Of the Seashell and Shingle-Shore
Some people would think that they would be wise to say a thing like, "Oh, fauns are very fond of dancing at meetings upon Dancing Lawn! I have known them to dance all through the night without even blinking an eye – unless they get the shock of being winked at by a satyr, then they know to turn their hooves to walk the other way," or perhaps say a thing like, "Certainly not! You can skin a coney to make slippers for warm feet, and skin a beaver to make a hat to warm your head, but try and skin a dragon and you'll be warmed to cinders without fur or pelt to show for it." But to merely say," Dwarves like digging!" is an indescribably inaccurate understatement and the person who said it, I do believe, does not know much about dwarves at all!
A digging dwarf is a happy dwarf as you would have seen for yourself outside Bunter Beaver's lodge. For whatever dwarfish reason, if they were ordered by Crumwhort to do so, if they were simply bored after they had ate their fill of a wholesome breakfast (prepared by Bunter's wife Prixy) or if it was (the most likely explanation) for the sheer fun of it Shoveldigel and Swiglepick were hacking and delving with pick and spade to uproot the stumps of the felled trees around the lodge .
Shoveldigel swung his pickaxe and Swiglepick jabbed and hove with is spade with such fervour that even the most venerable of moles would have taken pride to witness these industrious fellows at their work. Their cheeks were red like ripe apples as they puffed and blew like the bellows and astonishingly through it all it was a credit to hear them sing a hearty old ditty,
"All through and through
Wel'll-dig-it-up! one-two!
What's underneath?
We'll work and seek!
I'm not a dwarf
With a beard too short
So I'll tuck it in my belt
For a mucky beard never helps!
All through and through
Wel'll-dig-it-up! one-two!
See the earthworms
Wiggle and squirm!
Smash the rocks!
Solid as granite blocks!
And sever every root!
Trees dare not dispute!
All through and through
Wel'll-dig-it-up! one-two!
Think of gems- gold-loot!
Right under our boots!
Through a badgers house
Or a home of a mouse!
They shouldn't have been
There rightly unseen!
All through and through
Wel'll-dig-it-up! one-two!
And bless my soul,
That's a mighty big hole!
But what's the fun
In deciding it's done?
Keep digging-digging-digging!
Hear picks ringing-dinging-pinging!"
There you have it, and I suppose even now you don't understand nearly enough how much fun those two were having – but it did not last.
'Eaun, eaun, eu-oi-oi-oi!' sang one mysterious voice. The two dwarves looked accusingly at each other,
'Where under earth did you get that from?' inquired Shoveldigel, 'That is not part of the song! Confound you! Now I feel tired!'
'Confound yourself! I knows the song better than you! "Eu-oi-oi-oi?" Old father Tufflebeard never taught you to say that!' said Swinglepick, getting very flustered.
'I never said the like, Blunderbrain! I thought it was...' Shoveldigel's words were stifled by the same cry again, but now it sounded closer,
'Eaun, eaun, eu-oi-oi-oi!' The pair dwarves got such a fright then that their best pick and shovel were hurled into the air. First they thought that the shadows in the forest were playing tricks on them but finally they convinced themselves of what they were seeing – there, making his way up the wending stream towards them, was an enormously fat man floating on a donkey!
'Euan, eaun,eu-o....!' he began again, until he toppled over off the donkey's back into the water in a floundering panic of sprawling limbs and boisterous water. Shoveldigel and Swinglepick were dwarves of wicked mind so their thoughts turned immediately to going back inside the lodge for their weapons to slay the fat man and his donkey. They turned to run towards a mossy old boulder where their secret tunnels descended beneath – but there was another unexpected thing that way too. This time the cry came from many voices, all sweet and airy and full of mirth,
'Euan, eaun, eu-oi-oi-oi!' they all chorused. From the thick of the woods dozens of little girls came capering and laughing. Hither and thither they went with such unnatural deftness, sometimes swift and haphazardly and then suddenly their erratic movements seemed pacified to that of one of airy appearance as though they were drifting in watery depths. They were dressed in vines that trailed and rustled along the floor in their wake. There was a boy as well who was wilder and bolder then they, with vines wreathed in his hair and clothed with lamb skins, he dashed right up to Swinglepick and Shoveldigel , much to their astonishment, and held his hand out graciously with a simpering smile.
