C.S. Lewis - The Chronicles Of Narnia 3 (The Voyage of the Dawn Treader).pdf

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C.S. Lewis
The Chronicles Of Narnia
THE VOYAGE OF THE DAWN TREADER
BY
C.S. LEWIS
CHAPTER ONE
THE PICTURE IN THE BEDROOM
THERE was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it. His
parents called him Eustace Clarence and masters called him Scrubb. I can't tell you how
his friends spoke to him, for he had none. He didn't call his Father and Mother "Father"
and "Mother", but Harold and Alberta. They were very up-to-date and advanced people.
They were vegetarians, non-smokers and teetotallers and wore a special kind of
underclothes. In their house there was very little furniture and very few clothes on beds
and the windows were always open.
Eustace Clarence liked animals, especially beetles, if they were dead and pinned on a
card. He liked books if they were books of information and had pictures of grain
elevators or of fat foreign children doing exercises in model schools.
Eustace Clarence disliked his cousins the four Pevensies, Peter, Susan, Edmund and
Lucy. But he was quite glad when he heard that Edmund and Lucy were coming to stay.
For deep down inside him he liked bossing and bullying; and, though he was a puny little
person who couldn't have stood up even to Lucy, let alone Edmund, in a fight, he knew
that there are dozens of ways to give people a bad time if you are in your own home and
they are only visitors.
Edmund and Lucy did not at all want to come and stay with Uncle Harold and Aunt
Alberta. But it really couldn't be helped. Father had got a job lecturing in America for
sixteen weeks that summer, and Mother was to go with him because she hadn't had a real
holiday for ten years. Peter was working very hard for an exam and he was to spend the
holidays being coached by old Professor Kirke in whose house these four children had
had wonderful adventures long ago in the war years. If he had still been in that house he
would have had them all to stay. But he had somehow become poor since the old days
and was living in a small cottage with only one bedroom to spare. It would have cost too
much money to take the other three all to America, and Susan had gone.
Grown-ups thought her the pretty one of the family and she was no good at school work
(though otherwise very old for her age) and Mother said she "would get far more out of a
trip to America than the youngsters". Edmund and Lucy tried not to grudge Susan her
luck, but it was dreadful having to spend the summer holidays at their Aunt's. "But it's far
worse for me," said Edmund, "because you'll at least have a room of your own and I shall
have to share a bedroom with that record stinker, Eustace."
The story begins on an afternoon when Edmund and Lucy were stealing a few precious
minutes alone together. And of course they were talking about Narnia, which was the
name of their own private and secret country. Most of us, I suppose, have a secret country
but for most of us it is only an imaginary country. Edmund and Lucy were luckier than
other people in that respect. Their secret country was real. They had already visited it
twice; not in a game or a dream but in reality. They had got there of course by Magic,
which is the only way of getting to Narnia. And a promise, or very nearly a promise, had
been made them in Narnia itself that they would some day get back. You may imagine
that they talked about it a good deal, when they got the chance.
They were in Lucy's room, sitting on the edge of her bed and looking at a picture on the
opposite wall. It was the only picture in the house that they liked. Aunt Alberta didn't like
it at all (that was why it was put away in a little back room upstairs), but she couldn't get
rid of it because it had been a wedding present from someone she did not want to offend.
It was a picture of a ship - a ship sailing straight towards you. Her prow was gilded and
shaped like the head of a dragon with wide-open mouth. She had only one mast and one
large, square sail which was a rich purple. The sides of the ship - what you could see of
them where the gilded wings of the dragon ended-were green. She had just run up to the
top of one glorious blue wave, and the nearer slope of that wave came down towards you,
with streaks and bubbles on it. She was obviously running fast before a gay wind, listing
over a little on her port side. (By the way, if you are going to read this story at all, and if
you don't know already, you had better get it into your head that the left of a ship when
you are looking ahead, is port, and the right is starboard.) All the sunlight fell on her from
that side, and the water on that side was full of greens and purples. On the other, it was
darker blue from the shadow of the ship.
"The question is," said Edmund, "whether it doesn't make things worse, looking at a
Narnian ship when you can't get there."
"Even looking is better than nothing," said Lucy. "And she is such a very Narnian ship."
"Still playing your old game?" said Eustace Clarence, who had been listening outside the
door and now came grinning into the room. Last year, when he had been staying with the
Pevensies, he had managed to hear them all talking of Narnia and he loved teasing them
about it. He thought of course that they were making it all up; and as he was far too
stupid to make anything up himself, he did not approve of that.
"You're not wanted here," said Edmund curtly.
"I'm trying to think of a limerick," said Eustace. "Something like this:
"Some kids who played games about Narnia Got gradually balmier and balmier-"
"Well Narnia and balmier don't rhyme, to begin with," said Lucy.
"It's an assonance," said Eustace.
"Don't ask him what an assy-thingummy is," said Edmund. "He's only longing to be
asked. Say nothing and perhaps he'll go away."
Most boys, on meeting a reception like this, would either have cleared out or flared up.
Eustace did neither. He just hung about grinning, and presently began talking again.
"Do you like that picture?" he asked.
"For heaven's sake don't let him get started about Art and all that," said Edmund
hurriedly, but Lucy, who was very truthful, had already said, "Yes, I do. I like it very
much."
"It's a rotten picture," said Eustace.
"You won't see it if you step outside," said Edmund.
"Why do you like it?" said Eustace to Lucy.
"Well, for one thing," said Lucy, "I like it because the ship looks as if it was really
moving. And the water looks as if it was really wet. And the waves look as if they were
really going up and down."
Of course Eustace knew lots of answers to this, but he didn't say anything. The reason
was that at that very moment he looked at the waves and saw that they did look very
much indeed as if they were going up and down. He had only once been in a ship (and
then only as far as the Isle of Wight) and had been horribly seasick. The look of the
waves in the picture made him feel sick again. He turned rather green and tried another
look. And then all three children were staring with open mouths.
What they were seeing may be hard to believe when you read it in print, but it was almost
as hard to believe when you saw it happening. The things in the picture were moving. It
didn't look at all like a cinema either; the colours were too real and clean and out-of-
doors for that. Down went the prow of the ship into the wave and up went a great shock
of spray. And then up went the wave behind her, and her stern and her deck became
visible for the first time, and then disappeared as the next wave came to meet her and her
bows went up again. At the same moment an exercise book which had been lying beside
Edmund on the bed flapped, rose and sailed through the air to the wall behind him, and
Lucy felt all her hair whipping round her face as it does on a windy day. And this was a
windy day; but the wind was blowing out of the picture towards them. And suddenly with
the wind came the noises-the swishing of waves and the slap of water against the ship's
sides and the creaking and the overall high steady roar of air and water. But it was the
smell, the wild, briny smell, which really convinced Lucy that she was not dreaming.

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