Alice watched the White King as he slowly struggled up from bar to bar, till at last she said, `Why, you'll be hours and hours getting to the table, at that rate. I'd far better help you, hadn't I?' But the King took no notice of the question: it was quite clear that he could neither hear her nor see her.
So Alice picked him up very gently, and lifted him across more slowly than she had lifted the Queen, that she mightn't take his breath away: but, before she put him on the table, she thought she might as well dust him a little, he was so covered with ashes.
She said afterwards that she had never seen in all her life such a face as the King made, when he found himself held in the air by an invisible hand, and being dusted: he was far too much astonished to cry out, but his eyes and his mouth went on getting larger and larger, and rounder and rounder, till her hand shook so with laughing that she nearly let him drop upon the floor.
`Oh! PLEASE don't make such faces, my dear!' she cried out, quite forgetting that the King couldn't hear her. `You make me laugh so that I can hardly hold you! And don't keep your mouth so wide open! All the ashes will get into it--there, now Ithink you're tidy enough!' she added, as she smoothed his hair, and set him upon the table near the Queen.
The King immediately fell flat on his back, and lay perfectly still: and Alice was a little alarmed at what she had done, and went round the room to see if she could find any water to throw over him. However, she could find nothing but a bottle of ink, and when she got back with it she found he had recovered, and he and the Queen were talking together in a frightened whisper--so low, that Alice could hardly hear what they said.
The King was saying, `I assure, you my dear, I turned cold to the very ends of my whiskers!'
To which the Queen replied, `You haven't got any whiskers.'
`The horror of that moment,' the King went on, `I shall never, NEVER forget!'
`You will, though,' the Queen said, `if you don't make a memorandum of it.'
Alice looked on with great interest as the King took an enormous memorandum-book out of his pocket, and began writing. Asudden thought struck her, and she took hold of the end of the pencil, which came some way over his shoulder, and began writing for him.
The poor King look puzzled and unhappy, and struggled with the pencil for some time without saying anything; but Alice was too strong for him, and at last he panted out, `My dear! I really MUST get a thinner pencil. I can't manage this one a bit; it writes all manner of things that I don't intend--'
`What manner of things?' said the Queen, looking over the book (in which Alice had put `THE WHITE KNIGHT IS SLIDING DOWN THEPOKER. HE BALANCES VERY BADLY') `That's not a memorandum of YOUR feelings!'
There was a book lying near Alice on the table, and while she sat watching the White King (for she was still a little anxious about him, and had the ink all ready to throw over him, in case he fainted again), she turned over the leaves, to find some part that she could read, `--for it's all in some language I don't know,' she said to herself.
It was like this.
YKCOWREBBAJ sevot yhtils eht dna,gillirb sawT` ebaw eht ni elbmig dna eryg diD
,sevogorob eht erew ysmim llA .ebargtuo shtar emom eht dnA
She puzzled over this for some time, but at last a bright thought struck her. `Why, it's a Looking-glass book, of course!
And if I hold it up to a glass, the words will all go the right way again.'
This was the poem that Alice read.
JABBERWOCKY
'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe.
`Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jujub bird, and shun The frumious Bandersnatch!'
He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought--
So rested he by the Tumtum tree, And stood awhile in thought.
And as in uffish thought he stood, The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame, Came whiffling through the tulgey wood, And burbled as it came!
One, two! One, two! And through and through The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head He went galumphing back.
`And has thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Calloh! Callay!'
He chortled in his joy.
'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe.
`It seems very pretty,' she said when she had finished it, `but it's RATHER hard to understand!' (You see she didn't like to confess, ever to herself, that she couldn't make it out at all.)`Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas--only I don't exactly know what they are! However, SOMEBODY killed SOMETHING: that's clear, at any rate--'
`But oh!' thought Alice, suddenly jumping up, `if I don't make haste I shall have to go back through the Looking-glass, before I've seen what the rest of the house is like! Let's have a look at the garden first!' She was out of the room in a moment, and ran down stairs--or, at least, it wasn't exactly running, but a new invention of hers for getting down stairs quickly and easily, as Alice said to herself. She just kept the tips of her fingers on the hand-rail, and floated gently down without even touching the stairs with her feet; then she floated on through the hall, and would have gone straight out at the door in the same way, if she hadn't caught hold of the door-post. She was getting a little giddy with so much floating in the air, and was rather glad to find herself walking again in the natural way.
