Chapter 8. ‘It’s my own invention!’

After a while the noise disappeared, and Alice looked around. There was nobody, and her first thought was that she had a dream about the Lion and the Unicorn. But then she saw a dish near her feet. ‘So I wasn’t dreaming, after all,’ she said to herself, ‘or… we’re all part of the same dream. Only I hope it’s my dream, and not the Red King’s! I don’t like to be in another person’s dream.’

At this moment her thoughts were interrupted by a loud shouting of ‘Ahoy! Ahoy! Check!’ and a Knight dressed in red, came galloping to her. When he reached her, the horse stopped suddenly: ‘You’re my prisoner!’ the Knight cried.

But Alice was more frightened for him than for herself at the moment, because he fell down from the horse. When he was again in the saddle, he began once more ‘You’re my… ’ but here another voice cried ‘Ahoy! Ahoy! Check!’ and Alice looked round in some surprise.

This time it was a White Knight. He came up to Alice and fell off his horse just as the Red Knight had done. Then he got on again, and the two Knights sat and looked at each other for some time without speaking. Alice looked from one to the other in some confusion.

‘She’s my prisoner, you know!’ the Red Knight said at last.

‘Yes, but then I came and saved her!’ the White Knight said.

‘Well, we must fight for her, then,’ said the Red Knight and put his helmet on.

‘You will follow the Rules of Battle, of course?’ the White Knight said, putting on his helmet too.

‘I always do,’ said the Red Knight, and they began fighting with such fury that Alice hid behind a tree.

‘I wonder, what the Rules of Battle are,’ she said to herself, ‘if one Knight hits the other, he knocks him off his horse, and if he misses, he falls off himself… What a noise they make when they fall! And how quiet the horses are! They let them get on and off them as if they were tables!’

Another Rule of Battle was that they always fell on their heads. The battle ended when the both fell off their horses. When they got up, they shook hands, and then the Red Knight galloped off.

‘It was a victory, wasn’t it?’ said the White Knight.

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

‘You will be a Queen, when you’ve crossed the next brook,’ said the White Knight. ‘I’ll help you to get to the end of the wood… and then I must go back. That’s the end of my move.’

‘Thank you very much!’ said Alice. ‘May I help you with your helmet?’ It was not very easy, but finally she took it off.

‘Now I can breathe more easily,’ said the Knight. He put back his hair with both hands, and turned his gentle face and large kind eyes to Alice. She thought she had never seen such a strange-looking soldier in all her life. He was dressed in armour, which fit him very badly. And he had a strange little letter-box across his shoulder, which was upside-down. Alice looked at it with great curiosity.

‘I see you like my little box,’ the Knight said in a friendly tone. ‘It’s my own invention… I keep clothes and sandwiches here. You see I carry it upside-down, so that the rain can’t get in.’

‘But the things can fall out,’ Alice said. ‘Do you know that the lid’s open?’

‘I didn’t know that,’ the Knight said. ‘Then all the things have fallen out! And the box is useless.’ He was going to throw it into the bushes, when a sudden thought came to him, and he hung it carefully on a tree.

‘Can you guess why I did that?’ he said to Alice.

Alice shook her head.

‘I hope some bees can make a nest in it… then I will get the honey.’

‘But you’ve got already a beehive… or something like it… on your saddle,’ said Alice.

‘Yes, it’s a very good beehive,’ the Knight said, ‘one of the best! But there are no bees. And the other thing is a mouse-trap. I think the mice keep the bees out… or the bees keep the mice out, I don’t know.’

‘I don’t think there are any mice on the horse’s back,’ said Alice.

‘Perhaps,’ said the Knight: ‘but if they come…You see,’ he went on after a pause, ‘it’s as well to be provided for everything. That’s why the horse has all those bracelets round its feet.’

‘But what are they for?’ Alice asked in a tone of great curiosity. ‘Against the bites of sharks,’ the Knight said. ‘It’s an invention of my own! What’s this dish for?’

‘For plum-cake,’ said Alice.

‘We’d better take it with us, the Knight said. ‘It’ll be usefull if we find any plum-cake. Help me to put it into this bag.’

It took a very long time to do it. Alice held the bag very carefully, but the Knight was very clumsy: he fell in the bag himself instead several times.

‘It’s very difficult, you see,’ he said, as they put the dish in it at last; ‘There are so many candlesticks in the bag.’ And he hung it to the saddle, which was already full of bunches of carrots and many other things.

Alice and the Knight walked some time in silence. They stopped very often, and Alice helped the poor Knight, who was not a good rider. Every time the horse stopped, he fell off in front; and every time it went on again, he fell off behind.

‘I’m afraid you haven’t had much practice in riding,’ she said, when she was helping him.

The Knight looked very much surprised and a little offended.

‘What makes you say that?’ he asked, as he got back into the saddle.

‘Because people don’t fall off so often, when they’ve had enough practice.’

‘I’ve had a lot of practice,’ the Knight said: ‘a lot of practice! The great art of riding,’ the Knight said in a loud voice, waving his arms as he spoke, ‘is to keep…’ Here the sentence ended suddenly, because the Knight fell on the top of his head exactly in the path where Alice was walking. She was frightened this time, and asked, ‘I hope no bones are broken?’

