's hair. He ran around the wasp
once, and then again, and then cautiously started to creep up behind it.
The wasp lunged out with its sharp sting.
The spider leaped back and began to run around the wasp. It had only to
start approaching the wasp when the latter would twist its striped body
around and threateningly stab with its smooth sharp sting.
The spider tried to come upon the wasp from the back and from the
sides, but each time the sharp sting flourishing like a spear met him.
"Curious, very curious!" muttered the Professor, watching the wasp and
spider fighting.
At length after useless and fruitless endeavours the spider had to give
up the battle with its dangerous prey.
Describing a wide circle, it fussily ran around its web shaking it and
making the wasp jump about as if it were in a cradle.
The wasp struggled more furiously.
Running around the wasp the spider then hastily broke thread after
thread. At length the wasp enveloped in web crashed down on to the ground on
the edge of a ravine.
Helplessly floundering and becoming more and more entangled it rolled
down to the bottom of the steep slope, and after it clattered stones and
earth.
"Ha, ha! Now that is excellent," rejoiced the Professor. "That just
suits me."
He ran to the edge of the ravine and looked down.
At the bottom of the ravine the huge wasp struggled and twisted,
covered with web. It twisted its striped body rocking on the ground trying
to get clear of the web, but the web clung to its wings, feet and head all
the more closely.
The Professor hurried along the edge of the ravine carefully looking at
his feet. He was after something.
At last he found a big rock with sharp corners. He could not possibly
lift it. It was several times as big as himself. But as luck would have it,
it was hanging over the edge of the ravine. It just needed a good rocking
and a shove and it should fall down to the bottom of the ravine.
The Professor got a good foothold and started to try and shake the
rock. It wasn't at all light work. The rock stirred and shifted like a
Rotton tooth, but for all that it held firmly.
The Professor puffed like a steam engine. "You're going. You're going,"
he muttered, shoving the rock with his shoulder. "You're moving, that means
you will fall."
Only five minutes before he had expected to give this stone one shove
and it would fall but now it appeared not so simple.
"We will rest a little," he said, breathing heavily and wiping his
perspiring face with the back of his hand.
He sat down on the stone.
Almost immediately above his head the spider was scurrying backwards
and forwards making a new web. On the underside of the spider he could see
four mounds distended like wine skins.
"Spinnerets," the Professor remembered.
Each of them was considerably larger than the Professor's head.
He could see without any microscope hundreds of holes in the
spinnerets, out of which were oozing drops of thick liquid. These stretched
out like threads dragging behind the spider and came together in a thick
rope with shining blobs on it.
In a few minutes the spider had finished the repair of the torn net and
having immediately attached to it a sentry thread went off to the edge of
the web in a comfortable corner.
"And what am I up to?" the Professor angrily jumped to his feet.
He summoned all his strength, pressed his shoulder to the rock and his
feet to the ground.
"Now we'll get you !"
Push.
"Hah, hah! We'll give it to you! Ho, ho! There!"
The rock swayed, hung over the ravine as if thinking, and suddenly with
a rumble and roar crashed downwards raising a thick cloud of dust.
When the dust settled, the Professor shouted loudly.
"Hurrah!"
The rock lay at the bottom of the ravine.
Under it the crushed wasp waggled, convulsively straightening its legs.
Its long striped body now compressed itself and now expanded like the
bellows of a concertina.
"Good! very good!" said the Professor, wiping his hands.
After a little thought he lowered his feet over the edge of the ravine
and, holding on with his hands to roots and protruding stones, he began
cautiously to climb down to the bottom.
When he got to the wasp it no longer moved, the Professor kicked it
with his foot and touched it with his hands - the wasp did not stir.
"There we are !" he said, and whistling something unrecognisable,
calmly set about his work.
He had to work a whole hour before he succeeded in pulling its long
spear-like sting out of the wasp's body.
"A capital weapon!" he said, wiping the sting-spear with his hands.
With such a spear it would not be so terrifying wandering in the grass
jungle looking for Karik and Valya. In case of an attack the Professor could
not only protect himself but actually set about anything that might think of
eating him.
Now it became necessary to think about clothes. Whatever else might
happen the Professor was quite unprepared to journey through the wood naked.
Skilfully wielding the sharp spear he cut the spider's web in which the
wasp was entangled, carefully cleaned it from sticky blobs and wound it
around himself until its soft silky rope fitted tightly around his body.
The suit was not very beautiful but it would be very hard-wearing.
"Just as if I was in armour!" said the Professor, looking at himself in
his new apparel with great delight.
Throwing the spear on his shoulder he jauntily set off on his journey.
Tramping across the pitted earthen floor of the forest from time to
time he stopped and as he was deciding on his path he listened. Sometimes
having heard a noise he hid himself behind one of the huge green trunks
looking anxiously from side to side.
Such precaution was not unnecessary.
The grass jungle teemed with monster animals.
Rattling like sheets of iron, dragonflies flew over more like
aeroplanes than simple insects.
Jumping over the tops of the trees green grasshoppers zoomed past as
big as motor buses. Between the trunks there slid striped caterpillars
shaking the undergrowth with their bodies. They were so big that they gave
the impression to the Professor of something like a goods train passing
through the forest.
Now and then stamping their feet centipedes ran past. Any of them might
squash the Professor into the ground with one foot.
He had neither the time nor the inclination to fight with these animals
of the grass jungle.
He decided to go into battle only if one of these monsters attacked
him.
He travelled on towards the lake which showed blue through the gaps in
the trees.
As he went from tree to tree he looked with interest at the huge
flowers, trying to guess their names. But now he found he could not say with
any certainty which of the flowers was a daisy, which a buttercup or
marigold.
All the flowers were so immense that many of them conveyed nothing at
all to the Professor, which amused him.
"Now that, for example," he sighed, looking at a blue ball resembling a
stork's nest. "What is that called in our world?"
But who was there now to answer the Professor's questions?
Above the top of the forest quietly rocked pink jars, gigantic yellow
stars, red globes, blue baskets.
Out of the red globes tubes of beetroot red were sticking, like the
prickles of a hedgehog.
