Smaly and Redy joined hands. "We ought to save him," they said together.
The Prisoner never ceased to break the sugar-canes, and fresh canes sprang up around him also without a pause.
Fish that had wings and paws flew above the forest, brushing the heads of the canes with their ringed noses. Whenever they did this the sugar-canes seemed to shrivel up and vanish.
And thus the forest advanced, new canes springing up ahead, and the old canes withering behind; but always surrounding the Prisoner, no matter how he shattered them.
Now these rings which the Flying-Fish wore in their noses had been fixed there by the Despoiler, and the rings worn by all the Wigs came from the same source and served the same purpose, that of stopping all growth. This was how the Despoiler came by his name, for mere creature of insensate pasteboard as he was, he had the power from his magic ring to arrest all life—a blade of grass in the ground, or the passage of a bird in the air.
The Prisoner
Suddenly the Prisoner paused in his frantic toil and fell asleep like a child. The rats also left off their work and wrapped themselves in their mackintoshes.