Jimbo by Algernon Blackwood

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please
visit LibriVox dot org. Jimbo by Algernon Blackwood, read by
Adrian Pretzels, Chapter one rabbits. Jimbo's governess ought to have

(00:27):
known better, but she didn't. If she had, Jimbo would
never have met with the adventures that subsequently came to him. Thus,
in a roundabout sort of way, the child ought to
have been thankful to the governess, and perhaps in a
roundabout sort of way he was, but that comes at

(00:47):
the far end of the story, and is doubtful at best.
And in the meantime, the child had gone through his suffering,
and the governess had in some measure expiated her fault,
so that at this stage it is only necessary to
note that the whole business began because the empty house
happened to be really an empty house, not the one

(01:10):
Jimbo's family lived in, but another of which more will
be known in due course. Jimbo's father was a retired
colonel who had married late in life and now lived
all the year round in the country, and Jimbo was
the youngest.

Speaker 2 (01:27):
Child, but one.

Speaker 1 (01:29):
The colonel lean in body as he was sincere in mind,
an excellent soldier but a poor diplomatist, loved dogs, horses, guns,
and riding whips, and also really understood them. His neighbors,
had they been asked, would have called him hard headed,

(01:49):
and so far as a soft hearted man may deserve
the title, he probably was. He rode two horses a
day to hounds with the best of them, and the
state for the country, the better he liked it. Besides
his guns, dogs and horses, he was also very fond
of his children. It was his hobby that he understood

(02:11):
them far better than his wife did, more than anyone did.
For that matter, the proper evolution of their differing temperaments
had no difficulties for him. The delicate problems of child nature,
which defied solution by nine parents out of ten, ceased
to exist the moment he spread out his muscular hand

(02:32):
in a favorite omnipotent gesture and uttered some extraordinarily foolish
generality in that thunderous, good natured voice of his. The
difficulty for himself vanished when he ended up with the
words leave that to me, my dear believe me I
know best, but for all else concerned, and especially for

(02:55):
the child under discussion, this was when the difficulty really began. Since, however,
the Colonel after this chapter mounts his best hunter and
disappears over a high hedge into space. So far as
our story is concerned, any further delineation of his wholesome
but very ordinary type is unnecessary. One winter's evening, not

(03:20):
very long after Christmas, the Colonel made a discovery. It
alarmed him a little, for it suggested to his cockshaw
mind that he did not understand all his children as
comprehensively as he imagined. Between five o'clock and dinner, that
magic hour, when lessons were over and the big house

(03:40):
was full of shadows and mystery, there came a timid
knock at the study door. Come in, growled the soldier
in his deepest voice, and a little girl's face, wreathed
in tumbling brown hair, poked itself hesitatingly through the opening.
The Colonel did not like being disturbed at this hour,

(04:03):
and everybody in the house knew it. But the spell
of Christmas Holidays was still somehow in the air, and
the customary order was not yet fully re established. Moreover,
when he saw who the intruder was, his growl modified
itself into a sort of common sternness that yet was
not cleverly enough simulated to deceive the really intuitive little

(04:26):
person who now stood inside the room.

Speaker 2 (04:31):
Well, Nixy, child, what do you want now? Please? Father?

Speaker 1 (04:37):
Will you, we wondered, if a chorus of whispers issued
from the other side of the door. Go on, silly
out with it. You promised you would, Nixy, if you
would come and play rabbits with us, came the words
in a desperate rush, with laughter. Not far behind. The

(04:58):
big man with the fierce white mustaches glared over the
top of his glasses at the intruder, as if amazed
beyond belief at the audacity of the request. Rabbits, he exclaimed,
as if the mere word ought to have caused an
instant explosion. Rabbits, Oh, please do rabbits at this time

(05:21):
of night, he repeated. I've never heard of such a thing.
Why all good rabbits are asleep in their holes by
this time, and you ought to be in yours too.
By rights, I'm sure we don't sleep in holes, father,
said the owner of the brown hare, who was acting
as leader, and there's really still an hour before bedtime, really,

(05:43):
added a voice in the rear. The big Man slowly
put his glasses down and looked at his watch. He
looked very savage, but of course it was all pretense,
and the children knew it.

Speaker 2 (05:56):
If he was.

Speaker 1 (05:57):
Really cross, he'd pretend to be nice. They whispered to
each other with merciless perception. Well he began, But he
who hesitates with children is lost. The door flung open wide,
and the troop poured into the room in a medley
of long black legs, flying hair and outstretched hands. They

(06:21):
surrounded the table, swarmed upon his big knees, shut his
stupid old book, tried on his glasses, kissed him, and
fell to discussing the game breathlessly, all at once, as
though it had already begun. This, of course ended the battle,
and the Big Man had to play the part of
the monster Rabbit in a wonderful game of his own invention.

(06:44):
But when at length it was all over, and they
were gathered panting round the fire of blazing logs in
the hall, The monster Rabbit, the only one with any
breath at his command, looked up and spoke, where's Jimbo,
he asked stairs, Why didn't he come and play too?

Speaker 2 (07:04):
He didn't want to. Why what's he doing?

Speaker 1 (07:08):
Several answers were forthcoming, nothing in particular, talking to the
furniture when I last saw him, just thinking as usual,
or staring in the fire. None of the answers seemed
to satisfy the monster Rabbit, for when he kissed them
a little later and said good night, he gave orders
with a graver face for Jimbo to be sent down

(07:31):
to the study before he went to bed. Moreover, he
called him James, which was a sure sign of parental displeasure. James,
why didn't you come and play with your brothers and
sisters just now, asked the colonel, as a dreamy eyed
boy of about seven, with a mop of dark hair

(07:51):
and a wistful expression, came slowly forward into the room.
I was in the middle of making pictures. Where what
making pictures in the fire? James said the colonel in
a serious tone. Don't you know that you're getting too

(08:12):
old now for that sort of thing. If you dream
so much, you'll fall asleep altogether some fine day and
never wake up again.

Speaker 2 (08:21):
Just think what that means.

Speaker 1 (08:24):
The child smiled faintly and moved up confidingly between his
father's knees, staring into his eyes without the least sign
of fear. But he said nothing in reply. His thoughts
were far away, and it seemed as if the effort
to bring them back into the study and to a
consideration of his father's words was almost beyond his power.

(08:49):
You must run about more, pursued the soldier, rubbing his
big hands together briskly. And join your brothers and sisters
in their games. Lie about in the summer and dream
a bit if you like. But now it's winter you
must be more active and make your blood circulate healthily,
a and all that sort of thing. The words were

(09:12):
kindly spoken, but the voice and manner rather deliberate. Jimbo
began to look a little troubled as his father watched him.
Come now, little man, he said, more gently, what's the matter?

Speaker 2 (09:27):
Eh? He drew the boy close to him.

Speaker 1 (09:31):
Tell me all about it and what it is you're
always thinking about so much. Jimbo brought back his mind
with a tremendous effort and said, I don't like the winter.
It's so dark and full of horrid things. It's all
ice and shadows. So I go away and think of

(09:52):
what I like and other places. Nonsense, interrupted his father briskly.
Winter's a cabin all time for boys. What in the
world you mean, I wonder. He lifted the child on
to his knee and stroked his hair as though he
were patting the flank of a horse. Jimbo took no

(10:13):
notice of the interruption or of the caress, and went
on saying what he had to say, though with eyes
a little more clouded. Winters like going into a long
black tunnel. You see, it's downhill to Christmas, of course,
then up hill all the way to the summer holidays.

(10:35):
But the uphill parts so slow that tut tut, laughed
the colonel in spite of himself. You mustn't have such thoughts.
Those are a baby's notion. They're silly, silly, silly. Do
you really think so? Father, continued the boy, as if
politeness demanded some recognition of his father's remarks, but otherwise

(10:59):
anxious only to say what was on his mind. You
wouldn't think them silly if you really knew. But of
course there's no one to tell you in the stable,
so you can't know. You've never seen the funny big
people rushing past you and laughing through their long hair
when the wind blows so loud. I know several of

(11:19):
them almost to speak to, but you only hear wind.
And the other things with tiny legs that skate up
and down the slippery moonbeams without ever tumbling off. They
aren't silly a bit, only they don't like dogs and noise.
And I've seen the furniture he pronounced it furniture, dancing

(11:41):
about in the day nursery when it thought it was alone.
And i've heard it talking at night. I know the
big cupboard's voice quite well. It's just like a drum,
only rougher. The colonel shook his head and frowned severely,
staring hard at his son, But though when their eyes met,
the boy hardly saw him. Far away at the other

(12:04):
end of the tunnel of the months, he saw the
white summer sunshine lying over gardens full of nodding flowers.
Butterflies were flitting across meadows yellow with buttercups, and he
saw the fascinating rings upon the lawn where the fairy
people held their dances in the moonlight. He heard the

(12:25):
wind call to him as it ran along by the
hedgerows and saw the gentle pressure of its swift feet
upon the standing hay. Streams were murmuring under shady trees,
birds were singing, and there were echoes of sweeter music
still that he could not understand, but loved all the more.
Perhaps on that account, Yes, announced the colonel later that

(12:50):
evening to his wife, spreading his hands out as he spoke, Yes,
my dear, I have made a discovery, and an alarming one.
You know, I'm rarely at fault where the children are concerned,
and I've noted all the symptoms with unusual care. James,

(13:11):
my dear, is an imaginative boy. He paused to note
the effect of his words, but seeing none, he continued,
I regret to be obliged to say it, but it's
a fact beyond dispute. His head is simply full of things.
And he talked to me this evening about tunnels and

(13:31):
slippery moonlight till I nearly lost my temperal together. Now,
the boy will never make a man unless we take
him in hand properly at once. We must get him
a governess or something without delay. Just fancy if he
grew up into a poet, or one of these these.
In his distress, the soldier could only think of horse terms,

(13:53):
which did not seem quite the right language. He stuck
altogether and kept repeating the favorite gesture with open hand,
staring at his wife over his glasses as he did it.
But the mother never argued. He's very young still, she
observed quietly, And as you have always said, he's not
a bit like other boys. Remember exactly what I said.

(14:19):
Now that your eyes are open to the actual state
of affairs, I'm satisfied we'll get a sensible nursery, governess
At once added the mother, A practical one, yes, dear,
hard headed yes, and well educated yes, and are firm

(14:40):
with children. She'll do for the lot then, if possible.
And a young woman who doesn't go in for poetry
and dreaming and all that kind of flummery. Of course,
dear capital, I felt sure you would agree with me,
he went on. It'd be no end of a p
pity of Jimbo grew up an ass At presently hardly

(15:04):
knows the difference between a roadster and a racer. He's
going into the army too, he added, by way of climax.

Speaker 2 (15:11):
And you know, my dear the.

Speaker 1 (15:13):
Army would never stand. That never, said the mother quietly,
and the conversation came to an end. Meanwhile, the subject
of these remarks was lying wide awake up stairs in
the bed with the yellow iron railing round it. His
elder brother was asleep in the opposite corner of the room,

(15:33):
snoring peacefully. He could just see the brass knobs of
the bedstead as the dying firelight quivered and shone on them.
The walls and ceiling were draped in shadows that altered
their shapes from time to time. As the coals dropped
softly into the grate. Gradually the fire sank and the
room darkened. A feeling of delight and awe stole into

(15:58):
his heart. Jimbo loved these early hours of the night
before sleep came. He felt no fear of the dark.
Its mystery thrilled his soul. But he liked the summer dark,
with its soft, warm silences, better than the chill winter shadows. Presently,

(16:20):
the firelight sprang up into a brief flame and then
died away altogether with an odd little gulp. He knew
the sound well. He often watched the fire out, and now,
as he lay in bed, waiting for he knew not what.
The moonlight filtered in through the blaze curtains and gradually

(16:40):
gave to the room a wholly new character. Jimbo sat
up in bed and listened. The house was very still.
He slipped into his red dressing gown and crept noiselessly
over to the window. For a moment, he paused by
his brother's bed to make sure he really was asleep. Then,

(17:03):
evidently satisfied, he drew aside a corner of the curtain
and peered out. Oh, he said, drawing in his breath
with delight, and again, Oh. It was difficult to understand
why the sea of white moonlight that covered the lawn
should fill him with such joy and at the same

(17:24):
time bring a lump into his throat. It made him
feel as if he were swelling out into something very
much greater than the actual limits of his little person,
and the sensation was one of mingled pain and delight,
too intense for him to feel for very long. The
unhappiness passed gradually away, he always noticed, and the happiness

(17:46):
merged after a while into a sort of dreamy ecstasy
into which he neither thought nor wished very much, but
was conscious only of one single, unmanageable yearning. The huge
cedars on the lawn reared themselves up like giants in
silver cloaks, and the horse chestnut, the umbrella tree, as

(18:07):
the children called it, loomed with its motionless branches that
were frosted and shining. Beyond it, in a blue mist
of moonlight and distance lay the kitchen garden, and he
could just make out the line of the high wall
where the fruit trees grew. Immediately below him, the gravel
of the carriage rive sparkled with frost.

Speaker 2 (18:30):
The bars of.

Speaker 1 (18:31):
The windows were cold to his hands. Yet he stood
there for a long time, with his nose flattened against
the pane and his bare feet on the cane chair.
He felt both happy and sad. His heart longed dreadfully
for something he had not got, something that seemed out

(18:52):
of his reach because he could not name it. No
one seemed to believe all the things he knew in
the same way as he did. His brothers and sisters
played up to a certain point and then put the
things aside, as if they had only been assumed for
the time and were not real.

Speaker 2 (19:13):
To him.

Speaker 1 (19:13):
They were always real. His father's words too, that evening
had sorely puzzled him. When he came to think over
them afterwards, there a baby's notion. They're silly, silly, silly.
Were these things real? Or were they not? And as
he pondered, yearning dumbly as only these little souls can yearn,

(19:38):
the wistfulness in his heart went out to meet the
moonlight in the air. Together they wove a spell that
seemed to summon before him a fairy of the night,
who whispered an answer into his heart. We are real
so long as you believe in us. It is your
imagination that makes us real and gives us life.

Speaker 2 (20:00):
Please never, never stop believing.

Speaker 1 (20:05):
Jimbo was not quite sure that he understood the message,
but he liked it all the same and felt comforted.
So long as they believed in one another, the rest
did not matter very much after all, And when at last,
shivering with cold, he crept back to bed, it was
only to find, through the gates of sleep a more

(20:25):
direct way to the things he had been thinking about,
and to wander for the rest of the night, unwatched
and free, through the wonders of an enchanted land. Jimbo,
as his father had said, was an imaginative child. Most
children are more or less, and he was more or

(20:46):
at least more than his brothers and sisters. The colonel
thought he had made a penetrating discovery, but his wife
had known it always. His head, indeed, was full of
things that, unless trained into a channel where they could
be controlled and properly schooled, would certainly interfere with his

(21:07):
success in a practical world, and be a source of
mingled pain and joined to him all through life. To
have trained these forces, ever bursting out toward creation in
his little soul, to have explained, interpreted, and dealt fairly
by them, would perhaps have been the best and wisest way.

(21:28):
To have suppressed them altogether, cleaned them out by the
process of substitution, This might have succeeded too, in less measure.
But to turn them into a veritable rout of horror
by the common method of frightening the nonsense out of
the boy. This was surely the very worst way of

(21:48):
dealing with such a case, and the most cruel.

Speaker 2 (21:53):
Yet, this was the.

Speaker 1 (21:54):
Method adopted by the colonel in the robust good nature
of his heart and the utter ignorance of his soul.
So it came about that. Three months later, when May
was melting into June, Miss ethel Lake arrived on the scene.
As a result of the colonel's blundering good intentions. She

(22:16):
brought with her a kind disposition, a supreme ignorance of
unordinary children, a large store of self confidence, and accorded
yellow tin box. End of chapter one, Chapter two, Miss

(22:38):
Lake comes and goes. The conversation took place suddenly one afternoon,
and no one knew anything about it except the two
who took part in it. The colonel asked the governess
to try and knock the nonsense out of Jimbo's head,
and the governess promised eagerly to do her very best.

(23:00):
It was her first place, and by nonsense they both
understood imagination. True enough, Jimbo's mother had given her rather
different instructions as to the treatment of the boy, but
she mistook the soldier's bluster for authority and deemed it
best to obey him. This was her first mistake. In reality,

(23:25):
she was not devoid of imaginative insight. It was simply
that her anxiety to prove a success permitted her better
judgment to be overborne by the colonel's boisterous manner. The
wisdom of the mother was greater than that of her husband,
for the safe development of that tender and imaginative little
boy of hers. She had been at great pains to

(23:47):
engage a girl, a clergyman's daughter, who possessed sufficient sympathy
with the poetic and dreamy nature to be of real
help to him. For true help, she knew, can only
come from true understanding, and miss Lake was a good girl.
She was entirely well meaning, which is the beginning of

(24:10):
well doing, and her principal weakness lay in her judgment,
which led her to obey the colonel too literally. She
seemed most sensible, he declared to his wife. Yes, dear
and practical, I think so, and firm and er wise

(24:31):
with children. I hope so, just the thought for young Jimbo,
added the colonel with decision, I trust so. She's a
little young, perhaps, possibly, But one can't get everything, said
her husband in his horse and dog voice.

Speaker 2 (24:52):
A year with her.

Speaker 1 (24:53):
Should clean out that fanciful brain of his and prepare
him for school with other boys. He'll be all all
right once he gets to school, my dear, he added,
spreading out his right hand fingers extended. You've made a
most wise decision. I congratulate you. I'm delighted. I'm so glad, Capital,

(25:16):
I repeat Capital, You're a clever little woman. I knew
you'd find the right party once I showed you how
the land lay. The empty house that stood in its
neglected garden, not far from the park gates, was built
on a point of land that edged wedge wise into
the Colonel's estate. Though something of an eye saw therefore

(25:40):
he could do nothing with it. To the children, it
had always been an object of peculiar, though not unwholesome mystery.
None of them cared to pass it on a stormy day.
The wind made such odd noises in its empty corridors
and rooms, and the refused point blank to go withinhaling
distance of it after dark. But in Jimbo's imagination it

(26:04):
was especially haunted, and if he had ceased to reveal
to the others what he knew went on under its roof,
it was only because they were unable to follow him
and were inclined to greet his extravagant recitals with Now, Jimbo,
you know perfectly well you're only making it up. The
house had been empty for many years, but to the children,

(26:27):
it had been empty since the beginning of the world,
since what they called the very beginning.

Speaker 2 (26:34):
They believed, well, each child believed.

Speaker 1 (26:36):
According to his own mind and powers, but there was
at least one belief they all held in common, for
it was generally accepted as an article of faith that
the Indians, encamped among the shrubberies on the back lawn
secretly buried their dead behind the crumbling walls of its
weedy garden, the dead provided by the children's battles.

Speaker 2 (26:58):
Be it understood wakeful ears in the night.

Speaker 1 (27:02):
Nursery had heard strange sounds coming from that direction when
the windows were open on hot summer nights, and the gardener,
supreme authority in all that happened in the night, since
they believed that he sat up to watch the vegetables
and fruit trees ripen and never went to bed at all,
was evidently of the same persuasion. When appealed to for

(27:25):
an explanation of the mournful wind voices, he knew what
was expected of him, and rose manfully to the occasion.

Speaker 2 (27:33):
It's either of them.

Speaker 1 (27:34):
Red skins are bury in what you killed of them yesterday?
He declared, pointing towards the empty house with a bit
of broken flower pot or else it's the ones you
killed last week, and who was always a steelina moist strawberries.

Speaker 2 (27:51):
He looked very.

Speaker 1 (27:51):
Wise as he said this, and his wand of office,
a dirty trowel, which he held in his hand, gave
him tremendous dignity.

Speaker 2 (28:01):
That's just what we thought.

Speaker 1 (28:03):
And of course, and of course if you say so too.

Speaker 2 (28:06):
That settles it, said Nixy.

Speaker 1 (28:09):
It's more, lightly, missy lease ways from what you describes,
which is an empty house, are the same, though I
can't say, as I've heard no sounds not very distinct,
that is myself. The gardener may have been anxious to
hedge a bit for fear of a scolding from headquarters,
but his cryptic remark pleased the children greatly because it

(28:32):
showed they thought that they knew more than the gardener did.
Thus the empty house remained an object of somewhat dreadful delight,
lending a touch of wonderland to that part of the
lane where it stood, and forming the background for many
an enchanting story over the nursery fire in winter time.

Speaker 2 (28:54):
It appealed vividly to.

Speaker 1 (28:55):
Their imaginations, especially to Jimbo's. It's dark window without blinds
was sometimes full of faces that retreated the moment they
were looked at. That tangled ivy did not grow over
the roof so thickly for nothing, and those high elms
on the western side had not been planted years ago

(29:15):
in a semicircle without a reason. Thus, at least, the
children argued, not knowing exactly what they meant, not caring much,
so long as they proved to their own satisfaction that
the place was properly haunted and therefore worthy of their attention.
It was natural they should lead miss Lake into that

(29:36):
direction on one of their first walks together. And it
was natural too that she should at once discover from
their manner that the place was of importance. What a
queer looking old house, she remarked. When they turned the
corner of the lane and it came into view. Almost
a ruin, isn't it? The children exchanged glances. A ruin

(29:59):
did not seeing the right sort of word for it,
and besides was a little disrespectful. Also, they were not
sure whether the new governess ought to be told everything
so soon. She had not really won their confidence yet
after a slight pause and a children's pause, is the
most eloquent, imaginable. Nixy, being the eldest, said, in a

(30:23):
stiff little voice, it's the empty house, Miss Lake.

Speaker 2 (30:28):
We know it very well.

Speaker 1 (30:29):
Indeed it looks empty, observed Miss Lake briskly. But it's
not a ruin, of course, added the child, with the
cold dignity of a chosen spokesman. Oh, said the governess,
quite missing the point. She was talking lightly on the
surface of things, wholly ignorant of the depths beneath her feet. Intuition,

(30:53):
with her having always been sternly repressed. It's a gamekeeper's
cottage or something like that, I suppose, she said, Oh, no,
it isn't a bit. Doesn't it belong to your father?
Then no, it's somebody else's you see, Then you can't
have it pulled down. Rather not, of course, not, exclaimed

(31:16):
several indignant voices. At once Miss Lake perceived for the
first time that it held more than ordinary importance in
their mind. Tell me about it, she said, What is
its history? And who used to live in it? There
came another pause. The children looked into each other's faces.

(31:38):
They gazed at the blue sky overhead. Then they stared
at the dusty road at their feet, but no one
volunteered an answer. Miss Lake, they felt was approaching the
subject in an offensive manner. Why are you all so
mysterious about it? She went on, It's only a tumble
down old place and must be very drafted to live in,

(32:01):
even for a gamekeeper. Silence, Come, children, don't you hear me?
I'm asking your question. A couple of startled birds flew
out of the ivy with a great whirring of wings.
This was followed by a faint sound of rumbling that
seemed to come from the interior of the house. Outside,

(32:23):
all was still, and the hot sunshine lay over everything.
The sound was repeated. The children looked at each other
with large expectant eyes. Something in the house was moving,
was coming nearer. Have you all lost your tongues? Asked
the governess impatiently. But you see, Nixy said at length.

(32:47):
Somebody does live in it now, and who is he?
I didn't say it was a man. Whoever it is,
tell me about the person, persisted Miss Lake. There's really
nothing to tell, replied the child, without looking up. Oh
but there must be something, declared the logical young governess,

(33:10):
or you wouldn't object so much to its being pulled down.
Nixy looked puzzled, but Jimbo came to the rescue at once.
But you wouldn't understand if we did tell you, he said,
in a slow, respectful voice. His tone held a touch
of that indescribable scorn heard sometimes in a child's voice,

(33:32):
the utter contempt for the stupid grown up creature. Miss
Lake noticed and felt annoyed. She recognized that she was
not getting on well with the children, and it piqued her.
She remembered the Colonel's words about knocking the nonsense out
of James's head, and she saw that her first opportunity,

(33:53):
in fact, her first real test, was at hand. And why, pray,
should I not understand? And she asked, with some sharpness,
is the.

Speaker 2 (34:03):
Mystery so very great? For some reason?

Speaker 1 (34:06):
The duty of spokesmen now devolved unmistakably upon Jimbo, and
very seriously too. He accepted the task, standing with his
feet firmly planted in the road and his hands in
his trousers pockets. You see, miss Lake, he began, gravely.
We know such a lot of things in there, and

(34:27):
they might not like us to tell you about them.
They don't know you yet. If they did, it might
be different. But but you see, it isn't This was
rather crushing to the aspiring educator, and the colonel's instructions
gained additional point In the lights of the boy's explanation fiddlesticks,

(34:50):
she laughed, there's probably nothing at all in there except
rats and cobwebs things. Indeed, I knew you would not understand,
said Jimbo coolly, with no sign of being offended.

Speaker 2 (35:03):
How could you?

Speaker 1 (35:05):
He glanced at his sisters, gaining so much support from
their enigmatical faces that he added for their especial benefit.

Speaker 2 (35:12):
How could she?

Speaker 1 (35:15):
The gardener said so too, chimed in a younger sister
with a vague notion that their precious empty house was
being robbed of its glory. Yes, but James, dear, I
do understand perfectly, continued Miss Lake, more gently and wisely,
ignoring the reference to the authority of the kitchen garden.

(35:37):
Only you see, I cannot really encourage you in such nonsense.
It isn't nonsense, replied Jimbo with heat. But believe me, children,
it is nonsense. How do you know that there's anything inside.

Speaker 2 (35:51):
You've never been there. You can know perfectly well.

Speaker 1 (35:54):
What's inside a thing without having gone there, replied Jimbo,
with scorn.

Speaker 2 (35:59):
At least we can miss.

Speaker 1 (36:03):
Lake changed her tack a little fatally, as it appeared afterwards.
I know, at any rate, she said, with decision, that
there's nothing good in there. Whatever there may be is bad,
thoroughly bad, and not fit for you to play with.
The other children moved away, but Jimbo stood his ground.

(36:25):
They were all angry, disappointed, sore, hurt and offended. But
Jimbo suddenly began to feel something else besides anger and vexation.
It was a new point of view to him that
the empty house might contain bad things as well as good,
or perhaps only bad things. His imagination seized upon the

(36:47):
point at once and set to work vigorously to develop it.
This was his way with all such things, and he
could not prevent it. Bad things, he repeated, looking up
at the governess. You mean things that could hurt, Yes,
of course, she said, noting the effect of her words,

(37:08):
and thinking how pleased the Colonel would be later when
he heard it. Things that might run out and catch
you some day when you're passing here. Alone and take
you back a prisoner. Then you'd be a prisoner in
the empty house or your life. Think of that. Miss
Lake mistook the boy's silence as proof that she was
taking the right line. She enlarged upon this view of

(37:31):
the matter, now that she was so successfully launched and
described the inmate of the house with such wealth of detail,
that she felt sure her listener would never have anything
to do with the place again, and that she had
knocked out this particular bit of nonsense forever.

Speaker 2 (37:46):
And a day.

Speaker 1 (37:48):
But to Jimbo, it was a new and horrible idea
that the empty house, haunted hitherto by rather jolly and
wonderful red Indians, contained a monster whom he might take
him prisoner, And the thought made him feel afraid. The
mischief had of course been done, and the terror in
his eyes was unmistakable. When the foolish governess saw her mistake,

(38:14):
Retreat was impossible. The boy was shaking with fear, and
not all Miss Lake's genuine sympathy or Nixy's exclamations and
soothings were able to relieve his mind of its new burden. Hitherto,
Jimbo's imagination had loved to dwell upon the pleasant side
of things invisible. But now he had been severely frightened,

(38:38):
and his imagination took a new turn. Not only the
empty house but all his inner world, to which it
was in some sense the key underwent a distressing change.
His sense of horror had been vividly aroused. The governess
would willingly have corrected her mistake, but was of course

(39:01):
powerless to do so. Bitterly she regretted her tactlessness and folly,
but she could do nothing. And to add to her distress,
she saw that Jimbo shrank from her in a way
that could not long escape the watchful eye of the mother.
But if the boy shed tears of fear that night
in his bed, it must injustice be told that she,

(39:23):
for her part, cried bitterly in her own room, not
that she had endangered her place, but that she had
done a cruel injury to a child, and that she
was helpless to undo it. For she loved children, though
she was quite unsuited to take care of them. Her
just reward, however, came swiftly upon her a few nights later,

(39:48):
when Jimbo and Nixy were allowed to come down to dessert,
the wind was heard to make a queer, moaning sound
in the wisteria tree that hung over the dining room windows.
Jimbo heard it too. He held his breath for a minute,
then he looked round the table in a frightened way,
and the next minute gave a scream and burst into tears.

(40:10):
He ran round and buried his face in his father's arms.
After the tears came the truth. It was a bad
thing for miss ethel Lake, this little joke of the
wind and the wisteria tree, for the gin of terror
she had thoughtlessly evoked. Swept into the room and introduced

(40:30):
himself to the parents without her leave. What new nonsense
is this now, growled the soldier, leaving his walnuts and
lifting the boy on to his knee. He shouldn't come
down till he's a little older and knows how to behave.
What's the matter, darling child, asked the mother, drying his
eyes tenderly. I heard the bad things crying in the

(40:54):
empty house. The empty house is a mile away from here,
snorted the colonel. But it's come nearer, declared the frightened boy.
Who told you there were bad things in the empty house?
Asked the mother, Yes, who told you? Indeed, I would
like to know, demanded the colonel. Then it all came out.

(41:18):
The colonel's wife was very quiet, but very determined. Miss
Lake went back to the clerical family whence she had come,
and the children knew her no more. I'm glad, said Nixy,
voicing the verdict of the nursery.

Speaker 2 (41:35):
I thought she was awfully stupid.

