Page:Wet Magic - Nesbit.djvu/134

Wet Magic now?" Mavis asked her Porpoise, who followed her with the close fidelity of an affectionate little dog.

"I don't know," it said, with some pride. "I'm stupid, I am. But I can't help knowing that no one can come out of books unless they're called. You've just got to tap on the back of the book and call the name and then you open it, and the person comes out. At least, that's what the Bookworms do, and I don't see why you should be different."

What was different, it soon appeared, was the water in the stream in the Cave of Learning, which was quite plainly still water in some other sense than that in which what they were in was water. That is, they could not walk in it; they had to swim. The cave seemed dark, but enough light came from the golden gate to enable them to read the titles of the books when they had pulled away the seaweed which covered many of them. They had to hold on to the rocks—which were books—with one hand, and clear away the seaweed with the other.

You can guess the sort of books at which they knocked—Kingsley and Shakespeare and Marryat and Dickens, Miss Alcott and Mrs. Ewing, Hans Andersen and Stevenson, and Mayne Reid—and when they had knocked they called the name of the hero whose help they desired, and "Will you help us," they asked, "to conquer the horrid Book People, and drive them back to cover?"

And not a hero but said, "Yes, indeed we will, with all our hearts."

And they climbed down out of the books, and swam up to the golden gate and waited, talking with courage and dignity among themselves, while the children went on knocking at the backs of books—which are books' front doors—and calling out more and more heroes to help in the fight. 124