The Elfin Ship Read Online Free

was bustling with activity. A score of the sort who take everything very seriously were shouting and pounding their fists into open palms and clearing their throats to make everyone note that something important was being said. Old Beezle of Beezle’s Dry Goods and General Merchandise was red-faced; his spectacles kept sliding away off the tip of his nose. He maintained, in a loud voice, that Willowood Station had been demolished by flood. He had, he said, scientific proof that the sorts of levees and piers built at Willowood could not have stood the onslaught of swollen rivers over the course of many seasons. If those present would just pay attention to the diagrams and charts he’d brought along, the whole matter would be clarified and the people of Twombly Town could set about fortifying their own banks against the same eventuality.
    All in all, the villagers appeared to be uninterested in Mr Beezle, mainly because he brought the same charts and diagrams to town meetings every time the rainy season began. His wonderful drawings of what looked like medieval fortifications were written all over with large numbers and words like ‘stress load’ and ‘flow value’ and ‘whirl schute’ – words which sounded marvelous and important.
    Old Wurzle, the researcher, was also carrying on. As Jonathan poked his head in through the door he could hear Professor Wurzle saying, ‘We’ve seen your piers and levees, Mr Beezle. We’ve seen your piers and levees until they’ve given us the pip!’ Even though the Professor’s comments were made in a loud voice, Mr Beezle didn’t seem to hear them. Professor Wurzle, as a consequence, repeated the part about having gotten the pip and added, as a capper, that he was a ‘man of science’ and that Mr Beezle was a greengrocer. But, as far as Twombly Town and perhaps the whole valley was concerned, Professor Wurzle
was
fairly scientific. He had a laboratory filled with apparatus and with devices continually bubbling and whistling.
    But the Professor’s main accomplishment was that he was a historian. He knew the history of Twombly Town and of most of the families living there, and it was even rumored he had once climbed into the mountains in the east and lived with the Light Elves for a month or so. But that was thirty or forty years ago, and almost nobody remembered much about the incident anymore. What they did remember was that Wurzle, while researching the mysteries of Stooton Slough, a water lily-choked swamp far below Willowood Station, had come across the hulk of a very old and very beautiful sailing ship – rather like a sloop – mired in the rushes.
    The figurehead and three masts with a few tattered bits of stiff and crusted canvas were visible above the stagnant water and pond lilies of the swamp. The figurehead itself was carved in the semblance of a frightful dragon with furled wings. In either eye was a great jewel, one a ruby and the other an emerald. The masts themselves were minutely carved with odd runes and hieroglyphs. Wurzle’s intention was to cut off all that was above water and haul it back upriver to Twombly Town.
    He realized, of course, that such a feat would require a barge and tools and ropes and the help of several men, so he returned to Willowood and found three traders and a raft. The four men set out, although it was late in the season, and hadn’t floated halfway down to Stooton-on-River when a great storm overtook them and forced them ashore. For two days the men huddled in a cavern above the banks, the masts and sails of their own raft having been reduced to rubbish by the wind and rain. Finally two of the traders struck out overland for Willowood. When the storm cleared, Wurzle and the last trader, who had an enormous nose and the unlikely name of Flutesnoot, continued on Wurzle’s raft which had somehow survived the storm, to see what they could see.
    To poor Wurzle’s dismay, the ruins of the mysterious sloop had gone to bits in the storm