Speaker 1 (41:38):
She wasn't a real lake at all, declared another. She
was only a sort of puddle. Jimbo, however, said little,
and the colonel likewise held his peace. But the governess,
whether she was a lake or only a puddle, left
her mark behind her. The empty house was no longer less.

(42:01):
It had a new lease on life. It was tenanted
by some one who could never have friendly relations with children.
The weeds in the old garden took on fantastic shapes.
Figures hid behind the doors and crept about the passages.
The rooks in the high elms became birds of ill omen.

(42:21):
The ivy bristled upon the walls, and the trivial explanations
of the gardener were no longer satisfactory. Even in bright sunshine,
A shadow lay sprawling over the broken roof. At any
moment it might leap into life, and with immense striding
legs chased the children down to the very park gates.

(42:44):
There was no need to enforce the decree that the
empty house was a forbidden land. The children, of their
own accord declared it out of bounds and avoided it
as carefully as if all the wild animals from the
zoo were roaming its gardens, hungry and unchained. End of

(43:04):
Chapter two, Chapter three, The Shock. One immediate result of
Miss Lake's indiscretion was that the children preferred to play
on the other side of the garden, the side farthest
from the empty house. A spiked railing here divided them

(43:26):
from a field in which cows disported themselves, and as
a bull also was sometimes there, the field was strictly
out of bounds. In the spiked railing, not far from
the great shrubberies where the Indians increased and multiplied, there
was a swinging gait. The children swung on it whenever
they could. They called this express trains, and the fact

(43:51):
that it was forbidden only added to their pleasure. When
opened at its widest, the gate would swing them with
a rush through the air past the pillars with a
click out into the field and then back again into
the garden. It was bad for the hinges, and it
was also bad for the garden because the gate was
frequently left open after these carnivals, and the cows got

(44:14):
in and trod the flowers down. The children were not
afraid of the cows, but they held the bull in
great horror. And these trivial things have been mentioned here
because of the part they played in Jimbo's subsequent adventures.
It was only ten days or so after Mixed Lake's
sudden departure when Jimbo managed one evening to elude the

(44:38):
vigilance of his lawful guardians and wandered off unnoticed among
the laburnums on the front lawn. From the laburnums, he
passed successfully to the first laurel shrubbery, and thence he
executed a clever flank movement and entered the carriage drive
in the rear. The rest was easy, and he soon

(44:58):
found himself at the lodge gate. For some moments, he
peered through the iron grating and pondered on the seductiveness
of the dusty road and of the ditch beyond. To
his surprise, he found presently that the gate was moving outwards.
It was yielding to his weight. One thing leads easily

(45:20):
to another sometimes, and the open gate led easily on
to the seductive road. The result was that a minute
later Jimbo was chasing butterflies along the green lane and
throwing stones into the water of the ditch.

Speaker 2 (45:37):
It was the.

Speaker 1 (45:38):
Evening of a hot summer's day, and the butterflies were
still out in force. Jimbo's delight was intense. The joy
of finding himself alone where he had no right to
be put everything else out of his head, and for
some time he wandered on, oblivious of all but the
intoxicating scent of freedom, and the sad difficulty in choosing

(46:01):
between so many butterflies and such a magnificently dirty ditch.
At first he yielded to the stuctions of the ditch.
He caught a big, sleepy beetle and put it in
a violet leaf, and sent it sailing out to sea,
And when it landed on the farther shore, he found
a still bigger leaf and sent it forth on a

(46:23):
voyage in another direction, with a cargo of daisy petals
and a hairy caterpillar. For a Bozen's mate. But just
as the vessel was getting under way, a butterfly of
amazing brilliance floated past insolently under his very nose, leaving
the beetle and the caterpillar to navigate the currants as

(46:43):
best they could. He at once gave chase cap in hand.
He flew after the butterfly down the lane, and a
dozen times, when his cap was just upon it, it
sailed away sideways without the least effort and escaped him.
Then suddenly the lane took a familiar turning, the ditch

(47:04):
stopped abruptly, the hedge on his right fell away altogether.
The butterfly danced out of sight into a field, and
Jimbo found himself face to face with the one thing
in the whole world that could at that time fill
him with abject terror, the empty house. He came to

(47:26):
a full stop in the middle of the road and
stared up at the windows. He realized the first time
that he was alone, and that it was possible for
brilliant sunshine, even on a cloudless day, to become somehow
lustreless and dull. The wall showed a deep red in
the sunset light. The house was still as the grave.

(47:51):
His feet were rooted to the ground, and it seemed
as if he could not move a single muscle. And
as he stood there, the blood ebbing quickly from his heart,
the words of the governess a few days before rushed
back into his mind and turned his fear into a dreadful,
all possessing horror. In another minute, the battered door would

(48:14):
slowly open and the horrible inmate come out to seize him. Already,
there was a sound of something moving within, and as
he gazed, fascinated with terror, a shuddering movement ran over
the ivy leaves hanging down from the roof. Then they
parted in the middle, and something he could not, in

(48:35):
his agony see what, flew out with a whirring sound
into his face, and then vanished over his shoulder into
the fields. Jimbo did not pause a single second to
find out what it was, or to reflect that any
ordinary thrush would have made just the same sound. The
shock it gave to his heart immediately loosened the muscles

(48:58):
of his little legs, and he ran for his very life.
But before he actually began to run, he gave one
piercing scream for help. And the person he screamed to
was the very person who was unwittingly the cause of
his distress. It was as though he knew instinctively that
the person who had created for him the terror of

(49:20):
the empty house with its horrible inmate, was also the
only person who could properly banish it and undo the
mischief before it was too late. He shrieked for help
to the Governess, Miss ethel Lake. Of course, there was
no answer but the noise of the air whistling in
his ears as his feet flew over the road in

(49:43):
a cloud of dust. There was no friendly butcher's cart,
no baker's boy or farmer with his dog and gun.
The road was deserted. There was not even the beetle
or the caterpillar. He was beyond reach of help. Jimbo
ran for his life, but unfortunately he ran in the

(50:04):
wrong direction. Instead of going the way he had come,
where the lodge gates were ready to receive him not
a quarter of a mile away, he fled in the
opposite direction. It so happened that the lane flanked the
field where the cows lived. But the cows were nothing
compared to a creature from the empty house, and even

(50:24):
bulls seemed friendly. The boy was over the five barred gate,
inner twinkling, and half way across the field before he
heard a heavy, thunderous sound behind him. Either the thing
had followed him into the field or it was the bull.
As he raced, he managed to throw a glance over
his shoulder and saw a huge, dark mass bearing down

(50:47):
upon him a terrific speed. It must be the bull,
he reflected. The bull groaned to the size of an elephant,
and it appeared to him to have two immense black
wings that flapped at its side and helped it forward,
making a whirring noise like the arms of a great windmill.
This sight added to his speed, but he could not

(51:08):
last very much longer. Already his body ached all over,
and the frantic effort to get breath nearly choked him.
There before him, not so very far away now, was
the swinging gait. If only he could get there in
time to scramble over into the garden, he would be safe.
It seemed almost impossible, and behind him, meanwhile, the sound

(51:31):
of the following creature came closer and closer. Ground seemed
to tremble. He could almost feel the breath on his neck.
The swinging gait was only twenty yards off, now ten,
now only five. Now he had reached it.

Speaker 2 (51:46):
At last.

Speaker 1 (51:47):
He stretched out his hand to seize the top bar,
and in another moment he would have been safe in
the garden and within easy reach of the house. But
before he actually touched the iron rail, a sharp, up,
stinging pain shot across his back. He drew one final
breath as he felt himself being lifted lifted up into

(52:08):
the air. The horns had caught him just behind the shoulders.
There seemed to be no pain after the first shock.
He rose high into the air, while the bushes and
spiked railing he knew so well, sank out of sight
beneath him, dwindling curiously in sighe At first he thought
his head must bump against the sky, but suddenly he

(52:31):
stopped rising, and the green earth rushed up as if
it would strike him in the face. This meant he
was sinking again. The gate and railing flew by underneath him,
and the next second he fell with a crash upon
the soft grass of the lawn. Upon the other side.
He had been tossed over the gate into the garden,

(52:53):
and the bull could no longer reach him before he
became wholly unconscious. A composite picked, vivid in its detail,
engraved itself deeply with exceeding swiftness, line by line upon
the waxen tablets of his mind. In this picture, the
thrush that had flown out of the ivy, the empty

(53:14):
house itself, and its horrible pursuing inmate were all somehow
curiously mingled together with the black wings of the bull,
and with his own sensation of rushing, flying headlong through space.
As he rose and fell in a curve from the
creature's horns and behind it, he was conscious that the
real author of it all was somewhere in the shadowy background,

(53:38):
looking on, though to watch the result of her unfortunate mistake,
Miss Lake surely was not very far away. He associated
her with the horror of the empty house, as inevitably
as taste and smell joined together in the memory of
a certain food. And the very last thought in his

(53:58):
mind as he sank away into the blackness of unconsciousness
was a sort of bitter surprise that the governess had
not turned up to save him before it was actually
too late, But a certain sense of disappointment mingled with
the terror of the shock, for he was dimly aware
that miss Lake had not acted as worthily as she

(54:20):
might have done, and had not played the game as
well as she might have done, And somehow it didn't
all seem quite fair.

Speaker 2 (54:30):
End of chapter.

Speaker 1 (54:31):
Three, Chapter four on the edge, Jimbo had fallen on
his head. Inside that head lay the mass of highly
sensitive matter called the brain, on which were recorded, of course,
the impressions of everything that had come to him in life.

(54:52):
A severe shock such as he had just sustained, was
bound to throw these impressions into confusion and disorder, jumbling
them into new and strange combination, obliterating some and exaggerating others.
Jimbo himself was helpless in the matter. He could exercise
no control over their antics. Until the doctors had once

(55:14):
again reduced them to order, he would have to wander
lost and lonely through the comparative chaos of disproportioned visions,
generally known as the region of delirium, until the doctor,
assisted by Mother Nature, restored him once more to normal consciousness.
For a time everything was a blank, But presently he

(55:37):
stirred uneasily in the grass and the pictures graven on
the tablets of his mind began to come back to
him line by line, yet with certain changes. The bull,
for instance, had so far vanished into the background of
his thoughts that it had practically disappeared altogether, and he
recalled nothing of it but the wings, the huge floor

(56:00):
lapping wings of the creature to whom the wings belonged.
He had no recollection beyond that it was very large,
and that it was chasing him from the empty house.
The pain in his shoulders had also gone, But what remained,
with undiminished vividness, were the sensations of flight without escape,

(56:20):
the breathless race up to the sky, and the swift,
tumbling drop again through the air to the lawn. This
impression of rushing through space, short though the actual distance
had been, was the dominating memory. All else was apparently oblivion.
He forgot where he had come from, and he forgot

(56:41):
what he had been doing the events leading up to
the catastrophe. Indeed, everything connected with his existence previously as
Master James, had entirely vanished, and the slate of memory
had been wiped so clean that he had forgotten even
his own name. Jimbo was lying so to speak, on

(57:02):
the edge of unconsciousness, and for a time it seemed
uncertain whether he would cross the line into the region
of delirium and dreams, or fall back again into his
natural world. Terror, assisted by the horns of the black Bull,
had tossed him into the border land. His last scream, however,

(57:22):
had reached the ears of the Ubiquitous Gardener, and help
was near at hand. He heard voices that seemed to
come from beyond the stars, and was aware that shadowy
forms were standing over him and talking in whispers. But
it was all very unreal. While minute the voices sounded
up in the sky, and the next in his very ears,

(57:44):
while the figures moved about, sometimes bending over him, sometimes
retreating and melting away like shadows in the shifting screen.
Suddenly a blaze of light flashed upon him, and his
eyes flew open. He tumbled back from moment into his
normal world. He wasn't on the grass at all, but
was lying upon his own bed in the night nursery.

(58:08):
His mother was bending over him with a very white face,
and a tall man dressed in black stood beside her,
holding some kind of shining instrument in his fingers. A
little behind them, he saw Nixy shading a lamp with
her hand. Then the white face came close over the pillow,
and a voice full of tenderness whispered, my darling boy,

(58:32):
don't you know me?

Speaker 2 (58:33):
It's mother. No one will hurt you. Speak to me
if you can, dear.

Speaker 1 (58:39):
She stretched out her hands, and Jimbo knew her and
made an effort to answer, But it seemed to him
as if his whole body had suddenly become a solid
mass of iron, and he could not move any part
of it. His lips and hands both refused to move.
Before he could make a sign that he had understood
and was trying to reply, a fierce flame rushed between

(59:03):
them and blinded him. His eyes closed, and he dropped
back again into utter darkness. The walls flew asunder and
the ceiling melted into air, while the bed sank away
beneath him, down, down, down, into an abyss of shadows.
The lamp in Nixy's hands dwindled into a star, and

(59:27):
his mother's anxious face became a tiny patch of white
in the distance, blurred out of all semblance of a
human countenance. For a time, the man in black seemed
to hover over the bed as it sank, as though
he were trying to follow it down, But it too
presently joined the general enveloping blackness and lost its outline.

(59:50):
The pain had blotted out everything, and the return to
consciousness had been only momentary. Not all the doctors in
the world could have made things otherwise. Jimbo was off
on his travels at last, travels in which the chief
incidents were directly traceable to the causes and details of
his accident, the terror of the empty house, the pursuit

(01:00:13):
of its inmate, the pain of the bull's horns, and
above all, the flight through the air. For everything in
his adventures found its inspiration in the events described, and
a singular parallel ran ever between Jimbo upon the bed
in the night nursery and the other emancipated Jimbo wandering

(01:00:34):
into the regions of unconsciousness and delirium end of chapter four,
Chapter five, into the empty house. The darkness lasted a
long time without a break, and when it lifted, all

(01:00:55):
recollection of the bedroom scene had vanished. Found himself back
again on the grass. The swinging gait was just in
front of him, but he did not recognize it. No
suggestion of express trains came back to him as his
eyes rested without remembrance, upon the bars where he had

(01:01:15):
so often swung in defiance of orders with his brothers
and sisters. Recollection of his home, family and previous life,
he had absolutely none, or at least it was buried
so deeply in his inner consciousness that it amounted to
the same thing. And he looked out upon the garden,
the gate, and the field beyond, as upon an entirely

(01:01:39):
new peace of the world. The stars he saw were
nearly all gone, and a very faint light was beginning
to spread from the woods beyond the field. The eastern
horizon was slowly brightening, and soon the night would be gone.
Jimbo was glad of this. He began to be conscious

(01:01:59):
of little things, thrills of expectation, for with the light,
surely help would also come. The light always brought relief,
and he already felt that strange excitement that comes with
the first signs of dawn. In the distance, cocks were crowing,
horses began to stamp in the barns not far away,

(01:02:20):
and a hundred little stirrings of life ran over the
surface of the earth. As the light crept slowly up
the sky and dropped down again upon the world with
its message of coming day. Of course, help would come
by the time the sun was really up. And it
was partly this certainty, and partly because he was a
little too dazed to realize the seriousness of the situation

(01:02:43):
that prevented his giving way to a fit of fear
and weeping. Yet a feeling of vague terror lay only
a little way below the surface, And when a few
moments later he saw that he was no longer alone,
and that an odd looking figure was creeping to towards
him from the shrubberies, he sprang to his feet, prepared

(01:03:04):
to run unless it at once showed the most friendly intentions.
The figure seemed to have come from nowhere. Apparently it
had risen out of the earth. It was too large
to have been concealed by the low shrubberies. Yet he
had not been aware of its approach, and it had
come without making any noise. Probably it was friendly, he felt,

(01:03:26):
in spite of its curious shape and the stealthy way
it had come. At least he hoped so. And if
he could only have told whether it was a man
or an animal, he would easily have made up his mind,
but the uncertain light and the way it crouched half
hidden behind the bushes prevented this. So he stood poised,

(01:03:47):
ready to run, and yet waiting, hoping, indeed expecting every
minute a sign of friendliness and help. In this way,
the two faced each other silently for some time, until
the feeling of terror gradually stole deeper into the boy's
heart and began to rob him of full power over

(01:04:08):
his muscles. He wondered if he would be able to
run when the time came, and whether he could run
fast enough.

Speaker 2 (01:04:15):
This was how it.

Speaker 1 (01:04:16):
First showed itself, this suggestion of insidious fear. Would he
be able to keep up the start he had? Would
it chase him? Would it run like a man, or
like an animal on four legs or on two? He
wished he could see more clearly what it was. He
still stood his ground, pluckily facing it and waiting. But

(01:04:38):
the fear, once admitted to his mind, was gaining strength,
and he began to feel cold and shivery. Then suddenly
the tension came to an end. In two strides, the
figure came up close to his side, and the same
second Jimbo was lifted off his feet and borne swiftly
away across the field. He felt quite unable to offer

(01:05:01):
the least resistance, and at the same time he felt
a sort of relief that something had happened at last.
He was still not sure that the figure was unkind,
only its shape filled him with a feeling that was
certainly the beginning of a real horror. It was in
the shape of a man, he thought, but of a

(01:05:21):
very large and ill constructed man, for it certainly had
moved on two legs, and had caught him up in
a pair of tremendously strong arms. But there was something
else it had besides arms, For a kind of soft
cloak hung all around it and wrapped the boy from
head to foot, preventing him seeing his captive properly, and

(01:05:43):
at the same time filling his body with a kind
of warm drowsiness that mitigated his active fear and made
him rather like the sensation of being carried along so
easily and so fast. But was he being carried? The
pace they were going was amazing, and he moved as
easily as a sailing boat, and with the same swinging motion.

(01:06:05):
Could it be some animal like a horse? After all?
Jimbo tried to see more, but found it impossible to
free himself from the folds of the enveloping substance. And
meanwhile they were swinging forward at what seemed a tremendous pace,
over fields and ditches, through hedges and down long lanes.
The odors of earth and dew drenched grass and opening

(01:06:28):
flowers came to him. He heard the birds singing, and
felt the cool morning air sting his cheeks as they
raced along. There was no jolting or jarring, and the
figure seemed to cover the ground as lightly as though
it hardly touched the earth. It was certainly not a dream,
he was sure of that. But the longer they went on,

(01:06:49):
the drowsier he became, and the less he wondered whether
the figure was going to help him or to do
something dreadful to him. He was now thoroughly afraid, and yet,
strange contradiction, he didn't care a bit. Let the figure
do what it liked. It was only a sort of
nightmare person, after all, and might vanish as suddenly as

(01:07:10):
it had arrived. For a long time, they dashed forward
at this great speed, and then with a bump and
a crash, they stopped suddenly short, and Jimbo found himself
let down upon the solid earth. He tried to free
himself at once from the folds of the clinging substance
that enveloped him, but before he could do so and

(01:07:31):
see what his captor was really like, he heard a
door slam and felt himself pushed along what seemed to
be the hallway of a house. His eyes were clear
now and he could see, but the darkness had come
down again so thickly that all he could discover was
that the figure was urging him along the floor of
a large, empty hall, and that they were in a

(01:07:53):
dark and empty building. Jimbo tried hard to see his captor,
but the figure did enough in the uncertain light, always
managed to hide its face and keep itself bunched up
in such a way that he could never see more
than a great dark mass of a body from which
long legs and arms shot out like telescopes, draped in

(01:08:16):
a sort of clinging cloak. Now that the rapid motion
through the air had ceased, the boy's drowsiness passed a little,
and he began to shiver with fear, and to fear
that the tears could not be kept back much longer,
Probably in another minute, he would have started to run
for his life when a new sound caught his ears

(01:08:37):
and made him listen intently, while a feeling of wonder
and delight caught his heart and made him momentarily forget
the figure pushing him forward from behind. Was it the
wind he heard? Or was it the voices of children,
all singing together very low? It was a gentle, sighing
sound that rose and fell with mournful modulation, and seemed

(01:09:01):
to come from the very center of the building. It
held to a strange, far away murmur, like the surge
of a faint breeze moving in the tree tops. It
might be the wind playing round the walls of the building,
or it might be children singing in hushed voices. One
minute he thought it was outside the house, and the

(01:09:22):
next he was certain it came from somewhere in the
upper part of the building. He glanced up and fancied
for one moment that he saw in the darkness a
crowd of little faces peering down at him over the banisters,
and that as they disappeared, he heard the sound of
many little feet moving, and then a door hurriedly closing

(01:09:44):
but a push from the figure behind that nearly sent
him sprawling on the foot of the stairs prevented his
hearing very clearly, and the light was far too dim
to let him feel sure of what he had seen.
They passed quickly along deserted corridors and through winding passages
no one seemed about. The interior of the house was
chilly and the keen air nipped. After going up several

(01:10:08):
flights of stairs, they stopped at last in front of
a door, and before Jimbo had a moment to turn
and dash up stairs again past the figure, as he
had meant to do, he was pushed violently forward into
a room. The door slammed after him, and he heard
the heavy tread of the figure as it went down
the staircase again into the bottom of the house. Then

(01:10:32):
he saw that the room was full of light and
of small moving beings. Curiosity and astonishment now for a moment,
took the place of fear, and Jimbo, with a thumping
heart and clenched fists, stood and stared at the scene
before him. He stiffened his little legs and leaned against
the wall for support, but he felt full of fight

(01:10:54):
in case anything happened, and with wide open eyes, he
tried to take in the whole scene at once and
be ready for whatever might come. But there seemed no
immediate cause for alarm, and when he realized that the
beings in the room were apparently children and only children,
his rather mixed sensations of astonishment and fear gave place

(01:11:17):
to an emotion of overpowering shyness. He became exceedingly embarrassed,
for he was surrounded by children of all ages and
sizes staring at him just as hard as he was
staring at them. The children he began to take in
were all dressed in black. They looked frightened and unhappy.

(01:11:38):
Their bodies were thin and their faces very white. There
was something else about them he could not quite name,
but it inspired him with the same sense of horror
that he had felt in the arms of the figure
who had trapped him. For he now realized definitely that
he had been trapped, and he also began to realize
for the first time that though he still had the

(01:11:59):
body of little boy, his way of thinking and judging
was sometimes more like that of a grown up person.
The two alternated, and the result was an odd confusion
for sometimes he felt like a child and thought like
a man, while at others he felt like a man
and thought like a child. Something had gone wrong, very

(01:12:22):
much wrong, And as he watched this group of silent
children facing him, he knew suddenly that what was just
beginning to happen to him had happened to them long
long ago. For they looked as if they had been
a long long time in the world, but their bodies
had not kept pace with their minds. Something had happened

(01:12:44):
to stop the growth of the body while allowing the
mind to go on developing. The bodies were not stunted
or deformed. They were well formed, nice little children's bodies,
but the minds within them were grown up. And the
incongruity was just all this, he suddenly realized in a flash, intuitively,

(01:13:06):
just as though it had been most elaborately explained to him.
Yet he could not have put the least part of
it into words, or have explained what he saw and
felt to another. He saw that they had the hands
and figures of children, the heads of children, the unlined
faces and smooth foreheads of children, But their gestures and

(01:13:28):
something in their movements belonged to grown up people, and
the expression of their eyes, in meaning and intelligence was
the expression of old people, and not of children. And
the expression in the eyes of every one of them
he saw was the expression of terror and of pain.
The effect was so singular that he seemed face to

(01:13:51):
face with an entirely new order of creatures, a child's
features with a man's eyes, a child's figure with a
woman movements, full grown souls, cramped and cribbed in absurdly
inadequate bodies, and little, puny frames, the old trying uncouthly

(01:14:11):
to express itself in the young. The grown up, old
portion of him had been uppermost as he stared and
received these impressions, but now suddenly it passed away, and
he felt as a little boy again. He glanced quickly
down at his own little body in the alpaca knickerbockers
and sailor blouse, and then, with a sigh of relief,

(01:14:32):
looked up again at the strange group facing him. So far,
at any rate, he had not changed, and there was
nothing yet to suggest that he was becoming like them
in appearance, at least. With his back against the door,
he faced the room full of children, who stood there
motionless and staring, and as he looked, wild feelings rushed

(01:14:54):
over him and made him tremble. Who was he, Where
had he come from? Where in the world had he
spent the other years of his life, the forgotten years?
There seemed to be no one to whom he could
go for comfort, no one to ask questions, and there
was such a lot he wanted to ask. He seemed

(01:15:15):
to be so much older, and to know so much
more than he ought to have known, and yet to
have forgotten so much that he ought not to have forgotten.
His loss of memory, however, was of course only partial.
He had forgotten his own identity and all the people
with whom he had so far in life had to do.

(01:15:35):
Yet at the same time, he was dimly conscious that
he had just left all these people, and that some
day he would find them again. It was only the
surface layers of memory that had vanished, and these had
not vanished forever, but only sunk down a little below
the horizon. Then, presently, the children began to range themselves

(01:15:57):
in rows between him and the opposite wall, with at
once taking their horrible, intelligent eyes off him. As they moved.
He watched them with growing dread, but at last, his
curiosity became so strong that it overcame everything else. And
in a voice that he meant to be very brave,
but that sounded hardly above a whisper, he said, who

(01:16:19):
are you? And what's been done to you? The answer
came at once, in a whisper as low as his own,
though he could not distinguish who spoke. Listen, and you
shall know you too, are now one of us. Immediately
the children began a slow, impish sort of dance before him,

(01:16:40):
moving with almost silent feet over the boards, yet with
a sedateness and formality that had none of the unconscious
grace of children. And as they danced, they sang, but
in voices so low that it was more like the
mournful sighing of wind among branches than human voices. But
it was the sound he had already heard outside the building.

(01:17:04):
We are the children of the whispering night. We live
eternally in dreadful fright, of stories told us in the
gray twilight by nursery maids. We are the children of
our winter's day. Under our breath we chant this mournful lay.
We dance with phantoms and with shadows, play, and have

(01:17:26):
no rest we have no joy in any children's game,
for happiness in us is but a name, since terror
kissed us with his lips of flame. In wicked jest.
We hear the little voices in the wind, singing of freedom.
We may never find victims of fate so cruelly unkind

(01:17:47):
we are unblessed. We hear the little footsteps in the rain,
running to help us, though they run in vain, tapping
in hundreds on the window pane, in vain. Behested. We
are the children of the whispering night, who dwell unrescued
in eternal fright of stories told us in dim twirelight

(01:18:12):
by nursery maids. The song and the plaintive dance ceased together,
and before Jimbo could find any words to clothe even
one of the thoughts that crowded through his mind, he
saw them moving towards the door he had not hitherto
noticed on the other side of the room. A moment
later they had opened it and passed out, sedate, mournful, unhurried,

(01:18:35):
and the boy found that in some way he could
not understand. The light had gone with them, and he
was standing with his back against the wall in almost
total darkness. Once out of the room, no sound followed them,
and he crossed over and tried the handle of the door.
It was locked. Then he went back and tried the
other door. That two was locked. He was shut in.

(01:18:59):
There was no longer any doubt as to the figure's intentions.
He was a prisoner, trapped like an animal in a cage.
The only thought in his mind just then was an
intense desire for freedom. Whatever happened, he must escape. He
crossed the floor to the only window in the room.

(01:19:20):
It was without blinds, and he looked out, But instantly
he recoiled with a fresh and overpowering sense of helplessness,
for it was three stories from the ground, and down
below in the shadows he saw a paved courtyard that
rendered jumping utterly out of the question. He stood for
a long time, fighting down the tears and staring as

(01:19:43):
if his heart would break at the field and trees
beyond a high wall enclosed the yard, and beyond that
was freedom and open space. Feelings of loneliness and helplessness,
terror and dismay overwhelmed him. His eyes burned and smarted. Yet,
strange to say, the tears now refused to come and

(01:20:06):
bring him relief. He could only stand there with his
elbows on the window sill and watch the outline of
the trees and hedges grow clearer and clearer as the
light grew across the sky and the moment of sunrise
came close. But when at last he turned back into
the room, he saw that he was no longer alone.

(01:20:27):
Crouching against the opposite wall, there was a hooded figure
steadily watching him. End of Chapter five, Chapter six, his
prison friend shocks of terror as they increase in number,

(01:20:48):
apparently lessen in effect. The repeated calls made upon Jimbo's
soul by the emotions of fear and astonishment had numbed it. Otherwise,
the knowledge that he was locked in the room with
this mysterious creature beyond all possibility of escape must have
frightened him, as the saying is out of his skin.

(01:21:11):
As it was, However, he kept his head in a
wonderful manner and simply stared at the silent intruder as
hard as ever he could stare. How in the world
had it got in was the principal thought in his mind,
And after that, what in the world was it? The
dawn must have come very swiftly, or else he had

(01:21:34):
been staring longer than he knew. For just then the
sun topped the edge of the world and the window
sill simultaneously and sent a welcome ray of sunshine into
the dingy room. He turned the gray light into silver
and fell full upon the huddled figure crouching against the
opposite wall. Jimbo caught his breath and stared harder than ever.

(01:22:01):
It was a human figure, the figure apparently of a man,
sitting crumpled up in a very uncomfortable sort of position
on his haunches. It sat perfectly still, a black cloak
with loose sleeves and a cowl or hood that completely
concealed the face, covered it from head to foot. The

(01:22:23):
material of the cloak could not have been very thick,
for inside the hood he caught the gleam of eyes
as they roamed about the room and followed his movements.
But for this glitter of the moving eyes, it might
have been a figure carved in wood. Was it going
to sit there forever? Watching him? At first he was

(01:22:45):
afraid it was going to speak. Then he was afraid
it wasn't. It might rise suddenly and come towards him.
Yet the thought that it would not move at all
was worse.

Speaker 2 (01:22:56):
Still.

