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Salient. Victoria University of Wellington Students' Newspaper. Volume 31, Number 11 June 5, 1968

Part 11

Part 11

Photo: David J. Fergusson

Photo: David J. Fergusson

We have taken count of our fellows, and found that some among us are not here. Waterlulu is nowhere to be seen! Therefore she must still be locked in some Aggabug dungeon. Charlemagne has offered to return and rescue her.

That he may more easily rejoin us, a brilliant suggestion has been made. Whenever we turn in our path, as well as periodically white we remain on a single path, we shall leave by the wayside a heap of stones formed in an arrow, and the whole coloured licorice-blue, the most characteristic odour of our people.

By this means not only Charlemagne and the rescued Waterlulu be enabled to rejoin us, but if any others of our people happen to see such an arrow, they will perhaps guess that the arrow shows our path.

Since we are passing through such fertile country, we are filling our wagons with the local foods. For my own part I find them indigestible, but others of us eat with much tongue-flicking. Tonight we shall have a feast to farewell Charlemagne and the tortle, which he will take with him.

Our progress has ceased, that Charlemagne need travel no unnecessary distance. While the feast is being prepared, I am to take a walk with Sparadrap and Cantilever, to discuss our route.

Our walk led us along a clifftop, where we stood talking. Sparadrap had brought the Great Device on which he showed us the lines marked on it, commonly thought to be a map of our homeland, and the flight to the Plateau of Misery (as it has now been named). After we had strained our eyes to see the faint lines, we discussed the multitudinous interpretations of these markings.

Sparadrap idly turned the Device in his hands as we talked. Suddenly his sure touch slipped, and the Great fell from his grasp over the edge of the cliff and rolled towards the dense jungle that grew below.

Without thinking, I ran over the cliff-edge, and fell as fast as I could, finally snatching the Great Device in time to prevent it from being lost, painfully arresting my fall by dragging my tail along the cliff-face.

Therefore tonight's feast is to be for myself as well as for Charlemagne; though I am not sure whether the honour (a dubious commodity) compensates for my present pain, and my extreme shame at having to be cut from the undergrowth as though I were a slippery pumpkin somehow escaped from its bush.

Lying on my belly-side, I fancy, looking back, that a sudden, powerful gust of wind impelled both myself and the Great over the cliff at the same instant; therefore perhaps I am only a utensil of the wind, in the way that I consider my hand to be a utensil for whose benevolent deeds I myself take all credit. Enough of these unhealthy thoughts: I must not become an invalid.

Perhaps, if I simulate a temporary loss of my faculties, caused by my recent severe jolting, I shall find out whether what I hope to be only a dream, but fear to be true, but dare not ask anybody, is only a dream or is true, and, if so, why.

We have arrived at a particularly friendly village, populated not by the tall pale heavy folk of Aggabug, but by people very like ourselves, except that they lack tails and are bodily a little larger. Their morals, however, are regrettable; extremely lax: too shameful to be spoken of.

Their chief occupation is to concoct a drink which causes them to sleep. (I find these drinks remarkably tasty.) Their language closely resembles our own in some words, but they have no writing.

Perhaps they are related to us. Perhaps they are the remainder of our own people, come under some terrible calamity! All of our chronological apparatus was lost in the fiasco at Aggabug, therefore we have lost all count of the centuries; it may well have been hundreds of centuries since my undignified passage down the cliff.

Nostradamus' services as chronologist are no longer wanted. Ottoman has been appointed chronologist; perhaps he will be more reliable. (I am still not convinced by Quidditas' explanation for the apparent lost day; it is possible though unlikely, that the lost day was recovered during the fracas at Aggabug.)

* A blank page, so that Ottoman shall not see these chronicles before it is time.

These people are not such barbarians as those whom we have encountered elsewhere. I am almost able to converse with some of them. Several dozen among us (including Sparadrap,) are even more fluent in their tongue than I.

We are plying them with questions, asking them whether they saw our ancestors pass this way. Having no writing, they do not remember such an event, but they showed to us a piece of rope, the strands of which were of many different hues.

This rope, they said, had been left long ago by travellers. It is possible that this rope was left by our forebears. Today Sparadrap asked these villagers of Polloma Lu whether they had met with the remainder of our people.

Their answer was no, but one of them, named Nacravac, added the following tale:

"As I was travelling in the upper Shajat district. during the year before the year before this year, offering my liqueurs for sale, I was accosted by a fellow who remarked that I had lost my tail."

The obvious conclusion to be drawn from this narrative is that the people of the upper Shajat district found a tail bearing the name of Nacravac. But Nacravac's people have no tails; therefore the Shajat people must have been confusing the tail-name Nacravac with the tail-name Erythromelagia.

So Erythromelalgia is near! Perhaps if we go to the upper Shajat district we shall find where he came from, was going to, whether he was the dragonfly, or whether he was but momentarily separated from the bold 880.

