“We’d better carry out our original plans,” said Dick.
By and by came messengers from the king, who wished to see these strange beings descended on his earth from a star. And, indeed, it seemed to the three friends as if they had really dropped on some planet a thousand years less advanced than ours (for given similar beginnings and conditions, will not history go on repeating itself?). In any case, the king received them with wonder and respect, and straightway they were attached to the royal household.
Gradually they adapted themselves to mediæval ways, became accustomed to sleeping on straw, and to eating like pigs; but even to the last they did not cease to deplore the absence of small-tooth combs in the toilet equipment of the royal family.
The book goes on to trace the fortunes of each of its three heroes. It tells how Harry captivated the court with a buck-and-wing dance, set them turkey-trotting to the strains of “Hitchy Koo,” and bunny-hugging to the melody of “Down the Mississippi.” He even opened a private class for lessons in the Tango, and initiated Tango Teas in which mead replaced the fragrant orange pekoe. He invented the first banjo, demoralised the court with the first ragtime. You should have heard King Harold joining in the chorus of “Waiting for the Robert E. Lee,” or singing as a solo “You Made Me Love You.” Decidedly Harry bid fair to be the most popular man in the kingdom.
But Tom was running him a pretty close race. He had become the Royal Story-teller, and nightly held them breathless while he thrilled them with such marvels as horseless chariots, men who fly with wings, and lightning harnessed till it makes the night like day. Yet when he hinted that such things may even come to pass, what a howl of derision went up!
“Ah, no!” cried King Harold, “these be not the deeds of men but of the very gods.” And all the wise men of the land wagged their grey beards in approval.
So after that he gave Truth the cold shoulder, and found fiction more grateful. He reconstructed all the stock plots of to-day, giving them a Saxon setting; and the characters that had taken the strongest hold on the popular imagination he rehabilitated in Saxon guise. The most childish tales would suffice. Night after night would he rivet their attention with “Aladdin” or “Bluebeard,” or “Jack and the Beanstalk.” Just as Harry had made all the minstrels rend their harp-strings, in despair, so Tom made all the story-tellers blush with shame, and take to the Hinterlands.
Poor Dick, however, was having a harder time of it. Like a man inspired he was raving of a wonderful land many days sail beyond the sea. But the stolid Saxons refused to believe him. “Fancy believing one who says the world is round! Surely the man is mad.”
At last he fell in with some Danes who, seeing an opportunity for piracy, agreed to let him be their pilot to this golden land. They fitted out a vessel, and sailed away to the West. But they were storm-driven for many days, and finally their boat was wrecked on the Arran Islands.
In the meantime, William the Conqueror came on the scene, and King Harold, refusing to listen to the warning of Tom, gave fight to the Norman. Then Tom and Harry beheld with their modern eyes that epoch-making battle.