The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Клайв Стейплз Льюис

You might call it – and indeed it was – a Mouse. But then it was a Mouse on its hind legs and stood about two feet high. A thin band of gold passed round its head under one ear and over the other and in this was stuck a long crimson feather. (As the Mouse’s fur was very dark, almost black, the effect was bold and striking.) Its left paw rested on the hilt of a sword very nearly as long as its tail. Its balance, as it paced gravely along the swaying deck, was perfect, and its manners courtly. Lucy and Edmund recognized it at once – Reepicheep, the most valiant of all the Talking Beasts of Narnia, and the Chief Mouse. It had won undying glory in the second Battle of Beruna. Lucy longed, as she had always done, to take Reepicheep up in her arms and cuddle him. But this, as she well knew, was a pleasure she could never have: it would have offended him deeply.

      Instead, she went down on one knee to talk to him.

      Reepicheep put forward his left leg, drew back his right, bowed, kissed her hand, straightened himself, twirled his whiskers, and said in his shrill, piping voice:

      “My humble duty to your Majesty. And to King Edmund, too.” (Here he bowed again.) “Nothing except your Majesties’ presence was lacking to this glorious venture.”

      “Ugh, take it away,” wailed Eustace. “I hate mice. And I never could bear performing animals. They’re silly and vulgar and – and sentimental.”

      “Am I to understand,” said Reepicheep to Lucy after a long stare at Eustace, “that this singularly discourteous person is under your Majesty’s protection? Because, if not—”

      At this moment Lucy and Edmund both sneezed.

      “What a fool I am to keep you all standing here in your wet things,” said Caspian. “Come on below and get changed. I’ll give you my cabin of course, Lucy, but I’m afraid we have no women’s clothes on board. You’ll have to make do with some of mine. Lead the way, Reepicheep, like a good fellow.”

      “To the convenience of a lady,” said Reepicheep, “even a question of honour must give way – at least for the moment—” and here he looked very hard at Eustace. But Caspian hustled them on and in a few minutes Lucy found herself passing through the door into the stern cabin. She fell in love with it at once – the three square windows that looked out on the blue, swirling water astern, the low cushioned benches round three sides of the table, the swinging silver lamp overhead (Dwarfs’ work, she knew at once by its exquisite delicacy) and the flat gold image of Aslan the Lion on the forward wall above the door. All this she took in in a flash, for Caspian immediately opened a door on the starboard side, and said, “This’ll be your room, Lucy. I’ll just get some dry things for myself” – he was rummaging in one of the lockers while he spoke – “and then leave you to change. If you’ll fling your wet things outside the door I’ll get them taken to the galley to be dried.”

      Lucy found herself as much at home as if she had been in Caspian’s cabin for weeks, and the motion of the ship did not worry her, for in the old days when she had been a queen in Narnia she had done a good deal of voyaging. The cabin was very tiny but bright with painted panels (all birds and beasts and crimson dragons and vines) and spotlessly clean. Caspian’s clothes were too big for her, but she could manage. His shoes, sandals and sea-boots were hopelessly big but she did not mind going barefoot on board ship. When she had finished dressing she looked out of her window at the water rushing past and took a long deep breath. She felt quite sure they were in for a lovely time.

      Chapter 2

      On Board the Dawn Treader

      “Ah, there you are, Lucy,” said Caspian.

      “We were just waiting for you. This is my captain, the Lord Drinian.”

      A dark-haired man went down on one knee and kissed her hand. The only others present were Reepicheep and Edmund.

      “Where is Eustace?” asked Lucy.

      “In bed,” said Edmund, “and I don’t think we can do anything for him. It only makes him worse if you try to be nice to him.”

      “Meanwhile,” said Caspian, “we want to talk.”

      “By Jove, we do,” said Edmund. “And first, about time. It’s a year ago by our time since we left you just before your coronation. How long has it been in Narnia?”

      “Exactly three years,” said Caspian.

      “All going well?” asked Edmund.

      “You don’t suppose I’d have left my kingdom and put to sea unless all was well,” answered the King. “It couldn’t be better. There’s no trouble at all now between Telmarines, Dwarfs, Talking Beasts, Fauns and the rest. And we gave those troublesome giants on the frontier such a good beating last summer that they pay us tribute now. And I had an excellent person to leave as Regent while I’m away – Trumpkin, the Dwarf. You remember him?”

      “Dear Trumpkin,” said Lucy, “of course I do. You couldn’t have made a better choice.”

      “Loyal as a badger, Ma’am, and valiant as – as a Mouse,” said Drinian. He had been going to say “as a lion” but had noticed Reepicheep’s eyes fixed on him.

      “And where are we heading for?” asked Edmund.

      “Well,” said Caspian, “that’s rather a long story. Perhaps you remember that when I was a child my usurping uncle Miraz got rid of seven friends of my father’s (who might have taken my part) by sending them off to explore the unknown Eastern Seas beyond the Lone Islands.”

      “Yes,” said Lucy, “and none of them ever came back.”

      “Right. Well, on my coronation day, with Aslan’s approval, I swore an oath that, if once I established peace in Narnia, I would sail east myself for a year and a day to find my father’s friends or to learn of their deaths and avenge them if I could. These were their names – the Lord Revilian, the Lord Bern, the Lord Argoz, the Lord Mavramorn, the Lord Octesian, the Lord Restimar, and – oh, that other one who’s so hard to remember.”

      “The Lord Rhoop, Sire,” said Drinian.

      “Rhoop, Rhoop, of course,” said Caspian. “That is my main intention. But Reepicheep here has an even higher hope.” Everyone’s eyes turned to the Mouse.

      “As high as my spirit,” it said. “Though perhaps as small as my stature. Why should we not come to the very eastern end of the world? And what might we find there? I expect to find Aslan’s own country. It is always from the east, across the sea, that the great Lion comes to us.”

      “I say, that is an idea,” said Edmund in an awed voice.

      “But do you think,” said Lucy, “Aslan’s country would be that sort of country – I mean, the sort you could ever sail to?”

      “I do not know, Madam,” said Reepicheep. “But there is this. When I was in my cradle, a wood woman, a Dryad, spoke this verse over me:

       Where sky and water meet,

       Where the waves grow sweet,

       Doubt not, Reepicheep,

       To find all you seek,

       There is the utter East.

      “I do not know what it means. But the spell of it has been on me all my life.”

      After