Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) by Rudyard Kipling Page B

me another.’
    ‘What do you think of a big, red, dead city built of red sandstone, with raw green aloes growing between the stones, lying out neglected on honey-coloured sands? There are forty dead kings there, Maisie, each in a gorgeous tomb finer than all the others. You look at the palaces and streets and shops and tanks, and think that men must live there, till you find a wee gray squirrel rubbing its nose all alone in the market-place, and a jewelled peacock struts out of a carved doorway and spreads its tail against a marble screen as fine pierced as point-lace. Then a monkey — a little black monkey — walks through the main square to get a drink from a tank forty feet deep. He slides down the creepers to the water’s edge, and a friend holds him by the tail, in case he should fall in.’
    ‘Is that all true?’
    ‘I have been there and seen. Then evening comes, and the lights change till it’s just as though you stood in the heart of a king-opal. A little before sundown, as punctually as clockwork, a big bristly wild boar, with all his family following, trots through the city gate, churning the foam on his tusks. You climb on the shoulder of a blind black stone god and watch that pig choose himself a palace for the night and stump in wagging his tail. Then the night-wind gets up, and the sands move, and you hear the desert outside the city singing, “Now I lay me down to sleep,” and everything is dark till the moon rises. Maisie, darling, come with me and see what the world is really like. It’s very lovely, and it’s very horrible, — but I won’t let you see anything horrid, — and it doesn’t care your life or mine for pictures or anything else except doing its own work and making love. Come, and I’ll show you how to brew sangaree, and sling a hammock, and — oh, thousands of things, and you’ll see for yourself what colour means, and we’ll find out together what love means, and then, maybe, we shall be allowed to do some good work. Come away!’
    ‘Why?’ said Maisie.
    ‘How can you do anything until you have seen everything, or as much as you can? And besides, darling, I love you. Come along with me. You have no business here; you don’t belong to this place; you’re half a gipsy, — your face tells that; and I — even the smell of open water makes me restless. Come across the sea and be happy!’
    He had risen to his feet, and stood in the shadow of the gun, looking down at the girl. The very short winter afternoon had worn away, and, before they knew, the winter moon was walking the untroubled sea. Long ruled lines of silver showed where a ripple of the rising tide was turning over the mud-banks. The wind had dropped, and in the intense stillness they could hear a donkey cropping the frosty grass many yards away. A faint beating, like that of a muffled drum, came out of the moon-haze.
    ‘What’s that?’ said Maisie, quickly. ‘It sounds like a heart beating.
    Where is it?’
    Dick was so angry at this sudden wrench to his pleadings that he could not trust himself to speak, and in this silence caught the sound. Maisie from her seat under the gun watched him with a certain amount of fear.
    She wished so much that he would be sensible and cease to worry her with over-sea emotion that she both could and could not understand. She was not prepared, however, for the change in his face as he listened.
    ‘It’s a steamer,’ he said, — ’a twin-screw steamer, by the beat. I can’t make her out, but she must be standing very close in-shore. Ah!’ as the red of a rocket streaked the haze, ‘she’s standing in to signal before she clears the Channel.’
    ‘Is it a wreck?’ said Maisie, to whom these words were as Greek.
    Dick’s eyes were turned to the sea. ‘Wreck! What nonsense! She’s only reporting herself. Red rocket forward — there’s a green light aft now, and two red rockets from the bridge.’
    ‘What does that mean?’
    ‘It’s the signal of the Cross Keys