This rather shows up the moon-dog’s low tastes; and as there were no such towns on the world hundreds of years ago, you can also see that he had exaggerated the length of time since he fell over the edge a very great deal too. However, just at that moment, a specially large and dirty flake hit him in the left eye, and he changed his mind.
‘I think this stuff has missed its way and fallen off the beastly old world,’ he said. ‘Rat and rabbit it! And we seem to have missed our way altogether, too. Bat and bother it! Let’s find a hole to creep in!’
It took some time to find a hole of any sort, and they were very wet and cold before they did: in fact so miserable that they took the first shelter they came to, and no precautions—which are the first things you ought to take in unfamiliar places on the edge of the moon. The shelter they crawled into was not a hole but a cave, and a very large cave too; it was dark but it was dry.
‘This is nice and warm,’ said the moon-dog, and he closed his eyes and went off into a doze almost immediately.
‘Ow!’ he yelped not long afterwards, waking straight up dog-fashion out of a comfortable dream. ‘Much too warm!’
He jumped up. He could hear little Roverandom barking away further inside the cave, and when he went to see what was up, he saw a trickle of fire creeping along the floor towards them. He did not feel homesick for red furnaces just then; and he seized little Roverandom by the back of his little neck, and bolted out of the cave as quick as lightning, and flew up to a peak of stone just outside.
There the two sat in the snow shivering and watching; which was very silly of them. They ought to have flown off home, or anywhere, faster than the wind. The moon-dog did not know everything about the moon, as you see, or he would have known that this was the lair of the Great White Dragon—the one that was only half-afraid of the Man (and scarcely that when he was angry). The Man himself was a bit bothered by this dragon. ‘That dratted creature’ was what he called him, when he referred to him at all.
All the white dragons originally come from the moon, as you probably know; but this one had been to the world and back, so he had learned a thing or two. He fought the Red Dragon in Caerdragon in Merlin’s time, as you will find in all the more up-to-date history books; after which the other dragon was Very Red. Later he did lots more damage in the Three Islands, and went to live on the top of Snowdon for a time. People did not bother to climb up while that lasted—except for one man, and the dragon caught him drinking out of a bottle. That man finished in such a hurry that he left the bottle on the top, and his example has been followed by many people since. A long time since, and not until the dragon had flown off to Gwynfa, some time after King Arthur’s disappearance, at a time when dragons’ tails were esteemed a great delicacy by the Saxon Kings.
Gwynfa is not so far from the world’s edge, and it is an easy flight from there to the moon for a dragon so titanic and so enormously bad as this one had become. He now lived on the moon’s edge; for he was not quite sure how much the Man-in-the-Moon could do with his spells and contrivances. All the same, he actually dared at times to interfere with the colour-scheme. Sometimes he let real red and green flames out of his cave when he was having a dragon-feast or was in a tantrum; and clouds of smoke were frequent. Once or twice he had been known to turn the whole moon red, or put it out altogether. On such uncomfortable occasions the Man-in-the-Moon shut himself up (and his dog), and all he said was ‘That dratted creature again’. He never explained what creature, or where he lived; he simply went down into the cellars, uncorked his best spells, and got things cleared up as quick as possible.
Now you know all about it; and if the dogs had known half as much they would never have stopped there. But stop they did, at least as long as it has taken me to explain about the White Dragon, and by that time the whole of him, white with green eyes, and leaking green fire at every joint, and snorting black smoke like a steamer, had come out of the cave. Then he let off the most awful bellow. The mountains rocked and echoed, and the snow dried up; avalanches tumbled down, and waterfalls stood still.
That dragon had wings, like the sails that ships had when they still were ships and not steam-engines; and he did not disdain to kill anything from a mouse to an emperor’s daughter. He meant to kill those two dogs; and he told them so several times before he got up into the air. That was his mistake. They both whizzed off their rock like rockets, and went away down the wind at a pace that Mew himself would have been proud of. The dragon came after them, flapping like a flapdragon and snapping like a snapdragon, knocking the tops of mountains off, and setting all the sheep-bells ringing like a town on fire. (Now you see why they all had bells.)
