"Zeppelin, no!—is he the King of Germany?" said the dwarf who had been in the chair.
"Ha! ha!—King of Germany—well he is nearly, in some people's eyes," said Karl. "He has built an airship; it is the most wonderful of all new inventions, it floats in the air like a boat does in the water."
| "Close by it passes, by soft breezes fanned, |
| Like a great steamboat straight from fairyland." |
he went on in an enthusiastic way. "You can go for a ride in it any day in Frankfurt, providing the weather is fine and you can afford to pay £15!"
"Just listen to him, just listen to him!" said the dwarfs. "We don't believe a word you have said. You are imposing on our credulity, you bad man," and thereupon they flew at him and began to beat him with their clubs, which were heavily weighted, and to pinch him with their long fingers.
It might have gone hardly with him, but quick as thought Karl flashed out the little revolver from his pocket. They seemed to know the meaning of that modern toy; for they crouched back trembling, and not daring to move.
"Now stop it, will you," he said, "or I shall have to shoot you, and take you home with me to be stuffed or put into the National Anthropological Museum. They would give me a good price for you," he said musingly—"they would think you were The Missing Link."
"O please, Mr Hammerstein, don't shoot us—("however did the little chaps find out my name!" thought Karl) we will believe all you say, even if it seems the greatest nonsense to us. After all birds fly, bats fly and fairies fly, why should not ships and trains fly?" said the spokesman, who, I must tell you, was a relation of King Reinhold in the Taunus Mountains and was proud of belonging to a royal family.
Karl called him Mr Query, because he was so fond of asking questions, but so slow to take in a new fact, as indeed were all the dwarfs.
"You promised us Christmas Tree not to harm us," said Mr Query, reproachfully.