"What on earth is that?" the Professor puzzled and, suddenly hitting
his forehead with his hand, he shouted laughingly - "Clover! Ordinary red
clover!"
Beside the clover flowers there swung in the wind, shaking and dancing,
lilac bells. They were lit up by the sun, and the ground under them also
seemed lilac.
"Now I do know you?" said the Professor, happily. "Some poetry has
actually been written about you." And he sang at the top of his voice:
"My tender little Harebells,
Who bathe the steppes in blue,
Your gaze seems full of deep spells
With its dark, mysterious hue."
"You can gaze at me as much as you like," grinned the Professor, "but
if one of your "dark, mysterious" flowers gets torn off and falls on me, I'm
a gonner."
Thus did the Professor observe with great interest a new and unfamiliar
world as he picked his way through the grass jungle, stopping every so often
to rest.
Soon there was revealed before his eyes the smooth surface of a lake
stretching away without bounds.
The water sparkled in the sun like a gigantic mirror.
"This must be it," said the Professor, thoughtfully and holding his
spear more firmly he quickened his steps.
He came out of the grassy forest.
Across his path there was running a long narrow ditch filled to the
edges with brown water.
The Professor took a run, jumped and cleared the ditch quite easily,
but as he landed he felt the ground sliding away under his feet and opening
up.
He gave a cry and with his legs waving in the air vanished into a dark
hole.
Having fallen to the bottom he quickly picked himself up and started to
walk around.
Over his head far away was the blue sky. A weak light lit up the walls
of the hole which appeared thickly matted with roots. Immediately in front
of him the Professor could see the mouth of a dark tunnel.
He bent down,
The tunnel breathed at him dark and cold.
"That's that," said the Professor.
He turned away from the tunnel and started to climb the hanging wall of
the hole, getting grips for his hands and feet in the roots.
He had practically reached the top and -it remained only for him to
stretch out his arm and the sun would once again have been shining on his
head, but at the very moment when his head was appearing out of the hole he
spotted right in front of him the hideous snout of some sort of monster.
"Excuse me," hiccupped the startled Professor, and hastily ducking his head
disappeared back into the hole.
The monster, his great feet moving, approached the hole.
The Professor's eyes met the eyes of the monster.
"A beetle," he almost shouted, "a dung-beetle." Beside the beetle he
saw an immense grey pear-shaped object. The beetle turned to the pear-shaped
object and set about shoving it towards the hole.
The Professor had not succeeded in remembering the Latin name for the
beetle, when the grey pear toppled over the edge of the hole and shut out
the sky.
It was now pitch dark in the hole.
The Professor, frightened, quickly clambered up the side of the hole
and tried to push the pear away with his shoulder and head, using every
ounce of his strength. He tried to work his way out of the dungeon, but all
in vain.
The pear would not budge.
He shoved harder, but at that moment the beetle was pressing on the top
of the pear with such violence that the pear drove down into the hole like
the cork in a bottle.
The shock flung the Professor downwards.
Earth came crumbling down on his head and a sharp stem hit him a
painful blow in the chest.
"Ow!" he croaked and, rubbing his injured chest, he made to get up.
Suddenly he realised he was not alone in the darkness of the hole.
He hurriedly gazed around.
Behind his back something rustled as if it was slowly and cautiously
stealing up to him.
He felt around with his hands. His fingers touched his spear. He
grasped it tightly, and quickly jumping to his feet pressed his back to the
wall.
"Ts-z-a-a-k" Something sounded right beside him. The Professor heard
breathing - hesitating breathing. He started to wave his spear in front of
himself and then hoarsely shouted. "Who is it? Who is there?"
In the Spider's lair - The battle in the under-water prison - Valya
finds it stuffy - A vagabond vegetable - Karik finds a way out
KARIK BECAME CONSCIOUS. HE OPENED HIS EYES AND THEN suddenly it all
came back to him. He remembered how he had flown with Valya on a dragonfly.
He remembered the ghastly snout of the water skater and then the strong
hairy legs of the spider.
All around it was dark and there was a rank smell. Some way below
beyond his feet water quietly lapped and just beside him someone breathed
softly.
Karik lay stretched out at full length, but what he was lying on he
could not make out. His head sang, his arms and legs were tingling with pins
and needles, his eyelids seemed too heavy to open.
He groaned and then immediately recognised the frightened voice of
Valya.
"Quiet! He is here!"..
Karik quickly turned his head and bumped his forehead on Valya's
temple.
Valya made a choked shout.
Karik tried to move away from her but could not. Someone had wound a
thick cord round them from their feet to their heads fastening them securely
together.
Karik tried the harder to escape and suddenly as a result of a furious
wriggle he and Valya started to sway from side to side as if they were in a
swing.
"Quieter!" whispered Valya, hurriedly. "Please be quieter! It's - it's
just below us."
"The spider?"
"A - ay - It has just carried us here - I heard - "
"Aren't you frightened?"
"Not half! Aren't you?"
"I am, but look here, don't cry. Let's try to escape first of all."
Karik moved apart the loops of the cord with his head and peered
around. Below there lay the dark water out of which rose up black smooth
walls and overhead was a sloping roof.
The children were hanging in mid-air in the den.
"What do you think!" whispered Karik. "It's hung us up - fastened us to
the roof."
"M-m" nodded Valya, "it hung us up. I thought as much."
"But what for?"
"I've been trying to think. What for?"
"Well, haven't you thought of anything?"
"No."
Karik succeeded in pulling first one arm and then the other out of the
spider's binding cords.
"What are you doing, Karik?"
"Be quieter! Shut up!"
Trying not to pant, Karik in the end freed his head and started to look
below.
Just immediately below the children the spider was scurrying about. It
ceaselessly moved about in the water along the walls of the den stopping
from time to rime as if listening for something.
From the roof above huge drops of water formed and broke off to fall
with a splash into the water throwing up showers of spray to the roof.
Karik was able to distinguish a dull noise coming from somewhere.
Somewhere right beside them - just behind the wall it seemed -
something was not exactly knocking and not exactly scratching.
It was as if someone outside was moving around feeling the wall looking
for a door.
