our beaver task was performed we went on, and Dicky was so hot he had to take his jacket off and shut up about icebergs.
I cannot tell you about all the windings of the stream; it went through fields and woods and meadows, and at last the banks got steeper and higher, and the trees overhead darkly arched their mysterious branches, and we felt like the princes in a fairy tale who go out to seek their fortunes.
And then we saw a thing that was well worth coming all that way for; the stream suddenly disappeared under a dark stone archway, and however much you stood in the water and stuck your head down between your knees you could not see any light at the other end.
The stream was much smaller than where we had been beavers.
Gentle reader, you will guess in a moment who it was that said:
"Alice, you've got a candle. Let's explore."
This gallant proposal met but a cold response.
The others said they didn't care much about it, and what about tea?
I often think the way people try to hide their cowardliness behind their teas is simply beastly.
Oswald took no notice. He just said, with that dignified manner, not at all like sulking, which he knows so well how to put on:
"All right. I'm going. If you funk it you'd better cut along home and ask your nurses to put you to bed."
So then, of course, they agreed to go. Oswald went first with the candle. It was not comfortable; the architect of that dark, subterranean passage had not imagined any one would ever be brave enough to lead a band of beavers into its inky recesses, or he would have built it high enough to stand upright in. As it was, we were bent almost at a right angle, and this is very awkward if for long.
But the leader pressed dauntlessly on, and paid no attention to the groans of his faithful followers, nor to what they said about their backs.
It really was a very long tunnel, though, and even Oswald was not sorry to say, "I see daylight." The followers cheered as well as they could as they splashed after him. The floor was stone as well as the roof, so it was easy to walk on. I think the followers would have turned back if it had been sharp stones or gravel.
And now the spot of daylight at the end of the tunnel grew larger and larger, and presently the intrepid leader found himself blinking in the full sun, and the candle he carried looked simply silly. He emerged, and the others too, and they stretched their backs, and the word "Krikey" fell from more than one lip. It had indeed been a cramping adventure. Bushes grew close to the mouth of the tunnel, so we could not see much landscape, and when we had stretched our backs we went on up stream, and nobody said they'd had jolly well enough of it, though in more than one young heart this was thought.
It was jolly to be in the sunshine again. I never knew before how cold it was underground. The stream was getting smaller and smaller.
Dicky said, "This can't be the way. I expect there was a turning to the north pole inside the tunnel, only we missed it. It was cold enough there."
But here a twist in the stream brought us out from the bushes, and Oswald said:
"Here is strange, wild, tropical vegetation in the richest profusion. Such blossoms as these never opened in a frigid what's-its-name."
It was indeed true. We had come out into a sort of marshy, swampy place like, I think, a jungle is, that the stream ran through, and it was simply crammed with queer plants and flowers we never saw before or since. And the stream was quite thin. It was torridly hot and softish to walk on. There were rushes and reeds and small willows, and it was all tangled over with different sorts of grasses—and pools here and there. We saw no wild beasts, but there were more different kinds of wild flies and beetles than you could believe anybody could bear, and dragon-flies and gnats. The girls picked a lot of flowers. I know the names of some of them, but I will not tell you them because this is not meant to be instructing. So I will only name meadow-sweet, yarrow, loose-strife, lady's bed-straw, and willow herb—both the larger and the lesser.
Every one now wished to go home. It was much hotter there than in natural fields. It made you want to tear all your clothes off and play at savages, instead of keeping respectable in your boots.
But we had to bear the boots because it was so brambly.
It was Oswald who showed the others how flat it would be to go home the same way we came; and he pointed out the telegraph wires in the distance and said:
"There must be a road there, let's make for it," which was quite a simple and ordinary thing to say, and he does not ask for any credit for it.
So we sloshed along, scratching our legs with the brambles, and the water squelched in our boots, and Alice's blue muslin frock was torn all over in these criss-cross tears which are considered so hard to darn.
We did not follow the stream any more. It was only a trickle now, so we knew we had tracked it to its source. And we got hotter and hotter and hotter, and the dews of agony stood in beads on our brows and rolled down our noses and off our chins. And the flies buzzed and the gnats stung, and Oswald bravely sought to keep up Dicky's courage, when he tripped on a snag and came down on a bramble-bush, by saying:
"You see it is the source of the Nile we've discovered. What price north poles now?"
Alice said, "Ah, but think of ices! I expect Oswald wishes it had been the pole, anyway—"
Oswald is naturally the leader, especially when following up what is his own idea, but he knows that leaders have other duties besides just leading. One is to assist weak or wounded members of the expedition, whether polar or equatorish.
So the others had got a bit ahead through Oswald lending the tottering Denny a hand over the rough places. Denny's feet hurt him, because when he was a beaver his stockings had dropped out of his pocket, and boots without stockings are not a bed of luxuriousness. And he is often unlucky with his feet.
Presently we came to a pond, and Denny said:
"Let's paddle."
Oswald likes Denny to have ideas; he knows it is healthy for the boy, and generally he backs him up, but just now it was getting late and the others were ahead, so he said:
"Oh, rot! come on."
Generally the Dentist would have; but even worms will turn if they are hot enough, and if their feet are hurting them.
"I don't care, I shall!" he said.
Oswald overlooked the mutiny and did not say who was leader. He just said:
"Well, don't be all day about it," for he is a kind-hearted boy and can make allowances.
So Denny took off his boots and went into the pool.
"Oh, it's ripping!" he said. "You ought to come in."
"It looks beastly muddy," said his tolerating leader.
"It is a bit," Denny said, "but the mud's just as cool as the water, and so soft it squeezes between your toes quite different to boots."
And so he splashed about, and kept asking Oswald to come along in.
