“Look! look! O, King!” they cried, “he can neither roll nor hop! See how he edges along, leaning first on one foot and then on the other! He walks on his toe nails! Mark his companion, too! What monsters of clumsiness! How they rock and wabble! Why doth he not spring? Why doth he pound the earth as if he were beating flax?”
To all this mocking and jeering, Bulger and I turned a deaf ear, following our mistress, who ever and anon, turned her soft, black, mischievous eyes encouragingly upon us, as her head came uppermost.
Imagine our surprise when Rōlâ-Bōlâ halted at the beginning of a path having a gentle descent, and said:
“This is the entrance to the royal habitation. Follow me and fear nothing.”
In a few moments we found ourselves in the outer room of a vast underground dwelling, consisting of corridors, chambers, dormitories, banquet-halls and arenas.
All the habitations of the Roundbodies are subterranean.
Why?
This you shall know anon.
Bulger and I were conducted to very pleasant quarters—well-lighted, as were all the rooms of the palace, by means of vast slabs of rock crystal, of which the roof was made, by a “square” or “lôb-bô” as he is called in the language of the Roundbodies, that is, one not perfectly round in form, and hence degraded to the position of serving man. Doubtless, long before this, the reader has grown impatient at my silence concerning the strange beings among whom Bulger and I now found ourselves prisoners.
Who were the Roundbodies?