Speaker 1 (01:22:58):
In this way the two facty each other for several minutes, until,
just as the position was becoming simply unbearable, a low
whisper ran round the room. At last, oh I found him.
At last, Jimbo was not quite sure of the words,
though it was certainly a human voice that had spoken,

(01:23:21):
But the suspense once broken, the boy could not stand
it any longer, and with a rush of desperate courage,
he found his voice a very husky one, and moved
a step forward. Who are you please, and how did
you get in? He ventured with a great effort. Then
he fell back against the wall, amazed at his own daring,

(01:23:44):
and waited with tightly clenched fists for an answer. But
he did not wait very long, for almost immediately the
figure rose awkwardly to its feet and came over to
where he stood. Its manner of moving may best be
discribed as shuffling, and it stretched in front of it
a long cloaked arm on which the sleeve hung, He thought,

(01:24:08):
like clothes on a washing line. He breathed hard and waited.
Like many other people with strong wills and sensitive nerves,
Jimbo was both brave and a coward. He hoped nothing
horrible was going to happen, but he was quite ready
if it should. Yet, now that the actual moment had come,

(01:24:31):
he had no particular fear, and when he felt the
touch of the hand on his shoulder, the words sprang
naturally to his lips, with a little trembling laugh, more
of wonder perhaps than anything else. You do look like
a horrid brute, he was going to say, but at
the last moment he changed it to thing, for with

(01:24:54):
the true intuition of a child, he recognized that the
creature inside the cloak was a kind creature and well
disposed towards him. But how did you get in, he added,
looking up bravely into the black visage, because the doors
are both locked on the outside, and I couldn't get out.

(01:25:15):
By way of reply, the figure shuffled to one side, and,
taking the hand from his shoulder, pointed silently to a
trap door in the floor behind him. As he looked,
he saw it was being shut down stealthily by some
one beneath hush, whispered the figure, almost inaudibly. He's watching,

(01:25:38):
Who's watching? Jimbo cried, curiosity taking the place of every
other emotion I want to see. He ran forward to
the spot where the trap door now lay, flush with
the floor, But before he had gone two steps, the
black arms shot out and caught him. He turned struggling,

(01:25:59):
and in the scuffle followed the cloak shrouding the figure
became disarranged. The hood dropped from the face, and he
found himself looking straight into the eyes, not of a man,
but of a woman. It's you, he cried you. A
shock ran right through his body, from his head to

(01:26:21):
his feet, like a current of electricity, and he caught
his breath as though he had been struck. For one
brief instant, the sinister face of someone who had terrified
him in the past came back vividly to his mind,
and he shrank away in terror. But it was only
for an instant, the twentieth part of an instant. Immediately

(01:26:45):
before he could even remember the name, recognition passed into darkness,
and his memory shut down with a snap. He was
staring in the face of an utter stranger about whom
he knew nothing and had no feelings particularly one way
or another. I thought I knew you, he gasped, but

(01:27:07):
I've forgotten you again, and I thought you were going
to be a man too, Jimbo cried the other, and
in her voice was such unmistakable tenderness and yearning that
the boy knew at once beyond doubt that she was
his friend, Jimbo. She knelt down on the floor beside

(01:27:28):
him so that her face was on a level with his,
and then opened both her arms to him. But though
Jimbo was glad to have found a friend who was
going to help him, he felt no particular desire to
be embraced, and he stood obstinately where he was, with
his back to the window. The morning sunshine fell upon

(01:27:50):
her features and touched the thick coils of her hair
with glory. It was not, strictly speaking, a pretty face,
but the look of real human tenderness there was very
expressive and comforting, and in the light brown eyes there
shone a strange light that was not merely the reflection
of sunlight. Jimbo felt his heart warm to her as

(01:28:12):
he looked, but her expression puzzled him, and he would
not accept the invitation of her arms. Won't you come
to me, she said, her arms still outstretched. I want
to know who you are, and what I'm doing here,
he said. I feel so funny, so old and so young,

(01:28:33):
and all mixed up. I can't make out who I
am a bit. What's that funny name you call me?

Speaker 2 (01:28:40):
Jimbo?

Speaker 1 (01:28:41):
Is your name, she said softly. Then what's your name,
he asked quickly. My name, she repeated slowly, after a pause,
is not as nice as yours. Besides, you need not
know my name. You might dislike it. But I must
have something to call you, he persisted. But if I'd

(01:29:05):
told you and you disliked the name, you might dislike
me too, she said, still hesitating. Jimbo saw the expression
of sadness in her eyes, and it won his confidence,
though he hardly knew why. He came up closer to
her and put his puzzled little face next to hers.

(01:29:25):
I like you very much already, he whispered, And if
your name is a horrid one, I'll change it for
you at once. Please tell me what it is. She
drew the boy to her and gave him a little hug,
and he did not resist. For a long time she
did not answer. He felt vaguely that something of dreadful

(01:29:47):
importance hung about this revelation. Of her name, He repeated
his question, and at length she replied, speaking in a
very low voice and with her eyes fixed intently his face.
My name, she said, is Ethel Lake. Ethel Lake, he

(01:30:09):
repeated after her. The words sounded somehow familiar to him.
Surely he had heard that name before. Were not the
words associated with something in his past that had been unpleasant?
A curious, sinking sensation came over him as he heard them.
His companion watched him intently while he repeated the words

(01:30:32):
over to himself several times, as if to make sure
he had got them right. There was a moment's hesitation
as he slowly went over them once again. Then he
turned to her, laughing, I like your name, Ethel Lake,
he said, it's a nice name, Miss Miss. Again, he hesitated,

(01:30:53):
while a little warning tremor ran through his mind, and
he wondered for an instant why he said miss. But
it passed as suddenly as it had come, and he
finished the sentence, Miss Lake, I shall call you. He
stared into her eyes as he said it. Then you
don't remember me at all, she cried, with a sigh

(01:31:15):
of intense relief. You've quite forgotten. I never saw you before,
did I? How can I remember you? I don't remember
any of the things I've forgotten? Are you one of them?

Speaker 2 (01:31:27):
For reply, she.

Speaker 1 (01:31:28):
Caught him to her breast and kissed him. You precious boy,
she said, I'm so glad, Oh, so glad. But do
you remember me? He asked, sorely, puzzled, who I am?
Haven't I been born yet or something funny like that?
If you don't remember me, said the other, her face

(01:31:50):
happy with smiles that had evidently come only just in
time to prevent tears. There's not much good telling you
who you are but your neck if you really want
to know is, she hesitated a moment, Be quick, e
f miss Lake, or you'll forget it again, she laughed,

(01:32:10):
rather bitterly. Oh I'll never forget I can't, she said,
I wish I could. Your name is James Stone, and
Jimbo is short for James. Now you know, she might
just as well have said Bill Sykes for all the
boy knew or remembered. What a silly name, he laughed.

(01:32:32):
But it can't be my real name, or I should
know it. I never heard it before. After a moment,
he added, am I an old man? I feel just
like one? I suppose I'm grown up, grown up so
fast that I've forgotten what came before. You're not grown up, dear,
at least not exactly. She glanced down at his alpacker

(01:32:56):
knickerbockers and brown stockings, and as he followed her eyes
and saw the dirty buttoned boots, there came into his
mind some dim memory of where he had last put
them on, and of someone who had helped him. But
it all passed like a swift meteor across the dark
night of his forgetfulness, and was lost in mist. You

(01:33:17):
mustn't judge by these silly clothes, he laughed. I shall
change them as soon as I get, as soon as
I can find. He stopped short. No words came. A
feeling of utter loneliness and despair swept suddenly over him,
drenching him from head to foot. He felt lost and friendless, naked, homeless, cold.

(01:33:44):
He was ever on the brink of regaining a quantity
of knowledge and experience that he had known once long ago,
ever so long ago, but it was always just out
of his reach. He glanced at miss Lake, feeling that
she was his only possible comfort in a terrible situation.
She met his look and drew him tenderly towards her.

(01:34:07):
Now listen to me, she said gently, I've something to
tell you about myself. He was all attention in a minute.
I'm a discharged governess. She began holding her breath when
once the words were out, discharged. He repeated, vaguely, what's that?

Speaker 2 (01:34:29):
What for? For frightening a child? I told a.

Speaker 1 (01:34:34):
Little boy awful stories that weren't true. They terrified him
so much that I was sent away. That's why I'm
here now. It's my punishment. I'm a prisoner here until
I can find him and help him escape. Oh I say,
he exclaimed quickly, as though remembering something. But it passed,

(01:34:57):
and he looked up at her, half bored, half politely
escape from what he asked from here. This is the
empty house I told the stories about, and you are
the little boy I frightened. Now at last I found you,
and I am going to save you. She paused, watching

(01:35:20):
him with eyes that never left his face for an instant.
Jimbo was delighted to hear that he was going to
be rescued, but he felt no interest at all in
her story of having frightened a little boy who was himself.
He thought it was very nice of her to take
so much trouble, and he told her so. And when
he went up and kissed her and thanked her, he

(01:35:42):
saw to his surprise that she was crying. For the
life of him, he could not understand why a discharged governess,
whom he met, apparently for the first time in the
empty house, should weep over him and show him so
much affection, But he could think of nothing to say,
so he just waited till she had finished. You see,

(01:36:03):
if I can save you, she said, between her sobs,
it will be all right again, and I shall be
forgiven and she'll be able to escape with you. I
want you to escape so that you can get back
to life again. Oh then I'm dead?

Speaker 2 (01:36:19):
Am I.

Speaker 1 (01:36:21):
Not exactly dead, she said, drying her eyes with the
corner of her black hood. You've had a funny accident,
you know. If your body gets all right so that
you can go back and live in it again, then
you're not dead. But if it's so badly injured that
you can't work in it anymore, then you are dead
and will have to stay dead. You're still joined to

(01:36:43):
the body in a fashion, you see, he stared and listened,
not understanding much. It all bored him. She talked without explaining.
He thought an immense sponge had passed over the slate
of the passed and wiped it clean beyond recall. He
was utterly perplexed. How funny you are, he said, vaguely,

(01:37:08):
thinking more of her tears than her explanations. Water won't
stay in a cracked bottle, she went on, and you
can't stay in a broken body. But they're trying to
mend it now, and if we can escape in time,
you can be an ordinary, happy little boy in the
world again. Then are you dead too, he asked, or

(01:37:30):
nearly dead? I am out of my body like you,
she answered evasively. After a moment's pause, he was still
looking at her in a dazed sort of way when
she suddenly sprang to her feet and let the hood
drop back over her face. Hush, she whispered, he's listening again.

(01:37:52):
At the same moment, a sound came from beneath the
floor on the other side of the room, and Jimbo
saw the trap door being slowly raised above the level
of the floor. Your number is one hundred and two,
said a voice that sounded like the rushing of a river. Instantly,
the trap door dropped again, and he heard heavy steps

(01:38:14):
rumbling away into the interior of the house. He looked
at his companion and saw her terrified face as she
lifted her hood. He always blunders along like that, she whispered,
bending her head on one side to listen. He can't
see properly in the daylight. He hates sunshine and usually

(01:38:35):
only goes out after dark. She was white and trembling.
Is that the person who brought me in here this
morning at such a frightful pace? He asked, bewildered. She nodded.
He wanted to get in before it was light so
that you couldn't see his face. Is he such a fright?

(01:38:55):
Asked the boy, beginning to share her evident feeling of horror.
He is fright, she said in an awed whisper. But
never talk about him again unless you can't help it.
He always knows when he's being talked about, and he
likes it because it gives him more power. Jimbo only

(01:39:18):
stared at her without comprehending. Then his mind jumped to
something else he wanted badly to have explained, and he
asked her about this number and why he was called
number one hundred and two.

Speaker 2 (01:39:32):
Oh, that's easy, she said.

Speaker 1 (01:39:35):
One hundred two is your number among the frightened children.
There are one hundred one of them, and you are
the last arrival. Haven't you seen them yet? It is
also the temperature of your broken little body lying on
the bed in the night nursery at home, she added,
though he hardly caught her words, so low were they spoken.

(01:39:59):
Jimbo then disco ribed how the children had sung and
danced to him, and went on to ask a hundred
questions about them, but Miss Lake would give him very
little information, and said he would not have very much
to do with them. Most of them had been in
the house for years and years, so long that they
could probably never escape at all. They are all frightened children,

(01:40:23):
she said, little ones, scared out of their wits by
silly people who meant to amuse them with stories or
to frighten them into being well behaved nursery maids, elder sisters,
and even governesses. And can they never escape, not unless
the people who frightened them come to their rescue and

(01:40:45):
run the risk of being caught themselves. As she spoke,
there rose from the depths of the house, the sound
of muffled voices, children's voices singing faintly together. It rose
and fell exactly like the wind, and we're there's little tune.
It was weird and magical, but so utterly mournful that

(01:41:09):
the boy felt the tears start to his eyes. It
drifted away, too, just as the wind does, over the
tops of the trees, dying into the distance, and all
became still again. It's just like the wind, he said,
And I do love the wind. It makes me feel

(01:41:30):
so sad and so happy.

Speaker 2 (01:41:32):
Why is it?

Speaker 1 (01:41:34):
The governess did not answer. How old am I really?
He went on, How can I be so old and
so ignorant? I've forgotten such an awful lot of knowledge.
The fact is, well, perhaps you won't quite understand, but
you're really two ages at once. Sometimes you feel as

(01:41:56):
old as your body, and sometimes as old as your
They're still connected with your body, so you get the
sensations of both mixed up.

Speaker 2 (01:42:07):
Then is the.

Speaker 1 (01:42:08):
Body younger than the soul? The soul that is yourself,
she answered, is oh so old, awfully old, as old
as the stars and older. But the body is no
older than itself. Of course, how could it be, of course,
repeated the boy, who was not listening to a word.

(01:42:29):
She said, how could it be? But it doesn't matter
how old you are or how young you feel, as
long as you don't hate me for having frightened you,
she said, after a pause, that's the chief thing. He
was very, very puzzled. He could not help feeling that
it had been rather unkind of her to frighten him

(01:42:51):
so badly, that he had literally been frightened out of
his skin. But he couldn't remember anything about it, and
she was taking so much trouble to save him now
that he quite forgave her. He nestled up against her
and said, of course he liked her, And she stroked
his curly head and mumbled a lot of things to

(01:43:11):
herself that he couldn't understand a bit. But in spite
of his new found friend, the feeling of overmastering loneliness
would suddenly rush over him. She might be a protector,
but she was not a real companion. He knew that,
somewhere or other, he had left a lot of other
real companions whom he now missed dreadfully. He longed more

(01:43:36):
than he could say, for freedom. He wanted to be
able to come and go as he pleased, to play
about in a garden somewhere as of old, to wander
over soft green lawns, among laburnums and sweet smelling lilac trees,
and to be up to all his old tricks and mischief,
though he could not remember in detail what they were.

(01:43:58):
In a word, he wanted to escape. His whole being
yearned to escape and to be free again. Yet here
he was a wretched prisoner in a room like a
prison cell, with a sort of monster for a keeper,
and a troop of horrible, frightened children somewhere else in
the house to keep him company, and outside there was

(01:44:19):
only a hard, narrow paved courtyard with a high wall
around it. Oh, it was too terrible to think of,
and his heart sank down within him till he felt
as if he could do nothing else but cry. I
shall save you in time, whispered the governess, as if

(01:44:39):
she had read his thoughts. You must be patient and
do what I tell you, and I promise to get
you out. Only be brave and don't ask too many questions.
We shall win in the end and escape. Suddenly he
looked up with quite a new expression on his face.
But I say, miss cake, I'm frightfully hungry. I've had

(01:45:03):
nothing to eat since I can't remember when. But ever
so long, you needn't call me miss cake, though she laughed.
I suppose it's because I'm so hungry. Then you'll call
me miss lake when you're thirsty, perhaps, she said. But anyhow,
I'll see what I can get you. Only you must

(01:45:24):
eat as little as possible. I want you to get
very thin. What you feel is not really hunger. It's
only a memory of hunger, and you'll soon get used
to it. He stared at her with a very distressful
little face as she crossed the room making this new announcement,
And just as she disappeared through the trap door, only

(01:45:47):
her head being visible, she added, with great emphasis, the
thinner you get, the better, because the thinner you are,
the lighter you are, and the lighter you are, the
easier it will be to escape. Remember, the thinner the better,
the lighter the better, And don't ask a lot of

(01:46:09):
questions about it. And with that, the trap door closed
over her, and Jimbo was left alone with her last
strange words ringing in his ears. End of chapter six,
Chapter seven, under the spell. It was not long before

(01:46:34):
Jimbo realized that the house and everything connected with it
spelt for him one message, and one only, a message
of fear. And from the first day of his imprisonment,
the forces of his whole being shaped themselves, without further ado,
into one intense, single, concentrated desire to escape. Freedom, escape

(01:47:00):
into the world beyond that terrible high wall was his
only object, and miss Lake, the Governess as its symbol,
was his only hope. He asked a lot of questions
and listened to a lot of answers, but all he
really cared about was how he was going to escape.
And when all her other explanations were tedious and he

(01:47:24):
only half listened to them, his faith in her was absolute,
his patience unbounded. She had come to save him, and
he knew that before long she would accomplish her end.
He felt a blind and perfect confidence. But meanwhile, his
fear of the house and his horror of the secret

(01:47:44):
being who meant to keep him prisoner till at length
he became one of the troop of frightened children, increased
by leaps and bounds. Presently, the trap door creaked again,
and the Governess reappeared. In her hand was a small
white jug and a soup plate, thin gruel and skim milk,

(01:48:05):
she explained, pouring out a substance like paste into the
soup plate and handing him a big wooden spoon. But
Jimbo's hunger had somehow vanished. It wasn't real hunger, she
told him, but only a sort of memory of being hungry.
They're trying to feed your broken body now in the

(01:48:26):
night nursery, and so you feel a sort of ghostly
hunger here, even though you're out of your body. It's
easily satisfied at any rate, he said, looking at the
paste in the soup plate.

Speaker 2 (01:48:40):
No, no one.

Speaker 1 (01:48:41):
Actually eats or drinks here. But I'm solid, he said,
Am I not? People always think they're solid everywhere.

Speaker 2 (01:48:51):
She laughed. It's only a.

Speaker 1 (01:48:53):
Question of degree. Solidity here means a different thing to
solidity there. I can get thinner, though, can't I? He asked,
thinking of her remark about escape of being easier the
lighter he grew. She assured him that there would be
no difficulty about that, and after replying evasively to a
lot more questions, she gathered up the dishes and once

(01:49:16):
more disappeared through the trap door. Jimbo watched her going
down the ladder into the black gulf below, and wondered
greatly where she went to and what she did down there.
But on these points the Governess had refused to satisfy
his curiosity, and every time she appeared or disappeared, the
atmosphere of mystery came and went with her. As he

(01:49:40):
stared wondering, a sound suddenly made itself heard behind him,
and on turning quickly round, he saw to his great
surprise that the door into the passage was open. This
was more than he could resist, and in another minute,
with mingled feelings of dread and delight, he was out
in the passage. When he was first brought to the

(01:50:01):
house two hours before, it had been too dark to
see properly, and now the sun was high in the
heavens and the light still increasing. He crept cautiously to
the head of the stairs and peered over into the
well of the house. It was still too dark to
make things out clearly, but as he looked, he thought
something moved among the shadows below, and for a moment

(01:50:25):
his heart stood still with fear. A large gray face
seemed to be staring up at him out of the gloom.
He clutched at the banisters and felt as if he
hardly had strength enough in his legs to get back
to the room he had just left. But almost immediately
the terror passed, and he saw that the face resolved

(01:50:45):
itself into the mingling of light and shadow, and the features,
after all, were of his own creation. He went on
slowly and stealthily down the staircase. It was certainly an
empty hair. There were no carpets, The passages were cold
and drafty. The paper curled from the damp walls, leaving

(01:51:08):
ugly discolored patches about. Cobwebs hung in many places from
the ceilings. The windows were more or less broken, and
all were coated so thickly with dirt that the rain
had traced little furrows from top to bottom. Shadows hung
about everywhere, and Jimbo thought every minute he saw moving figures,

(01:51:29):
but the figures always resolved themselves into nothing. When he
looked closely. He began to wonder how far it was
safe to go, and why the governess had arranged for
the door to be opened, For he felt that it
was she who had done this, and that it was
all right for him to come out fright, she had said,
was never about in daylight. But at the same time

(01:51:52):
something warned him to be ready at a moment's notice,
to turn and dash up the stairs again to the
room where he was at least comparatively safe.

Speaker 2 (01:52:00):
So he moved.

Speaker 1 (01:52:01):
Along very quietly and cautiously. He passed many rooms with
the doors open, all empty and silent. Some of them
had tables and chairs, but no sign of occupation. The
grates were black and empty, the walls blank, the windows unshuttered.
Everywhere was only silence and shadows. There was no sign

(01:52:25):
of the frightened children or of where they lived, no
trace of another staircase leading to the region where the
governess went when she disappeared down the ladder through the
trap door, only hushed, listening, cold silence, and shadows that
seemed forever shifting from place to place as he moved
past them. This illusion of people peering at him from

(01:52:47):
corners and behind doors just Ajar was very strong. Yet
whenever he turned his face to them, lo they were gone,
and the shadows of the house rushed in to fill
their places. The spell of the empty house was weaving
itself slowly and surely about his heart. Yet he went

(01:53:08):
on pluckily, full of a dreadful curiosity, continuing his search,
and at length, after passing through another gloomy passage, he
was in the act of crossing the threshold of an
open door leading out into the courtyard when he stopped
short and clutched the door posts with both hands. Some
one had laughed. He turned, trying to look in every

(01:53:32):
direction at once, but there was no sign of any
living being. Yet the sound was close beside him, and
he could still hear it, ringing in his ears, a
mocking sort of laugh in a harsh, guttural voice. The
blood froze in his veins, and he hardly knew which
way to turn when another voice sounded, and his terror disappeared,

(01:53:55):
as if by magic. It was Miss Lake's voice calling
to him over the banisters at the top of the house,
and its tone was so cheerful that all his courage
came back in a twinkling Go out into the yard,
she called, and play in the sunshine. But don't stay
too long. Jimbo answered, all right, in a rather feeble

(01:54:19):
little voice, and went on down the passage and out
into the yard. The June sunshine lay hot and still
over the paved court, and he looked up into the
blue sky overhead. As he looked at the high wall
that closed it on three sides, he realized more than
ever that he was caught in a monstrous trap from

(01:54:40):
which there could be no ordinary means of escape. He
could never climb over such a wall, even with a ladder.
He walked out a little way and noticed the rank
weeds growing in patches in the corners. Decay and neglect
left everywhere their dismal signs. The yard, is bit of
the sunlight, seemed as gloomy and cheerless as the house itself.

(01:55:05):
In one corner stood several little white upright stones, each
about three feet high. There seemed to be some writing
on them, and he was in the act of going
nearer to inspect when a window opened, and some one,
calling to him in a loud, exciting whisper, hissed, come in,
Jimbo at once, quick, run for your life. He glanced up,

(01:55:28):
quaking with fear, and saw the governess leaning out of
the open window. At another window a little beyond her,
he thought a number of white little faces pressed against
the glass, But he had no time to look more
closely for Something in miss Lake's voice made him turn
and run into the house and up the stairs, as
though fright himself was close at his heels. He flew

(01:55:52):
up the three flights and found the Governess coming out
to the top, Landing to meet him. She caught him
in her arms and dashed back into the room as
if there was not a moment to be lost, slamming
the door behind her. How in the world did you
get out, she gasped, breathless as himself almost and pale
with alarm. Another second and he'd have had you. I

(01:56:15):
found the door open. He opened it on purpose, she whispered,
looking quickly round the room. He meant you to go out,
but you called me to play in the yard, he said,
I heard you, so of course I thought it was safe. No,
she declared, I never called to you. That wasn't my voice.

(01:56:37):
That was one of his tricks. I only this minute
found the door open, and you gone, Oh, Jimbo, that
was a narrow escape. You must never go out of
this room till till I tell you, and never believe
any of these voices you hear. You'll hear lots of them.
Saying all sorts of things. But unless you see me,

(01:56:58):
don't believe it's my Jimbo promised. He was very frightened,
but she could not tell him any more, saying would
only make it more difficult to escape if he knew
too much in advance. He told her about the laugh
and the gravestones and the faces at the other window,
but she would not tell him what he wanted to know,

(01:57:20):
and at last he gave up asking. A very deep
impression had been made on his mind, however, and he
began to realize more than he had hitherto done, the
horror of his prison and the power of its dreadful keeper.
And when he began to look about him again, he
noticed that there was a new thing in the room.

(01:57:41):
The governess had left him and was bending over it.
She was doing something very busily. Indeed, he asked her
what it was. I'm making your bed, she said, it
was indeed a bed, and he felt as he looked
at it that there was something very familiar and friendly
about the yellow framework and the little brass knobs.

Speaker 2 (01:58:04):
I've brought it up.

Speaker 1 (01:58:05):
Just now, she explained. But it's not for sleeping in.
It's only for you to lie down on and also
partly to deceive him. Why not for sleeping. There's no
sleeping at all here, she went on calmly.

Speaker 2 (01:58:21):
Why not.

Speaker 1 (01:58:22):
You can't sleep out of your body, she laughed. Why not,
he asked again. Your body goes to sleep, but you don't.
She explained, Oh, I see, his head was whirling. And
my body, my real body, is lying asleep unconscious. They

(01:58:43):
call it in the night nursery at home. It's sound asleep.
That's why you're here. It can't wake up till you
go back to it, and you can't go back to
it till you escape, even if it's ready for you
before then. The da it is only for you to
rest on, for you can rest, though you can't sleep.

(01:59:06):
Jimbo stared blankly at the Governess for some minutes. He
was debating something in his mind, something very important, and
just then it was his older self and not the
child that was uppermost. Apparently it was soon decided, for
he walked sedately up to her and said, very gravely,
with her serious eyes fixed on his face, Miss Lake,

(01:59:29):
Are you really? Miss Lake? Of course I am. You're
not a trick of his like the voices. I mean, no, Jimbo,
I am really, miss Lake, the discharged governess who frightened you,
And there was profound anxiety in every word. Jimbo waited
a minute, still looking steadily into her eyes. Then he

(01:59:52):
put out his hand cautiously and touched her. He rose
a little on tiptoe to be on a level with
her face, taking a f her cloak in each hand.
The sole knowledge was in his eyes just then, not
the mere curiosity of the child.

Speaker 2 (02:00:09):
And are you dead?

Speaker 1 (02:00:11):
He asked, sinking his voice to a whisper. For a moment,
the woman's eyes wavered. She turned white and tried to
move away, but the boy seized her hand and peered
more closely into her face. I mean, if we escape
and I get back into my body, he whispered, will
you get back into yours?

Speaker 2 (02:00:32):
Too?

Speaker 1 (02:00:34):
The governess made no reply and shifted uneasily on her feet,
but the boy would not let her go. Please answer,
he urged, still in a whisper. Jimbo, what funny questions
you ask? She said at last, in a husky voice,
but trying to smile. But I want to know, he said,

(02:00:54):
I must know. I believe you're giving up everything just
to save me. Everything and I don't want to be
saved unless you come too.

Speaker 2 (02:01:03):
Tell me.

Speaker 1 (02:01:04):
The color came back to her cheeks a little, and
her eyes grew moist again. She tried to slip past him,
but he prevented her. You must tell me, he urged.
I would rather stay here with you than escape back
into my body and leave you behind. Jimbo knew that
it was his older self speaking the freed spirit rather

(02:01:27):
than the broken body, but he felt the strain was
very great. He could not keep it up much longer.
Any minute he might slip back into the child again
and lose interest and be unequal to the task he
now saw so clearly before him. Quick, he cried, in
a louder voice. Tell me you are giving up everything

(02:01:48):
to save me, aren't you? And if I escape, you
will be left alone? Quick answer me, Oh be quick,
I'm slipping back.

Speaker 2 (02:01:57):
Already.

Speaker 1 (02:01:57):
He felt his thoughts becoming confused again as the spirit
merged back into the child. In another minute, the boy
would usurp the older self, you see, began the governess
at length, speaking very gently and sadly. I am bound
to make amends whatever happens, I must atone. But already

(02:02:19):
he found it hard to follow a tone, he asked,
what does a tone mean? He moved back a step
and glanced about the room. The moment of concentration had
passed without bearing fruit. His thoughts began to wander again,
like a child's Anyhow we shall escape together when the

(02:02:40):
chance comes?

Speaker 2 (02:02:41):
Sha'n't we? He said?

Speaker 1 (02:02:43):
Oh, yes, darling, we shall, she said, in a broken voice.
And if you do what I tell you, it will
come very soon, I hope. She drew him towards her
and kissed him, And though he didn't respond very heartily,
he felt he liked it, and was sure that she
was good and meant to do the best possible for him.

(02:03:04):
Jimbo asked nothing more for some time. He turned to
the bed, where he found a mattress and a blanket,
but no sheets, and sat down on the edge and waited.
The Governess was standing by the window, looking out. Her
back was turned to him. He heard an occasional deep
sigh come from her, but he was too busy now

(02:03:25):
with his own sensations to trouble much about her. Looking
past her, he saw the sea of green leaves dancing
lazily in the sunshine. Something seemed to beckon him from
beyond the high wall, and he longed to go out
and play in the shade of the elms and hawthorns,
for the horror of the empty house was closing in

(02:03:46):
upon him steadily but surely, and he longed for escape
into a bright, unhaunted atmosphere. More than anything else in
the whole world. His thoughts ran on and on in
this vein till present he noticed that the Governess was
moving about the room. She crossed over and tried first
one door and then the other. Both were fastened. Next,

(02:04:10):
she lifted the trap door and peered down into the
black hole below. That, too, apparently was satisfactory. Then she
came over to the bedside on tiptoe. Jimbo, I've got
something very important to ask you, she began. All right,
he said, full of curiosity. You must answer me very exactly.

(02:04:32):
Everything depends upon it, I will. She took another long
look about the room, and then, in a still lower whisper,
bent over him and asked, have you any pain.

Speaker 2 (02:04:46):
Where?