Very luckily, down the wind was the right direction. Also a most stupendous rocket went up from the tower as soon as the bells got frantic. It could be seen all over the moon like a golden umbrella bursting into a thousand silver tassels, and it caused an unpredicted fall of shooting stars on the world not long after. If it was a guide to the poor dogs, it was also meant as a warning to the dragon; but he had got far too much steam up to take any notice.
So the chase went fiercely on. If you have ever seen a bird chasing a butterfly, and if you can imagine a more than gigantic bird chasing two perfectly insignificant butterflies among white mountains, then you can just begin to imagine the twistings, dodgings, hairbreadth escapes, and the wild zigzag rush of that flight home. More than once, before they got even half way, Roverandom’s tail was singed by the dragon’s breath.
What was the Man-in-the-Moon doing? Well, he let off a truly magnificent rocket; and after that he said ‘Drat that creature!’ and also ‘Drat those puppies! They will bring on an eclipse before it is due!’ And then he went down into the cellars and uncorked a dark, black spell that looked like jellified tar and honey (and smelt like the Fifth of November and cabbage boiling over).
At that very moment the dragon swooped up right above the tower and lifted a huge claw to bat Roverandom—bat him right off into the blank nowhere. But he never did. The Man-in-the-Moon shot the spell up out of a lower window, and hit the dragon splosh on the stomach (where all dragons are peculiarly tender), and knocked him crank-sideways. He lost all his wits, and flew bang into a mountain before he could get his steering right; and it was difficult to say which was most damaged, his nose or the mountain—both were out of shape.
So the two dogs fell in through the top window, and never got back their breath for a week; and the dragon slowly made his lopsided way home, where he rubbed his nose for months. The next eclipse was a failure, for the dragon was too busy licking his tummy to attend to it. And he never got the black sploshes off where the spell hit him. I am afraid they will last for ever. They call him the Mottled Monster now.
3
The next day the Man-in-the-Moon looked at Roverandom and said: ‘That was a narrow squeak! You seem to have explored the white side pretty well for a young dog. I think, when you have got your breath back, it will be time for you to visit the other side.’
‘Can I come too?’ asked the moon-dog.
‘It wouldn’t be good for you,’ said the Man, ‘and I don’t advise you to. You might see things that would make you more homesick than fire and chimney-stacks, and that would turn out as bad as dragons.’
The moon-dog did not blush, because he could not; and he did not say anything, but he went and sat down in a corner and wondered how much the old man knew of everything that went on, and everything that was said, too. Also for a little while he wondered what exactly the old man meant; but that did not bother him long—he was a lighthearted fellow.
As for Roverandom, when he had got his breath back, a few days later, the Man-in-the-Moon came and whistled for him. Then down and down they went together; down the stairs, and into the cellars which were cut inside the cliff and had small windows looking out of the side of the precipice over the wide places of the moon; and then down secret steps that seemed to lead right under the mountains, until after a long while they came into a
completely dark place, and stopped, though Roverandom’s head went on turning giddily after the miles of corkscrewing downwards.
In complete darkness the Man-in-the-Moon shone palely all by himself like a glow-worm, and that was all the light they had. It was quite enough, though, to see the door by—a big door in the floor. This the old man pulled up, and as it was lifted darkness seemed to well up out of the opening like a fog, so that Roverandom could no longer see even the faint glimmering of the Man through it.
‘Down you go, good dog!’ said his voice out of the blackness. And you won’t be surprised to be told that Roverandom was not a good dog, and would not budge. He backed into the furthest corner of the little room, and set his ears back. He was more frightened of that hole than of the old man.
But it was not any good. The Man-in-the-Moon simply picked him up and dropped him plump into the black hole; and as he fell and fell into nothing, Roverandom heard him calling out, already far above him: ‘Drop straight, and then fly on with the wind! Wait for me at the other end!’
