The Story of the Amulet Part 41

'Nothing. Only don't!'

She put the tray down and hugged the girls in turn. The boys thumped her on the back with heartfelt affection.

'I'm as well as ever I was in my life,' she said. 'What nonsense about dying! You've been a sitting too long in the dusk, that's what it is.

Regular blind man's holiday. Leave go of me, while I light the gas.'

The yellow light illuminated four pale faces. 'We do love you so,'

Anthea went on, 'and we've made you a picture to show you how we love you. Get it out, Squirrel.'

The glazed testimonial was dragged out from under the sofa and displayed.

'The glue's not dry yet,' said Cyril, 'look out!'

'What a beauty!' cried old Nurse. 'Well, I never! And your pictures and the beautiful writing and all. Well, I always did say your hearts was in the right place, if a bit careless at times. Well! I never did! I don't know as I was ever pleased better in my life.'

She hugged them all, one after the other. And the boys did not mind it, somehow, that day.

'How is it we can remember all about the future, NOW?' Anthea woke the Psammead with laborious gentleness to put the question. 'How is it we can remember what we saw in the future, and yet, when we WERE in the future, we could not remember the bit of the future that was past then, the time of finding the Amulet?'

'Why, what a silly question!' said the Psammead, 'of course you cannot remember what hasn't happened yet.'

'But the FUTURE hasn't happened yet,' Anthea persisted, 'and we remember that all right.'

'Oh, that isn't what's happened, my good child,' said the Psammead, rather crossly, 'that's prophetic vision. And you remember dreams, don't you? So why not visions? You never do seem to understand the simplest thing.'

It went to sand again at once.

Anthea crept down in her nightgown to give one last kiss to old Nurse, and one last look at the beautiful testimonial hanging, by its tapes, its glue now firmly set, in glazed glory on the wall of the kitchen.

'Good-night, bless your loving heart,' said old Nurse, 'if only you don't catch your deather-cold!'

CHAPTER 13. THE s.h.i.+PWRECK ON THE TIN ISLANDS

'Blue and red,' said Jane softly, 'make purple.'

'Not always they don't,' said Cyril, 'it has to be crimson lake and Prussian blue. If you mix Vermilion and Indigo you get the most loathsome slate colour.'

'Sepia's the nastiest colour in the box, I think,' said Jane, sucking her brush.

They were all painting. Nurse in the flush of grateful emotion, excited by Robert's border of poppies, had presented each of the four with a s.h.i.+lling paint-box, and had supplemented the gift with a pile of old copies of the Ill.u.s.trated London News.

'Sepia,' said Cyril instructively, 'is made out of beastly cuttlefish.'

'Purple's made out of a fish, as well as out of red and blue,' said Robert. 'Tyrian purple was, I know.'

'Out of lobsters?' said Jane dreamily. 'They're red when they're boiled, and blue when they aren't. If you mixed live and dead lobsters you'd get Tyrian purple.'

'_I_ shouldn't like to mix anything with a live lobster,' said Anthea, shuddering.

'Well, there aren't any other red and blue fish,' said Jane; 'you'd have to.'

'I'd rather not have the purple,' said Anthea.

'The Tyrian purple wasn't that colour when it came out of the fish, nor yet afterwards, it wasn't,' said Robert; 'it was scarlet really, and Roman Emperors wore it. And it wasn't any nice colour while the fish had it. It was a yellowish-white liquid of a creamy consistency.'

'How do you know?' asked Cyril.

'I read it,' said Robert, with the meek pride of superior knowledge.

'Where?' asked Cyril.

'In print,' said Robert, still more proudly meek.

'You think everything's true if it's printed,' said Cyril, naturally annoyed, 'but it isn't. Father said so. Quite a lot of lies get printed, especially in newspapers.'

'You see, as it happens,' said Robert, in what was really a rather annoying tone, 'it wasn't a newspaper, it was in a book.'

'How sweet Chinese white is!' said Jane, dreamily sucking her brush again.

'I don't believe it,' said Cyril to Robert.

'Have a suck yourself,' suggested Robert.

'I don't mean about the Chinese white. I mean about the cream fish turning purple and--'

'Oh!' cried Anthea, jumping up very quickly, 'I'm tired of painting.

Let's go somewhere by Amulet. I say let's let IT choose.'

Cyril and Robert agreed that this was an idea. Jane consented to stop painting because, as she said, Chinese white, though certainly sweet, gives you a queer feeling in the back of the throat if you paint with it too long.

The Amulet was held up. 'Take us somewhere,' said Jane, 'anywhere you like in the Past--but somewhere where you are.' Then she said the word.

Next moment everyone felt a queer rocking and swaying--something like what you feel when you go out in a fis.h.i.+ng boat. And that was not wonderful, when you come to think of it, for it was in a boat that they found themselves. A queer boat, with high bulwarks pierced with holes for oars to go through. There was a high seat for the steersman, and the prow was shaped like the head of some great animal with big, staring eyes. The boat rode at anchor in a bay, and the bay was very smooth.

The crew were dark, wiry fellows with black beards and hair. They had no clothes except a tunic from waist to knee, and round caps with k.n.o.bs on the top. They were very busy, and what they were doing was so interesting to the children that at first they did not even wonder where the Amulet had brought them. And the crew seemed too busy to notice the children. They were fastening rush baskets to a long rope with a great piece of cork at the end, and in each basket they put mussels or little frogs. Then they cast out the rope, the baskets sank, but the cork floated. And all about on the blue water were other boats and all the crews of all the boats were busy with ropes and baskets and frogs and mussels.

'Whatever are you doing?' Jane suddenly asked a man who had rather more clothes than the others, and seemed to be a sort of captain or overseer.

He started and stared at her, but he had seen too many strange lands to be very much surprised at these queerly-dressed stowaways.

'Setting lines for the dye sh.e.l.l-fish,' he said shortly. 'How did you get here?'

'A sort of magic,' said Robert carelessly. The Captain fingered an Amulet that hung round his neck.

'What is this place?' asked Cyril.

'Tyre, of course,' said the man. Then he drew back and spoke in a low voice to one of the sailors.