This noise definitely was disturbing the spider. It would first of all
start climbing the wall and then moving its long legs would back away from
the wall.
"Do you hear?" said Valya, quietly. "Something is moving the other side
of the wall."
"Yes, yes," whispered Karik. "I hear it." The noise started to get
louder and louder. It seemed as if someone was beating on the wall with soft
but heavy fists.
"Something is trying to get in here!" breathed Valya. At that moment
the walls of the underwater house shook so vigorously that the children in
their spider's cradle were shot upwards. The cradle struck the wall and
started swinging like a pendulum. "Look! Look at the spider!" whispered
Valya. The spider had pushed itself into the centre of the water and was
ceaselessly moving its feet as if feeling something and gazing with all its
eyes at the wall of its den.
And suddenly the wall split open, there was a shower of pieces of
plaster-like earth into the water. In the gaping wall there appeared huge
hairy feet.
The feet once again tore at the wall. The under-water house shook and
rocked. The cradle with the children was flung from side to side.
The wall crashed down. Amid the noise and splatter another spider as
like the owner of the den as are two peas, burrowed its way into the den. It
gathered its striped legs underneath its body as if preparing for a spring
and slowly started to advance. The owner of the den waved its feelers. The
spiders looked at each other for a moment or so. Then the owner raised its
feelers and violently hurled itself at the uninvited guest.
In the darkness there commenced a bitter struggle. Feelers whistled
through the air and smacked the water. Spray flew up to the roof and soon
the walls were covered with shaking drops of water.
The battle of the spiders shook the underwater den. The walls quivered
and the roof rocked.
The children were flung up in the air, hurled first to the right and
then to the left.
Before their eyes were glimpses of wall, roof, spiders, water and then
again wall, roof, water.
The spiders fought silently. They hugged each other with long legs
swaying like wrestlers from side to side, then jumping backwards away from
each other would once again dart at one another. Then with a swish there
whirled up to the roof a torn-off leg. It got caught in the spider's
fastenings and hung swinging above the heads of the children.
Karik managed successfully to dislodge it. Rocking in the water the
mutilated spiders separated for an instant and sat breathing heavily near
the wall; but then once more they hurled themselves at each other.
Once more the water foamed noisily and the walls of the little house
shook from the blows as if there had been an earthquake.
The children followed the battle of the spiders with fear, hardly
daring to breathe.
The spider fastenings became slacker as a result of the violent
jerking. Now it became possible for Karik and Valya to wriggle out of their
rope cradle. First Karik climbed out and quickly grasped the rope which led
from the roof to the cradle.
"Come on Valya," said Karik, "get out."
Valya stretched herself upright to her full height and stood by Karik.
"Do you know what," she said, "we must look for something."
"What for?"
"Some sort of stick to defend ourselves with."
But wherever the children looked they could see nothing in the den
except the bare walls.
"What about the leg," said Valya, "we might use the leg over there,
there is the torn-off leg floating." She pointed her finger down to the dark
water on which mangled legs of the spiders floated.
"Oh! Valya," Karik whispered cheerfully. "Look, I believe they have
killed each other!"
The children stretched their heads down.
On the dark surface of the water there floated, moving ever so
slightly, the mutilated bodies of the spiders. Waves were pushing them
towards the hole in the wall and they rocked side by side, no longer paying
each other any attention. The spider-owner of the den made one more attempt
to move but its head dropped helplessly into the water - dead.
It became quite quiet in the under-water house.
"They're dead!" cheerfully shouted Karik.
He bent over, stretched his head out and spat first on to one spider
and then on to the other.
Neither spider budged.
The children looked at each other: were they dead or were they not
dead?
Karik shouted.
"Ehey-hey-hey!"
The spiders floated like leather cushions blown out with air.
"They're dead!" said Karik, now quite certain and having measured with
his eyes the distance to the water he let go the rope. Arms and legs gleamed
in the air, and Karik hit the water like a stone.
"Karik! Lunatic!" screamed Valya, gazing at the fountain of spray
shooting up at her.
Karik's head appeared above the water: having emerged he looked around
and swam towards the spiders.
"Karik," screamed Valya, "come back! They are still breathing!"
But Karik, paying no attention to the cries of his sister, swam up to
one of the spiders and lifting his arm out of the water struck it violently
in the tummy.
The spider's tummy made a noise like a drum. Karik quickly swam away
but, having looked at the spider, came back again and hit its head with the
heel of his foot. The spider never budged. Then Karik climbed on to the
carcass as if it was a raft. and stood upright.
"Jump!" he shouted, waving his hand at Valya. "No!" Valya shook her
head, "it's too far!"
"What are you going to do? Sit up there for ever? Whatever happens you
will have to jump. Come on, jump!" Valya sighed deeply.
"Jump quickly because maybe new spiders will come and we shall be even
worse off."
Valya closed her eyes, flung up her arms and plumped downwards, letting
out a sort of squeak.
A shower of spray hit Karik and waves rocked the spiders. Blowing and
puffing, Valya came up out of the water. "Climb up here!" shouted Karik,
drumming with his feet on the distended tummy of the spider. "Don't be
afraid! Give me your hand!"
Valya swam over to the fearsome carcass, touched the spider's huge,
hairy body with her hand and immediately drew her hand back and screamed
with fright.
"It's mo-ov-ing!"
"Don't tell lies! Nothing moved!" Karik grew angry. "Come on! quickly!"
At last after much persuasion, Valya took the hand stretched out by
Karik and he pulled her up on to his floating island.
The spider never budged. There was nothing to fear. Valya squatted down
and started to wring out her wet hair, but Karik stood upright and began to
examine the gloomy lair of the spider attentively.
"We must get out of this," sighed Valya. "We must find a door."
"There's a door." Karik stretched out his arm towards the dark hole in
the wall.
Throwing his arms up above his head he jumped into the water and
quickly swam towards the hole in the wall.
Valya watched Karik with some agitation and when he vanished in the
darkness she yelled.
"What's up? What's there?"
Karik did not answer.
Valya suddenly looked at her feet and grew pale. It seemed to her that
the spider was beginning to move.
