The Complete Alice in Wonderland (34 page)

Another Rule of Battle, that Alice had not noticed, seemed to be that they always fell on their heads; and the battle ended with their both falling off in this way, side by side. When they got up again, they shook hands, and then the Red Knight mounted and galloped off.

“It was a glorious victory, wasn’t it?” said the White Knight, as he came up panting.

“I don’t know,” Alice said doubtfully. “I don’t want to be anybody’s prisoner. I want to be a Queen.”

“So you will, when you’ve crossed the next brook,” said the White Knight. “I’ll see you safe to the end of the wood—and then I must go back, you know. That’s the end of my move.”

“Thank you very much,” said Alice. “May I help you off with your helmet?” It was evidently more than he could manage by himself; however she managed to shake him out of it at last.

“Now one can breathe more easily,” said the Knight, putting back his shaggy hair with both hands, and turning his gentle face and large mild eyes to Alice. She thought she had never seen such a strange-looking soldier in all her life.

He was dressed in tin armour, which seemed to fit him very badly, and he had a queer-shaped little deal box fastened across his shoulders, upside-down, and with the lid hanging open. Alice looked at it with great curiosity.

“I see you’re admiring my little box,” the Knight said in a friendly tone. “It’s my own invention—to keep clothes and sandwiches in. You see I carry it upside-down, so that the rain ca’n’t get in.”

“But the things can get
out
,” Alice gently remarked. “Do you know the lid’s open?”

“I didn’t know it,” the Knight said, a shade of vexation passing over his face. “Then all the things must have fallen out! And the box is no use without them.” He unfastened it as he spoke, and was just going to throw it into the bushes, when a sudden thought seemed to strike him, and he hung it carefully on a tree. “Can you guess why I did that?” he said to Alice.

Alice shook her head.

“In hopes some bees may make a nest in it—then I should get the honey.”

“But you’ve got a bee-hive—or something like one—fastened to the saddle,” said Alice.

“Yes, it’s a very good bee-hive,” the Knight said in a discontented tone, “one of the best kind. But not a single bee has come near it yet. And the other thing is a mouse-trap. I suppose the mice keep the bees out—or the bees keep the mice out, I don’t know which.”

“I was wondering what the mouse-trap was for,” said Alice. “It isn’t very likely there would be any mice on the horse’s back.”

“Not very likely, perhaps,” said the Knight; “but, if they do come, I don’t choose to have them running all about.”

“You see,” he went on after a pause, “it’s as well to be provided for
everything
. That’s the reason the horse has all those anklets round his feet.”

“But what are they for?” Alice asked in a tone of great curiosity.

“To guard against the bites of sharks,” the Knight replied. “It’s an invention of my own. And now help me on. I’ll go with you to the end of the wood—What’s that dish for?”

“It’s meant for plum-cake,” said Alice.

“We’d better take it with us,” the Knight said. “It’ll come in handy if we find any plum-cake. Help me to get it into this bag.”

This took a long time to manage, though Alice held the bag open very carefully, because the knight was so very awkward in putting in the dish: the first two or three times that he tried he fell in himself instead. “It’s rather a tight fit, you see,” he said, as they got it in at last; “there are so many candlesticks in the bag.” And he hung it to the saddle, which was already loaded with bunches of carrots, and fire-irons, and many other things.

“I hope you’ve got your hair well fastened on?” he continued, as they set off.

“Only in the usual way,” Alice said, smiling.

“That’s hardly enough,” he said, anxiously. “You see the wind is so very strong here. It’s as strong as soup.”

“Have you invented a plan for keeping the hair from being blown off?” Alice inquired.

“Not yet,” said the Knight. “But I’ve got a plan for keeping it from
falling
off.”

“I should like to hear it, very much.”

“First you take an upright stick,” said the Knight. “Then you make your hair creep up it, like a fruit-tree. Now the reason hair falls off is because it hangs
down
—things never fall
upwards
, you know. It’s a plan of my own invention. You may try it if you like.”

It didn’t sound a comfortable plan, Alice thought, and for a few minutes she walked on in silence, puzzling over the idea, and every now and then stopping to help the poor Knight, who certainly was
not
a good rider.