They felt very helpless without any weapons to threaten the boy that had stopped them in their tracks. Swinglepick obliged to hold his hand out to return the greeting then in the midst of their bewilderment.
"Hi-you! Very-bushy-long-beards!' he chortled with an uncanny undercurrent in his voice that sent shivers through Shoveldigel and Swinglepick, 'Self-name-talk-a-goes-in-blabber-mouth: Bromios! and Bassareus!' Then pointing to his head he said, 'Ram! See-how not-a-massive-riddle!' Then for one petrifying moment they thought that the boy had thick spirally horns upon his head like that of a ram.
At this point Swinglepick was inadvertently grasping the hand of the boy in a manner not unlike an affable handshake. The boy burst into an unrestrained laugh and the girls' giggles rang out like silver bells. The rustling got so loud that it sounded more like the ocean rushing in upon them through the forest. Then they looked to their boots the vines were entwining round their stumpy little legs like ivy stifling a tree trunk and Swinglepick found the vines crawling up his arm from the that of the boy's.
They gave a cry of dismay and tore and yanked to free themselves of the overwhelming plants. Free of the leafy bonds and entwinements they hurried to the ancient rock and with one combined effort they hove it to one side and disappeared down the dank little hole, not bothering to seal it up again.
Not a shadow had shifted nor had the day begun to gloom when the dwarves announced their return. From the earthy depths of their tunnel they came bawling and roaring as fierce as fire in the forges. Up popped Swinglepick, his keen eyes flashing, with his bow bending and string taught with an arrow ready to loose. Then next came Crumwhort with a hefty war axe and Shoveldigel came blundering and stumbling behind him, laying them both in a heap,
'Graaagh! You blunder-bearded good-for-nothing!' Crumwhort cried. Shoveldigel did not argue as he took up his round shield and short sword that escaped his grasp in the fall – he never took pride in wearing cumbersome armour and didn't care much about what Crumwhort or any dwarf thought about it. But there was no denying, no matter what you may think of them, that they were fearless creatures in all their splendid war-gear and if it was not for their wagging beards you would have thought them more of grumbling mechanical tin-men making a clattering and rattling racket fit to raise the dead.
With Crumwhort and Shoveldigel preoccupied with their little scuffle it was Swinglepick, with his wits still about him, who saw first what lay before them. There were no frolicking girls to be seen or heard, no fey little boy in lamb skins with lots of names and certainly no floundering fat man with his donkey within an inch of the stream or beyond it, but the entire place was completely swamped with grapevines. From the edges of the stream to the boundaries of the clearing the vines grew wildly across the ground and crawled up the boles of the nearest trees.
'What in the blazes!' cried Crumwhort, louder than before, 'Where's the intruders? And where did all these fruity bushes come from? I thought you were digging up the stumps, not making us a garden like a pair of prancing garden nymphs!'
'It wasn't our doing!' said Swiglepick, 'We were digging up the stumps until Shoveldigel started yodelling in the middle of our digging song!'
'Yodelling?' spat Crumwhort disdainfully.
'Don't listen to him! He was the one yodelling!' retorted Swiglepick.
'And you would call yourselves dwarves! Despicable!' scoffed Crumwhort. That of course kicked up quite a fuss between the two accused yodellers, which, as it seems, is something very un-dwarf-like and, therefore, most likely frowned upon among their folk.
It almost came to the point where the two dwarves would have turned their weapons on each other until Crumwhort asserted himself once more,
'Never mind! How in the smithies name did all these plants get here!'
'We was trying to tell you!' said Shoveldigel, 'It was people!'
'People?' inquired Crumwhort, seizing Shoveldigel and shaking him like a bucket of bolts, 'What kind of people? Humans? Come on, speak clear!'
'No-eaah-not humans!' he said hesitantly, 'They were – ah – like, woodpeople!'
'Bother you!'Crumwhort said, 'And where have these woodpeople gone to? You don't know? That's because you are talking folly! Swinglepick – what have you got there?'
Swinglepick was hunched over on all fours as if he was peeping down a rabbit hole, and that is what Crumwhort and Shoveldigel would have guessed he was doing if they had not noticed what he was staring at. Right underneath his nose was an amply sized conch seashell. But that would never be enough to captivate a dwarf and distract him from his quarrelling, fascinating though conch shell spirals are, this one was all encrusted and sparkling with gems of every colour.
