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Alice's
Adventures in Wonderland
Kapitel 8:
The queen's croquet ground, Lewis Carroll, Seite 3 ( von 4 )
"Get to your places!" shouted the Queen in a voice of thunder, and
people began running about in all directions, tumbling up against each other;
however, they got settled down in a minute or two, and the game began.
Alice thought she had never seen such a curious croquet-ground in her life: it
was all ridges and furrows; the croquet-balls were live hedgehogs, and the
mallets live flamingoes, and the soldiers had to double themselves up and stand
on their hands and feet, to make the arches.
The chief difficulty Alice found at first was in managing her flamingo: she
succeeded in getting its body tucked away, comfortably enough, under her arm,
with its legs hanging down, but generally, just as she had got its neck nicely
straightened out, and was going to give the hedgehog a blow with its head, it
would twist
itself round and look up in her face, with such a puzzled expression that she
could not help bursting out laughing: and when she had got its head down, and
was going to begin again, it was very provoking to find that the hedgehog had
unrolled itself, and was in the act of crawling away: besides all this, there
was generally a ridge or a furrow in the way wherever she wanted to send the
hedgehog to, and, as the doubled-up soldiers were always getting up an walking
off to other parts of the ground, Alice soon came to the conclusion that it was
a very difficult game indeed.
The players all played at once without waiting for turns, quarrelling all the
while, and fighting for the hedgehogs; and in a very short time the Queen was
in a furious passion, and went stamping about, and shouting "Off with his
head!" or "Off with her head!" about once in a minute.
Alice began to feel very uneasy: to be sure, she had not as yet had any dispute
with the Queen, but she knew that it might happen any minute, "and
then," thought she, "what would become of me? They're dreadfully fond
of beheading people here; the great wonder is, that there's any one left
alive!"
She was looking about for some way of escape, and wondering whether she could
get away without being seen, when she noticed a curious appearance in the air:
it puzzled her very much at first, but after watching it a minute or two she
made it out to be a grin, and she said to herself "It's the Cheshire Cat:
now I shall have somebody to talk to."
"How are you getting on?" said the Cat, as soon as there was mouth
enough for it to speak with.
Alice waited till the eyes appeared, and then nodded. "It's no use
speaking to it," she thought, "till its ears have come, or at least
one of them." In another minute the whole head appeared, and then Alice
put down her flamingo, and began an account of the game, feeling very glad she
had some one to listen to her. The Cat seemed to think that there was enough of
it now in sight, and no more of it appeared.
"I don't think they play at all fairly," Alice began, in rather a
complaining tone, "and they all quarrel so dreadfully one can't hear
oneself speak - and they don't seem to have any rules in particular; at least,
if there are, nobody attends to them - and you've no idea how confusing it is
all the things being alive; for instance, there's the arch I've got to go
through next walking about at the other end of the ground - and I should have
croqueted the Queen's hedgehog just now, only it ran away when it saw mine
coming!"
"How do you like the Queen?" said the Cat in a low voice.
"Not at all," said Alice: "she's so extremely -" Just then
she noticed that the Queen was close behind her, listening: so she went on,
"- likely to win, that it's hardly worth while finishing the game."
The Queen smiled and passed on.
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