The Sword in the Stone

At this the roach rushed up like a hen, burst into tears and began stammering its message.

“If you p-p-p-please, Doctor,” stammered the poor creature, gabbling so that they could scarcely understand what it said, “we have such a d-dretful case of s-s-s-something or other in our family, and we w-w-w-wondered if you could s-s-s-spare the time? It’s our d-d-d-dear Mamma, who w-w-w-will swim a-a-a-all the time upside d-d-d-down, and she d-d-d-does look so horrible and s-s-s-speaks so strange, that we r-r-r-really thought she ought to have a d-d-d-doctor, if it w-w-w-wouldn’t be too much? C-C-C-Clara says to say so sir, if you s-s-s-see w-w-w-what I m-m-m-mean?”

Here the little roach began fizzing so much, what with its stammer and its tearful disposition, that it became perfectly inarticulate and could only stare at Merlyn with big mournful eyes.

“Never mind, my little man,” said Merlyn. “There, there, lead me to your poor Mamma, and we shall see what we can do.”

They all three swam off into the murk under the draw-bridge upon their errand of mercy.

“Very Russian, these roach,” whispered Merlyn to the Wart, behind his fin. “It’s probably only a case of nervous hysteria, a matter for the psychologist rather than the physician.”

The roach’s Mamma was lying on her back as he had described. She was squinting horribly, had folded her fins upon her chest, and every now and then she blew a bubble. All her children were gathered round her in a circle, and every time she blew a bubble they all nudged each other and gasped. She had a seraphic smile upon her face.

“Well, well, well,” said Merlyn, putting on his best bedside manner, “and how is Mrs Roach today?”

He patted all the young roaches on the head and advanced with stately motions towards his patient. It should perhaps be mentioned that Merlyn was a ponderous, deep-beamed fish of about five pounds, red-leather coloured, with small scales, adipose in his fins, rather slimy, and having a bright marigold eye – a respectable figure.

Mrs Roach held out a languid fin, sighed emphatically and said, “Ah, Doctor, so you’ve come at last?”

“Hum,” said Merlyn, in his deepest tones.

Then he told everybody to close their eyes – the Wart peeped – and began to swim round the invalid in a slow and stately dance. As he danced he sang. His song was this:

Therapeutic,

Elephantic,

Diagnosis,

Boom!

Pancreatic,

Microstatic,

Anti-toxic,

Doom!

With normal catabolism,

Gabbleism and babbleism,

Snip, Snap, Snorum

Cut out his abdonorum.

Dyspepsia,

Anaemia,

Toxaemia,

One, two, three,

And out goes He,

With a fol-de-rol-derido for the Five Guinea Fee.

At the end of his song he was swimming round his patient so close that he actually touched her, stroking his brown smooth-scaled flanks against her more rattly pale ones. Perhaps he was healing her with slime – for all fishes are said to go to the Tench for medicine – or perhaps it was by touch or massage or hypnotism. In any case, Mrs Roach suddenly stopped squinting, turned the right way up, and said, “Oh, Doctor, dear Doctor, I feel I could eat a little lob-worm now.”

“No lob-worm,” said Merlyn, “not for two days. I shall give you a prescription for a strong broth of algae every two hours, Mrs Roach. We must build up your strength you know. After all, Rome wasn’t built in a day.”

Then he patted all the little roaches once more, told them to grow up into brave little fish, and swam off with an air of great importance into the gloom. As he swam, he puffed his mouth in and out.

“What did you mean by that about Rome?” asked the Wart, when they were out of earshot.

“Heaven knows,” said the tench.

They swam along, Merlyn occasionally advising him to put his back into it when he forgot, and all the strange under-water world began to dawn about them, deliciously cool after the heat of the upper air. The great forests of the weed were delicately traced, and in them there hung motionless many schools of sticklebacks learning to do their physical exercises in strict unison. On the word One they all lay still: at Two they faced about: at Three they all shot together into a cone, whose apex was a bit of something to eat. Water snails slowly ambled about on the stems of the lilies or under their leaves, while fresh-water mussels lay on the bottom doing nothing in particular. Their flesh was salmon pink, like a very good strawberry cream ice. The small congregations of perch – it was a strange thing, but all the bigger fish seemed to have hidden themselves – had delicate circulations, so that they blushed or grew pale as easily as a lady in a Victorian novel. Only their blush was a deep olive colour, and it was the blush of rage. Whenever Merlyn and his companion swam past them, they raised their spiky dorsal fins in menace, and only lowered them when they saw that Merlyn was a tench. The black bars on their sides made them look as if they had been grilled; and these also could become darker or lighter. Once the two travellers passed under a swan. The white creature floated above like a zeppelin, all indistinct except what was under the water. The latter part was quite clear and showed that the swan was floating slightly on one side with one leg cocked up over its back.