Suddenly then, out from the shell appeared a little hermit crab and pinched Swinglepick on his soft button nose,
'Ouch!' he shouted, and grabbed the seashell and tossed it in the direction of the lake. Crumwhort and Shoveldigel took off at a spurt and vanished into the thick of the grapevines. Swinglepick just stood there nursing his throbbing nose – then he realised what he had just done!
'Hey! Don't touch my shell you pair of nugget-swipers!' And then he was soon off in pursuit of the other two dwarves – and three dwarves all sprinting together in full armour tends to make a terrible clamour in the forest. Swinglepick had the worst time of it. He had to wade and jostle through the dense grapevines unlike Crumwhort and Shoveldigel who had blades to hack and cut at the thick foliage.
Of course, Swinglepick didn't think of following their path through the vines, he was thinking desperately more of getting ahead and finding the seashell before they did and so its not surprising that he arrived lastly in sight of the lakeshore – a sight that he would not have relished if he had lived longer than that day.
Crumwhort had abandoned his war axe and was struggling with Shoveldigel over the possession of the conch shell upon the mire and in the watery shallows. They were inseparable from that precious thing now that their hands had been laid upon it and their eyes had beheld its splendorous adornments. It was Crumwhort's covetous mind that had eluded its enchantment over him for a second long enough to contrive a wicked deed.
In one deft movement Crumwhort turned Shoveldigel's own blade against him. The short sword found its way past his cuirass and through his mail in one swift thrust drawing his life from him – Shoveldigel fell with a thud and a splash.
There Crumwhort stood in a state of euphoria – just him now and his precious conch shell of wonderful gems. He heard a twag, then a whizz and the last thing he knew was a smarting on his neck and the shell flying from his grasp. And thus fell Crumwhort, for he was struck in the neck with a well aimed arrow from Swinglepick's bow.
Swinglepick dropped his bow and rushed upon the fallen two. He fell on all fours once more and scrambled about the shallows. Looking up, there on the still water was the conch shell with all the winking gems upon its back. How Swinglepick longed to have it in his hands again! And what a shock it was to him when it disappeared beneath the shimmering water!
Into the cold depths he leapt after it – quiver and arrows, armour, beard and all! He strained his eyes to peer into the murkiness. At that moment he felt that he was in luck for where the sunrays cut through the sullen gloom the bright little gems of the conch shell caught the sunlight as it lay but a little way from him upon the lakebed.
He strove towards it, and how he cursed his armour – furious but inaudible oaths, never considering that he could not walk on the lakebed without it.
Forgetting that he was not wearily tramping through a field or through a pitch dark mine, he began to gasp for air and of course he only got a mouthful of foul water but at this point, charmed by the lure of precious stones, getting his hands on the seashell seemed the most important thing, so he trod onwards, deeper and deeper, and closer and closer he got to the seashell. Almost within its reach he stooped and stretched his arm out anxiously, then suddenly, he knew no more. But with the one little ounce of consciousness that lingered he could have sworn that he seen a mermaid as his eyes strayed ruefully to the bright surface. And that was the end of Swinglepick, and I do not doubt that he is still on that lakebed to this day eternally dreaming of digging for gems and gold nuggets the size of elephants.
It was, in fact, that he was not mistaken, the fool though he was. That very mermaid that he seen now sat upon a shingle-laid lakeshore in the shadow of the trees, that very same place where she spoke with Bunter Beaver. And now once again Bunter stood very anxious before the mermaid,
'Moi guderness, what have you been up to? Oi wonders if'n you've beez seeing those awful dwarves, have you?' he would say, and other impatient things of the same kind but all that the mermaid would say in return was,
'Wouldn't you like to know! It is not quite teatime yet, so be quiet, Nosey-Parker!' And of course that made him all the more curious, but now that teatime had just about come around he ventured to ask again, but there was no need for it.
'The deed is done!' said she, and just then the little hermit crab with the splendorous shell on his back scurried out of the shallows of the lake and onto the stony shore, 'Do you know my name furry fellow?' she asked Bunter.
'No! Oi'm gurtly sorry marm but oi don't!' he admitted apologetically.