"Ka-ari-k!" - She shouted.
Her voice carried along the curve of the roof and died away.
"Ka-a-ri-k!" shouted Valya, still louder. She was just about to jump
into the water and swim after her brother but at that moment Karik
reappeared in the dark hole.
"What are you shouting about?" he asked angrily.
Seeing Karik alive and uninjured, Valya became calm. She gave her hands
to her brother and, helping him up on to the spider, asked:
"Well, what did you find? Is there any sort of door?"
"No. It is the same sort of den as ours," answered Karik, shrugging his
shoulders.
"Is there anything living in it?"
"Nothing."
Karik sat down with his knees up to his chin and clasped his legs with
his arms.
"And there is no door?"
"No!"
"But suppose we dive under the wall, Karik?"
"Under the wall?"
Karik bent and, hanging his head, started to stare at the dark waters.
In the depths of the water he could dimly see the slimy bottom of the
pond. Silvery spider threads stretched from the slime to the edges of the
under-water den, making it impossible to dive out.
"We must dive under the wall," repeated Valya. "But do you see that?"
And Karik pointed with his hand at the net stretched under the water,
preventing either exit or entry to the prison. Certainly not! To dive into
that would be terrible.
"There must be some door!" said Karik. "How did we get in here
otherwise?"
Valya now began a sort of panting noise.
Karik peered at her and then quickly seized her hand.
"Valya! what's up?"
Valya sat there very pale with her mouth wide open, holding her throat
with her hands.
"I can't breathe," she croaked, "there - there's not enough air."
"All right, all right!" Karik muttered in confusion. But he did not
know how to help his sister, and in fact he himself felt a dragging in his
chest which tugged at his ribs till they hurt. "I can't get enough air
either," panted Karik. He breathed faster and faster, his ears began to
sing, his heart beat as violently as if he was running up a steep high
mountain. The damp, heavy air filled his lungs, making breathing more and
more difficult. Something had to be done.
"Don't be frightened!" he panted, touching Valya with his hand.
"We'll get out somehow!" And once again for the hundredth time he
started to examine the under-water prison.
Karik's head started to go round. He bent over, scooped up the stagnant
water, splashed it on his face. Suddenly his arm stopped in mid-air.
He had spotted two enormous green eggs on the slimy bottom to which
they were attached at one end. One of these eggs started to move and slowly
came free of the mud and floated upwards striking the edge of the
under-water den disappeared upwards somewhere. In the same way the second
egg floated up and disappeared.
Karik stretched out a hand to Valya and said with a trembling voice.
"Frogbit buds? Do you see?"
He had made no mistake, they were the "winter buds" of frogbit - a
water plant.
Karik had seen these many times when he was in the big world and now
recognised them without special difficulty.
Frogbit - a creeping water plant - travels about lakes and ponds all
the summer blown by the wind from bank to bank. Its roots like strawberries'
runners obtain nourishment direct from the water. At the end of the summer
young shoots appear with runners. They rise out of the surface of the water
and break into leaves resembling a heart as one sees drawn in pictures.
In winter the frogbit plant is frozen in the ice and perishes. But
before this it succeeds in strewing the bottom with its amazing winter buds.
All the winter the buds - looking like green eggs - remain on the
bottom. But as soon as there comes a day sufficiently warm they become blown
out with gas and one after the other float up to the surface of the water,
and once again become water creeping-plants.
It was these seeds that Karik had spotted.
Seizing Valya by the hand, he spluttered.
"Listen! These things rise like corks. We must dive and hold on to one
of them. They will then carry us up."
"But the web? Look at all its ropes under water."
"All the same we must try. Now dive. Quickly!"
Just at this moment a gigantic green egg was stirring on the bottom.
There was no time to think. The seed came away from the black mud and
started to float up.
"Dive!" shouted Karik.
Valya summoned all her strength. Having taken a deep breath she shot
off the spider and disappeared beneath the water. Karik watched her dive
under the wall, seize the huge frogbit bud with both hands, and disappear
upwards with it.
Karik dived after his sister. Opening his eyes beneath the water, he
made for another green torpedo. It started to move. He put his arms and legs
round the broad slippery sides and at once began to spin round. After
turning round several times the torpedo started suddenly to move upwards
through the mass of water above.
To Karik holding his breath there seemed to follow an age of floating
upwards, boring as it was through the water. Another moment and his heart
would have burst from lack of air, but as luck would have it the green
torpedo suddenly bobbed out of the surface of the water.
Blinded by the clear light, with the hot rays of the sun beating on his
face, Karik floundered in the water and breathed - at last. At last he could
breathe easily. Great lungfuls.
Beside him, Valya was floating gulping in the clean fresh air with the
same greed.
"Ah, Valya," Karik shouted again, "you're alive and breathing."
"I am breathing!"
"The main thing is, don't be frightened of anything," said the happy
Karik. "Don't get depressed, don't whimper and, above all, don't cry. If you
and I can succeed in getting away from such a terrible spider - well, it
means we should succeed in finding our way home."
The poor children had no suspicion of what they had still to survive in
this unfamiliar world and what dangers they had still to face on their
journey homewards.
Daring navigators - Strange passengers - Karik and Valya penetrate a
watery jungle - The search for food - The children find berries- - But then!
RAISING THEIR HEADS ABOVE WATER THE CHILDREN LOOKED ALL around them.
Everywhere as far as eye could see there seemed to stretch the blue sheen of
the water, and it was only in the west where now the sun was setting there
appeared the serried top of a dark bank of forest.
Above the forest clouds were rolling.
"We must get ashore somehow," said Karik, "and then make for home."
"Can we ever get to the shore, do you think?" asked Valya, eyeing the
distant bank.
"Certainly we can get to the shore," said Karik, perkily. "We must make
use of these things. Climb on to your bud!"
The children clambered on to the green torpedoes.
Karik shouted:
"Row with your feet."
The children started to paddle with their feet trying to get into
motion, but the buds just bobbed about and did not move.
"Stop!" shouted Karik. "Come over to me. We'll row together."
Valya swam to her brother. The frogbit bud was now loaded so that more
than half of it was under water.
