“Yes, to the hateful other side, and he got so miserable and what to do he did not know, and he could not stop still very well--nobody can stop still--and that’s why people have got a way of spinning on their heels in some countries, I forget their names--” “Dervishes?” “Dervishes of course; well, he became a Dervish, and used to spin round and round furiously, but you know a top always runs down, and so he got to the other side again.” “Stupid.” “Awful stupid. Now tell me what else he did and could not help coming to the other side?” said Bevis. “But it’s you who are telling the story.” “O! but you can put some of that in.” “Well,” said Mark, “if you walk across this island, you come to the other side, or sail down the New Sea in the Pinta, or if you swim out to Serendib, or if you climb up the fir-tree to the cones--” “Always the other side,” continued Bevis, “and so he said that this was such a little world he hated it, you could go all round the earth and come back to yourself and meet yourself in your own house at home in no time.” “It’s not very big, is it?” said Mark. “Nothing is very big that you could go round like that.” “No, and the quicker you get round the smaller it is, though it’s thousands and thousands of miles, so he said; and so he set out again to find a place where he could wander and never get to the other side, and after he had walked across Persia and Khorasan and Beloochistan--” “And Afghanistan?” “Yes, and crossed the Indus and Ganges, and been over the Himalayas, and inquired at every temple and of all the wise men who live in caves and hang themselves up with hooks stuck through their backs--” “Fakirs.” “At last a very old man took pity on him, seeing how miserable he was, and whispered to him where to go, and so he went on--” “Where?” “To Thibet.” “But nobody is allowed to enter Thibet.” “No; but he had the pass-word, which the aged man whispered to him, and so they let him come in, and then he wandered about again for a long while, and by this time he was getting very old himself and could not walk so fast, so that it took longer and longer to get to the other side each time. Till at last, inquiring at all the temples as he went, they promised to show him a forest to which there was no other side. But he had to bathe and be purified first, and they burned incense and did a lot of magical things--” “In circles?” “I suppose so. And then one night in the darkness, so that he should not see which way they went, they led him along, and in the morning he was in a very narrow valley with a wall across so that you could not go any farther down the valley, nor could you climb up, because the rocks were so steep. Now, when they came to the wall he saw a little narrow bronze door in it--very low and very narrow--and the door was all covered with carvings and curious inscriptions--” “Magic?”