Speaker 1 (02:04:47):
He asked, remembering to be exact anywhere, He thought for
a moment, none, thank you, none at all anywhere? She insisted,
at all anywhere, he said. With decision, she seemed disappointed.
Never mind, it's a little soon yet, perhaps, she said.

(02:05:10):
We must have patience. It will come in time. But
I don't want any pain, he said, rather ruefully. You
can't escape till it comes. I don't understand a bit
what you mean. He began to feel alarmed at the
notion of escape and pain going together. You'll understand later, though,

(02:05:31):
she said, soothingly, And it won't hurt very much. The
sooner the pain comes, the sooner we can try to escape.
Nowhere can there be escape without it? And with that
she left him, disappearing without another word into the hole
below the trap, and leaving him disconsolate yet excited, alone

(02:05:53):
in the room. End of chapter seven, Chapter eight The
Gallery of Memories. With every one, of course, the measurement
of time depends largely upon the state of the emotions,

(02:06:14):
but in Jimbo's case it was curiously exaggerated. This may
have been because he had no standard of memory by
which to test the succession of minutes. But whatever it was,
the hours passed very quickly, and the evening shadows were
already darkening the room when at length he got up

(02:06:34):
from the mattress and went over to the window. Outside,
the high elms were growing dim. Soon the stars would
be out in the sky. The afternoon had passed away
like magic, and the Governess still left him alone. He
could not quite understand why she went away for such

(02:06:55):
long periods. The darkness came down very swiftly, and it
was night almost before he knew it. Yet he felt
no drowsiness, no desire to yawn and get under sheets
and blankets. Sleep was evidently out of the question, and
the hours slipped away so rapidly that it made little

(02:07:16):
difference whether he sat up all night or whether he slept.
It was his first night in the empty house, and
he wondered how many more he would spend there before
escape came. He stood at the window, peering out into
the glowing darkness and thinking long, long thoughts. Below him

(02:07:38):
yawned the black gulf of the yard and the outline
of the enclosing.

Speaker 2 (02:07:42):
Wall was only just visible.

Speaker 1 (02:07:45):
But beyond the elms rose far into the sky, and
he could hear the wind singing softly in their branches.
The sound was very sweet. It suggested freedom and the
flight of birds and all that wild and unrestrained. The
wind could never really be a prisoner. Its voice sang

(02:08:06):
of open spaces and unbounded distances, of flying clouds and mountains,
of mighty woods, and dancing waves above all, of wings, free,
swift and unconquerable wings. But this rushing song of wind
among the leaves made him feel too sad to listen long,

(02:08:28):
and he lay down upon the bed again.

Speaker 2 (02:08:30):
Still thinking.

Speaker 1 (02:08:31):
Thinking the house was utterly still, not a thing stirred
within its walls. He felt lonely and began to long
for the companionship of the governess. He would have called
aloud for her to come, only he was afraid to
break the appalling silence. He wondered where she was all

(02:08:53):
this time, and how she spent the long dark hours
of the sleepless nights. For all these things really true
that she told him? Was he actually out of his body?
And was his name really Jimbo? His thoughts kept groping backwards, ever,
seeking the other companions he had lost, But like a

(02:09:16):
piece of stretched elastic too short to reach its object,
they always came back with a snap, just when he
seemed on the point of finding them. He wanted these
companions very badly, indeed, but the struggling of his memory
was painful. And he could not keep the effort up
for very long at one time. The effort once relaxed, however,

(02:09:39):
his thoughts wandered freely where they would, and there rose
before his mind's eye dim suggestions of memories far more distant,
ghostly scenes and faces that passed before him in endless succession,
But all was faded away before he could properly seize
and name them. This memory, so stubborn as regards quite

(02:10:03):
recent events, began to play strange tricks with him. It
carried him away into a past so remote that he
could not connect it with himself at all. And it
was like dreaming of scenes and events that had happened
to somebody else, Yet all the time he knew quite
well those things had happened to him and to none else.

(02:10:27):
It was the memory of the soul asserting itself now
that the clamour of the body was low. It was
an underground river coming to the surface for odd minutes
here and there, showing its waters to the stars, just
long enough to catch their ghostly reflections before it rolled
away underground again. Yet swift and transitory as they were,

(02:10:53):
these glimpses brought in their train sensations that were too
powerful ever to have troubled his child mind in its
present body. They stirred in him the strong emotions, the ecstasies,
the terrors, the yearnings of a much more distant past,
whispering to him, could he but have understood of an

(02:11:14):
infinitely deeper layer of memories and experiences, which, now released
from the burden of the intermediate years, strove to awaken
into life again. The soul in that little body, covered
with alpaca knickerbockers and a sailor blouse, seemed suddenly to
have access to a storehouse of knowledge that must have

(02:11:36):
taken centuries rather than a few short years to acquire.

Speaker 2 (02:11:41):
It was all very queer.

Speaker 1 (02:11:44):
The feeling of tremendous age grew mysteriously over him. He
realized that he had been wandering for ages. He had
been to the stars and also to the deeps. He
had roamed over strange mountains far away from cities or
inhabited places of the earth, and had lived by streams
whose waves were silvered by moonlight, dropping softly through whispered

(02:12:08):
palm branches. Some of these ghostly memories brought him sensations
of keenest happiness, icy silver, radiant. Others swept through his
heart like a cold wave, leaving behind a feeling of
unutterable woe and a sense of loneliness that almost made
him cry aloud. And there came voices, too, voices that

(02:12:33):
had slept so long in the inner kingdoms of silence
that they failed to rouse in him the very slightest
emotion of recognition. Worn out at length with the surging
of these strange hosts through him, he got up and
went to the open window again. The night was very
dark and warm, but the stars had disappeared, and there

(02:12:56):
was the hush and the faint odor of coming rain
in the air. He smelt leaves and the earth, and
the moist things of the ground, the wonderful perfume of
the life of the soil. The wind had dropped. All
was silent as the grave. The leaves of the elm
trees were motionless.

Speaker 2 (02:13:16):
No bird or.

Speaker 1 (02:13:17):
Insect raised its voice. Everything slept. He alone was watchful, awake,
leaning over the window sill, His thoughts searched for the Governess,
and he wondered aknew where she was spending.

Speaker 2 (02:13:31):
The dark hours.

Speaker 1 (02:13:34):
She, too, he felt sure, was wakeful somewhere watching with him.
Plotting their escape together, and all was mindful of his safety.
His reverie was suddenly interrupted by the flight of an
immense night bird, dropping through the air just above his head.
He sprang back into the room with a startled cry

(02:13:55):
as it rushed past into the darkness with a great
swishing of wings. The size of the creature filled him
with awe It was so close that the wind it
made lifted the hair on his forehead, and he could
almost feel the feathers brush his cheeks. He strained his
eyes to try to follow it, but the shadows were

(02:14:16):
too deep and he could see nothing only in the distance,
growing every moment fainter, he could hear the noise of
big wings threshing the air. He waited a little, wondering
if another bird would follow it, or if it would
presently return to its perch on the roof. Then his
thoughts passed on to uncertain memories of other big birds, hawks, owls,

(02:14:42):
eagles that he had seen somewhere in places now beyond
the reach of distant recollections. Soon the light began to
dawn in the east, and he made out the shape
of the elm trees and the dreadful prison wall, and
with the first real touch of light, he heard a
familiar creaking sound in the room behind him, and saw

(02:15:05):
the black hood of the Governess rising through the trap
door in the floor. But you left me alone all night,
he said at once, reproachfully as she kissed him on purpose.
She answered, he'd get suspicious if I stayed too much
with you. It's different in the daytime, when he can't
see properly. Where's he been all night? Then asked the

(02:15:29):
boy last night, he was out most of the time hunting. Hunting,
he repeated, with excitement.

Speaker 2 (02:15:39):
Hunting what.

Speaker 1 (02:15:41):
Children frightened children, she replied, lowering her voice. That's how
he found you. It was a horrible thought, fright hunting
for victims to bring to his dreadful prison. And Jimbo
shivered as he heard it.

Speaker 2 (02:16:01):
And how did you get on.

Speaker 1 (02:16:02):
All this time, she asked, hurriedly, changing the subject. I've
been remembering, that is, half remembering an awful lot of things,
and feeling oh so cold. I never want to remember
anything again, he said wearily. You'll forget quick enough when

(02:16:22):
you get back into your body and have only the
body memories. She said, with a sigh that he did
not understand, But now tell me, she added, in a
more serious voice. Have you had any pain yet? He
shook his head. She stepped up beside him. None there,

(02:16:43):
she asked, touching him lightly just below the shoulder blades.
Jimbo jumped as if he had been shot, and after
the piercing yell that hurts, he screamed, I'm so glad,
said the Governess. That's the pain's At last, her face
was beaming coming, he echoed, I think they've come. But

(02:17:08):
if they hurt as much as that, I think I'd
rather not escape, he added ruefully. The pain won't last
more than a minute. She said, calmly, you must be
brave and stand it. There's no escape without pain from anything.
If there's no other way, he said pluckily, I'll try.

(02:17:28):
But you see, she went on rather absently. At this
very moment, the doctor is probing the wounds in your
back where the horns went in. But he was not listening.
Her explanations always made him want either to cry or
to laugh. This time he laughed, and the Governess joined him.

(02:17:49):
While they sat on the edge of the bed together,
talking of many things. He did not understand all her explanations,
but it comforted him to hear them, so long as
somebody understood, no matter who he felt, it was all
right in this way. Several days and nights passed quickly away.

(02:18:10):
The pains were apparently no nearer, but as Miss Lake
showed no particular anxiety at their non arrival, he waited patiently, too,
dreading the moment yet also looking forward to it exceedingly.
During the day, the governors spent most of the time
in the room with him, but at night, when he
was alone, the darkness became enchanted, the room haunted, and

(02:18:36):
he passed into the long.

Speaker 2 (02:18:38):
Long gallery of memories.

Speaker 1 (02:18:42):
End of Chapter eight, Chapter nine, The Means of Escape.
A week passed, and Jimbo began to wonder if the
pains he so much dreaded yet so eagerly longed for,
where coming at all. The imprisonment was telling upon him,

(02:19:04):
and he grew very thin and consequently very light. The nights,
though he spent them alone, were easily borne, for he
was then intensely occupied, and the time passed swiftly. The
moment it was dark, he stepped into the gallery of memories,
and in a little while passed into a new world

(02:19:24):
of wonder and delight, but the daytime seemed always long.
He stood for hours by the window, watching the trees
and the sky, and what he saw all was set
painful currents running through his blood, unsatisfied longings, yearnings, and
immense desires. He could never understand. The white clouds, on

(02:19:47):
their swift journeys took with them something from his heart.
Every time he looked upon them, they melted into air
and blue sky, and lo that something came back to him,
charged with all the wild freedom and magic of open spaces,
distance and rushing winds. But the change was close at hand.

(02:20:11):
One night, as he was standing by the open window
listening to the drip of the rain, he felt a
deadly weakness steel over him. The strength went out of
his legs. First he turned hot, and then he turned cold.
Clammy perspiration broke out all over him, and it was
all he could do to crawl across the room and

(02:20:33):
throw himself onto the bed. But no sooner was he
stretched out on the mattress than the feelings passed entirely,
and behind left them an intoxicating sense of strength and lightness.
His muscles became like steel springs, his bones were strong
as iron, and light as cork. A wonderful vigor had

(02:20:55):
suddenly come into him, and he felt as if he
had just stepped from a dungeon into fresh air. He
was ready to face anything in the world. But before
he had time to realize the full enjoyment of these
new sensations, a stinging, blinding pain shot suddenly through his
right shoulder, as if a red hot iron had pierced

(02:21:16):
to the very bone. He screamed out in agony, though
even while he screamed the pain passed. Then the same
thing happened to his other shoulder. It shot through his
back with equal swiftness and was gone, leaving him lying
on the bed trembling with pain. But the instant it

(02:21:36):
was gone, delightful sensations of strength and lightness returned, and
he felt as if his whole body were charged with
some new and potent force. The pains had come at last.
Jimbo had no notion how they could possibly be connected
with escape, but miss Lake, his kind and faithful friend.

(02:21:57):
Miss Lake had said that no escape was possible without them,
and had promised that they should be brief, and this
was true, for the entire episode had not taken a
minute of time. Escape escape. The words rushed through him
like a flame of fire, out of this dreadful empty house,

(02:22:19):
into the open spaces beyond the prison wall, out where
the wind and the rain could touch him, where he
could feel the grass beneath his feet, and could see
the whole sky at once instead of this narrow strip
through the window. His thoughts flew to the stars and
the clouds. But a strange humming of voices interrupted his

(02:22:41):
flight of imagination, and he saw that the room was
suddenly full of moving figures. They were passing before him
with silent footsteps across the window, from door to door.
How they had come in or how they went out.

Speaker 2 (02:22:55):
He never knew.

Speaker 1 (02:22:57):
But his heart stood still for an instant as he
recognized the mournful figures of the frightened children filing before
him in a slow procession. They were singing, though it
sounded more like a chorus of whispering the actual singing.
And as they moved past, with the measured steps of
their sorrowful glance, he caught the words of the song

(02:23:19):
he had heard them sing when he first came into
the house. We hear the little voices in the wind,
singing of freedom. We may never find. Jimbo put his
fingers into his ears, but still the sound came through.
He heard the words almost as if they were inside himself,
his own thoughts singing, We hear the little footsteps in

(02:23:43):
the rain, running to help us, though they run in vain,
Tapping in hundreds on the window pane, the horrible procession
filed past and melted away near the door. They were gone,
as mysteriously as they had come, and almost before he
realized it, he sprang from the bed and tried the doors.

(02:24:05):
Both were locked. How in the world had the children
got in and out? The whispering voices rose again on
the night air, and this time he was sure they
came from outside. He ran to the open window and
thrust his head out cautiously. Sure enough, the procession was
moving slowly still, with the steps of that impish dance

(02:24:29):
across the courtyard stones. He could just make out the
slow waving arms, the thin bodies, and the white little
faces as they passed on silent feet through the darkness.
And again a fragment of the song rose to his
ears as he watched, and filled him with an overpowering sadness.

(02:24:51):
We have no joy in any children's game. For happiness
to us is but a name, since Terror kissed her
with his lips of flame. Then he noticed that the
group was growing smaller. Already the numbers were less. Somewhere
over there, in the dark corner of the yard, the

(02:25:12):
children disappeared, though it was too dark to see precisely
how or where. We danced with phantoms and with shadows.
Play rose to his ears. Then suddenly he remembered the
little white upright stones he had seen in that corner
of the yard, and understood one by one they vanished

(02:25:34):
just behind those stones. Jimbo shivered and drew his head in.
He did not like those upright stones. They made him
uncomfortable and afraid. Now, however, the last child had disappeared
and the song had ceased. He realized what his fate
would be if the escape were not successful. He would

(02:25:57):
become one of this band of frightened chicks children dwelling
somewhere behind the upright stones, a terrified shadow waiting in
vain to be rescued, waiting perhaps forever and ever. The
thought brought the tears to his eyes, but he somehow
managed to choke them down. He knew it was the

(02:26:18):
young portion of him only that felt afraid. The body.
The older self could not feel fear and had nothing
to do with tears. He lay down again on the
hard mattress and waited, And soon afterwards the first crimson
streaks of sunrise appeared behind the high elms, and rooks
began to cow and shake their wings in the upper branches.

(02:26:42):
A little later, the governess came in before he could
move out of the way, for he disliked being embraced.
She had her arms round his neck and was covering
him with kisses. He saw tears in her eyes. You,
darling Jimbo, she cried, they've come at last. How do

(02:27:02):
you know, he asked, surprised at her knowledge and puzzled
by her display of emotion. I heard you scream.

Speaker 2 (02:27:10):
To begin with.

Speaker 1 (02:27:11):
Besides, I've been watching, watching, yes and listening too, every night,
every single night. You've hardly been a minute out of
my sight.

Speaker 2 (02:27:24):
She added.

Speaker 1 (02:27:26):
I think it's awfully good of you, he said doubtfully,
But a flood of questions followed about the upright stones,
the shadowy children, where she spent the night watching him,
at a hundred other things besides, But he got little
satisfaction out of her. He never did when it was

(02:27:47):
Jimbo the child that asked, and he remained Jimbo the
child all that day. She only told him that all
was going well. The pains had come, he had grown nice,
thin and light. The children had come into his room
as a hint that he belonged to their band, and
other things had happened about which she would tell him later.

(02:28:11):
The crisis was close at hand. That was all he
could get.

Speaker 2 (02:28:15):
Out of her.

Speaker 1 (02:28:17):
It won't be long now, she said, excitedly. They'll come tonight.

Speaker 2 (02:28:21):
I expect.

Speaker 1 (02:28:24):
What will come tonight? He asked, with tremendous wonder. Wait
and see was all the answer he got. Wait and see.
She told him to lie quietly on the bed and
to have patience with asking questions and thinking and wondering.
The day passed very quickly. With the lengthening shadows, his

(02:28:46):
excitement began to grow. Presently, Miss Lake took her departure
and went off to her unknown and mysterious abode. He
watched her disappear through the floor with mingled feelings, wondering
what would have happened before he saw her again. She
gave him a long last look as she sank away

(02:29:07):
below the boards, but it was a look that brought
him fresh courage, and her eyes were happy and smiling.
Tingling already with expectancy, he got into the bed and
lay down, his brain alive with one word escape. From
where he lay, he saw the stars in the narrow

(02:29:28):
strip of sky. He heard the wind whispering in the branches.
He even smelt the perfume of the fields and hedges, grass, flowers, dew,
and the sweet earth, the odors of freedom. The governess
had for some reason she refused to explain taking his
blouse away with her. For a long time she puzzled

(02:29:51):
over this, seeking reasons and finding none. But while in
the act of stroking his bare arms, the pines of
the night before suddenly returned to both shoulders at once,
fire seemed to run down his back, splitting his bones apart,
and then passed even more quickly than before, leaving him

(02:30:11):
with the same wonderful sensations of lightness and strength. He
felt inclined to shout and run and jump, and it
was only the memory of the Governess's earliest caution to
lie quietly that prevented his new emotions passing into acts.
With very great effort, he lay still all night long,

(02:30:34):
and it was only when the room at last began
to get light again that he turned on his side
preparatory to getting up. But there was something new, something different.
He rested on his elbow, waiting something had happened to him. Cautiously,
he sat on the edge of the bed and stretched

(02:30:54):
out one foot and touched the floor. Excitement ran through him.

Speaker 2 (02:30:59):
Like a wall wave.

Speaker 1 (02:31:01):
There was a great change, a tremendous change, for as
he stepped out gingerly on to the floor, something followed
him from the bed. It clung to his back. It
touched both shoulders at once. It stroked his ribs and
tickled the skin of his arms. Half frightened, he brought

(02:31:21):
the other leg over and stood boldly upright on both feet,
with the weight still clung to his back. He looked
over his shoulder. Yes, it was trailing after him from
the bed. It was fan shaped and brilliant in color.
He put out a hand and touched it. It was

(02:31:42):
soft and glossy. Then he took it deliberately between his fingers.
It was smooth as velvet and had numerous tiny ribs
running along it. Seizing it at last with all his courage,
he pulled it forward in front of him for a
better view, only to discover that it would not come
out beyond a certain distance, and seemed to have got

(02:32:03):
caught somehow between his shoulders, just where the pains had been.
A second pull, more vigorous than the first, showed that
it was not caught, but fastened to his skin. It
divided itself moreover into two portions, one half coming from
each shoulder. I do believe their feathers, he exclaimed, his

(02:32:26):
eyes almost popping out of his head. Then with a
sudden flash of comprehension, he saw it all and understood
they were indeed feathers, but they were something more than feathers.

Speaker 2 (02:32:40):
Merely they were wings.

Speaker 1 (02:32:43):
Jimbo caught his breath and stared in silence. He felt dazed. Then,
bit by bit, the fragments of the weird mosaic fell
into their proper places, and he began to understand escape
was to be by flight. It filled him with such
a whirlwind of delight and excitement that he could scarcely

(02:33:06):
keep from screaming aloud. Lost in wonder, he took a
step forward and watched with bulging eyes how the wings
followed him their tips trailing along the floor. They were
a beautiful, deep red and hung down close and warm
beside his body, glossy, sleek, magical, and when later the

(02:33:30):
sun burst into the room and turned their color into
living flame, he could not resist the temptation to kiss them.
He seized them and rubbed their soft surfaces over his face.
Such colors he had never seen before, and he wanted
to be sure that they really belonged to him and
were intended for actual use. Slowly, without using his hands,

(02:33:55):
he raised them into the air. The effort was a
perfectly easy, muscular effort from the shoulders, but came naturally,
though he did not quite understand how he accomplished it.
The wings rose in a fine, graceful sweep, curving over
his head till the tips of the feathers met, touching

(02:34:15):
the walls as they rose, and almost reaching to the ceiling.
He gave a howl of delight, for this sight was
more than he could manage without some outlet for his
pent up emotion. And at the same moment, the trap
door shot open, and the Governess came into the room
with such a bang and a clatter that Jimbo knew
at once her excitement was as great as his own.

(02:34:39):
In her hand she carried the blouse she had taken
away the night before. She held it out to him
without a word. Her eyes were shining like electric lamps.
In less than a second, he had slipped his wings
through the neatly made slits, but before he could practice
them again, Miss Lake rushed over to him, her face

(02:34:59):
radiant with happiness. Jimbo, my darling, Jimbo, she cried, and
then stopped short, apparently unable to express her emotion. The
next instant he was enveloped, wings and all in a
warm confusion of kisses, congratulations, and folds of hood. When

(02:35:20):
they became disentangled again, the Governess went down on her
knees and made a careful examination. She pulled the wings
out to their full extent and found they stretched about
four feet and a half from tip to tip. They
are beauties, she exclaimed, enthusiastically, and full grown and strong.
I'm not surprised they took so long coming long, he echoed.

(02:35:46):
I thought they came awfully quickly, not half so quickly
as they'll go, she interrupted, adding, when she saw his
expression of dismay, I mean your fly like the wind
with them. Jimbo was simply breathless with excitement. He wanted
to jump out of the window and escape at once.

(02:36:06):
The blue sky and the sunshine and the white clouds
sent him an irresistible invitation. He could not wait a
minute longer quick, he cried, I can't wait. They may
go again. Show me how to use them. Oh, do
show me. I'll show you everything in time, she answered.

(02:36:27):
There was something in her voice that made him pause
in his excitement. He looked at her in silence for
some minute. But how are you going to escape? He
asked at length. You haven't got he stopped short. The
governess stepped back a few paces from him. She threw
back the hood from her face. Then she lifted the

(02:36:49):
long black cloak that hung like a cassock almost to
her ankles and had always enveloped her hitherto. Jimbo started
falling from her shoulders and folding over her hips. He
saw the long red feathers similar to his own, and
when he dashed forward to touch them with his own hands,
he found that they were just as sleek and smooth

(02:37:11):
and glossy as his own. And you never told me
all this time, he gasped. It was safer not, she said,
You'd have been stroking and feeling your shoulders the whole time,
and the wings might never have come at all. She
spread out her wings as they spoke to their full extent.

(02:37:31):
They were nearly six feet across, and the deep crimson
on the under side was so exquisite, gleaming in the
sunlight that Jimbo ran in and nestled between the feathers,
tickling his cheeks and the fluffy surface, and running his
fingers with childish delight along the slender red quills. You,
precious child, she said, tenderly, folding her wings round him

(02:37:56):
and kissing the top of his head. All was remember
that I really love you. No matter what happens. Remember that,
and I'll save you. And we shall escape together, he asked,
submitting for once to the caresses with a good grace.
We shall escape from the empty house together, she replied evasively.

(02:38:18):
How far we can go after that depends on you
on me. If you love me enough as I love you, Jimbo,
we can never separate again, because love ties us together
forever only, she added, it must be mutual. I love
you very much, he said, puzzled a little. Of course

(02:38:42):
I do. If you've really forgiven me for being the
cause of your coming here, she said questioningly, we can
always be together, but I don't remember. But I've forgiven
you that old you long ago, he said, simply. If
you hadn't brought me here, I should never have met you.

(02:39:04):
That's not real forgiveness. Quite she sighed half to herself.
But Jimbo could not follow this sort of conversation for long.
He was too anxious to try his wings. For one thing.
Is it very difficult to use them? He asked, try,
she said. He stood in the center of the floor

(02:39:25):
and raised them again and again. They swept up easily,
meeting over his head, and the air whistled musically through them.

Speaker 2 (02:39:34):
Evidently they had.

Speaker 1 (02:39:35):
Their proper muscles, for it was no great effort, and
when he folded them again by his side, they fell
into natural curves over his arms, as if they had
been there all his life. The sound of the feathers
threshing the air filled him with delight and made him
think of the big night bird that had flown past
the window during the night. He told the governess about it,

(02:39:57):
and she burst out laughing, I was that big bird,
she said, you. I perched on the roof every night
to watch over you. I flew down that time because
I was afraid you were trying to climb out of
the window. This was indeed a proof of devotion, and
Jimbo felt that he could never doubt her again. And

(02:40:19):
when she went on to tell him about his wings
and how to use them, he listened with his very
best attention and tried hard to learn and understand. The
great difficulty is that you can't practice properly, she explained.
There's no room in here, and yet you can't get
out till you fly out. It's the first swoop that

(02:40:40):
decides all. You'll have to drop straight out of this window.
And if you use the wings properly, they will carry
you in a single swoop over the wall and right
up into the sky. But if I miss, you can't miss,
she said with decision. But if you did, you would

(02:41:00):
be a prisoner here for ever. He would catch you
in the yard and tear your wings off. It is
just as well that you should know this at once.
Jimbo shuddered as he heard her. When can we try,
he asked, anxiously, Very soon? Now the muscles must harden first,

(02:41:23):
and that takes a little time. You must practice flapping
your wings until you can do it easily, four hundred
times a minute. When you can do that, it will
be time for the first start. You must keep your
head steady and not get giddy. The novelty of the motion,
the ground rushing up into your face, and the whistling
of the wind are apt to confuse at first, but

(02:41:45):
it soon passes, and you must have confidence. I can
only help you up to a certain point. The rest
depends on you, and the first jump you'll have to
make that by yourself, she said. But you'll do it
all right. You're very light and won't go too near
the ground. You see, we're like bats and cannot rise

(02:42:08):
from the earth. We can only fly by dropping from
a height, and that's what makes the first plunge rather trying.
But you won't fall, she added, and remember I shall
always be within reach. You're awfully kind to me, said Jimbo,
feeling his little soul more than ever invaded by the
force of our unselfish care. I promise you I'll do

(02:42:32):
my best. He climbed on to her knee and stared
into her anxious face. Then you are beginning to love
me a little, aren't you, she asked softly, putting her
arms round him. Yes, he said, decidedly, I love you
very much. Already four hundred times a minute sounded a

(02:42:55):
very great deal of wing flapping, but Jimbo practiced eagerly,
and though at first he could only manage about twice
a second, or one hundred and twenty times a minute,
he found this increased very soon to a great deal more,
and before long he was able to do the full
four hundred, though only for a few minutes at a time.

(02:43:16):
He stuck at it pluckily, getting stronger every day. The
Governess encouraged him as much as possible, but there was
very little room for her while he was at work,
and he found the best way to practice was at night,
when she was out of the way.

Speaker 2 (02:43:30):
She told him that a.

Speaker 1 (02:43:31):
Large bird moved its wings about four times a second,
two upstrokes and two down strokes, but a small bird,
like a partridge, moved its wings so rapidly it was
impossible for the eye to distinguish or count the strokes.
A middle course of four hundred suited his own case best,
and he bent all his energies to acquire it. He

(02:43:55):
also learned that the convex upside curve of wings allowed
the wind to assescape over them, while the underside, being concave,
held every breath. Thus the upward stroke did not simply
counterbalance the downward and keep him stationary. Moreover, she showed
him how the feathers underlaped each other, so that the

(02:44:17):
downward stroke pressed them closely together to hold the wind,
whereas in the upward stroke they opened and separated, letting
the air slip easily through them, thus offering less resistance
to the atmosphere. By the end of the week, Jimbo
had practiced so hard that he could keep himself off
the floor in mid air for half an hour at

(02:44:38):
a time, and even then without feeling any great fatigue.
His excitement became intense, and meanwhile in his body on
the nursery bed, though he did not know it, the
fever was reaching its crisis. He could think of nothing
else but the joys of flying and what the first
awful plunge would be. And when miss Lake came up

(02:45:02):
to him one afternoon and whispered something in his ear,
he was so wildly happy that he hugged her for
many minutes without the slightest coaxing. It's bright and clear,
she exclaimed, and Fright will not come after us, for
he fears the light and can only fly on dark
and gloomy nights. So we can start, he stammered, joyfully. Tonight,

(02:45:28):
she answered, for our first practice flight.

Speaker 2 (02:45:34):
End of chapter.

Speaker 1 (02:45:34):
Nine, Chapter ten.

Speaker 2 (02:45:41):
The plunge.

Speaker 1 (02:45:44):
To enter the world of wings is to enter a
new state of existence. The apparent loss of weight, the
ability to attain full speed in a few seconds and
to stop suddenly in a headlong rush without fear of collapse.
The power to steer instantly in any direction by merely

(02:46:08):
changing the angle of the body, The altered and enormous
view of the green world below looking down upon forests,
seas and clouds, The easy, voluptuous rhythm of rising and
falling in long, swinging undulations, and a hundred other things
that simply defy description and can be appreciated only by

(02:46:32):
actual experience. These are some of the delights of the
new world of wings and flying. And the fearful joy
of a very high speed, especially when the exhilaration of
escape is added to it, means a condition little short
of real ecstasy. Yet Jimbo's first flight, the Governess had

(02:46:53):
been careful to tell him, could not be the flight
of final escape, for even if the wings proved equal
to a prolonged effort, escaper was impossible until there was
somewhere safe to escape too. So it was understood that
the practiced flights might be long or might be short.

