The Floating Prince and Other Fairy Tales. Frank Richard Stockton
Head-boy saw that there was no help for it, and he told all.
The king looked sad, but the queen smiled two or three times.
"And you put their heads in bags?" said the king.
"Yes, sir," replied the Head-boy.
"Well, well!" said the king; "I am sorry. After all you have done for us, too. I will send out swift cruisers after that ship, which will be easy to find if it is painted as you say, and, until it is brought back to the city, I must keep you in custody. Look you," said he to his attendants; "take these young people to a luxurious apartment, and see that they are well fed and cared for, and also be very careful that none of them escape."
Thereupon, the aristocrats were taken away to an inner chamber of the palace.
When the admiral and his companions had been left on board the vessel, they felt very uneasy for they did not know what might happen to them next. In a short time, however, when the voices of the aristocrats had died away as they proceeded into the city, the admiral perceived the point of a gimlet coming up through the deck, close to him. Then the gimlet was withdrawn, and these words came up through the hole:
"Have no fear. Your navy will stand by you!"
"It will be all right," said the admiral to the others. "I can depend upon her."
And now was heard a noise of banging and chopping, and soon the cook cut her way from her imprisonment below, and made her appearance on deck. She went to work vigorously, and, taking the bags from the prisoners' heads, unbound them, and set them at liberty. Then she gave them a piece of advice.
"The thing for us to do." said she, "is to get away from here as fast as we can. If those young rascals come back, there's no knowin' what they'll do."
"Do you mean," said the master, "that we should sail away and desert my scholars? Who can tell what might happen to them, left here by themselves?"
"We should not consider what might happen to them if they were left," said one of the philosophers, "but what might happen to us if they were not left. We must away."
"Certainly!" cried the admiral. "While I have the soul of the commander of the navy of Nassimia left within me, I will not stay here to have my head put in a bag! Never! Set sail!"
It was not easy to set sail, for the cook and the philosophers were not very good at that sort of work; but they got the sail up at last, and cast loose from shore, first landing the old master, who positively refused to desert his scholars. The admiral took the helm, and, the wind being fair, the ship sailed away.
The swift cruiser, which was sent in the direction taken by the admiral's vessel, passed her in the night, and as she was a very fast cruiser, and it was therefore impossible for the admiral's ship to catch up with her, the two vessels never met.
"Now, then," said the admiral the next day, as he sat with the helm in his hand, "we are free again to sail where we please. But I do not like to sail without an object. What shall be our object?"
The philosophers immediately declared that nothing could be more proper than that they should take a voyage to make some great scientific discovery.
"All right," said the admiral. "That suits me. What discovery shall we make?"
The philosophers were not prepared to answer this question at that moment, but they said they would try to think of some good discovery to make.
So the philosophers sat in a row behind the admiral, and thought and thought; and the admiral sat at the helm, with his blue-and-red stilts dangling in the water behind; and the cook prepared the meals, swept the deck, dusted the sail, and put things in order.
After several hours, the admiral turned around to ask the philosophers if they had thought of any discovery yet, when, to his amazement, he saw that each one of them had put his bag upon his head.
"What did you do that for?" cried the admiral, when each of the philosophers gave a little start; and then they explained that it was much easier to think with one's head in a bag. The outer world was thus shut out, and trains of thought were not so likely to be broken up.
So, for day after day, the philosophers, with their heads in their bags, sat, and thought, and thought; and the admiral sat and steered, and the navy cooked and dusted and kept things clean.
Sometimes, when she thought the sail did not catch the wind properly, she would move the admiral toward one side or the other, and thus change the course of the vessel.
"If I knew," said the admiral one day, "the exact age of the youngest of those aristocrats, I should know just how long we should have to sail, before they would all be grown up, and when it would be time for us to go back after them, and take them to Nassimia."
The cook remembered that the smallest boy had told her he was ten years old.
"Then," said the admiral, "we must sail for eleven years."
And they sailed for eleven years; the philosophers, with their heads in their bags, trying their best to think of some good thing to discover.
The day after the aristocrats had been shut up in their luxurious apartment, the queen sent a messenger to them, to tell them that she thought the idea of putting people's heads in bags was one of the most amusing things she ever heard of, and that she would be much obliged if they would send her the pattern of the proper kind of bag, so that she could have some made for her slaves.
The messenger brought scissors, and papers, and pins, and the boys cut a pattern of a very comfortable bag, with holes for the eyes, nose, mouth, and ears, which they sent with their respects to the queen. This royal lady had two bags made, which she put upon two of her servants, and their appearance amused her so much that she smiled a great deal, and yet scarcely felt tired at all.
But, in the course of a day or two, the king happened to see these bag-headed slaves sitting in an ante-chamber. He was
THE KING'S CONSTERNATION.
struck with consternation, and instantly called a council of his chief ministers.
"We are threatened with a terrible danger," he said to them, when all the doors were shut. "We have among us a body of Bagists! Little did we think, in our gratitude, that we were wound up merely that we might go through life with our heads bagged. Better far that we should stay stopped forever! How can we know but that the ship which brought them here may soon return, with a cargo of bag-stuffs, needles, thread, and thimbles, and that every head in our city may be bagged in a few days? Already, signs of this approaching evil have shown themselves. Notwithstanding the fact that these dangerous characters have been closely confined, no less than two of the inmates of my palace have already had their heads bagged!"
At these words, a thrill of horror pervaded the ministers, and they discussed the matter for a long time. It was finally decided that a lookout should be constantly kept on the top of a high tower, to give notice of the approach of the ship, should she return; additional guards were posted at the door of the aristocrats' apartment, and it was ordered that the city be searched every day, to see if any new cases of bagism could be discovered.
The aristocrats now began to be very discontented. Although they had everything they could possibly want to eat and drink, and were even furnished with toys and other sources of amusement, they did not like to be shut up.
"I'll tell you what it is," said the Tail-boy. "I can't stand this any longer. Let's get away."
"But where shall we get away to?" asked several of the others.
"We'll see about that when we're outside," was the answer. "Anything's better than being shut up here."
After some talk, everybody agreed that they ought to try to escape, and they set about to devise some plan for doing so. The windows were not very high from the ground, but they were too high for a jump, and not a thing could be found in the room which was strong enough to make a rope.