"Row!" commanded Karik.
The children keeping time together pulled their arms through the water
like oars. The bud wobbled and then started to move slowly forward.
"We are going ahead!" shouted Valya.
"Full speed ahead!" ordered Karik.
At first the bud went from side to side, to the right and then to the
left, but soon this matter was put right.
Cutting the water with its sharp nose, the green torpedo sped towards
the shore like an ordinary boat. The children drove it forward
energetically, labouring with their arms.
In the distance ahead something panted and struck the water not exactly
like a plank of wood nor like oars of a boat. The nearer the children got to
the shore the more distinctly could these noises be heard and then quite
beside them something roared.
"Qua-a-a-ha-aha-ha," came the sound across the water. Valya trembled
and nearly fell off the bud.
"Whatever is that," she whispered, stopping rowing.
"A frog! It must be a frog. Just an ordinary frog. But bigger than a
five storeyed house. Don't be frightened!"
"Yes," said Valya thoughtfully. "Just an ordinary one - but even a fly
could eat us, let alone a five-storeyed frog."
"Don't fret," Karik comforted his sister. "A frog like that will never
notice us."
Valya became silent.
The children were now rowing towards inlets which could be seen cutting
the line of the shore.
Bright green glistening islands seemed to rise up out of the water.
They rocked slightly as if they were rafts moored at buoys. It was necessary
to keep a sharp look out to prevent running into one of them.
"What do you think that is?" asked Valya, pointing at one of the
islands.
"I don't know," answered Karik, undecidedly, "must be some sort of
leaves - surely water weeds."
Now to the right and now to the left of them round animals with smooth,
polished backs like motor-car bodies rose suddenly out of the water. They
were in fact as big as motor-cars.
Stretching out their wings the creatures flew upwards and then just as
suddenly plunged back into the water, raising a fountain of spray.
On the surface of a broad channel between two islands the children saw
a brown striped monster with long, bent legs. It hurried backwards and
forwards sliding over the water on its round, podgy body.
On the back of this podgy-bodied brute there were sitting five little
reproductions of the beast only much smaller.
The little ones sat there quite calmly.
From time to time the striped brute fished something up out of the
water. Then the little ones in one wink slid off into the water, and in a
trice climbed back again. In their paws they clasped pieces of some sort of
food which they quickly devoured.
"Another sort of spider!" groaned Valya, stopping rowing. The seed
stopped and lazily rocked in the waves.
"And on its back are its young," said Karik. "We had better wait a
little. They have our permission to move on!"
But at that moment another similar spider shot out from behind one of
the islands. It was the very same brown and also had stripes. There were
young ones moving on its back too.
The spiders hurled themselves at each other.
They were wolf spiders, beasts preying on the surface of the water.
They jerked each other savagely. The little spiders were thrown like
tops into the water. Whilst the big spiders were fighting the little ones
skidded about the water in confusion, coming together into a cluster and
then separating in all directions.
Then suddenly the battle finished.
One of the spiders started to sink in the water. The spreading ripples
reached the young ones and rocked them up and down.
They bobbed on the waves just like ducklings without feathers.
"Now the young ones will fight each other," breathed Valya. But the
young ones seemed hardly interested in the fight. They fussily charged about
the surface of the water, one following the other, tumbled head over heels,
and then suddenly they all made a rush for the victorious spider and,
jostling each other, nimbly climbed up on its back.
Karik and Valya looked at each other.
"What do you think of that!" exclaimed Valya. "Will it throw the
strange young spiders off its back or not?"
But the wolf spider did not even notice that it had twice the number of
passengers aboard.
It rested calmly on the water with its long legs apart waiting whilst
the youngsters settled themselves down. When they were all, to the last one,
seated it moved off as if nothing had happened and quickly vanished amid the
labyrinth of islands. The children rowed on further. "Interesting," said
Valya, thoughtfully. "What's interesting?"
"It is interesting what those little spiders were eating." Karik
shrugged his shoulders. "Some sort of rubbish !"
Valya sighed. She was remembering that she had not eaten anything since
the day before - no breakfast, no lunch. So she said.
"Maybe it isn't quite rubbish. To begin with, maybe it would taste
nasty, but then one would get used to it - and it would be all the same.
Then one might get very fond of it."
It was time for the evening meal.
The children grew thoughtful.
What would be happening at home now? Granny would undoubtedly be laying
the table. Mother had said yesterday:
"Dinner to-morrow will be a special one. You mustn't be late."
"What do you think there is for dinner at home to-day?" asked Valya.
"I believe it is cold soup and onion and egg pie."
Valya swallowed the water her mouth was making.
"Or maybe it's hot soup with pork or ham or sausages in it. Then for a
second course beefsteak with onions and roast potatoes. What would you like
most to eat?"
"I?"
Valya thought a little and said:
"I could eat a crust of bread and a little cheese."
"I would prefer a beefsteak," said Karik, "only a big one, like a
plate. And masses of potatoes and a green salad and afterwards I believe I
should have little difficulty with a whole pie and some strawberry tart.
Then ..."
Valya stopped rowing. She turned to Karik and asked:
"But what are we going to have for dinner to-day?"
"To-day it will not be convenient for us to have dinner."
"But then what for supper?"
"It is not really convenient for us to have supper to-day."
"Then breakfast?"
"We cannot have breakfast."
"What will be convenient?"
"Nothing," said Karik, grumpily. "The most convenient thing is not to
think about it."
Valya sighed.
"Come on, row! Let's get to the shore as quickly as possible!" shouted
Karik. "We'll find something ashore."
"It would be nice to find a strawberry. It would be ten times as big as
us. Certainly would be as big as a haystack. Do you know we only need one
berry and we could make a hole in it and live in it. Then we could just eat
the walls and the ceiling."
"Don't chatter." Karik frowned. "Row up and we shall see when we get
there."
Valya became silent.
With their arms and legs swinging in time, the bud spurted towards the
shore with a bow wave in front and long widening tracks like whiskers in the
water stretching away behind.
The shore grew nearer every minute.
Higher and higher rose the forest out of the water, and it seemed as if
it was floating to meet the children.
