'It is a very beautiful hall, but we have never been able to use it for public amusement or anything else. The giant who originally built this city placed in this hall a carpet so thick that it rises to your knees, and so intricately woven that none can disentangle it. It is far too thick to pass through any of the doors. It is your task to remove it.'
'Why that's as easy as easy,' said Philip. 'I'll cut it in bits and bring out a bit at a time.'
'That would be most unfortunate for you,' said Mr. Noah. 'I filed only this morning a very ancient prophecy:
| 'He who shall the carpet sever, |
| By fire or flint or steel, |
| Shall be fed on orange pips for ever, |
| And dressed in orange peel. |
You wouldn't like that, you know.'
'No,' said Philip grimly, 'I certainly shouldn't.'
'The carpet must be unravelled, unwoven, so that not a thread is broken. Here is the hall.'
They went up steps—Philip sometimes wished he had not been so fond of building steps—and through a dark vestibule to an arched door. Looking through it they saw a great hall and at its end a raised space, more steps, and two enormous pillars of bronze wrought in relief with figures of flying birds.
'Father's Japanese vases,' Lucy whispered.
The floor of the room was covered by the carpet. It was loosely but difficultly woven of very thick soft rope of a red colour. When I say difficultly, I mean that it wasn't just straight-forward in the weaving, but the threads went over and under and round about in such a determined and bewildering way that Philip felt—and said—that he would rather untie the string of a hundred of the most difficult parcels than tackle this.