“He’s going to illuminate the cave with different-coloured fires. He is very clever at that, but he won’t do it for everybody. I’m so glad. It looks lovely when it’s all lighted up!”
Then they followed the little old man along a rather dim passage, the air of which struck very chill, and then down some slippery steps, where they had all to tread very carefully, because there was ice under the sand sprinkled over them. After that they went along another gallery, and then came out into a wonderful grotto, the walls of which were of ice, with here and there a ledge of jutting rock, and where great icicles hung down from the roof in all sorts of queer fantastic shapes, and great blocks of ice on the floor seemed to take the shape of monster beasts lying crouched in corners, or guarding the entrance to the branching passages.
Squib wondered at first if it was his fancy that the ice looked to him like great beasts, but Peter told him afterwards that the old man often amused himself by chipping at the ice-blocks, and giving to them a grotesque shape. Of course they were always gradually changing in shape, but the carving was too rude for that to matter much. A blow here and there would soon give it a vague shape again, and the old custodian amused himself by the astonished remarks of the travellers. Many went away with the firm impression that they had seen frozen or “fossilized” antediluvian animals; and when Herr Adler heard this, a twinkle came into his eyes, and he turned to Squib and said,—
“Well, it is not long since an old friend of mine, who has a post in the British Museum in London, told me of a remark made to him by a lady of position and education, though, poor lady, she could not have used her brains to much advantage. They had been getting in some new fragments of statuary and so forth—from Greece, I think it was—and these great fragments were lying about in some confusion, waiting to be set in place. Many persons came to see them, and amongst them this lady; and my friend found her standing looking at the broken fragment of a horse. There was the head and neck and a small part of the body, and nothing more. It was leaning up against the wall, and as my friend passed by, the lady smiled at him and greeted him (for she knew him a little), and said, ‘I have come to see your new collection. I am so interested. Now this, I suppose, is a part of a fossil horse!’ And without waiting for an answer she rattled on about something else; and went away no doubt quite happy in the idea that she had seen a remarkable fossil.”
The ice-grotto was certainly very wonderful and beautiful, and when the old man lighted it up with coloured fire, its beauty quite took Squib’s breath away. The red or the blue light flickered over the transparent walls and amongst the great hanging icicles, transforming the grotto into a fairy palace, such as the child had dimly pictured sometimes in his daydreams. He did not wonder now that the inhabitants of these wild mountain places, so full of wonderful and beautiful hidden places, should have stores upon stores of legends about the unseen beings who lived there. Squib could almost fancy he saw the shadowy outlines of the ice-maidens hiding in the recesses of the grotto. It was not difficult to believe that, if anybody fell asleep in such a place, he would awake to find the world all changed about him.
Squib, however, had no chance of making this experience for himself. After a short time their guide took them back into the open daylight again, and Herr Adler, looking at his watch, said that they must be going.
“It was a lovely place!” said Squib, as they began retracing their steps; “I think it was quite the nicest place I’ve seen. What lots of things I shall have to tell the children when I get back! I shall never remember half. I wonder if Czar will tell the dogs about it too? Do you think animals do talk to one another?”
“They certainly make one another understand things sometimes. I’ll tell you about a dog belonging to my grandfather. He had two dogs—one a small terrier, and the other a great Newfoundland; and these two dogs were great friends. Once my grandfather had occasion to take a journey. It was before there were any railways, and he had to travel in his own carriage. He took his little terrier with him, and the big dog stayed at home. On the second day of his journey he arrived at the house of a friend, where he was to spend the night. And at this house was a dog which resented the arrival of the terrier, and gave him a good mauling before anybody could go to his assistance. Well, my grandfather did not think much of it. He went away on the next day, taking the little dog with him; but when he stopped to bait the horses at mid-day, the dog disappeared, and he quite failed to find him, and had to go on without him. He was away from home about a fortnight; and whilst engaged upon his business he had a letter from his wife, saying that the Newfoundland dog had suddenly disappeared, and had not been seen for a whole day. That was the only letter he got from his wife all the time he was absent, because he was moving about, and she could not be sure where he would be. As he was going home, he again passed a night at the house of his friend; and there he heard that upon the morning but one after he had left, his little terrier dog had suddenly appeared there, with a great Newfoundland as his companion; that the Newfoundland had set upon the dog of the house and had given him a thorough good thrashing—if you can use such an expression with regard to dogs—after which the two companions had gone quietly away together. And sure enough, when my grandfather got home, there were the two dogs, quite happy and content; and his wife told him that, the very day after she had written her letter, the Newfoundland had come home, bringing with him (to her great bewilderment) his little friend the terrier, and there they had been ever since.”
“Oh!” cried Squib, delighted. “Then the little dog had run home and told the big one all about it, and got him to come and fight the gentleman’s dog for him, and then they had gone home together! Was that it?”
“It seems as if it must have been. That is the story just as my grandfather told it, and it is quite true. So dogs certainly have the power of making each other understand up to a certain point, though how far this goes I suppose nobody will ever really know.”