"Row as hard as you can !" shouted Karik.
"I am going full speed ahead," panted Valya.
The bud flew forward like an arrow. Within an hour a huge reed forest
had risen up before the young travellers shutting out the sun. A heavy cold
shadow covered the water and the water itself in the shade by the forest was
chilly unlike that in the sun beyond.
The bud sped on between huge bamboo-like trunks which rose straight out
of the water and disappeared into the sky itself.
"Row gently!" commanded Karik.
"But why?"
"There is some animal here! Can you hear?"
The children stopped rowing.
Karik put his finger to his lips.
Looking at each other apprehensively the brother and sister silently
listened to the unpleasant sound which was proceeding from within the
forest.
The curving trunks swayed, rubbed one another and made loud scraping
noises. In the dark recesses of the forest which breathed coldness and damp
some animal noisily splashed about, something else jabbered and whined
menacingly.
The forest stood like trees in a flooded -field. Through the clearings
glistened the blue background beyond which the wall of trees rose thick and
solid.
On the surface of the water between the reed trunks strange,
quick-footed animals moved hither and thither and in pursuit of these there
hurried other animals bigger and more terrible. When they overtook their
prey they pulled it to pieces and immediately devoured it.
"Ye-e-es!" Karik whistled softly.
Valya understood him without further words.
Looking at her brother, in fright she whispered:
"We must go back? Now."
"Back where?" muttered Karik, and thinking a little. "We must get to a
shore where there are none of these brutes. Let's go and look for another."
They betook themselves back into open water and drove the bud along the
edge of the reed forest now and then looking around and endeavouring all the
time to get further away from it.
"Do you know what !" said Valya. "I propose that this bank be called
'Nightmare Jungle'."
"That's just stupid!" said Karik.
"Why stupid?" Valya was offended. "All travellers give names. I have
been reading about this in Jules Verne."
Karik did not answer. Looking at the reed forest past which they were
moving, he whistled some very melancholy tune.
"Or else," said Valya, "it could be called 'The Forest of Bloodsome
Mystery'."
"All right, all right!" barked Karik, "watch your rowing!"
The reed forest gradually receded and soon had completely disappeared.
To the right there now stretched a desert-like shore covered with yellow
stones which glittered in the sun.
It was so hot that all living creatures seemed to have hidden and must
have been sheltering under leaves and stones, and the children now rowed on
without meeting any sign of life.
The way was clear.
Karik grew happier.
"Now that shore," he said, pointing with his hand at the stony waste,
"I would call the 'Cape of Good Hope'."
"Why Gape? I don't see any Cape."
"That is unimportant," answered Karik, steering the bud towards the
shore, "as we explore it we are sure to find a Cape sooner or later."
"But I. . . ."
"I am going to beach the bud!" yelled Karik, splashing water in Valya's
face. "Ready !"
The children gave one final paddle with their arms and the green
torpedo stranded on the stony shore.
With the violence of the bump the bud turned over. Karik and Valya
found themselves suddenly in the water, but quickly jumped up and catching
hold of the projecting yellow cliff scrambled ashore.
The rocks were hot from the sun. Valya sat down on one only to leap up
again.
"What's the matter? Did it bite you?" grinned Karik. "What are you
going to call that rock?"
He put up his hand to shield his eyes like the peak of a cap and gazed
around himself.
"Do you know what . . . .?"
"What?" replied Valya, timidly.
"These rocks are just sand. When we were big it seemed minute, but now
each grain of sand has become like a rock for us."
"What then?"
Karik sighed and said.
"They say that in Africa they cook eggs by burying them in the sand. I
am afraid we may get cooked without being buried!"
He touched a rock with his hand and shook his head.
"No, we cannot sit down here. We must go on further."
The children returned to their green torpedo and the bud once again set
out on its travels.
"I propose that this shore be called - " said Valya.
" 'Hot Bottom'," interrupted Karik, and laughed loudly.
Valya was cross.
Knitting her brow, she sat paddling furiously with her arms and legs.
Karik also became silent.
How long the children drove the torpedo along the bank they neither of
them could tell, but their arms and legs became very tired.
"If only you knew how much I wanted something to eat," Valya said,
breaking the long silence.
"I know," Karik sympathised. "The two sides of my tummy are sticking
together."
"It would be grand," said Valya, "if we could catch something and cook
it on those rocks."
"What in particular?"
"Oh, something - a butterfly - dragonfly."
"Do you think they would taste all right?"
"Of course! If you cooked them they'd taste all right."
"But I could eat something raw," confessed Karik. "A butterfly, only we
could never kill it."
Talking thus they reached a shore covered with grass forest.
Up from the grass forest there was rising the sultry steam of a
summer's day. Here and there stood gnarled trunks of trees resembling the
monster trees of the tropics - the baobab tree - which Karik and Valya had
seen at the pictures.
"There will be berries here!" shouted Valya. "I know there are always
berries in a forest. Let's get ashore quickly."
The bud came to rest on the sloping shore. The children jumped ashore
and, stumbling now and then, ran in to the forest.
In the forest it was stiflingly hot.
The trees smelt of swampy grass. There was no bark on their shiny
trunks.
The rays of the sun penetrating through the thick vegetation made odd
yellow patches on the ground.
The ground under foot was damp and sticky.
"Now!" cried Valya, pushing her way through the undergrowth of the
forest. "Who will be the first to find our dinner!"
"All right!" said Karik, "look for it, but don't get too far away or we
shall lose each other."
Shouting and hallooing to one another the children made their way
through the forest keeping a sharp look-out on all sides.
On the way they stopped here and there and pushed great leaves on one
side to see if there were berries underneath. They climbed up the grass
trees to look for berries. But nowhere could they find a berry.
"What an awful forest!" Did it mean that they must die of hunger?
Suddenly the children heard a dull noise.
They stopped.
Karik raised his hand.
"Did you hear?"
"Aha," Valya nodded. "It's water. Apparently it's the noise of a river.
Come on! There are sure to be berries by the river. That I know !"
Valya ran on.
Karik dashed after her.
