Half-Past Bedtime

by Sir H. H. Bashford

Cuthbert told her that he was; and now that they could look about, they saw that they were on the floor of an immense cave, and that they had pitched down from somewhere near the top of it on to a huge mass of feathers. These were evidently the feathers of thousands and thousands of sea-birds; but who could have plucked them and stored them here so carefully?

Then they heard a strange sort of coughing and grunting and spluttering, and they saw the oddest of little men. He was about three feet high, with a red beard and a very cheerful sort of face, and he had evidently been asleep in among the feathers, for he was rubbing his eyes and staring at them in astonishment. Then they heard some more grunting and coughing, and at last they saw a dozen of these little men standing all round them, dressed in the skins of animals, and with feathers sticking to their beards. They were all looking rather disturbed, but when Cuthbert and Doris smiled they began to smile too and come toward them. Then they began to talk, and, though at first the sounds that they made seemed very queer, Cuthbert and Doris, rather to their surprise, found that they could understand them perfectly well. That was because the language in which the little men spoke was the oldest language in the world, the father and mother of all the other languages, and so of course the children soon understood it. They also found that in a very little while they could talk in this language themselves, and soon they were all chattering together about what had happened, as if they had known each other all their lives.

Now that they had become used to the dim light, they could see that this great cave had walls of rock, with long icicles hanging from the roof and the sticking-out pieces of the walls. Most of the floor of it was of smooth ice, but in the middle there was a flat rock; and on this rock there was a little fire burning, a little fire made of coal. The leader of the men was a man called Marmaduke, and he told the children that they had all been asleep, and that they had lived in this cave for hundreds of thousands of years, and that the great pile of feathers was where they went to bed.

"But it's day-time," said Cuthbert. "Why do you go to bed in day-time?"

Marmaduke laughed, and so did all the other men.

"Because at night," he said, "we go out and hunt to get our wolf-and seal-meat, when no one can see us."

But they were all so excited at the appearance of Cuthbert and Doris that they led them to the fire, where they sat and talked to them, and presently they cooked a delicious meal for them of seal-soup and wolf-chops. The coal that they burnt they had found in a deep hole in one corner of the cave, and at the other corner there was a little crack, down which they presently led the children. This opened upon a ledge of ice, five or six feet above the shore, but now they could hardly see anything, because the air was full of snow, driving fiercely into their faces. The little ice-men looked grave.

"It's a blizzard," they said, "and very likely it'll go on for a week. But luckily we've got plenty of meat, so that we shan't be in want of food."

"But how shall we get back?" said Doris. "They won't know where we are, and they'll think that we're both dead."

Marmaduke shook his head.