(02:47:15):
The important thing, meanwhile, was to learn to fly as
well as possible, for skilled flying is very different to
mere headlong rushing, and both patience and perseverance are necessary
to acquire it. With rare common sense, Miss Lake had
said very little about the possibility of failure. Having warned

(02:47:38):
him about the importance of not falling, she had then stopped,
and the power of suggestion had allowed to work only
in the right direction of certain success. While the boy
knew that the first plunge from the window would be
a moment fraught with the highest danger, his mind only
recognized the mere off chance of falling and being caught.

(02:48:03):
He felt confidence in himself, and by so much therefore
were the chances of disaster lessened. For the rest of
the afternoon, Jimbo saw nothing of his faithful companion. He
spent the time practicing and resting, and when weary of
everything else, he went to the window and indulged in

(02:48:24):
thrilling calculations about the exact height from the ground. A
drop of three stories into a paved courtyard, with our
monster waiting to catch him, and a high wall too
close to allow a proper swing, was an alarming matter
from any point of view. Fortunately, his mind dwelt more

(02:48:45):
on the delight of prospective flight and freedom than on
the chances of being caught. The yard lay hot and
naked in the afternoon glare, and the enclosing wall had
never looked more formidable. But from his lofty perch, Jimbo
could see beyond into soft hay fields and smiling meadows,

(02:49:06):
yellow with cowslips and buttercups. Everything that flew he watched
with absorbing interest. Swift blackbirds whistling as they went, and crows,
their wings purple in the sunshine. The song of the larks,
invisible in the sea of blue air, sent a thrill

(02:49:27):
of happiness through him. He too might soon know something
of that glad music, and even the stately flight of
the butterflies which occasionally ventured over into the yard. Stirred
anticipations in him of joyous toccum. The day waned slowly,

(02:49:48):
the butterflies vanished, the rooks sailed homewards through the sunset.
The wind dropped away, and the shadows of the high
elms lengthened gradually and fell a crossed the window, the
mysterious hour of the dusk, when the standard of reality
changes and other worlds come close, and Listen began to

(02:50:11):
work its subtle spell upon his soul imperceptibly. The shadows
deepened as the veil of night drew silently across the sky.
A gentle breathing filled the air. Trees and fields were
gathering themselves to sleep, Stars were peeping. Wings were being folded,

(02:50:34):
but the boy's wings trembling with life to the very
tips of their long feathers. These were not being folded,
charged with excitement toike himself. They were gathering all their
forces for the supreme effort of their first journey out
into the open spaces, where they might touch the secret

(02:50:55):
sources of their own magical life. For a long long
time he waited, but at last the trap door lifted
and Miss Lake appeared above the floor. The moment she
stood in the room. He noticed that her wings came
through two little slits in her gown and folded down

(02:51:16):
close to the body. They almost touched the ground. Hush,
she whispered, holding up a warning finger. She came over
on tiptoe and they began to talk in low whispers.
He's on the watch. We must speak very quietly. We

(02:51:37):
couldn't have a better night for it. The winds in
the south and the moon won't be up till we're
well on our way. Now that the actual moment was
so near, the boy felt something of fear steal over him.
The night seemed so vast and terrible all of a sudden,

(02:51:57):
like an immense black ocean with no friendly islands where
they could fold their wings and rest. Don't waste your
strength thinking, whispered the governess. When the time comes, act quickly,
That's all. She went over to the window and peered
out cautiously, after a while, beckoning the child to join her.

(02:52:23):
He is there, she murmured in his ear. Jimbo could
only make out an indistinct shadowy object crouching under the wall,
and he was not even positive of that. Does he
know we're going? He asked, in an awed whisper. He's
there on the chance, replied the governess, drawing back into

(02:52:46):
the room. When there's a possibility of any one getting frightened,
he's bound to be lurking about somewhere near that's fright
all over. But he can't hurt you, she added, because
you're not going to get frightened. And also he can
only fly when it's dark, and to night we shall

(02:53:09):
have the moon. I'm not afraid, declared the boy, in
spite of a rather fluttering heart. Are you ready, was
all she said at last. Then the moment had come.
It was actually beside him, waiting, full of mystery and

(02:53:30):
wonder with alarm. Not far behind, the sun was buried
below the horizon of the world, and the dusk had
deepened into night. Stars were shining overhead. The leaves were motionless,
not a breath stirred. The earth was silent and waiting. Yes,

(02:53:52):
I'm ready, he whispered, almost inaudibly. Then listen, she said,
and I'll tell you exactly what to do. Jump upwards
from the window, ledge as high as you can, and
the moment you begin to drop, open your wings and
strike with all your might, you'll rise at once The

(02:54:17):
thing to remember is to rise as quickly as possible,
because the wall prevents a long, easy sweeping rise. And
whatever happens, you must clear that wall. I shan't touch
the ground, then, asked a faint little voice.

Speaker 2 (02:54:37):
Of course, not you'll get near it.

Speaker 1 (02:54:41):
But the moment you use your wings, you'll stop sinking
and rise up, up, up, ever so quickly. And where
to to me. You'll see me waiting for you above
the trees. Steering will come naturally, It's quite easy. Jimbo

(02:55:02):
was already shaking with excitement. He could not help it,
and he knew, in spite of all Miss Lake's care,
that Fright was waiting in the yard to catch him
if he fell or sank too near the ground. I'll
go first, added the governess. And the moment you see
I've cleared the wall, you must jump after me. Only

(02:55:25):
do not keep me waiting. The girl stood for a
moment in silence, arranging her wings. Her fingers were trembling
a little. Suddenly she drew the boy to her and
kissed him passionately. Be brave, she whispered, looking searchingly into
his eyes, And strike hard. You can't possibly fail. In

(02:55:51):
another minute, she was climbing out of the window. For
one second he saw her standing on the narrow ledge
with black space at her feet. The next, without even
a cry, she sprang out into the.

Speaker 2 (02:56:03):
Darkness and was gone.

Speaker 1 (02:56:07):
Jimbo caught his breath and ran to sea. She dropped
like a stone, turning over sideways in the air, and
then at once her wings opened on both sides, and
she righted. The darkness swallowed her up for a moment,
so that he could not see clearly and only heard
the threshing of the huge feathers, but it was easy

(02:56:29):
to tell from the sound that she was rising. Then
suddenly a black form cleared the wall and rose swiftly
in a magnificent sweep into the sky, and he saw
her outlined darkly against the stars above the high elm trees.

Speaker 2 (02:56:50):
She was safe.

Speaker 1 (02:56:52):
Now it was his turn act quickly. Don't think, rang
in his ears. If only he could do it all
as quickly as she had done it. But insidious fear
had been working all the time below the surface, and
his refusal to recognize it could not prevent it, weakening

(02:57:13):
his muscles and checking his power of decision. Fortunately, something
of his older self came to the rescue. The emotions
of fear, excitement, and intense anticipation combined to call up
the power of his deeper being. The boy trembled horribly,

(02:57:34):
but the old, experienced part of him sang with joy. Cautiously,
he began to climb out onto the window sill, first
one foot and then the other. Hung over the ledge,
he sat there, staring down into the black space beneath
for a minute. He hesitated. Despair rushed over him in

(02:57:57):
a wave. He could never take that all, jump into
emptiness and darkness. It was impossible. Better be a prisoner
forever than to risk so fearful a plunge. He felt cold, weak, frightened,
and made a half movement back into the room. The

(02:58:17):
wings caught somehow between his legs and nearly flung him
headlong into the yard. Jimbo, I'm waiting for you came
at that moment in a faint cry from the stars,
and the sound gave him just the impetus he needed
before it was too late. He could not disappoint her,

(02:58:38):
his faithful friend. Such a thing was impossible. He stood
upright on the ledge, his hands clutching the window sash behind,
balancing as best he could. He clenched his fists, drew
a deep, long breath, and jumped upwards and forwards into
the air. Up rushed the darkness with a shriek. The

(02:59:01):
air whistled in his ears. He dropped that fearful speed
into nothingness. At first everything was forgotten, wings, instructions, warnings
and all. He even forgot to open his wings at all,
and in another second he would have dashed upon the

(02:59:21):
hard paving stones of the courtyard, where his great enemy
lay waiting to seize him. But just in the nick
of time he remembered, and the long hours of practice
or fruit, out flew the great red wings in a
tremendous sweep on both sides of him, and he began

(02:59:42):
to strike with every atom of strength he possessed. He
had dropped to within six feet of the ground, but
at once the strokes began to tell, and oh magical sensation,
he felt himself rising easily, lightly, swiftly. A very slight

(03:00:03):
effort of those big wings would have been sufficient to
lift him out of danger, But in his terror and excitement,
he had quite miscalculated their power, and in a single
moment he was far out of reach of the dangerous
yards and anything it contained. But the mad rush of
it all made his head swim. He felt dizzy and confused,

(03:00:26):
and instead of clearing the wall, he landed on the
top of it and clung to the crumbling coping with
his hands and feet, panting and breathless. The dizziness was
only momentary, however, in less than a minute he was
on his feet and in the act of taking his
second leap into space. This time it came more easily.

(03:00:50):
He dropped, and the field swung up to meet him. Soon,
the powerful strokes of his wings drove him at great
speed upwards, and he sounded ever higher towards the stars. Overhead,
the Governess hovered like an immense bird, and as he
rose up he caught the sound of her wings beating

(03:01:12):
the air, while far beneath him he heard, with a shudder,
a voice like the rushing of a great river. It
made him increase his pace, and in another minute he
found himself among the little whirlwinds that raced about from
the beating of Miss Lake's great wings. Well done, cried

(03:01:35):
the delighted Governess. Safe at last, Now we can fly
to our heart's content. Jimbo flew up alongside and together
they dashed forward into the night end of chapter ten,

(03:01:57):
Chapter eleven, the first fly. There was not much talking
at first. The stress of conflicting emotions was so fierce
that the words choked themselves in his throat, and the
desire for utterance found its only vent in hard breathing.

(03:02:17):
The intoxication of rapid motion carried him along headlong in
more senses than one. At first he felt as if
he never would be able to keep up. Then it
seemed as if he would never get down again. For
with wings it is almost easier to rise than to fall,
and a first flight is, before anything else, a series

(03:02:40):
of vivid and audacious surprises. For a long time, Jimbo
was so dizzy with excitement and the novelty of the sensation,
that he forgot his deliverer altogether. And what a flight
it was. Instead of the steady race of the carrier pigeon,
or of the rooksward bound at evening, it was the

(03:03:02):
see saw motion of the wrens swinging journey across the lawn,
only heavier, faster, and with more terrific impetus up and
down each time, with a rise and a fall of
twenty feet. He careened, whistling through the summer night. At
the drop of each curve, so low that the scents

(03:03:23):
of dewy grass rose into his face, at the crest
of it, so high that the trees and hedges often
became mere blots upon the dark surface of the earth.
The fields rushed by beneath him. The white roads flashed
past like streaks of snow. Sometimes he shot across streaks

(03:03:45):
of water and felt the cooler air strike his cheeks,
sometimes over sheltered meadows where the sunshine had slept all
day and the air was still soft and warm. On
and on, as easily as rain dropping from the sky,
or wind rushing earthwards from between the clouds. Everything flew

(03:04:09):
past him at an astonishing rate, everything but the bright
stars that gazed calmly down overhead. And when he looked
up and saw their steadfastness, it helped him keep within
the bounds the fine alarm of this first excursion to
the great vault of the sky. Gently, child gasped, miss

(03:04:31):
lake behind him. We shall never keep it up.

Speaker 2 (03:04:34):
At this rate.

Speaker 1 (03:04:36):
Oh but it's so wonderful, he cried, drawing in the
air loudly between his teeth and shaking his wings rapidly
like a hawk before its drops. The pace slackened a little,
and the girl drew up alongside. For some time they
flew forward together in silence. They had been skirting the

(03:04:58):
edge of a wood. Then sudden only the trees fell away,
and Jimbo gave a scream and rose fifty feet into
the air with a single bound. Straight in front of
him loomed an immense, glaring disk that seemed to swim
suddenly up into the sky above the trees. It hung

(03:05:20):
there before his eyes and dazzled him.

Speaker 2 (03:05:24):
It's only the.

Speaker 1 (03:05:25):
Moon, cried miss Lake from below. Jimbo dropped through the
air to her side again with a gasp. I thought
it was a big hole in the sky with fire
rushing through, he exclaimed breathlessly. The boy stared, full of
wonder and delight at the huge flaming circle that seemed

(03:05:48):
to fill half the heavens in front of him. Look Out,
cried the governess, seizing his hand.

Speaker 2 (03:05:56):
Wish woo, whew.

Speaker 1 (03:05:58):
A large bird whipped past them, like some winged imp
of darkness, vanishing among the trees far below. There would
certainly have been a collision, but for the girl's energetic interference.
You must be on the lookout for these night birds,
she said. They fly so unexpectedly, and of course they

(03:06:20):
don't see us properly. Telegraph wires and church steeples are
bad too, But then we sha'n't fly over cities much.
Keep a good height, it's safer. They altered their course
a little, flying at a different angle, so that the
moon no longer dazzled them. Steering came quite easily by

(03:06:43):
turning the body, and Jimbo still led the way, the
governess following heavily and with a mighty business of wings
and flapping. It was something to remember the glory of
that first journey through the air, sixty miles an hour
and scarcely an effort, skimming the long ridges of the

(03:07:05):
hills and rushing through the pure air of mountaintops, threading
the starbeams, bathing themselves from head to foot in an
ocean of cool, clean wind, swimming on the waves of
viewless currents, currents warmed only by the magic of the
stars and kissed by the burning lips of flying meteors

(03:07:28):
far below them. The moonlight touched the fields with silver,
and the murmur of the world rose faintly to their ears, trembling,
as it were, with the inarticulate dreams of millions everywhere
about them thrilled and sang the unspeakable power of the night.

(03:07:49):
The mystery of its great heart seemed laid bare before them.
It was like a wonder journey in some Eastern fairy tale.
Sometimes they passed through zones of sweeter air, perfumed with
the scents of hay and wild flowers. At others the fresh,
damp odor of plowed fields rose up to them. Or

(03:08:12):
again they went spinning over leagues of forest, where the
tree tops stretched beneath them, like the surface of a
wide green sea, sleeping in the moonlight. And when they
crossed open water, the stars shone reflected in their faces,
and all the while the wings, whirring and purring softly

(03:08:33):
through the darkness, made pleasant music in their ears. I'm tired,
declared Jimbo. Presently, then we'll go down and rest, said
his breathless companion, with obvious relief. She showed him how
to spread his wings, sloping them towards the ground at

(03:08:54):
an angle that enabled him to shoot rapidly downwards, at
the same time regulating his speed by the least upward tilt.
It was a glorious motion without effort or difficulty, though
the pace made it hard to keep the eyes open,
and breathing became almost impossible. They dropped to within ten

(03:09:16):
feet of the ground and then shot forward again. But
while the boy was watching his companion's movements and paying
too little attention to his own, there rose suddenly before
him out of the ground, a huge, bulky form of something,
and crash, he flew headlong into it. Fortunately it was

(03:09:40):
only a haystack, but the speed at which he was
going lodged his head several inches under the thatch, whence
he projected horizontally into space, feet arms and wings gyrating furiously.
The governess, however, soon released him with much laughter, and
they dropped down into the fall hay upon the ground

(03:10:01):
with no worse result than a shaking. Oh what a lark,
he cried, shaking the hay out of his feathers and
rubbing his.

Speaker 2 (03:10:11):
Head rather ruefully.

Speaker 1 (03:10:13):
Except that larks are hardly night birds, she laughed, helping him.
They settled with folded wings in the shadow of the haystack,
and the big moon peeping over the edge at them,
must have surely wondered to see such a funny couple
in such a place, and at such an hour. Mushrooms

(03:10:35):
suddenly cried the Governess, springing to her feet. There must
be lots in this field. I'll go down and pick
some while you rest a bit off. She went drapsing
over the field in the moonlight, her wings folded behind her,
her body bent a little forward as she searched, and
in ten minutes she came back with her hands full.

(03:10:58):
That was undoubtedly the to enjoy mushrooms at their best,
with the dew still on their tight little jackets and
the sweet odor of the earth caught under their umbrellas.
Soon they were all eaten, and Jimbo was lying back
in a pile of hay, his shoulders against the walls
of the stack, and his wings gathered around him like

(03:11:21):
a warm cloak of feathers. He felt cozy and dozy,
full of mushrooms inside and covered with hay and feathers outside.
The Governess had once told him that a sort of
open air sleep sometimes came after a long flight. It was,

(03:11:41):
of course, not a real sleep, but a state in
which everything about oneself is forgotten, no dreams, no movement,
no falling asleep and waking up in the ordinary sense,
but a condition of deep repose, in which recuperation is
very great. Jimbo would have been greatly interested, no doubt,

(03:12:04):
to know that his real body on the bed had
also just been receiving nourishment and was now passing into
a quieter and less feverish condition. The parallel always held
true between himself and his body in the nursery. But
he could not know anything about this, and only supposed

(03:12:27):
that it was this open, ere sleep that he felt
so gently stealing over him. It brought at first strange
thoughts that carried him far away to other woods and
other fields. While Miss Lake sat beside him eating her mushrooms,
his mind was drawn after some other little folk. It

(03:12:50):
was always stopped just short of them. He never could
quite see their faces, yet his thoughts continued their search,
groping in the darkness. He felt sure he ought to
be sharing his adventures with these other little persons, whoever
they were. They ought to have been sitting beside him

(03:13:11):
at that very moment, eating mushrooms, combing their wings, comparing
the length of their feathers, and snuggling with him into
the warm hay. But they obstinately hovered just outside his
memory and refused to come in and surrender themselves. He
could not remember who they were, and his yearnings went

(03:13:33):
unsatisfied up to the stars, as yearnings generally do, while
his thoughts returned weary from their search, and he yielded
to the seductions of the soothing open air sleep. The
moon meanwhile rose higher and higher, drawing a silver veil
over the clouds upon the field. The dews of midnight

(03:13:56):
fell silently. A faint mist rose from the ground and
covered the flowers in their dim seclusion under the hedgerows.
The hours slipped away silently. Come on, Jimbo Boy, cried
the governess at length. The moon's below the hills, and
we must be off. The boy turned and stared sleepily

(03:14:20):
at her from his nest in the hay. We've got
miles to go. Remember the speed we came at, she explained,
getting up and arranging her wings. Jimbo got up slowly
and shook himself. I've been miles away, he said, dreamily,
miles and miles, but I'm ready to start at once.

(03:14:44):
They looked about for a raised place to jump from.
A ladder stood against the other side of the haystack.
The Governess climbed up it, and Jimbo followed her drowsily.

Speaker 2 (03:14:58):
Hand in hand.

Speaker 1 (03:14:59):
They sprang into the air from the edge of the
thatched roof, and their wings spread out like sails to
catch the wind. It smote their faces pleasantly as they
plunged downwards and forwards, and the exhilarating rush of cool
air vanished from the boy's head, the last vestige of
the open air sleep. We must keep up a good pace,

(03:15:23):
cried the governess, taking a stream and the hedge beyond
in a single sweep. There's a light in the east. Already,
as she spoke, a dog howled in the farm yard
beneath them, and she shot upwards, as though lifted by
a sudden gust of wind.

Speaker 2 (03:15:41):
We're too low, she.

Speaker 1 (03:15:42):
Shouted from above. That dog felt us near. Come up higher.
It's easier flying, and we've got a long way to go.
Jimbo followed her up till they were several hundred feet
above the earth, and the keen air stung their cheeks.
Then she led him still higher, till the meadows looked

(03:16:03):
like the squares on a chessboard, and the trees were
like little toy shrubs. Here they rushed along at a
tremendous speed, too fast to speak, their wings churning the
air into little whirlwinds and eddies as they passed, whizzing, whistling,
tearing through space. The fields, however, were still dim in

(03:16:28):
the shadows that preceded the dawn, and the stars only
just beginning to fade when they saw the dark outline
of the empty house below them, and began carefully to descend.
Soon they topped at the high elm, startling the rooks
into noisy cooring, and then, skimming the wall, sailed stealthily

(03:16:52):
on outspread wings across the yard. Cautiously dropping down to
the level of the window. They crawled over the sill
into the dark little room.

Speaker 2 (03:17:03):
And folded their wings.

Speaker 1 (03:17:08):
End of chapter eleven, Chapter twelve, The Four Winds, The
Governess left the boy to his own reflections.

Speaker 2 (03:17:21):
Almost immediately.

Speaker 1 (03:17:23):
He spent the hours thinking and resting, going over again
in his mind every incident of the great flight, and
wondering when the real final escape would come and what
it would be like. Thus, between the two states of excitement,
he forgot for a while that he was still a prisoner,

(03:17:44):
and the spell of horror was temporarily lifted from his heart.
The day passed quickly, and when miss Lake appeared in
the evening, she announced that there could be no flying
again that night, and that she wished instead to give
him I important instruction for the future. There were rules
and signs and times which he must learn carefully. The

(03:18:09):
time might come when he would have to fly alone,
and he must be prepared for everything. The first thing
I have to tell you, she said, exactly as though
it was a schoolroom, is never fly over the sea.
Our kind of wings quickly absorb the finer particles of

(03:18:29):
water and get clogged and heavy. Over the sea, you
finally cannot resist the drawing power of the water, and
you will be dragged down and drowned. So be very
careful when you are flying high. It is often difficult
to know where the land ends and the sea begins,

(03:18:49):
especially on moonless nights. But you can always be certain
of one thing. If there are no sounds below you, horses, hoofs, voice, wheels,
you are certainly over the sea, yes, said the child,
listening with great attention.

Speaker 2 (03:19:08):
And what else?

Speaker 1 (03:19:10):
The next thing is don't fly too high. Though we
fly like birds, remember we are not birds, and we
can fly where they can't. We can fly in the ether.

Speaker 2 (03:19:25):
Where's that?

Speaker 1 (03:19:26):
He interrupted, half afraid of the sound. She stooped and
kissed him, laughing at his fear. There's nothing to be
frightened about, she explained. The air gets lighter and lighter
as you go higher, till at last it stops altogether.
Then there's only ether left. Birds can't fly in ether

(03:19:51):
because it's too thin. We can because is that why
it was good for me to get lighter and thinner?
He interrupts, did again, in a puzzled voice, partly yes,
And what happens in the ether?

Speaker 2 (03:20:07):
Please?

Speaker 1 (03:20:09):
It still frightened him a little, nothing except that if
you were to fly too high, you reach a point
where the earth ceases to hold you, and you dash
off into space. Weight leaves you then, and the wings
move without effort, faster and faster you rush upwards till

(03:20:31):
you lose all control of your movements. And then Miss
Lake hesitated a moment, and then asked the fascinated child.
You may never come down.

Speaker 2 (03:20:44):
Again, she said, slowly.

Speaker 1 (03:20:47):
You may be sucked into anything that happens to come
your way, a comet or a shooting star, or the moon,
I should like a shooting star, best observed the boy interested.
The moon frightens me. I think it looks so dreadfully clean.
You wouldn't like any of them. When the time comes,

(03:21:10):
she laughed, no one ever gets out again who once
gets in. But you'll never be caught that way after
what I've told you, she added with decision, I shall
never want to fly as high as that, I'm sure,
said Jimbo. And now, please, what comes next. The next

(03:21:31):
thing she went on to explain was the weather, which
to all flying creatures was of the utmost importance. Before
starting for a flight, he must always carefully consider the
state of the sky and the direction in which he
wished to go. For this purpose, he must master the
meaning and character of the four winds, and be able

(03:21:53):
to recognize them in a moment. Once you know these,
she said, you cannot possibly go wrong. To make it easier,
I've put each wind into a little simple rhyme for you.
I'm listening, he said eagerly. The north wind is one
of the worst and most dangerous, because it blows so

(03:22:15):
much faster than you think. It's taken you ten miles
before you think you've gone too in Starting with the
north wind, always fly against it. Then it will bring
you home easily. If you fly with it, you may
be swept so far that the day will catch you
before you can get home, and then you're as good

(03:22:37):
as lost. Even birds fly warily when this wind is about.
It has no lulls or resting places in it. It
blows steadily on and on and conquers everything. It comes
against everything except the mountains. And it's rhyme, asked Jimbo.

(03:22:59):
All ears. It will show you the joy of the birds,
my child. You shall know their terrible bliss. It will
teach you to hide when the night is wild from
the storm's too passionate kiss. For the wind of the
north is a volleying forth that will lift you with

(03:23:19):
springs in the heart of your wings, and may sweep
your way to the edge of the day. So beware
the wind of the north, my child. Fly not with
the wind of the North. I think I like him
all the same, said Jimbo, But I'll remember always to

(03:23:39):
fly against him. The east wind is worse still, for
it hurts, continued the governess. It stings and cuts. It's
like the breath of an ice creature. It brings hail
and sleet and cold rain that beat down wings and
blind the eyes. Like the north wind too, it is

(03:24:02):
dreadfully swift and full of little whirlwinds, and may easily
carry you into the night of the day that would
prove your destruction. Avoid it always. No hiding place is
safe from it.

Speaker 2 (03:24:16):
This is the rhyme.

Speaker 1 (03:24:18):
It will teach you the secrets the eagles know of
the tempests and whirlwind's birth, and the magical weaving of
rain and snow as they fall from the sky to
the earth. But an easterly wind is forever unkind. It
will torture and twist you, and never assist you, but

(03:24:41):
will drive you with might to the verge of the night.
So beware the wind of the east. My child flies
not with the wind of the east. The west wind
is really a very nice and jolly wind in itself,
she went on, But it's dangerous for a spe reason.

(03:25:01):
It will carry you out to sea. The empty house
is only a few miles from the coast, and a
strong west wind would take you there almost before you
had time to get down to earth again. And there's
no use struggling against a really steady west wind for
it's simply tireless. Luckily, it rarely blows at night and

(03:25:25):
goes down with the sun. Often, too, it blows hard
to the coast and then drop suddenly, leaving you among
the fogs in the mists of the sea. Rather a nice,
exciting sort of wind, remarked Jimbo, waiting for the rhyme.
So at last you shall know from their lightest breath

(03:25:47):
to which heaven each wind belongs, and shall master their
meaning for life or death by the shout of their
splendid songs. For the wind of the West is a
wind done blessed. It is lifted and kissed by the
spirits of mist. It will clasp you and flee to

(03:26:07):
the wastes of the sea. So beware the wind of
the west. My child flies not with the wind of
the west. A jolly wind, observed Jimbo.

Speaker 2 (03:26:20):
Again.

Speaker 1 (03:26:21):
But that doesn't lead much over to fly with, he added, Sadly,
they all seem dangerous or cruel, yes, she laughed, And
so they are till you can master them.

Speaker 2 (03:26:34):
Then they're kind. The only one.

Speaker 1 (03:26:38):
That's really always safe and kind is the wind of
the South. It's a sweet, gentle wind, beloved of all
that flies and you can't possibly mistake it. You can
tell it at once by the murmuring way it stirs
the grasses and the tops of the trees. Its taste
is soft and sweet in the mouth, like wine, and

(03:27:01):
there's always a faint perfume about it, like gardens in summer.
It is the joy of this wind that makes all
flying things sing. With a south wind, you can go
anywhere and no harm can come to you. Dear old
south wind, cried Jimbo, rubbing his hands with delight. I

(03:27:23):
hope it will blow soon. Its rime is very easy too,
though you will always be able to tell it without that,
she added, For this is the favorite wind of all,
beloved of stars and night. In the rustle of leaves,
you shall hear it call to the passionate joys of flight.

(03:27:45):
It will carry you forth in its wonderful hair to
the far away courts of the sky. And the breath
of its lips is a murmuring prayer for the safety
of all who fly. For the wind of the South
is like wine in the mouth, with its whispering showers

(03:28:05):
and perfume of flowers. When it falls, like a sky
from the heart of the sky, Oh, interrupted Jimbo, rubbing
his hands. That is nice.

Speaker 2 (03:28:18):
That's my wind.

Speaker 1 (03:28:20):
It will bear you aloft with pressure so soft that
you hardly shall guess who's the gentle caress. Hooray, he
cried again. It's the kindest of weathers for our red feathers,
and blows open the way to the gardens of play.

(03:28:40):
So fly out with the wind of the south, my child,
with the wonderful wind of the south. Oh, I love
the south wind already, he shouted, clapping his hands again.
I hope it will blow very very soon. It may
be rising even now, answered the governess, leading him to

(03:29:01):
the window. But as they gazed at the summer landscape
lying in the dying light of the sunset, all was
still and resting. The air was hushed, the leaves motionless.
There was no call just then to flight from among
the tree tops, and he went back into the room disappointed.

(03:29:23):
But why can't we escape at once? He asked again,
after he had given his promise to remember all she
had told him, and to be extra careful if he
ever went out flying alone. Jimbo, dear, I've told you before.
It's because your body isn't ready for you yet, she answered, patiently.

Speaker 2 (03:29:45):
There's hardly any.

Speaker 1 (03:29:46):
Circulation in it, and if you forced your way back now,
the shock might stop your heart beating altogether. Then you'd
be really dead, and escape would be impossible. The boy
sat on the edge of the bed, staring intently at
her while she spoke. Something clutched at his heart. He

(03:30:07):
felt his older self, with its greater knowledge, rising up
out of the depths within him. The child struggled with
the old soul for possession. Have you got any circulation,
he asked abruptly at length, I mean, has your heart
stopped beating? But the smile called up by his words

(03:30:32):
froze on her lips. She crossed to the window and
stood with her back to the fading light, avoiding his eyes.
My case, Jimbo, is a little different to yours, she said. Presently,
the important thing is to make certain about your escape.
Never mind about me. But escape without you is nothing,

(03:30:56):
he said, the older self, now wholly in possession, I
simply wouldn't go. I'd rather stay here with you. The
governess made no reply, but she turned her back to
the room and leaned out of the window. Jimbo fancied
he heard a sob. He felt a great, big heart

(03:31:18):
swelling up within his little body, and he crushed over
beside her. For some minutes, they stood there in silence,
watching the stars that were already shining faintly in the sky.
Whatever happens, he said, nestling against her, I sha'n't go
from here without you. Remember that, he was going to

(03:31:42):
say a lot more, But somehow or other, when she
stooped over to kiss his head, he hardly came up
to her shoulder. It all ran suddenly out of his mind,
and the little child dropped back into possession again. The
tide of his thoughts that seemed about to rise fast
and furious, sunk away completely, leaving his mind a clean,

(03:32:06):
washed slate, without a single image, and presently without any
more words. The governess left him and went through the
trap door into the silence and mystery of the house below.
Several hours later, about the middle of the night, there
came over him a most disagreeable sensation of nausea and dizziness.

