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Through
the Looking-Glass
and what Alice
found there
Kapitel 8:
"It's my own invention", Lewis Carroll, Seite 1 ( von 8 )
After a while the noise seemed gradually to die away, till all was dead
silence, and Alice lifted up her head in some alarm. There was no one to be
seen, and her first thought was that she must have been dreaming about the Lion
and the Unicorn and those queer Anglo-Saxon Messengers. However, there was the
great dish still lying at her feet, on which she had tried to cut the
plum-cake, "So I wasn't dreaming, after all," she said to herself,
"unless - unless we're all part of the same dream. Only I do hope it's
my dream, and
not the Red King's! I don't like belonging to another person's dream," she
went on in a rather complaining tone: "I've a great mind to go and wake
him, and see what happens!"
At this moment her thoughts were interrupted by a loud shouting of "Ahoj!
Ahoj! Check!" and a Knight, dressed in crimson armour, came galloping down
upon her, brandishing a great club. Just as he reached her, the horse stopped
suddenly: "You're my prisoner!" the Knight cried, as he tumbled off
his horse.
Startled as she was, Alice was more frightened for him than for herself at the
moment, and watched him with some anxiety as he mounted again. As soon as he
was comfortably in the saddle, he began once more "You're my -" but
here another voice broke in "Ahoj! Ahoj! Check!" and Alice looked
round in some surprise for the new enemy.
This time it was a White Knight. He drew up at Alice's side, and tumbled off
his horse just as the Red Knight had done: then he got on again, and the two
Knights sat and looked at each other for some time without speaking. Alice
looked from one to the other in some bewilderment.
"She's my
prisoner, you know!" the Red Knight said at last.
"Yes, but then I came and rescued
her!" the White Knight replied.
"Well, we must fight for her, then," said the Red Knight, as he took
up his helmet (which hung from the saddle, and was something the shape of a
horse's head), and put it on.
"You will observe the Rules of Battle, of course?" the White Knight
remarked, putting on his helmet too.
"I always do," said the Red Knight, and they began banging away at
each other with such fury that Alice got behind a tree to be out of the way of
the blows.
"I wonder, now, what the Rules of Battle are," she said to herself,
as she watched the fight, timidly peeping out from her hiding-place: "one
Rule seems to be, that if one Knight hits the other, he knocks him off his
horse, and if he misses, he tumbles off himself - and another Rule seems to be
that they hold their clubs with their arms, as if they were Punch and Judy -
What a noise they make when they tumble! Just like a whole set of fire-irons
falling into the fender! And how quiet the horses are! They let them get on and
off them just as if they were tables!"
Another Rule of Battle, that Alice had not noticed, seemed to be that they
always fell on their heads, and the battle ended with their both falling off in
this way, side by side: when they got up again, they shook hands, and then the
Red Knight mounted and galloped off.
"It was a glorious victory, wasn't it?" said the White Knight, as he
came up panting.
"I don't know," Alice said doubtfully. "I don't want to be
anybody's prisoner. I want to be a Queen."
"So you will, when you've crossed the next brook," said the White
Knight. "I'll see you safe to the end of the wood - and then I must go
back, you know. That's the end of my move."
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