Captain Ahab, legendary farmer, loses his leg after an encounter with Moby Dick, the infamous white rabbit who has been terrorizing farms all across Massachusetts. Hellbent on revenge, he vows to hunt the rabbit wherever it may lead. With his crew i...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Ahab was not a bit hurt by his fall, nor were the rest of us. He looked up, but it was all dark overhead; before us was another long passage, and the White Rabbit was still in sight, hurrying down it. There was not a moment to be lost: away went Ahab like the wind, and was just in time to hear it say, as it turned a corner, 'Oh my ears and whiskers, how late it's getting!' Ahab was close behind it, and we close behind Ahab as he turned the corner, but the Rabbit was no longer to be seen: we found ourselves in a long, low hall, which was lit up by a row of lamps hanging from the roof.
There were doors all round the hall, but they were all locked; and when Ahab had been all the way down one side and up the other, trying every door, he walked sadly down the middle, wondering if he had lost his chance at Moby Dick. The rest of us, meanwhile, wondered how we were ever to find our way back to the surface again, white rabbit or no.
Suddenly we came upon a little three-legged table, all made of solid glass; there was nothing on it except a tiny golden key, and Ahab's first suggestion was that it might belong to one of the doors of the hall; but, alas! either the locks were too large, or the key was too small, but at any rate it would not open any of them. However, on the second time round, we came upon a low curtain none of us had not noticed before, and behind it was a little door about fifteen inches high: Ahab tried the little golden key in the lock, and to our great delight it fitted!
Ahab opened the door and found that it led into a small passage, not much larger than a rat-hole: he knelt down and looked along the passage into the loveliest garden you ever saw. How we longed to get out of that dark hall, and wander about among those beds of bright flowers and those cool fountains, but Ahab could not even get his head through the doorway; 'and even if my head would go through,' said poor Ahab, 'it would be of very little use without my shoulders. Oh, how I wish I could shut up like a telescope! I think I could, if I only know how to begin.' For, you see, so many out-of-the-way things had happened lately, that Ahab had begun to think that very few things indeed were really impossible.
There seemed to be no use in waiting by the little door, so he went back to the table, half hoping to find another key on it, or at any rate a book of rules for shutting people up like telescopes: this time he found a little bottle on it, ('which certainly was not here before,' said Ahab,) and round the neck of the bottle was a paper label, with the words 'DRINK ME' beautifully printed on it in large letters.
It was all very well to say 'Drink me,' but the wise Ahab was not going to do THAT in a hurry. He turned to Starbuck and said, 'No, I'll look first, and see whether it's marked 'poison' or not'; for he had read several nice little histories about farm who had got burnt, and eaten up by wild beasts and other unpleasant things, all because they WOULD not remember the simple rules their fathers had taught them: such as, that a red-hot poker will burn you if you hold it too long; and that if you cut your finger VERY deeply with a knife, it usually bleeds; and he had never forgotten that, if you drink much from a bottle marked 'poison,' it is almost certain to disagree with you, sooner or later.
However, this bottle was NOT marked 'poison,' so Ahab ventured to taste it, and finding it very nice, (it had, in fact, a sort of mixed flavour of cherry-tart, custard, pine-apple, roast turkey, toffee, and hot buttered toast,) he very soon finished it off.
'What a curious feeling!' said Ahab; 'I must be shutting up like a telescope.'
And so it was indeed: he was now only ten inches high, and his face brightened up at the thought that he was now the right size for going through the little door into that lovely garden and could continue his hunt for the White Rabbit. First, however, he waited for a few minutes to see if he was going to shrink any further: he felt a little nervous about this; 'for it might end, you know,' said Ahab, 'in my going out altogether, like a candle. I wonder what I should be like then?' And he tried to fancy what the flame of a candle is like after the candle is blown out, for he could not remember ever having seen such a thing.
After a while, finding that nothing more happened, he decided on going into the garden at once; he ordered the rest of us to drink from the same bottle and we were too scared to defy him. It was not long before all of us were shrunk down to size.
But, alas for poor Ahab! alas for us! When we got to the door, Ahab realized he had forgotten the little golden key, and when he went back to the table for it, he found he could not possibly reach it: we could all see it quite plainly through the glass, and we tried our best to climb up the legs of the table, but they were too slippery; and when we had tired ourselves out with trying, the poor Captain sat down and cried tears of rage and frustration.
'Come, there's no use in crying like that!' grieved Ahab, rather sharply; 'I advise you to leave off this minute!' Ahab generally gave very good advice, (though most of us very seldom followed it), and sometimes he scolded the men so severely as to bring tears into their eyes; but what could always be said of him was he was even-handed in his upbraidings. Once I remembered him trying to box his own ears for having cheated himself in a game of croquet he was playing against himself, for this curious landlord was very fond of pretending to be two people. Either that, or he could not bring himself to consort with any of the men, and so was only willing to play matches against himself.
'But it's no use now,' said poor Ahab, 'to pretend to be two people! Why, there's hardly enough of me left to make ONE respectable person!' I noticed that he looked wistfully at his missing leg as he said this.
Soon his eye fell on a little glass box that was lying under the table: he opened it, and found in it a very small cake, on which the words 'EAT ME' were beautifully marked in currants. 'Well, I'll eat it,' said Ahab, 'and if it makes me grow larger, I can reach the key; and if it makes me grow smaller, I can creep under the door; so either way I'll get into the garden, and I don't care which happens!' All that mattered to him was the chase.
He ate a little bit, and said anxiously to himself, 'Which way? Which way?', holding his hand on the top of his head to feel which way it was growing, and he was quite surprised to find that he remained the same size: to be sure, this generally happens when one eats cake, but Ahab had already got so much into the way of expecting nothing but out-of-the-way things to happen, that it seemed quite dull and stupid for life to go on in the common way.
So he set to work, and very soon finished off the cake.