"Not so much noise!" he shouted. "It may not be a river but some sort
of frog breathing!"
He caught hold of Valya's hand.
The children made their way in the direction of the noise, listening at
each suspicious rumble.
Piles of fallen trunks covered with a layer of dried mud barred their
way. Dry leaves stood up like walls and when the children were trying to get
round one leaf it fell on them, and they only just managed to wriggle out
from underneath it.
At last Karik and Valya came out at the foot of a high hillock. They
dashed up to the top of this and there suddenly felt cold air in their
faces.
Right ahead water was flowing noisily.
Parting the undergrowth with their hands they saw in front of them a
stream.
The stream was almost a river. Bubbling and foaming it ran amongst the
stones twisting now to the right and now to the left, leaping downwards in
noisy waterfalls.
"I see something," shouted Valya.
She wrenched her hand out of her brother's grasp and knocking him aside
dashed off ahead.
"Vally! Stop! Come back!"
But Valya was already hidden amongst the trunks of the trees.
"Come on! Come on!" Karik could hear her calling. "Hurry up! Here are
the berries. Such huge ones too. Do hurry, Karik!"
Karik ran towards his sister's voice. "Vally!"
"Here! Here!"
Valya was standing under a tall tree and with her head flung back, she
pointed upwards with her finger. Karik ran up beside her. "Berries? Eh?"
"Yes ! there you are! Huge ones!"
High above the ground there hung pressed to the trunk of the tree dusky
fruit as big as beer barrels. Full of juicy flesh, they hid in the shadow of
long narrow leaves. "Well!" Valya's eye flashed.
"What do you mean, 'Well'? Up you go!" shouted Karik, and dashed to the
tree.
With their arms and legs around the trunk the children swarmed up the
tree, not letting the dusky fruit out of their sight - first Karik and after
him Valya.
The trunk swayed slightly and the leaves shook. Below at the bottom of
a steep slope the river foamed noisily.
Valya looked down.
"Oh! suppose we fall - how awful!" she said.
"Keep climbing," ordered Karik from above, "we won't fall."
Nimbly shifting their hands and feet, they at length reached the
tempting fruit.
Karik stretched out his hand, but suddenly all went dark before his
eyes and his hands slipped.
"What are you up to?" Valya managed to ask, and at that moment she felt
a deafening noise in her ears. Her head started to swim.
With their arms waving and turning head over heels the children plunged
violently downwards straight into the swift and boisterous stream.
The strong current seized them and sweeping them round a rock carried
them off towards the rumbling waterfall.
The battle in the cave - It had ears in its legs - The extraordinary
trees - The Professor becomes a pilot - An unexpected meeting
THE PROFESSOR EDGED BACK TO THE SIDE OF THE HOLE. AS HIS eyes became
used to the darkness he saw in the depth of a dark cavern a huge head with
long whiskers.
"Good gracious, a regular hussar! What on earth is it?" he
gruff-gruffed, quite perplexed.
A broad, bulging shield covered the head and the front part of the
monster. From under the shield there poked out short but very broad legs
with teeth on them. The Professor could at once see that it was quite beyond
him to fight with this creature. It could kill him with a single blow of its
foot. For all that he resolved that he would defend himself.
He pressed his back against the cold, damp side of the dungeon, keeping
the wasp sting in front of him.
The creature began to stir. The great stiff body, which might have been
made of bone rings, started to move forwards. Earth fell noisily from the
sides of the cavern.
"Is it possible to attack it from behind?" flashed into the Professor's
mind.
But the monster's back was well protected. Two webbed wings folded side
by side covered the huge carcass with a strong armour.
"But whatever is it? What can it be?"
The Professor stood on tiptoes, stretched his head and suddenly spotted
two spears with sharp edges which were dragging on the ground like two
tails. He gasped with fright.
"An underground cricket! The mole-cricket!"
The mole-cricket noisily shifted itself in the cavern. Raking itself
forward on the earth it moved nearer and nearer the Professor.
"Feeds on the larvae of insects and earth worms," recollected
Professor; "no doubt it would not object to eating me!"
Looking around helplessly, he cautiously edged away from the dark
corner of the cavern, trying to keep as far as possible from the
mole-cricket.
"Must get round it!" mused the Professor, moving along the wall towards
the rear of his enemy.
The mole-cricket turned. It raised its feelers as if smelling or
listening.
The Professor held his breath.
The mole-cricket dropped its feelers and clumsily scraping its
spade-like feet hurled itself at him.
The Professor shot back into his former place. "No! it's not so easy to
deceive a mole-cricket underground.
It feels just as much at home there as a fish does in water. No!
No use running away! I must fight!"
He stopped and lifted up the bottom of the spear, let the point fall
forward and then steadied it ready for battle. He edged along with one elbow
pressed against the wall behind him.
Then suddenly he felt his elbow was in space.
He quickly turned around. Immediately behind him gaped the entrance of
some sort of dark recess.
The Professor took a deep breath.
Where did this tunnel lead to? Who had dug it? Was any new danger
lurking here? But there was no time at that moment to think it out. . . .
"To hide, to get away, to dig deeper into the earth," hammered in his
mind, and without thinking it all out, he plunged into the hole.
Stumbling and hitting himself painfully against a rock, he threaded his
way in pitch darkness, feeling with his hands.
The hole appeared a lengthy one, sometimes dropping downwards, then
rising upwards, then turning to the right, then abruptly twisting to the
left and all the time becoming narrower and narrower.
It was necessary for him to bend now and in places to crawl on all
fours dragging his spear after him.
But all this was a trifle. The Professor was ready to put up with all
these discomforts. He would readily have agreed to crawl all day long even
on his stomach.
"If only I could get away from the cursed cricket. If I could only hide
- anywhere!" he muttered, shivering with fright.
However, it appeared that it was impossible to get away from the
mole-cricket.
It was relentlessly following in his tracks, and the Professor could
clearly hear the rising noises of the chase in progress behind him.
When he had first dodged into the tunnel the mole-cricket stopped, felt
the walls of the cave with his feelers and then became dead quiet as if
thinking, "where has this strange and agile worm hidden itself?"