(03:32:31):
The ground rose and fell beneath his feet, the walls
swam about sideways, and the ceiling slid off into the air.
It only lasted a few minutes, however, and Jimbo knew
from what she had told him that it was the
flying sickness which always followed the first long flight. But

(03:32:52):
about the same time, another little body lying in a
night nursery bed was being convulsed with a similar attack,
and the sickness of the little prisoner in the empty
house had its parallel, strangely enough, in the half tenanted
body miles away in a different world. End of chapter twelve,

(03:33:21):
Chapter thirteen flight. Since the night when Jimbo had nearly
fallen into the yard and risked capture fright, the horrible
owner of the house had kept himself well out of
the way and had allowed himself to be neither seen
nor heard. But the boy was not foolish enough to

(03:33:44):
fall into the other trap. And imagine therefore that he
did not know what was going on. Jimbo felt quite
sure that he was only waiting his chance, and the
governess's avoidance of the subject tended to confirm this opposition.
He's disappeared somewhere and taken the children with him, she declared,

(03:34:07):
when he questioned her, And now you know almost as
much as I do, but not quite. He laughed enough,
though she replied, we want all our energy for escape
when it comes. Don't bother about anything else for the moment.
During the day, when he was alone, his thoughts and

(03:34:30):
fancies often terrified him. But at night, when he was
rushing through the heavens, the intense delight of flying drove
all minor emotions out of his consciousness, and he even
forgot his one great desire to escape. One night, however,
something happened that brought it back more keenly than ever.

(03:34:55):
He had been flying alone, but had not gone far
when he noticed that an evi a stilly wind had
begun to rise and was blowing steadily behind him. With
his recent instructions fresh in his head, he thought it
wiser to turn homewards rather than fight his way back.
Later against a really strong wind from this quarter. Flying

(03:35:19):
low along the surface of the fields so as to
avoid its full force, he suddenly rose up with a
good sweep and settled on the top of the wall,
enclosing the yard. The moonlight lay bright over everything. His
approach had been very quiet. He was just about to
sail across to the window when something caught his eye,

(03:35:43):
and he hesitated a moment and stared. Something was moving
at the end of the courtyard. It seemed to him
that the moonlight suddenly grew pale and ghastly. The night
air turned chilly. Shivers beauregan to run up and down
his back. He folded his wings and watched. At the

(03:36:08):
end of the yard, he saw several figures moving busily
to and fro in the shadow of the wall. They
were very small, but close beside them all the time
stood a much larger figure which seemed to be directing
their movements. There was no need to look twice. It
was impossible to mistake these terrible little people and their

(03:36:32):
hideous overseer. Horror rushed over the boy, and our wild
scream was out in the night before he could possibly
prevent it. At the same moment, a cloud passed over
the face of the moon, and the yard was shrouded
in darkness. A minute later the cloud passed off, but

(03:36:54):
while it was still too dark to see clearly, Jimbo
was conscious of a rushing, whispering sound in the air,
and something went past him at a tremendous pace into
the sky. The wind stirred his hair as it passed,
and a moment later he heard voices far away in
the distance, up in the sky or within the house,

(03:37:17):
he could not tell, singing mournfully the song he now
knew so well.

Speaker 2 (03:37:26):
We danced with.

Speaker 1 (03:37:27):
Phantoms and with shadows play. And when he looked down
at the yard, he saw that it was deserted, and
the corner by the little upright stones lay in the
clear moonlight, empty of figures large or small. Shivering with fright,
he flew across to the window ledge and almost tumbled

(03:37:50):
into the arms of the governess, who was standing close inside.
What's the matter, child, she asked, in a voice that
trembled a little, and still shuddering, he told her how
he thought he had seen the children working by the gravestones.
All her efforts to calm him at first failed, but

(03:38:12):
after a bit she drew his thoughts to pleasanter things,
and he was not so certain after all that he
had not been deceived by the cunning of the moonlight
and the shadows. A long interval passed, and no further
sign was given by the owner of the house or
his band of frightened children. Jimbo soon lost himself again

(03:38:36):
in the delights of flying and the joy of his
increasing powers. Most of all, he enjoyed the quiet starlit
nights before the moon was up, for the moon dazzled
the eyes in the rarefied air where they flew, whereas
the stars gave just enough light to steer by without

(03:38:57):
making it uncomfortable. Moreover, the moon often filled him with
a kind of faint terror, as of death. He could
never gaze at her white face for long without feeling
that something entered his heart with those silver rays, something
that bode him no good. He never spoke of this

(03:39:19):
to the governess. Indeed, he only recognized it himself when
the moon was near the fall. But it lay always
in the depths of his being, and he felt dimly
that it would have to be reckoned with before he
could really escape for good. He took no liberties when
the moon was at the full. He loved to hover,

(03:39:42):
for he had learned by this time that most difficult
of all flying feats to hold the body vertical and
whir the wings without rising or advancing. He loved to
hover on windless nights over ponds and rivers and see
the star reflected in their steel pools. Indeed, sometimes he

(03:40:04):
hovered till he dropped, and only saved himself from a
wetting by sweeping up in a tremendous curve along the
surface of the water, and thus up into the branches
of the trees where the governess sat waiting for him.
And then, after a little rest, they would launch forth
again and fly over fields and woods, sometimes even as

(03:40:27):
far as the hills that ran down the coast of
the sea itself. They usually flew at a height of
about a thousand feet, and the earth passed beneath them
like a great streaked shadow. But as soon as the
moon was up, the whole country turned into a fairy
land of wonder. Her light touched the woods with a

(03:40:50):
softened magic, and the fields and hedges became frosted most
delicately beneath a thin transparency of mist. The water shone
with a silvery brilliance that aws enabled them to distinguish
it from the land at any height, while the farms
and country houses were swathed in tender gray shadows, through

(03:41:11):
which the trees and chimneys pierced in slender lines of black.
It was wonderful to watch the shadows everywhere, spinning their
blue veil of distance that lent even to the commonest
objects something of enchantment and mystery. Those were wonderful journeys

(03:41:32):
they made together into the pathways of the silent night,
along the unknown courses, into that hushed center, where they
could almost hear the beatings of her great heart, like
winged thoughts searching the huge vault, till the boy ached
with the sensations of speed and distance, and the old

(03:41:54):
yellow moon seemed to stagger across the sky. Sometimes they
were rose very high into the freezing air, so high
that the earth became a dull shadow speckled with light.

Speaker 2 (03:42:08):
They saw the.

Speaker 1 (03:42:08):
Trains running in all directions, with thin threads of smoke
shining in the glare of the open fire boxes. But
they seemed of very tiny trains, indeed, and stirred in
him no recollections of the semi annual visits to London Town,
when he went to the dentist and lunched with the
dreaded grandmother, or the stiff and fashionable ants. And when

(03:42:33):
they came down again from these perilous heights, the scents
of the earth rose to meet them, the perfume of
woods and fields, and the smells of the open country.
There was to the delight, the curious delight of windy nights,
when the wind smote and buffeted them, knocking them suddenly sideways,

(03:42:55):
whistling through their feathers as if it wanted to tear
them from their sockets, rushing furiously up underneath their wings,
with repeated blows, turning them round and backwards and forwards,
washing them from head to foot in a tempestuous sea
of rapid and unexpected motion. It was, of course, far

(03:43:17):
easier to fly with the wind than without one. The
difficulty with a violent wind was to get down, not
to keep up. The gusts strove against the under surfaces
of their wings, and kept them afloat, so that by
merely spreading them like sails, they could sweep and circle
without a single stroke. Jimbo soon learned to maneuver so

(03:43:42):
that he could turn the strength of a great wind
to his own purposes and revel in its boisterous waves
and currents like a strong swimmer in a rough sea.
And to listen to the wind as it swept backwards
and forwards over the surface of the earth below was
another pleasure, for everything it touched gave out a definite note.

(03:44:05):
He soon got to know the long, sad cry from
the willows, and the little whispering in the tops of
the poplar trees, the crisp, silvery rattle of the birches,
and the deep roar from the oaks and beech woods.
The sound of a forest was like the shouting of
the sea, but far more lovely. When they descended a

(03:44:28):
little and the wind was more gentle, were the whispers
among the reeds and the little wayward murmurs under the
hedge rose. The pine trees, however, drew the most, with
their weird voices, now far away, now near, rising upwards

(03:44:48):
with a wind of sighs. There was a grove of
these trees that trooped down to the waters of a
little lake in the hills, And to this spot they
often flew when the wind was low and the music
likely therefore to be to their taste. And even when
there was no perceptible wind, these trees seemed always full

(03:45:11):
of mysterious, mournful whisperings, for their branches held soft music
that never quite died away, even when all other trees
were silent and motionless. Besides these special expeditions, they flew
everywhere and anywhere. They visited the birds in their nests

(03:45:33):
in lofty trees, and exchanged the time of night with
wise eyed owls staring out upon them from the ivy.
They hovered up the face of great cliffs and passed
the hawks asleep on perilous ledges, skimmed over lonely marshes,
frightening the water birds. Paddling in and out among the trees,

(03:45:56):
they followed the windings of streams singing among the meadow,
and flew along the wet sands as they watched the
moon rise out of the sea. These flights were unadulterated pleasure,
and Jimbo thought he could never have enough of them.
He soon began to notice, too, that the trees emanated

(03:46:19):
something that affected his own condition. When he sat in
their branches, this was very noticeable. Currents of force passed
from them into himself, and even when he flew over
their crests, he was aware that some words exhaled vigorous,
life giving forces, while others tired and depleted him. Nothing

(03:46:45):
was actually visible, but fine waves seemed to beat up
against his eyes and thoughts, making him stronger or weaker,
happy or melancholy, full of hope and courage, or listless
and indifferent. These emanations of the trees this giving forth

(03:47:05):
of their own personal forces were, of course, very varied
in strength and character. Oaks and pines were the best
combination he found before the stress of a long flight,
the former giving him steadiness, and the latter steely endurance
and the power to steer insinuous, swift curves without taking

(03:47:29):
thought or trouble. Other trees gave other powers, all gave something.
It was impossible to sit among their branches without absorbing
some of the subtle and exhilarating tree life. He soon
learned how to gather it all into himself and turn
it to account in his own being. Sit quietly, the

(03:47:54):
governess said, let the forces creep in and stir about.
Do nothing yourself. Give them time to become part of yourself,
and mix properly with your own currents. Effort on your
part prevents this, and you weaken them without gaining anything yourself.

(03:48:17):
Jimbo made all sorts of experiments with trees and rocks,
and water and fields, learning gradually the different qualities of
force they gave forth and how to use them for himself.
Nothing he found was really dead, and sometimes he got

(03:48:37):
himself into strange difficulties. In the beginning of his attempts
to master and absorb these nature forces. Remember, the Governess
warned him more than once when he was inclined to
play tricks. They are in quite a different world to ours.
You cannot take liberties with them. Even a sympathetic soul

(03:49:00):
like yourself only touches the fringe of their world. You
exchange surface messages with them, nothing more. Some trees have
terrible forces just below the surface. They could extinguish you altogether,
absorb you into themselves. Others are naturally hostile. Some are

(03:49:23):
mere tricksters. Others are shifty and treacherous, like the hollies
that move about too much. The oak and the pine
and the elm are friendly, and you can always trust
them absolutely, But there are others. She held up a
warning finger, and Jimbo's eyes nearly dropped out of his head. No,

(03:49:46):
she added, in reply to his questions, you can't learn
all this at once. Perhaps, she hesitated a little. Perhaps
if you don't escape, we should have time for all
manner of adventures among the trees and other things. But
then we are going to escape, so there's no good

(03:50:08):
wasting time over that. End of chapter thirteen. Chapter fourteen
an adventure, But Miss Lake did not always accompany him
on these excursions into the night. Sometimes he took long

(03:50:29):
flights by himself, and she rather encouraged him in this,
saying it would give him confidence in case he ever
lost her and was obliged to find his way about alone.
But I couldn't get really lost, he said once to her.
I know the winds perfectly now, and the country round

(03:50:49):
for miles, and I never go out in fog. But
these are only practice flights, she replied. The flight of
escape is a very different matter. I want you to
learn all you possibly can so as to be prepared
for anything. Jimbo felt vaguely uncomfortable when she talked like this.

(03:51:14):
But you'll be with me in the escape flight, the
final one of all, he said, And nothing ever goes
wrong when you're with me. I should like to be
always with you, she answered tenderly. But it's well to
be prepared for anything. Just the same, and more than this,

(03:51:34):
the boy could never get out of her. On one
of these lonely flights, however, he made the unpleasant discovery
that he was being followed. At first, he only imagined
there was somebody after him because of the curious vibrations
of the very rarefied air in which he flew. Every

(03:51:57):
time his flight slackened and the noise of his own
wings grew less, there reached him from some other corner
of the sky, a sound like the vibrations of large
wings beating the air. It seemed behind and generally below him,
but the swishing of his own feathers made it difficult

(03:52:18):
to hear with distinctness, or to be certain of the direction.
Evidently it was a long way off. But now and again,
when he took a spurt and then sailed silently for
several minutes on outstretched wings, the beating of distant following
feathers seemed unmistakably clear, and he raced on again at

(03:52:40):
full speed, more than terrified. At other times, however, when
he tried to listen, there was no trace of this
other flier, And then his fear would disappear, and he
would persuade himself that it had been imagination. So much
on these flights he knew to be imagination. The sentences, voices,

(03:53:03):
and laughter, for instance, that filled the air and sounded
so real, yet were actually caused by the wind rushing
past his ears. The rhythm of the wingbeats, and the
tips of the feathers occasionally rubbing against the sides of
his body. But at last one night the suspicion that
he was followed became a certainty. He was flying far

(03:53:27):
up in the sky, passing over some big city, when
the sound rose to his ears, and he paused, sailing
on stretched wings to listen. Looking down into the immense
space below, he saw plainly outlined against the luminous patch
above the city, the form of a large flying creature

(03:53:51):
moving by with rapid strokes. The pulsations of its great
wings made the air tremble, so that he both heard
hered and felt to them.

Speaker 2 (03:54:02):
It may have.

Speaker 1 (03:54:03):
Been that the vapors of the city distorted the thing,
just as the Earth's atmosphere magnifies the rising or setting
of the moon, but even so it was easy to
see that it was something a good deal larger than himself,
and with a much more powerful flight. Fortunately, it did

(03:54:24):
not seem this time to be actually on his trail,
for it swept by at a great pace and was
soon lost in the darkness far ahead. Perhaps it was
only searching for him, and his great height had proved
his safety, but in any case he was exceedingly terrified,

(03:54:45):
and at once turned round, pointed his head for the earth,
and shot downwards in the direction of the empty house
as fast as ever he could. But when he spoke
to the Governess, she made light of it and told
him there was nothing to be afraid of. It might
have been a flock of hurrying night birds, she said,

(03:55:06):
or an owl distorted by the city's light, or even
his own reflection magnified in water. Anyhow, she felt sure
it was not chasing him, and he need pay no
attention to it. Jimbo felt reassured, but not quite satisfied.
He knew a flying monster when he saw one, and

(03:55:29):
it was only when he had been for many more
flights alone without its reappearance, that his confidence was fully restored,
and he began to forget about it. Certainly, these lonely
flights were very much to his taste. His older self,
with its dim hauntings of a great memory somewhere behind him,

(03:55:51):
took possession then, and he was able to commune with
nature in a way that the presence of the Governess
made impossible. With his older self rarely showed itself above
the surface for long, he was always the child but
when alone nature became alive, he drew force from the

(03:56:13):
trees and flowers, and felt that they all shared a
common life together. Had he been imprisoned by some wizard
of old in a tree form, knowing of the sunset
and the dawn only by the sweet messages that rustled
in his branches, the wind could hardly have spoken to
him with a more intimate meaning, or the life of

(03:56:35):
the fields eternally patient have touched him more nearly with
their joys and sorrows. It seemed almost as if from
his leafy cell he had gazed before this into the
shining pools with which the summer rains jeweled the meadows,
sending his soul in a stream of unsatisfied yearning up

(03:56:57):
to the stars. It all came back dimly when he
heard the wind among the leaves, and carried him off
to the woods and fields of an existence far antedating
this one, And on gentle nights, when the wind itself
was half asleep and dreaming, the pine trees drew him

(03:57:18):
most of all, for theirs was the song he loved
above all others. He would fly round and round their
little grove by the mountain lake, listening for hours together
to their sighing voices. But the Governess was never told
of this, whatever she may have guessed, for it seemed

(03:57:38):
to him a joy too deep for words, the pines
and sweetness being mingled, too mysteriously for him ever to
express in awkward sentences. Moreover, it all passed away and
was forgotten the moment the child took possession and usurped.

Speaker 2 (03:57:57):
The older memory.

Speaker 1 (03:58:00):
One night, when the moon was high and the air
was cool and fragrant after the heat of the day,
Jimbo felt a strong desire to get off by himself
for a long flight. He was full of energy, and
the space craving cried to be satisfied. For several days
he had been content with slow, stupid expeditions with the Governess.

(03:58:25):
I'm off alone to night, he cried, balancing on the
window ledge, But I'll be back before dawn.

Speaker 2 (03:58:32):
Good Bye.

Speaker 1 (03:58:33):
She kissed him as she always did now, and with
her good bye ringing in his ears, he dropped from
the window and rose rapidly over the elms and away
from Earth. This night, for some reason, the stars and
the moon seemed to draw him, and with tireless wings,
he mounted up up up to a height he had

(03:58:57):
never reached before. The intoxication of the strong night air
rose into his brain, and he dashed forward ever faster
with a mad delight, into the endless space before him.
Mile upon mile lay behind him as he rushed onwards,
always pointing a little on the upward slope, drunk with speed.

(03:59:22):
The Earth faded away to a dark expanse of shadow
beneath him, and he no longer was conscious of the
deep murmur that usually flowed steadily upward from its surface.
He had often before risen out of reach of the
earth noises, but never so far that this dull, reverberating sound,

(03:59:43):
combined of all the voices of the world merged together,
failed to make itself heard. To night, however, he heard nothing.
The stars above his head changed from yellow to diamond white,
and the cold air stung his cheeks and brought the
water to his eyes. But at length, the Governess's warning

(04:00:06):
as he explored these forbidden regions came back to him,
and in a series of gigantic bounds that took his
breath away completely, he dropped nearer to the earth again
and kept on at a much lower level. The hours passed,
and the position of the moon began to alter noticeably.

(04:00:28):
Some of the constellations that were overheard when he started
were now dipping below the horizon. Never before had he
ventured so far from home, and he began to realize
that he had been flying much longer than he knew
or intended. The speed had been terrific. The change came
imperceptibly with the discovery that his wings were not moving

(04:00:52):
quite so easily as before. He became suddenly aware that
this had really been the case for some little time.
He was flying with greater effort, and for a long
time this effort had been increasing gradually before he actually
recognized the fact. Although no longer pointing towards the Earth,

(04:01:13):
he seemed to be sinking. It became increasingly difficult to
fly upwards. His wings did not seem to fail or weaken,
nor was he conscious of feeling tired, but something was
ever persuading him to fly lower, almost as if a
million tiny threads were coaxing him downwards, drawing him gradually

(04:01:36):
nearer the world again, whatever it was, The Earth had
come much closer to him in the last hour, and
its familiar voices were pleasant to hear. After the boundless
heights he had just left. But for some reason his
speed grew insensibly less and less. His wings moved apparently

(04:01:58):
as fast as before, but it was harder to keep up.
In spite of himself, he kept sinking. The sensation was
quite new, and he could not understand it. It almost
seemed as though he were being pulled downwards. Jimbo began
to feel uneasy. He had not lost his bearings, but

(04:02:20):
he was a very long way from home and quite
beyond reach of the help he was so accustomed to.
With a great effort, he mounted several hundred feet into
the air and tried hard to stay there for a
short time. He succeeded, but he soon felt himself sinking
gradually downwards again. The force drawing him was a constant force,

(04:02:46):
without rise or fall, and with a deadly feeling of fear,
the boy began to realize that he would soon have
to yield to it altogether. His heart beat faster, and
his thoughts turned to the friend, who was then far away,
but who alone could save him. She at least could

(04:03:06):
have explained it and told him what best to do,
But the Governess was beyond his reach. This problem he
must face alone. Something, however, had to be done quickly,
and Jimbo, acting more as the man than as the boy,
turned and flew hurriedly forward in another direction. He hoped

(04:03:29):
this might somehow counteract the force that still drew him downwards,
and for a time it apparently did so, and he
flew level. But the strain increased every minute, and he
looked down with something of a shudder as he realized
that before very long he would be obliged to yield
to this deadly force and drop. It was then, for

(04:03:53):
the first time, he noticed a change had come over
the surface of the earth.

Speaker 2 (04:03:57):
Below.

Speaker 1 (04:03:58):
Instead of the patchworker of field and wood and road,
he saw a vast cloud stretching out, white and smooth
in the moonlight. The world was hidden beneath the snowy fog,
dense and impenetrable. It was no longer even possible to
tell him what direction he was flying, for there was

(04:04:19):
nothing to steer by. This was a new and unexpected complication,
and the boy could not understand how the change had
come about so quickly. For the last time he had
glanced down for indications to steer by. Everything was clear
and easily visible. It was very beautiful, this carpet of

(04:04:40):
white mist, with the silver moon shining above it. But
it thrilled him now with an unpleasant sense of dread.
And still more unpleasant was a new sound, which suddenly
broke in upon the stillness and turned his blood into ice.
He was certain that he heard wings behind him. He

(04:05:01):
was being followed, and this meant that it was impossible
to turn and fly back. There was nothing now to
do but to fly forwards and hope to distance the
huge wings. But if he was being followed by the
powerful flier he had seen a few nights before, the
boy knew that he stood a little chance of success,

(04:05:22):
and he did it because it seemed the only thing possible.
The cloud was dense and chill as he entered it.
Its moisture clung to his wings and made them heavy.
His muscle seemed to stiffen, and motion became more and
more difficult. The wings behind him meanwhile came closer. He

(04:05:44):
was flying along the surface of the mist, now, his
body and wings hidden, and his head just above the
level he could see along its white even top. If
he sank a few more inches, it would be impossible
to see it all, or even to judge where he
was going. Soon it rose level with his lips, And

(04:06:05):
at the same time he noticed a new smell in
the air, faint at first, but growing every moment stronger.
It was a fresh, sweet odor. Yet it somehow added
to his alarm and stirred in him new centers of uneasiness.
He tried vainly to increase his speed and distance the wings,

(04:06:26):
which continued to gain so steadily upon him from behind.
The cloud apparently was not everywhere of the same density,
for here and there he saw the tops of green
hills below him as he flew. But he could not
understand why each green hill seemed to have a little
lake on its summit, a little lake in which the

(04:06:48):
reflected moon stared straight up into his face. Nor could
he quite make out what the sounds were which rose
to his ears through the muffling of the cloud, sounds
of tumultuous rushing, hissing, and tumbling. There were continuous these sounds,
and once or twice he thought he heard with them

(04:07:09):
a deep, thunderous roar that almost made his heart stop
beating as he listened. Was he perhaps over a range
of high mountains, And was this the sound of the
tumbling torrents. Then suddenly it came to him with a
shock that the ordinary sounds of the earth had wholly ceased.

(04:07:31):
Jimbo felt his head beginning to whirl. He grew weaker
every minute, less able to offer resistance to the remorseless
forces that were sucking him down. Now the mist had
closed over his head, and he could no longer see
the moonlight. He turned again, shaking with terror, and drove
forward headlong through the clinging vapor. A sensation of choking

(04:07:55):
rose in his throat. He was tired out, ready to
drop with the exact taustion. The wings of the following creature
were now so close that he thought every minute he
would be seized from behind and plunged into the abyss
to his death. It was just then that he made
the awful discovery that the world below him was not stationary.

(04:08:20):
The green hills were moving. They were sweeping past with
a rushing, thundering sound in regular procession, and their huge
sides were streaked up with white.

Speaker 2 (04:08:33):
The reflection of the.

Speaker 1 (04:08:34):
Moon leaped up into his face as each hill rolled,
hissing and gurgling by, and he knew at last, with
the shock of unutterable horror that it was the sea.
He was flying over the sea, and the waters were
drawing him down. The immense green waves that rolled along

(04:08:55):
through the sea fog, carrying the Moon's face on their
crestsaming and gurgling as they went, were already leaping up
to seize him by the feet and drag him into
their depths. He dropped several feet deeper into the mist
and towards the sea, terror stricken and blinded. Then turning frantically,

(04:09:18):
not knowing what else to do, he struck out with
his last strength for the upper surface and the moonlight.
But as he did so, turning his face towards the sky,
he saw a dark form hovering just above him, covering
his retreat with huge outstretched wings. It was too late.

(04:09:38):
He was hemmed in on all sides. At that moment,
A huge rolling wave, bigger than all the rest, swept
past and wet him to the knees. His heart failed him.
The next wave would cover him. Already it was rushing
towards him with foaming crest. He was in its shadow.

(04:10:01):
He heard its thunder. Darkness rushed over him. He saw
the vast sides streaked with gray and white. When Suddenly
the owner of the wings plucked him in the back,
midway between the shoulders, and lifted him bodily out of
the fog, so that the wave swept by without even
wetting his feet. The next minute he saw a dim

(04:10:25):
white sheet of silvery mist at his feet, and found
himself far above it in the sweet, clean moonlight. And
when he turned, almost dead with terror, to look upon
his captor, he found himself looking straight into the eyes
of the Governess. The sense of relief was so great

(04:10:48):
that Jimbo simply closed his wings and hung a dead
weight in the air. Use your wings, cried the governess, sharply,
and still him. While he began to flap feebly. She
turned and flew in the direction of the land. You,
he gasped at last, It was you following me. Of

(04:11:11):
course it was me. I never let you out of
my sight. I've always followed you every time you've been
out alone. Jimbo was still conscious of the drawing power
of the sea, but he felt that his companion was
too strong for it. After fifteen minutes of fierce flight,
he heard the sounds of Earth again and knew that

(04:11:34):
they were safe. Then the Governess loosened her hold, and
they flew along side by side in the direction of home.
I won't scold you, Jimbo, she said, presently, for you've
suffered enough already. She was the first to break the silence,

(04:11:54):
and her voice trembled a little. But remember, the sea
drawed you down just as surely as the moon draws
you up. Nothing would please him better than to see
you destroyed by one or the other. Jimbo said nothing.
But when once they were safe inside the room again,

(04:12:16):
he went up and cried his eyes out on her arm,
while she folded him into her heart, as if he
were the only thing in the whole world she had
to love. End of Chapter fourteen, Chapter fifteen, The Call

(04:12:37):
of the Body. One night, towards the end of the
practice flights, a strange thing happened which showed that the
time for the final flight of escape was drawing near.
They had been out for several hours, flying through a rainstorm,
the thousand little drops of which stung their faces like

(04:12:59):
time gunshot. About two in the morning, the wind shifted
and drove the clouds away, as by magic. The stars
came out at first like the eyes of children, still
dim with crying but later with a clear brilliance that
filled Jimbo and the Governess with keen pleasure. The air

(04:13:23):
was washed and perfumed the night, luminous, alive and singing.
All its tenderness and passion entered their hearts and filled
them with the wonder of its glory. Come on, Jimbo,
said the governess, and we'll lie in the trees and
smell the air after the rain. Yes, added the boy,

(04:13:48):
whose older self had been leading him far down the
gallery of memories, and watch the stars and hear them singing.
She led the way to some beech trees that lined
a secluded lane, and he settled himself comfortably in the
top branches of the largest, while the Governess soon found

(04:14:09):
a resting place beside him. It was a deserted spot,
far from human habitation. Here and there through the foliage
they could see little pools of rain water reflecting the sky.
The group of trees swung in the wind, dreaming great
woodland dreams, and overhead the stars looked like a thousand

(04:14:32):
orchards in the sky, filling the air with a radiance
of their blossoms. How brilliant they are to night, said
the governess, after watching the boy keenly for some minutes
as they lay side by side in the great forked branch.
I never saw the constellation so clear, But they have

(04:14:55):
so little shape, he answered, dreamily. If we wore lights
when we flew about, we should make much better constellations
than they do, the big and little child instead of
the big and little bear. She laughed, still watching him.

