It was of Prince Tatters—during all this bluster—that Grampa was thinking as he lay shivering under the carpet, and as soon as the thunder stopped hammering in his ears he stuck out his head. The wind, after snatching off ten roofs, the wings from the red mill and shaking all the little cottages till their very chimneys chattered, had rushed away over Red Mountain. It was still raining, but Grampa, seeing that the worst was over, crawled out of the carpet and began to look for trouble. And what do you s’pose he found? Why, the King, or at least, the best part of the King!
“Ragamercy!” shrieked the old soldier, jumping behind a tapis tree, a thing he had never done in all of those nine hundred and eighty battles. But his conduct does not surprise me at all, for Fumbo had lost his head in the storm, and was running wildly around without it—stumbling over bushes and vines and stamping his stockinged feet in a perfect frenzy of fright and fury. Now, of course, you will say at once that Fumbo is not first King to lose his head and I can only answer that he is the first I ever heard of who went on living without it, and if Ragbad were not in the wonderful Land of Oz I should say at once that the thing was impossible. In Oz, however, one may come apart, but no one ever dies; so here was poor Fumbo, with his head clean off, as live and lively as ever.
Breathing hard, Grampa peered around the tapis tree again to see whether his eyes had deceived him. But no, it was the King, without a doubt, and without his head. “Whatever will Mrs Sew-and-Sew do now,” groaned Grampa, and pulling his campaign hat well down over his ears dashed out and seizing Fumbo’s arm began splashing through the garden, dragging the King along after him. Mrs Sew-and-Sew had already reached the castle and was sitting on the broken-springed sofa that served for a throne, sneezing violently. She had not only rescued her quilt, but she had caught a frightful cold. All the colors in the quilt had run together, and this last calamity so upset the poor lady that she began sobbing and sneezing by turns. But right in the middle of the fifteenth sneeze, she looked up and saw the old soldier with the game leg standing in the doorway.
“Now don’t be frightened,” begged Grampa, advancing stiffly and dripping water all over the rug. “Don’t be alarmed, but at the same time prepare yourself for a blow.”
Mrs Sew-and-Sew, with her damp kerchief in her hand, had already been preparing herself for a blow, but now, dropping the handkerchief, she sneezed instead and when, glancing over Grampa’s shoulder she caught sight of the King, she sneezed again and fainted dead away and rolled under the sofa.
“This is worse than a battle,” puffed Grampa, dashing between the King and the Queen, for every time he tried to help Mrs Sew-and-Sew the King fell over a chair or upset a table.
“Halt! About face and wheel to your left, can’t you?” roared the old soldier, mopping his forehead. But to these instructions Fumbo, having no face about him, paid no attention. Instead he wheeled to the right and swept all the ornaments from the mantel down on the old soldier’s head, and then jumped on Grampa’s good foot so hard that Grampa forgot for a moment he was a King, and thumped him in the ribs. Then, muttering apologies, the old soldier seized a curtain cord and tied Fumbo to a red pillar. This done, he reached under the sofa, pulled out Mrs Sew-and-Sew, and having nothing else handy gave her a huge pinch of snuff. Just as she came to, in from the garden, splashing water in every direction, rushed Prince Tatters and in from the kitchen pelted Pudge, the aged Wise Man.
“The rag crop is ruined and the King will lose his head!” panted Pudge, who had a bad habit of predicting events after they had occurred.