“Roll backward, Round bodies! What meaneth this unseemly impatience in the presence of your King?”
In an instant, the round-bodied monsters rolled silently backwards.
All was calm again.
Turning to his neighbor, the King exclaimed, with a gurgling laugh:
“Why, by my royal girth, its voice is all the world like one of the toy pipes of our baby prince!”
“‘Its? Its?’” I repeated, with fire flashing from my upturned eyes. “Know, Sir Monster, that I am not a ‘thing,’ but a perfect man; a baron by birth, a scholar by profession, a traveler by choice.”
At this outburst on my part, the crowd of living balls again sent up a deep, rumbling peel of laughter.
“Silence!” commanded the King, and then he continued: “Well, well, then, baron,—whatever that may be—but I think I ought to say ‘little baron,’ for by my royal roundness, thou art a wee, puny being! Let it be as thou sayest, but tell me, I implore thee, what is this walking box on four legs, which nature seems to have left unfinished?”
And so saying, he raised his terrible hand with fingers strong enough to crush me as I might a puff-ball, and waved it toward Bulger.
This contemptuous sneer did not escape Bulger.