And so he was; for in a moment she heard him coming downstairs.
‘I wonder what he’ll do when he finds the door locked?’ she thought.
Just then he reached the door and turned the handle, but the door refused to move; and although he kicked and banged, it was all no use.
‘I’ll go and fetch a hatchet and prise it open,’ he grunted, out of breath with his exertions; and he thumped up the stairs again.
But meanwhile the Princess unlocked the door, and seizing a couple of books at random off the bookshelf she ran up on deck; but she kept possession of the door-key.
Now it so happened that Wopole had dropped his hatchet in front of the hatchway, and he was bending down to pick it up just as she came out of it, so that the result was a collision; and as Wopole was bending down he got considerably the worst of it, although the books that the Princess was carrying were thrown right out of her hands.
Wopole got up from the sitting posture which the sudden shock had made him assume.
‘Well, this is extraordinary! Shiver my old lee-scuppers if it isn’t! Here first I can’t get into my cabin, and then I’m knocked over by my own books that come flying at my head. I think it’s those books that are the cause of the mischief, and I’ll just throw them overboard,’ and he was just bending over to pick them up. But this was too much for the Princess, who had no wish to be left for the whole of another day without books. So she snatched the books from just under his hand—at least, the book he was going to pick up—and as soon as she touched it, it became invisible.
Wopole shook his head dismally as if he had quite expected it, and then he tried to pick up the other one; but just the same thing happened. Now the Princess had just been bending down to pick the book up as he bent down, and the wind blew her hair right across his eyes. He, feeling the tickling, put his hand up to his face and caught the hair before she could draw it away.
‘What is this now?’ he said, as he examined his hand. ‘Feels like hair,’ he mused. But in his fit of musing he let his fingers relax their grasp, and she drew her hair away very quickly.