Those feelers had then again moved restlessly. They felt the floor,
walls, ceiling, and quickly discovered the entrance to the hole.
The mole-cricket shoved its head into the hole, breathing heavily.
"Is it here or not?"
The creature stopped for a little, stamping its legs, and then thrust
its enormous body with great decision into the hole and, rapidly burrowing
through the earth, crawled along the tunnel.
The mole-cricket moved forward as rapidly as a hot knife cuts butter,
pushing its body through the crumbling earth and boring its way with
unbelievable rapidity.
The Professor could soon hear behind him by his very back jerky
breathing, and suddenly the wiry feelers of the mole-cricket touched him on
the shoulder. Then again they felt his arms and slid across his face.
The Professor yelled. Turning round as quickly as he could he jabbed
the spear into the feelers and crawled away, twisting like a worm.
The rough walls of the narrow tunnel scraped his sides, shoulders and
elbows.
The tunnel had now become so tight that it was with great difficulty he
managed to move forward at all.
What with the mouldiness and dampness it was suffocating.
The Professor was bathed in perspiration. His heart thumped. His arms
and legs shook.
The further he went the more difficult was it to make any headway along
this tightening underground pipe. However, the Professor now noticed that
the mole-cricket was dropping behind and thus allowed him a ray of hope that
he might be safe.
More and more remote became the sound of the chase. The mole-cricket
stopped somewhere far back.
"Saved! It has gone away!" the Professor breathed thickly.
Pressing himself forward on his elbows and knees he slid along exerting
every effort and suddenly his head ran into the earth.
Further than this it was impossible to go. The tunnel had ended in a
blind-alley !
The Professor started to shake bodily.
"A certain death? But who will then save Karik and Valya?"
With sweat dripping he felt here and there in the dark, but everywhere
his hands met a solid earth wall.
What could he do? He was sitting in the hole just as if he was in a
trap. Behind him the mole-cricket was coming up, and in front of him was a
blank wall.
What could he do in such a hopeless situation?
The Professor felt as if ants were running over his body. His arms and
legs grew cold. His mouth became dry.
"No! No!" he said, with decision, "we shall yet see who is who. You are
a great strong animal but I am a man. I will fight you and I will be the
conqueror."
An hour ago he could have crushed the mole-cricket with a finger, but
now he would have to gather all his strength for the fray and he could not
say with any certainty how this battle would end.
He turned back and pressing his back against the earth wall of the
blind-alley held the spear in front of himself.
"I'll hit it right on the nerve point under the eyes," said the
Professor to himself loudly.
At that moment a thought flashed into his head which made his flesh
creep.
"How shall I get out if I kill the cricket? It will just cork up the
hole with its great carcass. How could I move such a monster?"
There was no time to think this out.
Louder and louder grew the underground noise. The cricket was now quite
close.
A minute passed and then another.
"Get back! get back!" roared the Professor, waving the spear.
The earth broke away with a rumble. Along the walls of the tunnel there
came scraping noises. The sinuous feelers of the cricket were seeking for
him. In the darkness they felt his head and shoulders. Twisting his body he
threw these live, knotted cords off and started to rain blow after blow on
the head of the monster with his spear.
"There! Take that! and that, and that!", he shouted hoarsely.
The cricket did not expect such an attack. Backing, it slid away.
"Aha! Aha!" yelled the Professor, courageously throwing himself on his
enemy.
The cricket put out its feelers. The Professor struck at them with his
naked fist, and scolding loudly hunted the creature back along the tunnel.
He did not cease to hit the cricket on the head with the spear, trying
to stab the nerve centre with its sharp point. But suddenly the creature
pulled its head back under its shield and the spear made no impression on
this horny covering.
The monster stopped. Obviously the spear no longer worried it. The
Professor knew then - the battle was lost.
Moving with its broad feet the cricket now advanced to attack. The
Professor had to retreat.
Waving the spear he slowly backed to the end of the tunnel until he
felt the solid wall behind him.
"Now we're done!" he thought.
He shut his eyes tiredly and ducking his head dropped in a heap on the
floor.
Suddenly he heard a noise above his head. The ceiling of the hole
cracked as if someone was drilling through from above. Earth fell on his
head.
The ceiling fell down. A blinding light flashed for an instant into the
hole and the Professor saw far away a fragment of blue sky, but almost at
once something like a huge pod came down into the tunnel from above,
shutting up the opening.
"What is this?" shouted the Professor, and seized the pod in his hands.
The pod trembled and commenced to go up again quickly.
The Professor realised just one thing :
This pod was going out - back up to where it was all sunny - and he
must get out of the earth back to the sun with it.
He held tightly on to the pod with his arms and legs and suddenly like
a cork he flew out of the earth.
The sun blinded him. He screwed up his eyes.
"Saved ! Saved !" He was now laughing hysterically.
But he had not succeeded in letting go with his arms when some strange
force flung him upwards and then dropped him down again, then upwards again,
and once again down.
The Professor bounced up like a ball and fell again.
He simply must get free of this jumping pod. The Professor let go.
Twisting in the air he dropped to the ground and rolled head over heels
amongst the stones.
The shock was so great that he lost consciousness for an instant.
When he came to the first thing he saw was a great green animal. It was
standing not far from him with long legs studded with sharp points - spurs.
On the ground lay a thick pod-like tail considerably longer than the green
animal itself.
"Aha!" The Professor raised himself on his elbows. "I see. It was that
tail I was holding on to. A most kindly tail! A magnificent tail."
Hearing the voice of the Professor the creature turned a flattened head
with a huge mouth towards him and moved feelers of immeasurable length.
"What family do you belong to, my saviour?" he now enquired politely.
The green animal, covered as it were with shining enamel, moved its
feet.
"Of course it's you !" shouted the Professor. "You heard me with your
feet? There you are! It's quite clear. You are a green grasshopper. Well,
anyway, thank you my friend! Thanks for pulling me out of an awkward jam, a
very awkward jam."
The grasshopper once again moved its feet. The narrow listening slits
on its front legs turned towards the Professor. The grasshopper could
clearly hear him.
Then the meaning of his recent experience