It is decided that our next destination is the upper Shajat district. But in the meantime we shall stop here for a year or two, savouring the food and fellowship of this fertile area. Many of the magicians have expressed interest in the processes by which the drinking fluids are made. Tomorrow our magicians and elders are to be shown this apparatus.

The apparatus of which I have spoken includes several enormous tubs, as high as four men, a cat, a pigeon, and an earthworm turned on its side; ladders go up the outside of these tubs. To see the contents of one of these tubs (said to be a sticky brown substance) Sparadrap climbed to the top of the ladder, paused, and looked down at the sticky surface; I was immediately behind him.

A bee buzzed near the top of the tub. Sparadrap started forward as if to catch the bee, and seemed to grasp the side of the tub to steady himself. Others aver that he was attempting to rescue the bee from a possible sticky death. There is argument as to his exact movements at the time, but what ensued was that, uttering a soft cry of surprise, he fell into the tub. The tub was filled to its brim; therefore its contents overflowed, and I was forced to wrap my tail tightly several times around the topmost rung of the ladder, in order that I should not fall back on to the stone floor far below and very likely bend a bone.

The effect of my exertions was that I plunged headlong into the tub, totally immersed in the sticky brown substance with the exception of my tail, on which a few minutes of near-suffocation I felt a strong and painful pull, which, however, led to my being extricated, glutinous, from the tub.

Alas! Sparadrap was lost in that tub; we are leaderless, and once more I feel intense shame at having made an undignified appearance.

As a mark of mourning for our beloved leader, I have chosen to black the entire previous page, and I have vowed, from this point onward, to pay my own respects to the late Sparadrap by writing in no colour but black; and to pay the respects of this chronicle by leaving, after each entry I make, a space for sad thought, thus: "( )".

We are thrown into confusion by the loss of our leader. What shall we now do without his helping hand, forceful foot, monitorial mouth, tactful tongue, trusty tooth? I scarcely know what to write here, lacking his sanguine suggestion.

I am terribly embarrassed by the praise bestowed on me; the common opinion among our people is that I am his resourceful rescuer; my piteous protestations are met with charitable cheering. There is to be a meeting of all our people tomorrow, that the course of our future may be decided "( )".

At a solemn ceremony this morning I was elected leader. I begged inexperience and incapability; my pleas were ignored. It is a tradition that he who is chosen must not refuse. I shall have to rely largely on the advice of such experienced men as Cantilever, Rigmarole and Ottoman.

Tradition demands also that our leader must devote himself to leadership alone; therefore I, as leader, shall have to appoint another chronicler. However, tradition also has it that the chronicler must not choose his successor.

I mentioned this difficulty to Rigmarole, who solved my predicament by means of a closely reasoned statement; the leader, he said, must appoint a chronicler but need not choose him; a parallel situation to this occurred when, on the death of Xanthagorian (from consumption), Niddle-noodle the chronicler was chosen as leader.

The olders, led by Dubelcoleph? [what resounding names were used in that period!], decided that Hunchforthworthness should be chronicler; the latter was then appointed by Niddle-noodle. (I am pleased that a parallel has been drawn from such a noble and distinguished period) "( )".

Emerging from their huddle, the people have recommended to me that Whirligig be appointed historian. This choice surprised me; he is somewhat tactless, somewhat impetuous, and, I think, too young; I had expected that an elder of the calibre of, say, Cantilever would be selected.

While awaiting the end of my seemly period, during which I am expected (I do not know by whom) to ponder on whether or not to agree to have Whirligig (or whoever has been nominated as chronicler), hut in fact I do not think that I am expected by anybody at all to ponder, but only to agree.

I should perhaps not be writing this at all, since I am acting as leader and chronicler together, in which case I should defend my own actions and opinions (which indeed I seem to be doing), but perhaps some short overlap (a few hours, as this has been) is acceptable. Otherwise, who would be writing these words, since Whirligig is not yet appointed?

So during my period in which I am expected (or not expected, as the case may be) to ponder the selection of a chronicler, I shall hastily search the chronicles of our classical period, in particular the end of the chronicle of Niddle-noodle, that I may discover whether a precedent exists for declining the appointment of an unselected chronicler.

It would seem, since I am given time to ponder, that I cannot enforce the results of my pondering to agree with the opinion of the multitude; but these assumptions are often misleading; it is safer to be able to quote a precedent "( )".

As I feared, the chronicle of Niddle-noodle ceases abruptly after mentioning the death of Xanthagorion. I suppose that Whirligig will adequately (if not brilliantly) perform his task as historian. However I feel that his mind is sporadic, great leaps are apparent in his thinking, it seems to me.

He has devoted himself largely to somewhat futile inventions and impractical suggestions. I shall have to carefully instruct him in the subtleties of his new craft.

To future readers of these chronicles; I recommend that Whirligig's chronicle be read in a sceptical frame of mind. Here my chronicle comes to an end.