That ought to have comforted him, but it did not. Roverandom always said afterwards that he did not think even falling over the world’s edge could be worse; and that anyway it was the nastiest part of all his adventures, and still made him feel as if he had lost his tummy whenever he thought of it. You can tell he is still thinking of it when he cries out and twitches in his sleep on the hearthrug.
All the same, it came to an end. After a long while his falling gradually slowed down, until at last he almost stopped. The rest of the way he had to use his wings; and it was like flying up, up, through a big chimney—luckily with a strong draught helping him along. Jolly glad he was when he got at last to the top.
There he lay panting at the edge of the hole at the other end, waiting obediently, and anxiously, for the Man-in-the-Moon. It was a good while before he appeared, and Roverandom had time to see that he was at the bottom of a deep dark valley, ringed round with low dark hills. Black clouds seemed to rest upon their tops; and beyond the clouds was just one star.
Suddenly the little dog felt very sleepy; a bird in some gloomy bushes nearby was singing a drowsy song that seemed strange and wonderful to him after the little dumb birds of the other side to which he had got used. He shut his eyes.
‘Wake up, you doglet!’ called a voice; and Roverandom bounced up just in time to see the Man climbing out of the hole on a silver rope which a large grey spider (much larger than himself) was fastening to a tree close by.
The Man climbed out. ‘Thank you!’ he said to the spider. ‘And now be off!’ And off the spider went, and was glad to go. There are black spiders on the dark side, poisonous ones, if not as large as the monsters of the white side. They hate anything white or pale or light, and especially pale spiders, which they hate like rich relations that pay infrequent visits.
The grey spider dropped back down the rope into the hole, and a black spider dropped out of the tree at the same moment.
‘Now then!’ cried the old man to the black spider.
‘Come back there! That is my private door, and don’t you forget it. Just make me a nice hammock from those two yew-trees, and I’ll forgive you.
‘It’s a longish climb down and up through the middle of the moon,’ he said to Roverandom, ‘and I think a little rest before they arrive would do me good. They are very nice, but they need a good deal of energy. Of course I could take to wings, only I wear ‘em out so fast; also it would mean widening the hole, as my size in wings would hardly fit, and I’m a beautiful rope-climber.
‘Now what do you think of this side?’ the Man continued. ‘Dark with a pale sky, while tother was pale with a dark sky, eh? Quite a change, only there is not much more real colour here than there, not what I call real colour, loud and lots of it together. There are a few gleams under the trees, if you look, fireflies and diamond-beetles and ruby-moths, and such like. Too tiny, though; too tiny like all the bright things on this side. And they live a terrible life of it, what with owls like eagles and as black as coal, and crows like vultures and as numerous as sparrows, and all these black spiders. It’s the black-velvet bob-owlers, flying all together in clouds, that I personally like least. They won’t even get out of my way; I hardly dare give out a glimmer, or they all get tangled in my beard.
‘Still this side has its charms, young dog; and one of them is that nobody and no-doggy on earth has ever seen it before—when they were awake—except you!’
Then the Man suddenly jumped into the hammock, which the black spider had been spinning for him while he was talking, and went fast asleep in a twinkling.
Roverandom sat alone and watched him, with a wary eye for black spiders too. Little gleams of firelight, red, green, gold, and blue, flashed and shifted here and there beneath the dark windless trees. The sky was pale with strange stars above the floating wisps of velvet cloud. Thousands of nightingales seemed to be singing in some other valley, faint beyond the nearer hills. And then Roverandom heard the sound of children’s voices, or the echo of the echo of their voices coming down a sudden soft-stirring breeze. He sat up and barked the loudest bark he had barked since this tale began.
‘Bless me!’ cried the Man-in-the-Moon, jumping up wide awake, straight out of the hammock onto the grass, and nearly onto Roverandom’s tail. ‘Have they arrived already?’
