It was many hours
since he had last taken a drink from the wooden spout of their old
pump, which brought them the sparkling, ice-cold water of the
hills.
But, fortunately for him, the stove, having been marked and
registered as "fragile and valuable," was not treated quite like a
mere bale of goods, and the Rosenheim station-master, who knew its
consignees, resolved to send it on by a passenger train that would
leave there at daybreak. And when this train went out, in it,
among piles of luggage belonging to other travelers, to Vienna,
Prague, Buda-Pest, Salzburg, was August, still undiscovered, still
doubled up like a mole in the winter under the grass. Those words,
"fragile and valuable," had made the men lift Hirschvogel gently
and with care. He had begun to get used to his prison, and a
little used to the incessant pounding and jumbling and rattling
and shaking with which modern travel is always accompanied, though
modern invention does deem itself so mightily clever. All in the
dark he was, and he was terribly thirsty; but he kept feeling the
earthenware sides of the Nurnberg giant and saying, softly, "Take
care of me; oh, take care of me, dear Hirschvogel!"
He did not say, "Take me back;" for, now that he was fairly out in
the world, he wished to see a little of it. He began to think that
they must have been all over the world in all this time that the
rolling and roaring and hissing and jangling had been about his
ears; shut up in the dark, he began to remember all the tales that
had been told in Yule round the fire at his grandfather's good
house at Dorf, of gnomes and elves and subterranean terrors, and
the Erl King riding on the black horse of night, and--and--and he
began to sob and to tremble again, and this time did scream
outright.
Pages:
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49