‘None,’ the Knight said. ‘The great art of riding, as I was saying, is… to keep your balance! Like this… ’

He wanted to show Alice what he meant, and this time he fell on his back, right under the horse’s feet.

‘A lot of practice!’ he went on repeating all the time when Alice was getting him on his feet again. ‘A lot of practice!’

‘It’s just funny!’ cried Alice, she lost all her patience. ‘You should ride a wooden horse on wheels!’

‘Fine! 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 great at inventing things. I think you noticed that when you picked me up last time, I was thoughtful. Well, just then I was inventing a new way, how to get over a gate… Would you like to hear it?’

‘Yes, please,’ Alice said politely.

‘I’ll tell you!’ said the Knight. ‘You see, I said to myself, “The only difficulty is with the feet: the head is high already.” Now, first I put my head on the top of the gate… then I stand on my head… then the feet are high, you see… then I’m over!’

‘Yes, I think you’d be over,’ Alice said thoughtfully: ‘but don’t you think it would be very difficult?’

‘I haven’t tried it yet,’ the Knight said: ‘so I can’t tell now… but I’m afraid it would be a little difficult.’

He looked so worried, that Alice decided to change the subject.

‘What a curious helmet you’ve got!’ she said cheerfully. ‘Is that your invention too?’

The Knight looked proudly at his helmet, which hung on the saddle. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘but I’ve invented a better one than that… like a sugar loaf. When I wore 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… I could fall into it. And it happened to me once… and the worst of it was, that before I could get out, the other White Knight came and put it on. He thought it was his own helmet.’

Alice tried not to laugh. ‘I’m afraid you had hurt him,’ she said, ‘because you were 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.’

He raised his hands in some excitement as he said this, rolled out of the saddle, and fell into a hole.

Alice ran up to him, she was afraid that he was really hurt this time. At first she could see only his feet, but then she heard that he kept on talking in his usual tone. ‘It was careless of him to put another man’s helmet on… with the man in it, too.’

‘How can you keep on talking?’ Alice asked, as she helped him to stand.

The Knight looked surprised. ‘My mind goes on working all the same. In fact, when I am downwards, I keep inventing new things.’

‘Now the cleverest thing of the sort that I ever did,’ he went on after a pause, ‘was inventing a new pudding.’

‘What was it made of?’ Alice asked.

‘Blotting paper,’ the Knight answered.

‘It wasn’t very nice, I’m afraid…’

‘Not very nice alone,’ he interrupted: ‘but if it would be mixed with other things… And here I must leave you.’

They had just come to the end of the wood.

Alice was very much puzzled: she was thinking of the pudding.

‘You are sad,’ the Knight said: ‘let me sing you a song!’

‘Is it very long?’ Alice asked, she had heard a lot of poetry that day.

‘It’s long,’ said the Knight, ‘but very, very beautiful. The name of the song is called “Haddocks Eyes.”’

‘Oh, that’s the name of the song, is it?’ Alice said.

‘No, you don’t understand,’ the Knight said, ‘That’s what the name is called. The name really is “The Aged Aged Man.”’

‘Then I have to say “That’s what the song is called”?’ Alice corrected herself.

‘No, that’s quite another thing! The song is called “Ways and Means”, but that’s only what it’s called!’

‘Well, what is the song, then?’ said Alice, who was completely puzzled.

‘The song really is “A-sitting On A Gate”, and the tune is my own invention,’ the Knight said.

He stopped his horse and with a weak smile he began singing.

Alice saw a lot of strange things in her journey Through The Looking-Glass, but this was that she always remembered very clearly. After many years she could retold it, as if it had been only yesterday… The blue eyes and kind smile of the Knight… the setting sun that was shining through his hair… the horse was quietly moving about… and the black shadows of the forest behind… And she listened in a half dream to the music of the song.

When the Knight sang the last words of the song, he said. ‘You have to go only a few yards,’ he said, ‘down the hill and over that little brook, and then you’ll be a Queen… But you’ll stay and watch me first, won’t you?’ he added. ‘It won’t be long. You’ll wait and wave your handkerchief when I get to that turn in the road, won’t you? I think it’ll encourage me…’

‘Of course I’ll wait,’ said Alice: ‘and thank you very much that you’ve come with me… and thank you for the song… I liked it very much!’

So they shook hands, and then the Knight rode slowly away into the forest. ‘It won’t take long, I think,’ Alice said to herself, she stood and watched him. ‘There he goes! Right on his head as usual! However, he gets on again very easily…’ The Knight fell off again and again. After the fourth or fifth fall he reached the turn. Alice waved her handkerchief to him. ‘I hope he’ll be alright,’ she said and she ran down the hill.

‘And now it’s time for the last brook, and I’ll be a Queen! How great it sounds!’ She was at the edge of the brook. ‘The Eighth Square at last!’ she cried when she jumped it over. ‘Oh, how glad I am to get here! And what is on my head?’ she asked. Alice put her hands up to something very heavy round her head.

‘But how can it be there?’ she said to herself, and took it off. It was a golden crown.