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Mark
Twain - A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
Chapter 44
A POSTSCRIPT BY CLARENCE
I, CLARENCE, must write it for him. He proposed that we two go out
and see if any help could be accorded the wounded. I was strenuous
against the project. I said that if there were many, we could do but
little for them; and it would not be wise for us to trust ourselves
among them, anyway. But he could seldom be turned from a purpose once
formed; so we shut off the electric current from the fences, took
an escort along, climbed over the enclosing ramparts of dead knights,
and moved out upon the field. The first wounded mall who appealed
for help was sitting with his back against a dead comrade. When The
Boss bent over him and spoke to him, the man recognized him and stabbed
him. That knight was Sir Meliagraunce, as I found out by tearing off
his helmet. He will not ask for help any more.
We carried The Boss to the cave and gave his wound, which was not
very serious, the best care we could. In this service we had the help
of Merlin, though we did not know it. He was disguised as a woman,
and appeared to be a simple old peasant goodwife. In this disguise,
with brown-stained face and smooth shaven, he had appeared a few days
after The Boss was hurt and offered to cook for us, saying her people
had gone off to join certain new camps which the enemy were forming,
and that she was starving. The Boss had been getting along very well,
and had amused himself with finishing up his record.
We were glad to have this woman, for we were short handed. We were
in a trap, you see -- a trap of our own making. If we stayed where
we were, our dead would kill us; if we moved out of our defenses,
we should no longer be invincible. We had conquered; in turn we were
conquered. The Boss recognized this; we all recognized it. If we could
go to one of those new camps and patch up some kind of terms with
the enemy -- yes, but The Boss could not go, and neither could I,
for I was among the first that were made sick by the poisonous air
bred by those dead thousands. Others were taken down, and still others.
To-morrow --
to-morrow. It is here. And with it the end. About midnight I awoke,
and saw that hag making curious passes in the air about The Boss's
head and face, and wondered what it meant. Everybody but the dynamo-watch
lay steeped in sleep; there was no sound. The woman ceased from her
mysterious foolery, and started tip-toeing toward the door. I called
out:
"Stop! What have you been doing?"
She halted, and said with an accent of malicious satisfaction:
"Ye were conquerors; ye are conquered! These others are perishing
-- you also. Ye shall all die in this place -- every one -- except
him. He sleepeth now -- and shall sleep thirteen centuries. I am Merlin!"
Then such a delirium of silly laughter overtook him that he reeled
about like a drunken man, and presently fetched up against one of
our wires. His mouth is spread open yet; apparently he is still laughing.
I suppose the face will retain that petrified laugh until the corpse
turns to dust.
The Boss has never stirred -- sleeps like a stone. If he does not
wake to-day we shall understand what kind of a sleep it is, and his
body will then be borne to a place in one of the remote recesses of
the cave where none will ever find it to desecrate it. As for the
rest of us -- well, it is agreed that if any one of us ever escapes
alive from this place, he will write the fact here, and loyally hide
this Manuscript with The Boss, our dear good chief, whose property
it is, be he alive or dead.
THE END OF THE MANUSCRIPT
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