(04:15:15):
I'm slipping away, he began suddenly, and then stopped. He
saw the expression of his companion's eyes, which were looking
him through and through with the most poignant love and
yearning mingled in their gaze, and something clutched at his
heart that he could not understand. Not slipping out of

(04:15:37):
the tree, he went on vaguely, but slipping into some
new place or condition. I don't understand it. Am I
going off somewhere where you can't follow? I thought suddenly
I was losing you. The governess smiled at him sadly

(04:15:58):
and said nothing. She stroked his wings and then raised
them to her lips and kissed them. Jimbo watched her
and folded his other wing across into her hands. He
felt unhappy, and his heart began to swell within him,
and he didn't know what to say, and the older

(04:16:18):
self began slowly to fade away again. But the stars,
he went on, have they got things they send out
too forces? I mean, like the trees. Do they send
out something that makes us feel sad or happy, or
strong or weak? She did not answer for some time,

(04:16:39):
she lay watching his face and fondling his smooth red wings,
And presently, when she did begin to explain, Jimbo found
that the child in him was then paramount again, and
he could not quite follow what she said. He tried
to answer properly and seem interested, but her words were

(04:17:00):
very long and hard to understand, and after a time
he thought she was talking to herself more than to him,
and he gave up all serious effort to follow. Then
he became aware that her voice had changed. The words
seemed to drop down upon him from a great height.
He imagined she was standing on one of those fast

(04:17:22):
stars he had been asking about, and was shouting at
him through an immense tube of sky and darkness. The
words pricked his ears like needle points, only he no
longer heard them as words, but as tiny explosions of sound,
meaningless and distant, swift flashes of light. Began to dance

(04:17:43):
before his eyes, and suddenly, from underneath a tree, a
wind rose up and rushed laughing across his face. Darkness
in a mass dropped over his eyes, and he sank backwards,
somewhere into another corner of space altogether. The governess, meanwhile,

(04:18:05):
lay quite still, watching the limp form in the branches
beside her, and still holding the tips of his red wings. Presently,
tears stole into her eyes and began to run down
her cheeks. One deep sigh after another escaped from her lips.
But the little boy, or the old soul, who was

(04:18:28):
the cause of all her emotion, apparently was far away
and knew nothing of it. For a long time, she
lay in silence, and then leaned a little nearer to him,
so as to see his full face. The eyes were
wide open and staring, but they were looking at nothing
she could see, for the consciousness cannot be in two

(04:18:51):
places at the same time. And Jimbo just then was
off in a little journey of his own, a journey
that was but preliminary to the great final one of all. Jimbo,
whispered the girl between her tears and sighs. Jimbo, where
have you gone to tell me? Are they getting ready for.

Speaker 2 (04:19:12):
You at last?

Speaker 1 (04:19:13):
And am I to lose you after all? Is this
the only way I can save you? By losing you?
There was no answer, no sign of movement, and the
governess hid her face in her hands and cried quietly
to herself, while her tears dropped down through the branches
of the tree and fell into rain pools beneath. For

(04:19:38):
Jimbo's state of oblivion in the tree was in reality
a momentary return to consciousness in his body on the bed,
and the repaired mechanism of the brain and muscles had
summoned him back on a sort of trial visit. He
remembered nothing of it afterwards, any more than one remembers
the experiences of deep sleep. But the fact was that

(04:20:02):
with the descent of the darkness upon him in the branches,
he had opened his eyes once again. On the scene
in the night nursery bedroom where his body lay, he
saw figures standing round the beds and about the room.
His mother, with the same white face as before, was
still bending over the bed, asking him if he knew her.

(04:20:26):
A tall man in a long black coat moved noiselessly
to and fro and he saw a shaded lamp on
a table a little to the right of the bed.
Nothing seemed to have changed very much, though there had
probably been time enough since he had last opened his
eyes for the black coated doctor to have gone and
come again for a second visit. He held an instrument

(04:20:50):
in his hands that shone brightly in the namp light.
Jimbo saw this plainly and wondered what it was. He
felt as if he was just waking up of a nice,
deep sleep, dreamless and undisturbed. The empty house, the Governess, Fright,

(04:21:11):
and the children had all vanished from his memory, and
he knew no more about wings and feathers than he
did about the science of meteorology. But the bedroom scene
was a mere glimpse, after all. His eyes were already
beginning to close again. First they shut out the figure
of the doctor, then the bed curtains, and then the

(04:21:34):
nurse moved her arm, making the whole scene quiver for
an instant like some huge jelly shape, before it dipped
into profound darkness and disappeared altogether. His mother's voice ran
off into a thin trickle of sound miles and miles away,

(04:21:55):
and the light from the lamp followed him with its glare.
For less than half a second, all had vanished. Jimbo, dear,
where have you been? Can you remember anything? Asked the
soft voice beside him, as he looked first at the
stars overhead, and then from the tracery of branches and

(04:22:16):
leaves beneath him to the great sea of tree tops
and open country all around.

Speaker 2 (04:22:23):
But he could tell her nothing.

Speaker 1 (04:22:25):
He seemed dreamy and absent minded, lying and staring at
her as if he hardly knew who she was or
what she was saying. His mind was still hovering near
the border line of the two states of consciousness, like
the region between sleeping and waking, where both worlds seemed
unreal and wholly wonderful. He could not answer her questions,

(04:22:51):
but he evidently caught some reflex in her emotions, for
he leaned towards her across the branches and said he
was happy and wanted to leave her. Then he crawled
to the edge of the big bough and sprang out
into the air with a shout of delight. He was
the child again, the flying child, wild with the excitement

(04:23:15):
of tearing through the night air at fifty.

Speaker 2 (04:23:17):
Miles an hour.

Speaker 1 (04:23:19):
The Governess soon followed him, and they flew home together,
taking a long turn by the sea, and passed the
Great Chalk Cliffs, where the sea sang loud beneath them.
These lapses became, with time more frequent as well as
of longer duration, and with them the boy noticed that

(04:23:39):
the longing to escape became once again intense. He wanted
to get home, wherever home was. He experienced a sort
of nostalgia for the body, though he could not remember
where that body lay. But when he asked the Governess
what this feeling meant, only mystified him by her answers,

(04:24:02):
saying that every one in the body or out of it,
felt a deep longing for their final home, though they
might not have the least idea where it lay, or
even to be able to recognize, much less label their longing.
His normal feelings, too, were slowly returning to him. The

(04:24:23):
older self became more and more submerged as he approached
the state of ordinary superficial consciousness. The characteristics of that
state reflected themselves more and more in his thoughts and feelings.
His memory still remained a complete blank, but he somehow
felt that the things, places, and people he wanted to remember,

(04:24:47):
had moved much nearer to him than before. Every day
brought them more and more within his reach. All these
forgotten things will come back to me soon, I know,
he said, one day to the governess, and then I'll
tell you all about them. Perhaps you'll remember me too,

(04:25:09):
Then she answered, a shadow passing across her face. Jimbo
clapped his hands with delight. Oh, he cried, I should
like to remember you, because that would make you a
sort of too papal governess, and I should love you
twice as much. But with the gradual return to former conditions,

(04:25:32):
the feelings of age and experience grew dim and indefinite.
His knowledge lessened, becoming obscure and confused, showing itself only
in vague impressions and impulses, until at last it became
quite the exception for the child consciousness to be broken
through by flashes of intuition and inspiration from the more

(04:25:55):
deeply hidden memories. For one thing, the deep horror of
the empty house and its owner now returned to him
with full force. Fear settled down again over the room
and lurked in the shadows over the yard. A vivid
dread seized him of the other door in the room,

(04:26:18):
the door through which the frightened children had disappeared, and
which had never opened since. It gradually became for him
a personality in the room, a staring, silent, listening thing,
always watching, always waiting. One day it would open, and

(04:26:38):
he would be caught in a dozen ways. Like this,
the horrors of the house entered his heart and made
him long for escape with all the force of his being.
But the governess, too, seemed changing. She was becoming more
vague and more mysterious. Face was always sad now, and

(04:27:02):
her eyes wistful. Her manner became restless and uneasy, and
in many little ways the child could not fail to
notice that her mind was intent upon other things. He
begged her to name the day of the final flight,
but she always seemed to have some good excuse for
putting it off. I feel frightened when you don't tell

(04:27:27):
me what's going on.

Speaker 2 (04:27:28):
He said to her.

Speaker 1 (04:27:30):
It's the preparations for the last flight, she answered, the
flight of escape. He'll try to prevent us going together
so that you should get lost. But it's better you
shouldn't know too much, she added, Trust me and have patience.

(04:27:51):
Oh that's what you're so afraid of, he said, separation.
He was very proud, indeed, of the long word hed
and said it over several times to himself, and the Governess,
looking out of the window at the fading sunlight, repeated
to herself more than to him, the word he was

(04:28:11):
so proud of. Yes, that's what I'm so afraid of, separation,
But if it means your salvation. And her sentence remained
unfinished as her eyes wandered far above the tops of
the trees into the shadows of the sky, and Jimbo,

(04:28:33):
drawn by the sadness of her voice, turned towards the
window and noticed, to his utter amazement, that he could
see right through her. He could see the branches of
the trees through her body. But the next instant she
turned and was no longer transparent, and before the boy
could say a word, she crossed the room and disappeared

(04:28:57):
downstairs through.

Speaker 2 (04:28:58):
The trap door.

Speaker 1 (04:29:01):
End of Chapter fifteen, Chapter sixteen, Preparation. Now that he
was preparing to leave it, Jimbo began to realize more
fully how things in this world of delirium, so the
Governess sometimes called it, were all terribly out of order

(04:29:25):
and confused, so long as he was wholly in it
and of it, everything had seemed all right. But as
he approached his normal condition again, the disorder became more
and more apparent, and the next few hours brought it
home with startling clearness and increased the desire for the

(04:29:45):
final escape to fever heat. It was not so much
a nonsense world. It was too alarming for that, as
a world of nightmare, wherein everything was distorted. Events in
it were all out of proportion. Effects no longer sprang
from adequate causes. Things happened in a dislocated sort of way,

(04:30:11):
and there was no sequence in the order of their happening.
Tiny occurrences filled him with disproportionate, inconceivable horror, and great events,
on the other hand, passed him scathless. The spirit of disorder, monstrous, uncouth, terrifying,

(04:30:31):
reigned supreme, and Jimbo's whole desire, though inarticulate, was to
escape back into order and harmony again. In contrast to
all this dreadful uncertainty, the conduct of the Governess stood
out alone as the one thing he could count on.
She was sure and unfailing. He felt absolute confidence in

(04:30:56):
her plans for his safety and When he thought of her,
his mind was at rest, come what might, She would
always be there in time to help. The adventure over
the sea had proved that. But childlike, he thought chiefly
of his own safety, and had ceased to care very

(04:31:17):
much whether she escaped with him or not.

Speaker 2 (04:31:21):
It was the older.

Speaker 1 (04:31:22):
Jimbo that preferred captivity to escape without her, whereas every
minute now he was sinking deeper into the normal child's state,
in which the intuitive flashes from the buried soul became
more and more rare. Meanwhile, there was preparation going on,

(04:31:42):
secret and mysterious. He could feel it. Some One else
beside the Governess was making plans, and the boy began
to dread the moment of escape almost as much as
he desired it. The alternative appalled him to live forever
in the horror of this house, bounded by the narrow yard,

(04:32:06):
watched by fright listening ever at his elbow, and visited
by the horrible, frightened children. Even the Governess herself began
to inspire him with something akin to fear. As her
personality grew more and more mysterious, He thought of her
as she stood by the window with the branches of

(04:32:28):
the tree visible through her body, and the thought filled
him with a dreadful and haunting distress. But this was
only when she was absent. The moment she came into
the room and he looked into her kind eyes, the
old feeling of security returned and he felt safe and happy.

(04:32:51):
Once during the day she came up to see him,
and this time with final instructions. Jimbo listened with rapt attention.
To night or to morrow night we start.

Speaker 2 (04:33:06):
She said in a quiet voice.

Speaker 1 (04:33:08):
You must wait till you hear me calling. But sha'n't
we start together, he interrupted, Not exactly, She replied, I'm
doing everything possible to put him off the scent, but
it's not easy. For once Fright knows you, he's always
on the watch.

Speaker 2 (04:33:28):
Even if he.

Speaker 1 (04:33:29):
Can't prevent your escape, he'll try to send you home
to your body with such a shock that you'll be
only half there for the rest of your life. Jimbo
did not quite understand what she meant by this, and
returned at once to the main point. Then, the moment
you call, I'm to start. Yes, I shall be outside somewhere.

(04:33:56):
It depends on the wind and the weather a little,
but I shall be hovering above the trees. You must
dash out of the window and join me the moment
you hear me call, clear the wall without sinking into
the yard and mine. He doesn't tear your wings off
as you fly by. What will happen though, if I

(04:34:19):
don't find you, he asked, You might get lost If
he succeeds in getting me out of the way first,
You're sure to get lost. But I've had long flights
without getting lost, he objected, nothing to this one, she replied,
It will be tremendous.

Speaker 2 (04:34:41):
You see, Jimbo.

Speaker 1 (04:34:42):
It's not only distance, it's change of condition as well.
I don't mind what it is, so long as we
escape together, he said. Puzzled by her words, he kept
his eyes fixed on her face. It's to him she
was changing. Even as he looked at her, a sort

(04:35:04):
of veil lifted from her features. He fancied he could
see the shape of the door through her body. Oh please,
miss Lake, he began in a frightened voice, taking a
step towards her. What is the matter you look so different, Nothing,
dear boy, is the matter, she replied, faintly. I feel

(04:35:29):
sad at the thought of your of our going. That's
all but that's nothing, she added more briskly, and remember,
I've told you exactly what to do, so you can't
make any mistake. Now good bye for the present. There
was a smile on her face that he had never

(04:35:51):
seen there before, and an expression of tenderness and love
that even he could not fail to understand. But even
as he looked, she seemed to fade away into a delicate,
thin shadow. As she moved slowly towards the trap door,
Jimbo stretched out his arms to touch her, for the

(04:36:13):
moment of dread had passed and he wanted to kiss her. No,
she cried sharply, don't touch me, child, don't touch me.
But he was already close beside her, and in another
second would have had his arms round her when his
foot stumbled over something and he fell forward into her

(04:36:34):
with his full weight. Instead of saving himself against her body, however,
he fell clean through her. Nothing stopped him. He met
nothing more solid than air, and fell full length on
to the floor. Before he could recover from his surprise

(04:36:55):
and pick himself up, something touched him on the lips,
and he heard a voice that was faint as a whisper,
saying good bye.

Speaker 2 (04:37:04):
Darling child, and bless you.

Speaker 1 (04:37:07):
The next moment he was on his feet again, and
the room was empty. The governess had gone through the
trap door, and he was alone. It was all very
strange and confusing, and he could not understand what was
happening to her. He never for a moment realized that

(04:37:27):
the change was in himself, and that as the tie
between himself and his body became closer, the things of
this other world he had been living in for so
long must fade gradually away into shadows and emptiness. But
Jimbo was a brave boy, and there was nothing of

(04:37:48):
the coward in him, though his sensitive temperament made him
sometimes hesitate where an ordinary child with less imagination would
have acted promptly. The desire to cry he thrust down
and repressed, fighting his depression by the thought that within
a few hours the voice might sound that should call

(04:38:10):
him to the excitement of the last flight and freedom.
The rest of the daylight slipped away very quickly, and
the room was full of shadows, almost before he knew it.
Then came the darkness outside. The wind rose and fell
fitfully booming in the chimney with hollow music and sighing round.

Speaker 2 (04:38:35):
The walls of the house.

Speaker 1 (04:38:37):
A few stars peeped between the branches of the elms,
but masses of cloud hid most of the sky, and
the air felt heavy with coming rain. He lay down
on the bed and waited at the least sound. He started,
thinking it might be the call from the governess. But

(04:38:58):
the few sounds he did hear all resolved themselves into
the moaning of the wind, and no voice came. With
his eyes on the open window trying to pierce the
gloom and find the stars, he lay motionless for hours
while the night wore on and the shadows deepened. And

(04:39:20):
during those long hours of darkness and silence, he was
conscious that a change was going on within him. Name
it he could not, but somehow it made him feel
that living people like himself were standing near him, trying
to speak, beckoning, anxious to bring him into their own

(04:39:43):
particular world. The darkness was so great that he could
see only the square outline of the open window, but
he felt sure that any sudden flash of light would
have revealed a group of persons round his bed, with
arms out stretched, trying to reach him. The emotion they

(04:40:04):
roused in him was not fear, for he felt sure
they were kind and eager only to help him, and
the more he realized their presence, the less he thought
about the Governess, who had been doing so much to
make his escape possible. Then, too, voices began to sound

(04:40:25):
somewhere in the air, and he could not tell whether
they were actually in the room, or outside in the night,
or even within himself. In his own head, strange faint voices, whispering, laughing, shouting, crying.

(04:40:45):
Fragments of stories, rhymes, riddles, odd names of people and
places jostled one another with varying degrees of clearness.

Speaker 2 (04:40:56):
Now loud, now soft.

Speaker 1 (04:41:00):
He wondered what it all meant, and longed for the
light to come. And besides all this, something else too
was abroad that night, something he could not name or
even think about without shaking with terror down to the
very roots of his being. And when he thought of this,
his heart called loudly for the Governess, and the people

(04:41:23):
hidden in the shadows of the room seemed quite useless
and unable to help. Thus he hovered between the two
worlds and the two memories, phantoms and realities, shifting and
changing places every few minutes. A little light would have
saved him much suffering. If only the moon were up,

(04:41:46):
moonlight would have made all the difference. Even a moon
half hidden would have put the shadows farther away from him.
Dear old misty Moon, he cried, half aloud to himself
on the bed, Why.

Speaker 2 (04:42:00):
Aren't you here to night?

Speaker 1 (04:42:02):
My last night, Misty Moon, misty Moon. The words kept
ringing in his ear, Misty Moon, misty Moon. They swam
around in his blood in an odd, tumultuous rhythm. Every
time the current of blood passed through his brain in

(04:42:24):
the course of its circulation, it brought the words with it,
altered a little, and singing.

Speaker 2 (04:42:30):
Like a voice, like a voice.

Speaker 1 (04:42:35):
Suddenly he made a discovery that it actually was a voice,
and not his own. It was no longer the blood
singing in his veins. It was some one singing outside
the window. The sound began faintly and far away, up
above the trees. Then it came gradually nearer, only to

(04:42:57):
die away again, almost to a whisper. If it was
not the voice of the governess, he could only say,
it was a very good imitation of it. The words,
forming out of the empty air, rose and fell with
the wind, and taking his thoughts flung them in a
stream through the dark sky towards the hidden misty Moon. O,

(04:43:22):
misty Moon, Dear misty Moon. The nights are long without thee.
The shadows creep across my sleep and fold their wings
about me. And another silvery voice that might have been
the voice of a star took it up faintly, evidently
from a much greater distance. Oh misty Moon, Sweet misty Moon.

(04:43:48):
The stars are dim behind thee, and lo, thy beams
swing through my dreams and weave a veil to blind me.
The sound of this beautiful voice so delighted Jimbo that
he sprang from his bed and rushed to the window,
hoping that he might be able to hear it more clearly.

(04:44:11):
But before he got half way across the room, he
stopped short, trembling with terror. Underneath his very feet. In
the depths of the house, he heard the awful voice
he dreaded more than anything else. It roared out the
lines with a sound like the rushing of a great river. Oh,

(04:44:32):
Misty Moon, Pale, misty Moon. Thy songs are nightly driven
eternally from sky to sky, all the old gray hills
of heaven, And after the voice Jimbo heard a great
peal of laughter that seemed to shake the walls of

(04:44:53):
the house, and rooted his feet to the floor. It
rolled away with thundering echoes, in to the very bowels
of the earth. He just managed to crawl back to
his mattress and lie down when another voice took up
the song, but this time in accents so tender that
the child felt something within him melt into tears of joy,

(04:45:17):
and he was on the verge of recognizing for the
first time since his accident, the voice of his mother.
Oh misty Moon, shy, misty Moon, whence comes the blush
that trembles in sweet disgrace, or half thy face when
night her stars assembles. But his memory, of course, failed

(04:45:42):
him just as he seemed about to grasp it, and
he was left wondering why the sound of that one
voice had brought him a moment of radiant happiness in
the midst of so much horror and pain. Meanwhile, the
answering voices went on, each time different and in new directions.

(04:46:04):
But the next verse somehow brought back to him all
the terror he had felt in his flight over the sea.
When the sound of the hissing waters had reached his
ear through the carpet of fog. Oh, misty Moon, persuasive.

Speaker 3 (04:46:20):
Moon, Earth's tides are ever rising by the awful grace
of thy weird white face, leap the seas to thy enticing.

Speaker 1 (04:46:35):
Then followed the voice that had started the horrid song.
This time he was sure it was not Miss Lake's voice,
but only a very clever imitation of it. Moreover, it
again ended in a shriek of laughter that froze his blood.
O misty Moon, deceiving Moon, Thy silvery glance brings sadness.

(04:47:00):
Who flies to thee from land or sea shall end
his days in madness. Other voices began to laugh and sing,
but Jimbo stopped his ears, for he simply could not
bear any more. He felt certain, too, that these strange
words to the moon had all been part of a trap,

(04:47:22):
a device to draw him to the window. He shuddered
to think how nearly he had fallen into it, and
determined to lie on the bed and wait till he
heard his companion calling, and knew beyond all doubt that
it was she. But the night passed away and the
dawn came, and no voice had called him forth to

(04:47:45):
the last flight hitherto. In all his experiences, there had
been only one absolute certainty, the appearance of the Governess
with the morning light. But this time sunrise came, and
the clouds cleared away, and the sweet smells of field

(04:48:05):
and air stole into the little room. Yet without any
sign of the Governess. The hours passed and she did
not come, till finally he realized she was not coming
at all, and he would have to spend the whole
day alone. Something had happened to prevent her, or else

(04:48:26):
it was all part of her mysterious plan. He did
not know, and all he could do was to wait
and wonder and hope. All day he lay and waited,
and all day long he was alone. The trap door
never once moved, The courtyard remained empty and deserted. There

(04:48:50):
was no sound on the landing or on the stairs.
No wind stirred the leaves outside, and the hot sun
poured down out of a cloud sky. He stood by
the open window for hours, watching the motionless branches. Everything
seemed dead. Not even a bird crossed his field of vision.

(04:49:12):
The loneliness, the awful silence, and above all, the dread
of the approaching night were sometimes more than he seemed
to be able to bear. And he wanted to put
his head out of the window and scream, or lie
down on the bed and cry his heart out, but
he yielded to neither impulse. He kept a brave heart,

(04:49:35):
knowing that this would be his last night in prison,
and that in a few hours time he would hear
his name called out of the sky and would dash
through the window to liberty and the last wild flight.
This thought gave him courage, and he kept all his

(04:49:55):
energy for the great effort. Gradually, once more the sunlight
faded and the darkness began to creep over the land.
Never before had the shadows under the elms looked so fantastic,
nor the bushes in the field beyond assumed such sinister shapes.

(04:50:18):
The empty house was being gradually invested. The enemy was
masquerading already under the cover of these very shadows. Very
soon he felt the attack would begin, and he must
be ready to act.

Speaker 2 (04:50:36):
The night came.

Speaker 1 (04:50:37):
Down at last with a strange suddenness, and with it
the warning of the governess came back to him, and
he thought quakingly of the stricken children who had been
caught and deprived of their wings, And then he pulled
out his long red feathers and tried their strength, and
gained thus fresh confidence in their power to save him.

(04:51:00):
When the time came end of chapter sixteen, chapter seventeen.

Speaker 2 (04:51:12):
Off.

Speaker 1 (04:51:14):
With the full darkness, a whole army of horrors crept nearer.
He felt sure of this, though he could actually see nothing.
The house was surrounded, the courtyard, crowded outside, on the stairs,
in the other rooms, even on the roof itself, waited
dreadful things, ready to catch him, to tear off his wings,

(04:51:39):
to make him prisoner forever and ever. The possibility that
something had happened to the governess now became a probability.
Imperceptibly the change was wrought. He could not say how
or when exactly, but he now felt almost certain that
the effort to keep her out of the way had succeeded.

(04:52:02):
If this were true, the boy's only hope lay in
his wings, and he pulled them out to their full
length and kissed them passionately, speaking to the strong red
feathers as if they were living little persons.

Speaker 2 (04:52:16):
You must save me.

Speaker 1 (04:52:18):
You will save me, won't you, he cried in his anguish,
and every time he did this, and looked at them.
He gained fresh hope and courage. The problem where he
was going to fly too, had not yet insisted on
a solution, though it lay always at the back of

(04:52:38):
his mind, for the final flight of escape without a
guide had never been even a possibility. Before, lying there
alone in the darkness, waiting for the sound of the
voice so longed for, he found his thoughts turning again
to the moon and the strange words of the song
that had puzzled him the night before. What in the

(04:53:02):
world did it all mean? Why all this about the moon?
Why was it a cruel moon? And why should it
attract and persuade and entice him? He felt sure, the
more he thought of it, that this had all been
a device to draw him to the window, and perhaps

(04:53:22):
even farther. The darkness began to terrify him. He dreaded
more and more the waiting, listening things that it concealed.
Oh when would the governess call to him? When would
he be able to dash through the open window and
join her In the sky. He thought of the sunlight

(04:53:45):
that had flooded the yard all day, so bright it
seemed to have come from a sun fresh maid and shining.
For the first time, he thought of the exquisite flowers
that grew in the fields just beyond the high wall,
and the nights of the earth reached him through the window,
wafted in upon a heavy wind, with secrets of woods

(04:54:07):
and fields. They all came from a land of magic
that after to night might be forever beyond his reach.
And they went straight to his heart and immediately turned
something solid there into tears. But the tears did not
find their natural expression, and Jimbo lay there fighting with

(04:54:29):
his pain, keeping all his strength for the one great effort,
and waiting for the voice that at any minute now
might sound above the tree tops. But the hours passed
and the voice did not come. How he loathed the
room and everything in it. The ceiling stretched like a white,

(04:54:52):
staring countenance above him, the walls watched and listened, and
even the mantelpiece grew into the semblance of a creature
with drawn up shoulders bending over him. The whole room
indeed seemed to his frightened soul to run into the
shape of a monstrous person whose arms were outstretched in

(04:55:13):
all directions to prevent his escape. His hands never left
his wings. Now he stroked and fondled them, arranging the
feathers smoothly and speaking to them under his breath, just
as though they were living things. To him, they were
indeed alive, and he knew when the time came, they

(04:55:35):
would not fail him. The fierce passion for the open
spaces took possession of his soul, and his whole being
began to cry out for freedom, rushing wind, the stars,
and a pathless sky. Slowly, the power of the great
open night entered his heart, bringing with it a courage

(04:55:58):
that enabled him to keep the terrors of the house
at a distance. So far, the boy's strength had been
equal to the task, but a moment was approaching when
the tension would be too great to bear, and the
long pent up force would rush forth into an act.
Jimbo realized this quite clearly, though he could not exactly

(04:56:21):
express it in words. He felt that his real hope
of escape lay in the success of that act. Meanwhile,
with more than a child's wisdom, he stored up every
particle of strength he had for the great moment when
it should come. A light wind had risen soon after sunset,

(04:56:42):
but as the night wore on, it began to fail
dropping away into little silences that grew each time longer.
In the heart of one of these spells of silence,
Jimbo presently noticed a new sound, a sound that he
recognized far away at first, but growing in distinctness with

(04:57:04):
every dropping of the wind. This new sound rose from
the interior of the house below and came gradually upon him.
It was voices faintly singing, and the tread of stealthy footsteps.
Nearer and nearer came the sound, till at length they
reached the door, and there passed into the room a

(04:57:28):
wave of fine, gentle sound that awoke no echo, and
scarcely seemed to stir the air into vibration at all.
The door had opened, and a number of voices were
singing softly under their breath. And after the sounds, creeping
slowly like some timid animal, there came into the room

(04:57:51):
a small black figure, just visible in the faint starlight.
It peered round the edge of the door, hesitating a moment,
then advanced with an odd rhythmical sort of motion. And
after the first figure came a second, and after the
second a third, and then several entered together, until a

(04:58:14):
whole group of them stood on the floor between Jimbo
and the open window. Then he recognized the frightened children,
and his heart sank even they he saw, were arrayed
against him, and took it for granted that he already
belonged to them. Oh, why did not the governess come

(04:58:35):
for him? Why was there no voice in the sky.
He glanced with longing towards the heavens, and as the
children moved past, he was almost certain he saw the
stars through their bodies. Too Slowly they shuffled across the
floor till they formed a semicircle round the bed, and

(04:58:56):
then they began a silent, impish dance the made the
flesh creep. Their thin forms were dressed in black gowns
like shrouds, and as they moved through the steps of
this bizarre dance, he saw that their legs were little
more than mere skin and bone. Their faces, what he

(04:59:17):
could see of them when he dared to open his eyes,
were pale as ashes, and their beady little eyes shone
like the facets of cut stones, flashing in all directions.
And while they danced in and out amongst each other,
never breaking the semicircle round the bed, they sang a low,
mournful song that sounded like the wind whispering through a

(04:59:41):
leafless wood, And the words stirred in him that vague
yet terrible fear known to all children who had been
frightened and made to feel afraid of the dark. Evidently
his sensations were being merged very rapidly now into those
of the little boy in the night nursery bed. There

(05:00:02):
is someone in the nursery whom we never saw before.
Why hangs the moon so red? And he came not
by the passage or the window or the door. Why
hangs the moon so red? And he stands there in
the darkness in the center of the floor. See where

(05:00:24):
the moon hangs red. Someone's hiding in the passage where
the door begins to swing. Why dry of the clouds
so fast? In the corner by the staircase, there's a
dreadful waiting thing. Why dry of the clouds so fast?
Past the curtain creeps a monster with a black and

(05:00:48):
fluttering wing. See where the clouds drive fast in the
chilly dusk of evening, in the hush before the dawn.
Why drips the rain so cold in the twilight of
the garden, in the mist upon the lawn. Why drips
the rain so cold? Faces stare and mouth upon us,

(05:01:14):
faces white and weird and drawn. See how the rain
drips cold close beside us in the night time, waiting
for us in the gloom. Oh why sings the wind
so shrill in the shadows by the cupboard, in the
corners of the room. Oh why sings the wind so shrill?