‘Who?’ asked Roverandom.
‘Well, if you didn’t hear them, what did you yap for?’ said the old man. ‘Come on! This is the way.’
They went down a long grey path, marked at the sides with faintly luminous stones, and overhung with bushes. It led on and on, and the bushes became pine-trees, and the air was filled with the smell of pine-trees at night. Then the path began to climb; and after a time they came to the top of the lowest point in the ring of hills that had shut them in.
Then Roverandom looked down into the next valley; and all the nightingales stopped singing, like turning off a tap, and children’s voices floated up clear and sweet, for they were singing a fair song with many voices blended to one music.
Down the hillside raced and jumped the old man and the dog together. My word! the Man-in-the-Moon could leap from rock to rock!
‘Come on, come on!’ he called. ‘I may be a bearded billy-goat, a wild or garden goat, but you can’t catch me!’ And Roverandom had to fly to keep up with him.
And so they came suddenly to a sheer precipice, not very high, but dark and polished like jet. Looking over, Roverandom saw below a garden in twilight; and as he looked it changed to the soft glow of an afternoon sun, though he could not see where the soft light came from that lit all that sheltered place and never strayed beyond. Grey fountains were there, and long lawns; and children everywhere, dancing sleepily, walking dreamily, and talking to themselves. Some stirred as if just waking from deep sleep; some were already running wide awake and laughing: they were digging, gathering flowers, building tents and houses, chasing butterflies, kicking balls, climbing trees; and all were singing.
‘Where do they all come from?’ asked Roverandom, bewildered and delighted.
‘From their homes and beds, of course,’ said the Man.
‘And how do they get here?’
‘That I ain’t going to tell you at all; and you’ll never find out. You are lucky, and so is anyone, to get here by any way at all; but the children don’t come by your way, at any rate. Some come often, and some come seldom, and I make most of the dream. Some of it they bring with them, of course, like lunch to school, and some (I am sorry to say) the spiders make—but not in this valley, and not if I catch ‘em at it. And now let’s go and join the party!’
The cliff of jet sloped steeply down. It was much too smooth even for a spider to climb—not that any spider ever dared try; for he might slide down, but neither he nor anything else could get up again; and in that garden were hidden sentinels, not to mention the Man-in-the-Moon, without whom no party was complete, for they were his own parties.
And he now slid bang into
the middle of this one. He just sat down and tobogganed, swish! right into the midst of a crowd of children with Roverandom rolling on top of him, quite forgetting that he could fly. Or could have flown—for when he picked himself up at the bottom he found that his wings had gone.
‘What’s that little dog doing?’ said a small boy to the Man. Roverandom was going round and round like a top, trying to look at his own back.
‘Looking for his wings, my boy. He thinks he has rubbed them off on the toboggan-run, but they’re in my pocket. No wings allowed down here, people don’t get out of here without leave, do they?’
‘No! Daddy-long-beard!’ said about twenty children all at once, and one boy caught hold of the old man’s beard and climbed up it onto his shoulder. Roverandom expected to see him turned into a moth or a piece of indiarubber, or something, on the spot.
But ‘My word! you’re a bit of a rope-climber, my boy!’ said the Man. ‘I’ll have to give you lessons.’ And he tossed the boy right up into the air. He did not fall down again; not a bit of it. He stuck up in the air; and the Man-in-the-Moon threw him a silver rope that he slipped out of his pocket.
‘Just climb down that quick!’ he said; and down the boy slithered into the old man’s arms, where he was well tickled. ‘You’ll wake up, if you laugh so loud,’ said the Man, and he put him down on the grass and walked off into the crowd.
Roverandom was left to amuse himself, and he was just making for a beautiful yellow ball (‘Just like my own at home,’ he thought) when he heard a voice he knew.
‘There’s my little dog!’ it said. ‘There’s my little dog! I always thought he was real. Fancy him being here, when I’ve looked and looked all over the sands and called and whistled every day for him!’