“Look,” said the Wart, “it’s the poor swan with the deformed leg. It can only paddle with one leg, and the other side of it is all hunched.”

“Nonsense,” said the swan snappily, putting its head into the water and giving them a frown with its black nares. “Swans like to rest in this position, and you can keep your fishy sympathy to yourself, so there.” It continued to glare at them from up above, like a white snake suddenly let down through the ceiling, until they were out of sight.

“You swim along,” said the tench in gloomy tones, “as if there was nothing to be afraid of in the world. Don’t you see that this place is exactly like the forest you had to come through to find me?”

“Is it?”

“Look over there.”

The Wart looked, and at first saw nothing. Then he saw a little translucent shape hanging motionless near the surface. It was just outside the shadow of a water-lily and was evidently enjoying the sun. It was a baby pike, absolutely rigid and probably asleep, and it looked like a pipe stem or a sea horse stretched out flat. It would be a brigand when it grew up.

“I am taking you to see one of those,” said the tench, “the Emperor of all these purlieus. As a doctor I have immunity, and I daresay he will respect you as my companion as well. But you had better keep your tail bent in case he is feeling tyrannical.”

“Is he the King of the Moat?”

“He is the King of the Moat. Old Jack they call him, and some Black Peter, but for the most part they don’t mention him by name at all. They just call him Mr M. You will see what it is to be a king.”

The Wart began to hang behind his conductor a little, and perhaps it was as well that he did, for they were almost on top of their destination before he noticed it. When he did see the old despot he started back in horror, for Mr M. was four feet long, his weight incalculable. The great body, shadowy and almost invisible among the stems, ended in a face which had been ravaged by all the passions of an absolute monarch, by cruelty, sorrow, age, pride, selfishness, loneliness and thought too strong for individual brains. There he hung or hoved, his vast ironic mouth permanently drawn downwards in a kind of melancholy, his lean clean-shaven chops giving him an American expression, like that of Uncle Sam. He was remorseless, disillusioned, logical, predatory, fierce, pitiless: but his great jewel of an eye was that of a stricken deer, large, fearful, sensitive and full of griefs. He made no movement whatever, but looked upon them with this bitter eye.

The Wart thought to himself that he did not care for Mr M.

“Lord,” said Merlyn, not paying any attention to his nervousness. “I have brought a young professor who would learn to profess.”

“To profess what?” inquired the King of the Moat slowly, hardly opening his jaws and speaking through his nose.

“Power,” said the tench.

“Let him speak for himself.”

“Please,” said the Wart, “I don’t know what I ought to ask.”

“There is nothing,” said the monarch, “except the power that you profess to seek: power to grind and power to digest, power to seek and power to find, power to await and power to claim, all power and pitilessness springing from the nape of the neck.”

“Thank you,” said the Wart.

“Love is a trick played on us by the forces of evolution,” continued the monster monotonously. “Pleasure is the bait laid down by the same. There is only power. Power is of the individual mind, but the mind’s power alone is not enough. The power of strength decides everything in the end, and only Might is right.

“Now I think it is time that you should go away, young master, for I find this conversation excessively exhausting. I think you ought to go away really almost at once, in case my great disillusioned mouth should suddenly determine to introduce you to my great gills, which have teeth in them also. Yes, I really think you ought to go away this moment. Indeed, I think you ought to put your very back into it. And so, a long farewell to all my greatness.”

The Wart had found himself quite hypnotized by all these long words, and hardly noticed that the thin-lipped tight mouth was coming closer and closer to him all the time. It came imperceptibly, as the cold suave words distracted his attention, and suddenly it was looming within an inch of his nose. On the last sentence it opened, horrible and vast, the thin skin stretching ravenously from bone to bone and tooth to tooth. Inside there seemed to be nothing but teeth, sharp teeth like thorns in rows and ridges everywhere, like the nails in labourers’ boots, and it was only at the very last second that he was able to regain his own will, to pull himself together, recollect his instructions and to escape. All those teeth clashed behind him at the tip of his tail, as he gave the heartiest jack-knife he had ever given.

In a second he was on dry land once more, standing beside Merlyn on the piping drawbridge, panting in all his clothes.

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