(05:01:38):
From the corridors and landings? Voices call us to our doom?
Oh how the wind sing shrill? By this time, the
dreadful dancers had come much closer to him, shifting stealthily
nearer to the bed under cover of their dancing, and

(05:01:59):
always between him and the window. Suddenly their intention flashed
upon him. They meant to prevent his escape with a
tremendous effort. He sprang from the bed. As he did so,
a dozen pairs of thin, shadowy arms shot out towards him,

(05:02:19):
as though to seize his wings. But with an agility
born of fright, he dodged them and ran swiftly into
the corner by the mantelpiece. Standing with his back against
the wall, he faced the brutal children and strove to
call out for help to the governess But this time
there was an entirely new difficulty in the way, for

(05:02:41):
he found, to his utter dismay, that his voice refused
to make itself heard. His mouth was dry, and his
tongue would hardly stir. Not a sound issued from his lips.
But the children instantly moved forwards and hemmed him in
between them the wall, and to reach the window he

(05:03:02):
would have to break through this semi circle of whispering
shadowy forms above their heads. He could see the stars shining,
and any moment he might hear Miss Lake's voice calling
to him to come out. His heart rose with passionate
longing within him, and he gathered his wings tightly about him,
ready for the final dash. It would take more than

(05:03:26):
the frightened children to hold him a prisoner when once
he heard that voice, or even without it. Whether they
were astonished at his boldness or merely waiting their opportunity later,
he could not tell. But anyhow, they kept their distance
for a time and made no further attempt to seize
his feathers, whispering together under their breath, sometimes singing their

(05:03:51):
mournful sighing songs, sometimes sinking their voices into a confused murmur.
They moved in and out amongst each other with soundless feet,
like the shadows of branches swaying in the wind. Then
suddenly they moved closer and stretched out their arms towards him,

(05:04:11):
their bodies swaying rhythmically together, while their combined voices, raised
just above a whisper, sang to him, dare you fly
out to night when the moon is so strong, though
the stars are so bright? There is death in their song.

(05:04:31):
You're a hostage to fright, and to us you belong.
Dare you fly out alone through the shadows that wave
when the course is unknown and there's no one to save.
You are bone of our bone and forever his slave.

(05:04:52):
And following these words came from somewhere in the air outside,
that much more dreaded voice, like the thunder of a river.
Jimbo knew only too well to whom it belonged as
he listened to the rhyme of the west wind.

Speaker 4 (05:05:10):
For the wind of the west is our wind, unblessed,
and its dangerous breath will entice you to death. Fly
not with the wind of the west, oh child, with
the terrible wind of the west.

Speaker 1 (05:05:31):
But Jimbo knew perfectly well that these efforts to stop
him were all part of a trap. They were lying
to him. It was not the wind of the west
at all. It was the south wind, that at least
he knew by the odors that were wafted in through
the window. Again, he tried to call the governess, but

(05:05:51):
his tongue lay stiff in his mouth, and no sound came. Meanwhile,
the children began to draw closer him in They moved
almost imperceptibly, but he saw plainly that the circle was
growing smaller and smaller. His legs began to tremble, and
he felt that soon he would collapse and drop at

(05:06:13):
their feet, for his strength was failing, and the power
to act and move was slowly leaving him. The little
shadowy figures were almost touching him, when suddenly a new
sound broke the stillness and set every nerve tingling in
his body. Something was shuffling along the landing. He heard

(05:06:35):
it outside pushing against the door. The handle turned with
a rattle, and a moment later the door slowly opened
For a second. Jimbo's breath failed him, and he nearly
fell in a heap upon the floor round the edge
of the door, he saw a dim, huge figure come

(05:06:57):
crawling into the room, creeping along the floor and trailing
behind it a pair of immense black wings that stretched
along the boards. For one brief second he stared horror
stricken and wondering what it was. But before the whole
length of the creature was in he knew it was

(05:07:20):
fright himself, and he was making steadily for the window.
The shock instantly galvanized the boy into a state of
activity again. He recovered the use of all his muscles
and all his faculties. His voice, released by terror, rang
out in a wild shriek for help to the governess,

(05:07:42):
and he dashed forward across the room in a mad
rush for the window. Unless he could reach it before
the other he knew he would be a prisoner for
the rest of his life. It was now or never.
The instant he moved, the children came straight at him
with hands outstretched the stop, but he passed through them

(05:08:02):
as if they were smoke, and with almost a single bound,
sprang upon the narrow window sill. To do this, he
had to clear the head and shoulders of the creature
on the floor, and though he accomplished it successfully, he
felt himself clutched from behind. For a second he balanced
doubtfully on the window ledge. He felt himself being pulled

(05:08:24):
back into the room, and he combined all his forces
into one tremendous effort to rush forward. There was a ripping,
tearing sound as he sprang into the air with a
yell of mingled terror and exultation. His prompt action and
the fierce impetus had saved him. He was free. But

(05:08:45):
in the awful hand that seized him, he had left
behind the end feathers of his right wing. A few
inches more, and it would have been not merely the feathers,
but the entire wing itself. He dropped to within three
feet of the stones in the yard, and then borne
aloft by the kind, rushing wind of the south. He

(05:09:07):
rose in a tremendous sweep far over the tops of
the high elms and out into the heart of the night.
Only there was no Governess's voice to guide him. And
behind him, a little lower down, a black, pursuing figure
with huge wings flapped heavily as it followed him with

(05:09:29):
laborious flight through the darkness. End of Chapter seventeen. Chapter
eighteen Home. But it was the sound of something crashing
heavily through the top branches of the elms. That made

(05:09:50):
the boy realize he was actually being followed, and all
his efforts became concentrated into the desire to put as
much distance as possible between himself and the horror of
the empty house. He heard the noise of big wings
far beneath him, and his one idea was to outdistance

(05:10:10):
his pursuer and then come down again to earth and
rest his wings in the branches of some tree till
he could devise some plan how to find the governess.
So at first he raced at full speed through the air,
taking no thought of direction.

Speaker 2 (05:10:28):
When he looked.

Speaker 1 (05:10:28):
Down, all he could see was that something vague and
shadowy shaking out a pair of enormous wings between him
and the earth. Moved along with him. Its path was
parallel with his own, but apparently it made no effort
to rise up to his higher level. It thundered along
far beneath him, and instinctively he raised his head and

(05:10:51):
steered more and more upwards and away from the world.
The gap at the end of his right wing, where
the feathers had been torn out, seemed to make no
difference in his power of flight or steering, and he
went tearing through the night at a pace he had
never dared to try before, and at a height he
had never yet reached in any of the practice flights.

(05:11:14):
He had sought higher even than he knew, and perhaps
this was fortunate, for the friction of the lower atmosphere
might have heated him to the point of igniting, and
some watcher at one of Earth's windows might have suddenly
seen a brilliant little meteor flash through the night and
vanish into dust. At first, the joy of escape was

(05:11:37):
the only idea his mind seemed able to grasp, and
he reveled in a passionate sense of freedom, and all
his energies poured themselves into one concentrated effort to fly faster, faster, faster.
But after a time, when the pursuer had been apparently outflown,
and he realized that escape was an accomplished fact, he

(05:11:59):
began and a search for the governess, calling to her,
rising and falling, darting in all directions, and then hovering
on outstretched wings to try and catch some sound of
a friendly voice. But no answer came, even from the
stars that crowded in the vault above, or from the
dark surface of the world below. Only silence answered his cries,

(05:12:24):
and his voice was swallowed up and lost in the
immensity of space almost the moment.

Speaker 2 (05:12:29):
It left his lips.

Speaker 1 (05:12:32):
Presently, he began to realize to what an appalling distance
he had risen above the world, and with anxious eyes
he tried to pierce the gaping emptiness beneath him and
on all sides. But this vast sea of air had
nothing to reveal. The stars shone like pinholes of gold,

(05:12:52):
pricked in a deep black curtain, and the moon, now
rising slowly, spread a veil of silver between him and
the upper regions. There was not a cloud anywhere, and
the winds were all asleep. He was alone in space.
Yet as the swishing of his wings slackened and the

(05:13:12):
roar of the air in his ears died away, he
heard in the short pause the ominous beating of great
wings somewhere in the depths beneath him, and he knew
that the great pursuer was still on his track. The
glare of the moon now made it impossible to distinguish
anything properly, and in those huge spaces, with nothing to

(05:13:35):
guide the eye, it was difficult to know exactly from
what direction sound came. He was only sure of one thing,
that it was far below him, and that for the
present it did not seem to come much nearer. A
cry for help that kept rising to his lips he suppressed,
for it would only have served to guide his pursuer.

(05:13:57):
And moreover, a cry, a little, thin, despairing cry, was
instantly lost in these great heavens. It was less than
a drop in an ocean. On and on he flew, ally,
was pointing away from the earth and trying hard to
think where he would find safety. Would this awful creature

(05:14:21):
hunt him all night long into the daylight, or would
he be forced back into the empty house in sheer exhaustion.
The thought gave him new impetus, and with powerful strokes
he dashed onwards and upwards through the wilderness of space,
in which the only pathways were the little golden tracks
of the starbeams. The Governess would turn up somewhere. He

(05:14:45):
was positive of that she had never failed him. Yet,
so alone and breathless he pursued his flight, and the
higher he went, the more the tremendous vault opened up
into the inconceivable and untold distances. His speed kept increasing.
He thought he had never found flying so easy before,

(05:15:07):
and the thunder of the following wings that held persistently
on his track made it dangerous for him to slacken
up for more than a minute. Here and there the
earth became a dark blot beneath him, while the moon,
rising higher and higher, grew weirdly bright and close. How

(05:15:28):
black the sky was, how piercing the points of starlight,
how stimulating the strong new odors of these lofty regions.
He realized, with a thrill of genuine awe, that he
had flown over the very edge of the world. And
the moment the thought entered his mind, it was flung
back at him by a voice that seemed close to

(05:15:51):
his ear one moment and the next was miles away.
In the space overhead light, thoughts born of the stars
and the moon and of his great speed danced before
his mind in fanciful array. Once he laughed aloud at them,
but once only the sound of his voice fell unpleasantly

(05:16:13):
dead in these echoless spaces, and made him afraid. The
speed too affected his vision. For at one moment the
thin cloud stretched across his face, and the next he
was whirling through perfectly clear air again with no vestige
of a cloud in sight. The same reason doubtless explained

(05:16:34):
the sudden presence of sheets of light in the air
that reflected the moonlight like particles of glittering ice, and
then suddenly disappeared again. The terrific speed would explain a
good many things, but certainly it was curious how creatures
formed out of the hollow darkness like foam before a

(05:16:55):
steamer's bows, and moved noiselessly away on either side to
join in the army of dim life that crowded everywhere
and watched his passage. For in front and on both
sides there gathered a vast assembly of silent forms, more
than shadows, less than bodily shapes, that opened up a

(05:17:16):
pathway as he rushed through them, and then immediately closed
up their ranks again. When he had passed. The air
seemed packed with living creatures. Space was filled with them.
They surrounded him on all sides, yet his passage through
them was like the passage of a hand through smoke.

(05:17:38):
It was easy to make a pathway, but the pathway
left no trace behind it. The smoke rushed in and
filled the void. He could never see these things properly
face to face. They always kept just out of the
line of vision, like shadows that follow a lonely walker

(05:17:58):
in a wood, and vanished the moment he turns to
look at them over his shoulder, but ever by his side.
With a steady, effortless motion. He knew they kept up
with him, strange inhabitants of the airless heights, immense and misty,
winged with veiled, flaming eyes and silent feathers. He was

(05:18:20):
not afraid of them, for they were neither friendly nor hostile.
They were simply the beings of another world, alien and unknown.
But what puzzled him more was that the light and
the darkness seemed separate things, each distinctly visible. After each
stroke of his wings, he saw the darkness shift downwards,

(05:18:43):
pasted him through the air like a veil. It floated
all round him in thinnest diaphanous texture, visible not because
the moonlight made it so, but because in its inmost
soul it was it self luminous. It rose and fell
in eddies, swirling wreaths and undulations, inwoven with star beams

(05:19:09):
as with golden thread. It clothed him about in circles
of some magical, primordial substance. Even the stars looking down
upon him from terrifying heights seemed now draped, now undraped,
as if by the sweeping of enormous wings that stirred

(05:19:29):
these sheets of visible darkness into a vast system of
circulation through the heavens. Everything in these oceans of upper
space apparently made use of wings, or the idea of wings.
Perhaps even the great Earth itself, rolling from star to star,

(05:19:49):
was moved by the power of gigantic invisible wings. Jimbo
realized he had entered a forbidden region. He began to
feel fraid. But the only possible expression of his fear
and its only possible relief, lay in his own wings,
and he used them with redoubled energy. He dashed forward

(05:20:12):
so fast that his face began to burn, and he
kept turning his head in every direction for a sign
of the governess, or for some indication of where he
could escape too. In the pauses of the wild flight,
he heard the thunder of the following wings below. They
were still on his trail, and it seemed that they

(05:20:33):
were gaining on him. He took a new angle, realizing
that his only chance was to fly high, and the
new course took him perpendicularly away from the earth and
straight towards the moon. Later, when he had outdistanced the
other creature, he would drop down again to safer levels.

(05:20:55):
A measured distance was steadily kept up between them, as
though with calculs elated purpose. Curious distant voices shouted from
time to time all manner of sentences and rhymes in
his ears, but he could neither understand nor remember them.
More and more the awful stillness of the vast regions

(05:21:15):
that lie between the world and the moon appalled him.
Then suddenly a new sound reached him that at first
he could not in the least understand. It reached him, however,
not through the ears, but by a steadily trembling of
the whole surface of his body. It set him in
vibration all over, and for some time he had no

(05:21:38):
idea what it meant. The trembling ran deeper and deeper
into his body, till at last a single, powerful, regular
vibration took complete possession of his whole being, and he
felt as though he was being wrapped round and absorbed
by this vast and gigantic sound. He had always thought

(05:21:59):
that the voice of fright, like the roar of a river,
was the loudest and deepest sound he had ever heard.
Even that set his soul a trembling. But this new, tremendous,
rolling ocean of a voice came not that way, and
could not be compared to it. The voice of the

(05:22:19):
other was a mere tinkling of the ear compared to
this awful crashing of seas and mountains and falling worlds.
It must break him to pieces, he felt. Suddenly he
knew what it was, and for a second his wings
failed him. The fact was he had reached such a

(05:22:42):
height that he could hear the roar of the world
as it thundered along its journey through space. That was
the meaning of this voice of majesty that had set
him all a trembling, And before long he would probably
hear too the voices of the planets and the singing
of the great Moon. The Governess had warned him about this.

(05:23:05):
At the first sound of these awful voices, she told
him to turn instantly and drop back to the Earth
as fast as ever he could drop. Jimbo turned instinctively
and began to fall, But before he had dropped half
a mile, he met once again the ascending sound of
the wings that had followed him from the empty house.

(05:23:28):
It was no good flying straight into destruction. He summoned
all his courage and turned once more towards the stars.
Anything was better than being caught and held forever by
fright and with a wild cry for help that fell
dead in the empty spaces. He renewed his unending flight
towards the stars. But meanwhile the pursuer had distinctly gained

(05:23:53):
appalled by the thunder of the stars voices above, yet
too frightened by the prospect of imediate yet capture if
he turned back. Jimbo flew blindly on towards the Moon,
regardless of consequences, and below him, the pursuer came closer
and closer.

Speaker 2 (05:24:14):
The strokes of.

Speaker 1 (05:24:14):
Its wings were no longer mere distant thuds that he
heard when he paused in his own flight to listen.
They were the audible swishing of feathers. It was near
enough for that Jimbo could never properly see what was
following him. A shadow between him and the Earth was
all he could distinguish. But in the center of that

(05:24:37):
shadow there seemed to burn two glowing eyes. Two brilliant
lights flashed whenever he looked down, like the lamps of
a revolving lighthouse. But other things he saw too when
he looked down, And once the earth rose close to
his face so that he could have touched it with

(05:24:58):
his hands. The same instant it dropped away again with
a rush of whirlwinds and became a distant shadow miles
and miles below him. But before it went it had
time to see the empty house standing within its gloomy yard,
and the horror of it gave him fresh impetus. Another time,

(05:25:20):
when the world raced up close to his eyes, he
saw a scene of a different kind that stirred a
passionately deep yearning within him. A house overgrown with ivy
and standing among trees and gardens, with laburnums and lilacs
flowering on smooth green lawns, and a clean gravel drive

(05:25:42):
leading down to a big pair of iron gates. Oh,
it all seemed so familiar. Perhaps in another minute, the
well known figures would have appeared and spoken to him.
Already he had heard their voices behind the bushes, But
just before they appeared, the earth dropped back with a

(05:26:04):
roar of a thousand winds, and Jimbo saw instead the
shadow of the pursuer, mounting, mounting, mounting towards him. Up
he shot again, with terror in his heart and all
trembling with the thunder of the great star voices above.
He felt like a leaf in a hurricane. Lost, dizzy,

(05:26:26):
shelterless voices, too, now began to be heard more frequently.
They dropped upon him out of the reaches of this
endless void, and with them sometimes came forms that shot
past him with amazing swiftness, racing into the empty beyond,
as though sucked into a vast vacuum. The very stars

(05:26:48):
seemed to move. He became part of some much larger
movement in which he was engulfed and merged. He could
no longer think of himself as Jimbo. When he uttered
his own name, he saw merely a mass of wind
and color through which the great pulses of space and
other planets beat, tumultuously, lapping him round with the currents

(05:27:11):
of a terrific motion that seemed to swallow up his
own little personality entirely while giving him something infinitely greater.
But surely, these small voices, shrill and trumpet like did
not come from the stars. These deep whispers that ran

(05:27:31):
round the immense vault overhead and sounded almost familiarly in
his ears, give it him the moment he wakes. Bring
the icebag quick, put the hot water bottle to his feet.
Immediately the voices shrieked all round him, turning suddenly into
soft whispers that died away somewhere among his feathers. The

(05:27:56):
soles of his feet began to glow, and he fell.
A gigantic hand laid upon his throat and head. Almost
it seemed as if he were lying somewhere on his back,
and people were bending over him, shouting and whispering. Why
hangs the moon so red? Cried a voice that was
instantly drowned in a chorus of unintelligible whispering. The black

(05:28:21):
cow must be killed, whispered someone deep within the sky.
Why drips the rain so cold? Yelled one of the
hideous children close behind him, and a third called, with
distant laughter from behind a star, Why sings the wind
so shrill?

Speaker 2 (05:28:42):
Quiet?

Speaker 1 (05:28:43):
Roared an appalling voice below, as if all the rivers
of the world had suddenly turned loose into the sky.

Speaker 2 (05:28:51):
Quiet.

Speaker 1 (05:28:53):
Instantly, a star that had been hovering for some time
on the edge of a fantastic dance, dropped down unclose
in front of his face.

Speaker 2 (05:29:02):
It had a.

Speaker 1 (05:29:03):
Glaring disk with mouth and eyes. An icy hand seemed
laid on his head, and the star rushed back into
its place in the sky, leaving a trail of red
flame behind it. A little voice seemed to go with it,
growing fainter and fainter in the distance. We dance with

(05:29:25):
phantoms and with shadows play. But regardless of everything, Jimbo
flew onwards and upwards, terrified and helpless though he was,
His thoughts turned without ceasing to the Governess, and he
felt sure that she would yet turn up in time
to save him from being caught by fright that pursued

(05:29:46):
or lost among the fearful spaces that lay beyond the stars.
For a long time, however, his wings had been growing
more and more tired, and the prospect of being destroyed
by sheer exhaustion now presented itself to the boy vaguely
as a possible alternative, vaguely only because he was no

(05:30:08):
longer able to think properly speaking, and things came to
him more by a way of dull feeling than anything else.
It was all the more with something of a positive shock. Therefore,
that he realized the change for a change had come.
He was now suddenly conscious of an influx of new

(05:30:30):
power greater than anything he had ever known before in
any of his flights. His wings now suddenly worked as
if by magic. Never had the motion been so easy,
and it became every minute easier and easier. He simply
flashed along without apparent effort. An immense driving power had

(05:30:53):
entered into him. He realized that he could fly forever
without getting tired. His pace increased tenfold, increased alarmingly. The
possibility of exhaustion vanished utterly. Jimbo knew now that something
was wrong. This new driving power was something wholly outside himself.

(05:31:16):
His wings were working far too easily. Then suddenly he
understood his wings were not working at all. He was
not being driven forward from behind. He was being drawn
forward by the moon. He saw it all in a flash.
Miss Lake's warning long ago about the danger of flying

(05:31:39):
too high, The last song of the frightened children, dare
you fly alone through the shadows that wave? When the
course is unknown and there's no one to save? The
strange words sung to him about the restless, misty moon
and the object of the dreadful pursuer in steadily forcing

(05:32:02):
him upwards and away from the Earth. It all flashed
across his poor little, dazed mind. He understood at last
he had soared too high and had entered the sphere
of the Moon's attraction.

Speaker 3 (05:32:19):
The moon is too strong, and there's death in the stars.

Speaker 1 (05:32:24):
A voice bellow below him, like the roar of a
falling mountain, shaking the sky. The child flew screaming on.
There was nothing else he could do. But hardly had
the roar died away, when another voice was heard, a
tender voice, a whispering, sympathetic voice. Though from what part

(05:32:47):
of the sky it came he could not tell. Arranged
the pillows for his little head. But below him, the
wings of the Pursuer were mounting closer and closer. He
could almost feel the mighty wind from their feathers, and
hear the rush of the great body between them. It
was impossible to slacken his speed, even had he wished.

(05:33:12):
No strength on earth could have resisted that terrible power.
Drawing upwards towards the moon. Instinctively, however, he realized that
he would rather have gone forwards than backwards. He never
could have faced capture by that dreadful creature. Behind all
the efforts of the past weeks to escape from fright,

(05:33:35):
the owner of the empty house now acted upon him
with a cumulative effect, and added to the suction of
the moon life. He shot forward at a pace that
increased with every second. At the back of his mind, too,
lay some kind of faint perception that the Governess would,

(05:33:55):
after all be there to help him. She had always
turned up before when he was in danger, and she
would not fail him now. But this was a mere
ghost of a thought that brought little comfort, and merely
added its quota of force to the speed that whipped
him on ever faster into the huge white moon world

(05:34:17):
in front. For this, then he had escaped from the
horror of the empty house, to be sucked up into
the moon, the restless, misty moon, to be drawn into
its cruel silver web and destroyed. The song to the
misty moon outside the window came back in snatches and

(05:34:39):
added to his terror. Only it seemed now weeks ago
since he had heard it. Something of its real meaning, too,
filtered down into his heart, and he trembled anew to
think that the Moon could be a great, vast, moving being,
alive and with a purpose. But why, oh why did

(05:35:00):
they keep shouting these horrid snatches of the song through
the sky? Trapped, trapped? The word haunted him through the night.
Thy songs are nightly driven from sky to sky eternally,
or the old gray hills of Heaven, Caught, caught at last,

(05:35:23):
the Moon's prisoner, a captive in her airless caves, alone
on her dead white plains, searching forever in vain for
the Governess, Wandering alone and terrified by the awful grace
of thy weird white face. The thought crazed him, and

(05:35:45):
he struggled like a bird caught in a net. But
he might as well have struggled to push the worlds
out of their courses. The power against him was the
power of the universe, in which he was nothing but
a little lost whirling atom. It was all of no avail,
and the Moon did not even smile at his feeble efforts.

(05:36:09):
He was too light to revolve around her, too impalpable
to create his own orbit. He had not even the
consistency of a comet, and had now reached the point
of stagnation, as it were, the dead level, the neutral
zone where the attractions of the Earth and the Moon
meet and counterbalance one another, where bodies have no weight

(05:36:33):
and existence no meaning. Now the Moon was close upon him,
he could see nothing. There lay the vast, shining sea
of light in front of him.

Speaker 2 (05:36:46):
Behind.

Speaker 1 (05:36:46):
The roar of the following creature grew fainter and fainter
as he outdistanced it in the awful swiftness of the
huge drop down upon the moon mountains. Already he was
close enough to it surface to hear nothing of its
great singing but a deep, confused murmur. And as the
distance increased, he realized that the change in his own

(05:37:10):
condition increased. He felt as if he were flying off
into a million tiny particles, breaking up under the effects
of the deadly speed and the action of the new
moon forces. Immense invisible arms, half silver and half shadow,
grew out of the white disk and drew him downwards

(05:37:31):
upon her surface. He was being merged into the life
of the Moon. There was a pause for a moment.
His wings stopped dead, their vein fluttering was all but over.
Hark was that a voice borne on the wings of
some lost wind. Why should his heart beat so tumultuously

(05:37:54):
all at once? He turned and stared into the ocean
of black air overhead till it turned him dizzy. A
violet trembling ran through his tired being from head to foot.
He had heard a voice, a voice that he knew
and laughed, a voice of help and deliverance.

Speaker 2 (05:38:16):
It rang in shrill.

Speaker 1 (05:38:17):
Syllables up the empty spaces, and it touched new centers
of force within him, that touched his last store of
courage and strength. Jimbo, hold on, it cried, like a faint, thin,
prickling current of sound, almost unable to reach him through
the seas of distance. I'm coming, hold on a little longer.

(05:38:42):
It was the Governess. She was true to the end.
Jimbo felt his heart swell within him. She was mounting,
mounting behind him with incredible swiftness. The sound of his
own name in these terrible regions recalled to him some
degree of concentration, and he strove hard to fight against

(05:39:04):
the drawing power that was seeking his destruction. He struggled
frantically with his wings, but between him and the Governess
there was still the power of fright to be overcome.
The very power she had long ago invoked. It was
following him, still, preventing his turning back, and driving him

(05:39:27):
ever forward to his death. Again, the voice sounded in
the night, and this time it was closer. He could
not quite distinguish the words. They buzzed oddly in his ears.
Other voices mingled with them. The hideous children began to
shriek somewhere underneath him. Wings with eyes among their burning

(05:39:49):
feathers flashed past him. His own wings folded close over
his little body, drooping like dead things. His eyes closed,
and he turned on his side. A huge face that
was one half the Governess and the other half the
head gardener at home, struck itself close against his own

(05:40:12):
and blew upon his eyelids till he opened them. Already
he was falling, sinking, tumbling headlong through a space that
offered no resistance. Jimbo shrieked a voice that instantly died
away into a wail behind him. He opened his eyes
once more, for it was that loved voice again, But

(05:40:35):
the glare from the moon so dazzled him that he
could only fancy He saw the figure of the Governess
not a hundred feet away, struggling and floundering in the
clutch of a black creature that beat the air with
enormous wings all round her. He saw her hair streaming
out into the night, and one wing seemed to hang

(05:40:57):
broken and useless at her side. He was turning over
and over like a piece of wood in the waves
of the sea, and the governess, caught by fright. The
monster of her own creation, drifted away from his consciousness
as a dream melts away in the light of the morning.
From the gleaming mountains and treeless plains below, Jimbo thought

(05:41:21):
there rose a hollow roar, like the mocking laughter of
an immense multitude of people, shaking with mirth. The Moon
had got him at last, and her laughter ran through
the heaven like a wave, revolving upon his own little axis,
so swiftly that he neither saw nor heard anything more.

(05:41:43):
Jimbo dropped straight down upon the great satellite. The light
of the moon flamed up into his eyes and dazzled him.
But what in the world was this? How could the
moon dwindled so suddenly to the size of a mere
lamp flame. How could the whole expanse of the heavens

(05:42:06):
shrink in an instant to the limits of a little
cramped room. In a single second. Before he had time
to realize that he felt surprised, the entire memory of
his recent experiences vanished from his mind. The past became
an utter blank, like a wreath of smoke. Everything melted away,

(05:42:29):
as if it had never been at all. The functions
of the brain resumed their normal course. The delirium of
the past few hours was over. Jimbo was lying at
home on his bed in the night nursery, and his
mother was bending over him. At the foot of the

(05:42:50):
bed stood the doctor in black. The nurse held a
lamp only half shaded by her hand as she approached
the bedside. This lamp was the moon of his delirium,
only had quite forgotten now that there had ever been
any moon at all. The little thermometer thrust into his
teeth among the stars, was still in his mouth. A

(05:43:14):
hot water bottle made his feet glow and burn, and
from the walls of the sick room came as if
it were the echo of recently uttered sentences. Take his temperature,
give him the medicine the moment he awakes. Put hot
water bottle to his feet, Fetch the ice bag quick
where am I mother, he asked in a whisper. You're

(05:43:37):
in bed, darling, and must keep quite quiet. You'll soon
be all right again. It was the old black cow
that tossed you. The gardener found you by the swinging
gate and carried you in. You've been unconscious. How long
have I been un Jimbo could not manage the whole word,
About three hours, darling. Then he fell into a deep,

(05:44:01):
dreamless sleep. And when he woke long after, it was
early morning, and there was no one in the room
but the old family nurse, who sat watching beside the bed. Something,
some dim memory that had stirred his brain in sleep
immediately rushed to his lips in the form of an

(05:44:22):
inconsequent question. But before he could even frame the sentence,
the thought that prompted it had slipped back into the
deeper consciousness he had just left behind with the trance
of deep sleep. But the old nurse, watching every movement
waiting upon the child's very breath, had caught the question,

(05:44:43):
and she answered soothingly in a whisper. Oh, miss Lake
died a few days after she left here, she said,
in a very low voice, But don't think about.

Speaker 2 (05:44:56):
Her any more.

Speaker 1 (05:44:57):
Dearie, She'll never frighten children again with her silly stories.

Speaker 2 (05:45:02):
Died.

Speaker 1 (05:45:03):
Jimbo sat up in bed and stared into the shadows
behind her, as though his eyes saw something she could
not see, but his voice seemed almost to belong to
some one else. She was really dead all the time.
Then he said below his breath. Then the child fell

(05:45:24):
back without another word, and dropped off to sleep, which
was the first step to final recovery. End of Jimbo,
a fantasy by Algernon Blackwood, read by Adrian Pratzells, December third,
two thousand and eight.