Whenever the horse stopped (which it did very often), he fell off in front; and, whenever it went on again (which it generally did rather suddenly), he fell off behind. Otherwise he kept on pretty well, except that he had a habit of now and then falling off sideways; and, as he generally did this on the side on which Alice was walking, she soon found that it was the best plan not to walk quite close to the horse.

“I’m afraid you’ve not had much practice in riding,” she ventured to say, as she was helping him up from his fifth tumble.

The Knight looked very much surprised, and a little offended at the remark. “What makes you say that?” he asked, as he scrambled back into the saddle, keeping hold of Alice’s hair with one hand, to save himself from falling over on the other side.

“Because people don’t fall off quite so often, when they’ve had much practice.”

“I’ve had plenty of practice,” the Knight said very gravely: “plenty of practice!”

Alice could think of nothing better to say than “Indeed?” but she said it as heartily as she could. They went on a little way in silence after this, the Knight with his eyes shut, muttering to himself, and Alice watching anxiously for the next tumble.

“The great art of riding,” the Knight suddenly began in a loud voice, waving his right arm as he spoke, “is to keep—” Here the sentence ended as suddenly as it had begun, as the Knight fell heavily on the top of his head exactly in the path where Alice was walking. She was quite frightened this time, and said in an anxious tone, as she picked him up, “I hope no bones are broken?”

“None to speak of,” the Knight said, as if he didn’t mind breaking two or three of them. “The great art of riding, as I was saying, is—to keep your balance properly. Like this, you know —”

He let go the bridle, and stretched out both his arms to show Alice what he meant, and this time he fell flat on his back, right under the horse’s feet.

“Plenty of practice!” he went on repeating, all the time that Alice was getting him on his feet again. “Plenty of practice!”

“It’s too ridiculous!” cried Alice, losing all her patience this time. “You ought to have a wooden horse on wheels, that you ought!”

“Does that kind go smoothly?” the Knight asked in a tone of great interest, clasping his arms round the horse’s neck as he spoke, just in time to save himself from tumbling off again.

“Much more smoothly than a live horse,” Alice said, with a little scream of laughter, in spite of all she could do to prevent it.

“I’ll get one,” the Knight said thoughtfully to himself. “One or two—several.”

There was a short silence after this, and then the Knight went on again. “I’m a great hand at inventing things. Now, I daresay you noticed, the last time you picked me up, that I was looking rather thoughtful?”

“You
were
a little grave,” said Alice.

“Well, just then I was inventing a new way of getting over a gate—would you like to hear it?”

“Very much indeed,” Alice said politely.

“I’ll tell you how I came to think of it,” said the Knight. “You see, I said to myself “the only difficulty is with the feet: the head is high enough already.” Now, first I put my head on the top of the gate—then the head’s high enough—then I stand on my head—then the feet are high enough, you see—them I’m over, you see.”

“Yes, I suppose you’d be over when that was done,” Alice said thoughtfully: “but don’t you think it would be rather hard?”

“I haven’t tried it yet,” the Knight said, gravely; “so I ca’n’t tell for certain—but I’m afraid it
would
be a little hard.”

He looked so vexed at the idea, that Alice changed the subject hastily. “What a curious helmet you’ve got!” she said cheerfully. “Is that you invention too?”

The Knight looked down proudly at his helmet, which hung from the saddle. “Yes,” he said; “but I’ve invented a better one than that—like a sugar-loaf. When I used to wear it, if I fell off the horse, it always touched the ground directly. So I had a
very
little way to fall, you see—But there
was
the danger of falling
into
it, to be sure. That happened to me once—and the worst of it was, before I could get out again, the other White Knight came and put it on. He thought it was his own helmet.”

The Knight looked so solemn about it that Alice did not dare to laugh. “I’m afraid you must have hurt him,” she said in a trembling voice, “being on the top of his head.”

“I had to kick him, of course,” the Knight said, very seriously. “And then he took the helmet off again—but it took hours and hours to get me out. I was as fast as—as lightning, you know.”

“But that’s a different kind of fastness,” Alice objected.

The Knight shook his head. “It was all kinds of fastness with me, I can assure you!” he said. He raised his hands in some excitement as he said this, and instantly rolled out of the saddle, and fell headlong into a deep ditch.