Circus -- Juvenile fiction; Fantasy fiction; Mermaids -- Juvenile fiction; War -- Juvenile fiction
And then an odd thing happened. Out of nowhere, as it seemed, a little
pearly coat appeared, hanging alone in air (water, of course, it was
really. Or was it?). It seemed to grow and to twine itself round Ulfin.
“Put it on,” said a voice from invisibility, “put it on,” and Ulfin did
put it on.
The soldiers were close upon him. “Press the third button,” cried the
Princess, and Ulfin did so. But as his right hand sought the button,
the foremost soldier caught his left arm with the bitter cry—
“Traitor, I arrest you in the King’s name,” and though he could now not
see that he was holding anything, he could feel that he was, and he
held on.
“The last button, Ulfin,” cried the voice of the unseen Princess,
“press the last button,” and next moment the soldier, breathless with
amazement and terror, was looking stupidly at his empty hand. Ulfin, as
well as the three children and the Princess, was not only invisible but
intangible, the soldiers could not see or feel anything.
And what is more, neither could the Princess or the children or Ulfin.
“Oh, where are you? Where am I?” cried Mavis.
“Silence,” said the Princess, “we must keep together by our voices, but
that is dangerous. _A la porte!_” she added. How fortunate it was that
none of the soldiers understood French!
As the five were invisible and intangible and as the soldiers were
neither, it was easy to avoid them and to get to the arched doorway.
The Princess got there first. There was no enemy near—all the soldiers
were crowding around the rifled Museum case, talking and wondering, the
soldier who had seized Ulfin explaining again and again how he had had
the caitiff by the arm, “as solid as solid, and then, all in a minute,
there was nothing—nothing at all,” and his comrades trying their best
to believe him. The Princess just waited, saying, “Are you there?”
every three seconds, as though she had been at the telephone.
“Are you there?” said the Princess for the twenty-seventh time. And
then Ulfin said, “I am here, Princess.”
“We must have connecting links,” she said—“bits of seaweed would do. If
you hold a piece of seaweed in your hand I will take hold of the other
end of it. We cannot feel the touch of each other’s hands, but we shall
feel the seaweed, and you will know, by its being drawn tight that I
have hold of the other end. Get some pieces for the children, too. Good
stout seaweed, such as you made the nets of with which you captured us.”
“Ah, Princess,” he said, “how can I regret that enough? And yet how
can I regret it at all since it has brought you to me.”
“Peace, foolish child,” said the Princess, and Ulfin’s heart leaped for
joy because, when a Princess calls a grown-up man “child,” it means
that she likes him more than a little, or else, of course, she would
not take such a liberty. “But the seaweed,” she added, “there is no
time to lose.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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