'Well know now hereafter that it is Lady Periwinkle! And let never you say that I am not a lady of her word! Go back to your little home. No dwarves will you find there. Never again will you search vainly in the lake for gold. And never again will you find me upon this lake shore, for I go back to the kingdoms in the East with the story of Beavers and Dwarves to tell. Oh think how they will love me for telling such a story! (Stories about fish and coral get very dull you know). Farewell!' And as quick as that she was gone. She took the little hermit crab and the gem-encrusted conch shell and flopped into the lake never to be seen by beaver eyes again.
Bunter Beaver was very confused, and for many a year from that day he never slept without dreaming about mermaids and underwater kingdoms. Now Bunter had quite had his fill of strange happenings for one day and he was tired. It seemed very likely to him then that the mermaid was playing a trick on him and he went on his way with the full expectation of getting back to the lodge and having to put up with the dwarves for another evening of "Where's my gold you lazy rudder-rat!" How he dreaded the thought! Feeling that nobody had any sympathy for himself but himself he gazed across the lake and laid his eyes on a log, adrift off in the distance – at least that is what he thought of it at first. That was until he noticed shapes, like creatures sitting upon it – then he was sure that the shapes were some kind of creatures because two of them were rowing. It was advancing towards the opposite shore of the lake – the very spot were the channel led from the lake to his lodge.
'Oh moi!' he cried, 'Oi better warn those creatures! If'n those dwarves catchem they'll beez in a bundle of trouble!' And off he swam frantically across the lake.
'Ahoy mate! I see trees once more! All ashore that's going ashore!' cried a distinctly squirrel-like voice. It was the voice of Pattertwig. Him with Reeicheep and Ruddletod, were nearing the leaning trees in the logboat. Reepicheep at once decried the slain bodies of Crumwhort and Shoveldigel lying face-down in the mire, their armour still had a sheen about it in the shadows beneath the canopy. Ruddletod's eyes were keener though and he dove into the turbid lake and came upon the shore before the logboat.
'It's those nasty dwarves! There're dead!' cried Ruddletod as he stood before them in the shallows, 'Oi told youz, moi father was a gurtly fierce foighter! He's stuffed both of'em!' Reepicheep and Pattertiwg were unsteady on their footpaws as they disembarked but made their way none the less to the spot where Ruddletod was.
'Horrid business!' Pattertwig said, 'Always is when they get stuck in the neck! Your father is a good shot with a bow! That's a Queen Susan job that is!' obviously referring to the arrow in Crumwhort's neck.
'Oh moi!' said Ruddletod, pondering if that was to be a good thing or not, 'Oi'll have to tell him that when oi foinds him, he'll be very pleased to hear that!'
'There were only three dwarves, did you say?' asked Reepicheep, 'We can't let our guard down until we find the third. If he is armed like these two there is no easy task ahead of us if we are to overcome him.'
'Oi thinks he moight be back at the lodge drinking moi father's beer! That's what they always do this toime of the day.'
'Villains!' shouted Pattertwig, who was now right above their heads on an overhanging tree branch, 'Drinking all your father's beer! Vile ould villains the lot of them!' Ruddletod nodded his head vigorously in agreement,
'Oi know!' he gasped.
''Then we should head there first.' said Reepicheep, 'You should lead the way Ruddletod.'
'And remember,' interrupted Pattertwig, 'Don't you go and try taking him all on your own if we find him! We will sort him out, Sir Reep and I!' Ruddletod did not seem in the least bit disappointed despite his brave words,
'Oi'll have to troi and not foight'em boi moiself! Oi'll leave'em to youz two, oi will!'
'And what beez all this talk about foightin' and whatnot!' broke in a comparatively husky voice, 'There will be no foightin' done here! You were raised better than that, oi'll reakon!'
As Reepicheep turned around he discovered another beaver, full-grown and as stout as he was tall. It was none other than Bunter Beaver himself. That was a merry meeting between two creatures that Narnia has never seen the like of as Bunter and Ruddletod found each other once more.
Ruddletod introduced his new friends, and Bunter thanked them for delivering the young beaver home safely. They went together back to the lodge (the two beavers were lost as to where all the grape vines came from), by which Reepicheep and Pattertwig entered through the dwarf tunnels, and they did not find a third dwarf after all.