DAVID looked up at the huge iron door. It was shut and locked.
Beside the doorway a great iron horn hung by a long iron chain from the wall. Over the horn were these words written in letters of red:
"Whatever man would enter here,
Must blow a blast both loud and clear."
David set the horn to his lips and blew a blast so loud and long that it rang back again from the dark high walls and under the eaves and made his ears hum. Instantly there was a rumbling and a grumbling as though of distant thunder. The iron bolts within shot grating back and the huge iron door opened slowly, slowly, until it stood open wide. David entered, looking about him wondering.
It was a great, dark, empty room. The risen moon was now shining in at the grated windows, high overhead, and David could see above him a vast vaulted ceiling of iron, and under foot a pavement of iron. Everywhere were dust and cobwebs. Bats and owls were flying silently about in the gloom above. The white moonlight falling aslant upon the walls showed thereon figures of knights and ladies and dragons and giants painted in red. Beyond this great gloomy room was another just like it, and beyond that another and another, until David began to think that there was no end to them. He went on and on, until by and by he saw in the distance a dull glow of red light, and heard the sound of some one moving and the rattle of pans and dishes. He followed the sound until he came to a door. He pushed it open, and there was a room that looked like a great kitchen. In this room was nobody but an old woman and a black cat and a bright fire burning on the hearth. A huge table was spread for supper; on it was a pitcher of ale as big as a barrel, and a goblet as big as a bucket. There was a pewter plate as wide as a cart-wheel, a fork like a pitch fork, and a knife like a scythe. The old woman was busy roasting a whole sheep at the fire. She held a ladle in her hand, with which she basted the roast as she turned it before the blaze. Hearing the door open, she turned and then she saw David standing. Down fell the ladle clattering upon the floor.
She stood staring and staring while David stood gazing back at her. "Who are you?" said the old woman at last, "and whence come you?"
"I am a Christian soul, mother," said David, "and I come from the brown earth on the other side of the moon."
"And what do you seek?" said the old woman.
"I come," said David, "to find the Wonder-Box and the Know-All Book, and to take them back again to the brown earth, where they belong."
"Alas!" said the old woman, "I am sorry for you, for, though you look like a hero rather than like a man, woe to you if the Iron Man comes and finds you here."
"And who are you, mother?" said David.
"I do not know," said the old woman, "except that I am a woman of flesh and blood. I have been here for so long that I have forgotten everything else. But I too am of flesh and blood--that much I do remember."
"Then, if you are really of flesh and blood, you will help me, will you not, mother?" said David.
"I will do what I can, for the sake of flesh and blood," said the old woman. "But hark!" she cried, suddenly, and she put her hand to her ear--"Hark! I hear him coming now!"
David listened, and then he also heard far away a sound of clashing and clattering and clanking and jingling, as of moving iron. He knew that it must be the coming of the Iron Man, and though his heart beat fast he squared his shoulders to meet the giant.
But the old woman ran to him and caught him by the arm. "Quick!" she cried. "Here!" and she lifted up the lid of a great chest that stood in the corner.
David climbed into the chest, and the old woman shut the lid, leaving him lying in the dust and darkness. Jingle! clink! crash! bang! then the door opened, and in came the Iron Man, breathing fire and smoke out of his iron nostrils. David lifted the lid of the chest a little and saw him as he came.
The Iron Man went to the fire and took up the sheep, spit and all. He laid it upon the great plate on the table and cut it up as one would cut up a partridge. Then he sat down to the table and began to eat and drink, carving the meat with the iron knife as long as a scythe, and thrusting it into his mouth with the fork as large as a pitch fork, and drinking great draughts of ale out of the huge goblet. The ale hissed and sputtered as it went down his iron throat, and a white cloud of steam came out of his nostrils. Nothing was heard for a while but the clash and clatter of knife and fork and the champing and champing of the iron jaws of the Iron Man. All this David saw as he looked out from under the lid of the chest. The Iron Man was thrusting food into his mouth as one might put coal into the mouth of a furnace.
At last the meal was ended, and the Iron Man drew his chair up in front of the fire. "Here," said he to the old woman, "take this key and bring me the Wonder-Box and the Know-All Book. Maybe I can read the book to-night."
Then David, as he peered out from the chest, saw the old woman take the iron key and go to another great iron chest at the further side of the room. She opened the chest and brought out a box of burnished iron that gleamed red in the red fire-light. The box was locked with a golden key, and from the key there hung a fine golden chain. The old woman brought the box to the Iron Man, who opened it with the golden key, and took out a book as white as snow. It was the Know-All Book; the wonder of wonders! Yes; the Know-All Book, which alone could bring the joy of true happiness into the world, whence it had fled when those two--the man and the woman--fled from out the Garden of Paradise.
David watched the Iron Man as he held the book, and looked and looked at it, and tried to read it. He was holding it upside down, the poor giant, for he could not read a single word of it--that wonderful, wonderful book. Ever since that far beginning of time he has been trying to read it, and he is trying to read it still. But he cannot, for between him and it there hangs a veil that only the living soul can pierce to read those words within.
So there he sat now, the poor, blundering giant of smoking fire and hot iron--there he sat, patiently trying and trying to read what was there written, while his eyelids grew heavier and heavier, until by and by he fell asleep. After a while he began to snore, and after another while the book slipped from out his hand and fell to the floor, where it lay-the precious Know-All Book--face downward and forgotten.
Then after a while the old woman came to the chest where David lay hidden. "Now is your time," said she, "if you are man enough to do what you came for."
"I am man enough," said David. "Thank you, mother."
"Ah!" she said, "do not thank me yet, man of flesh and blood, for your trouble is not yet over. But there is the book, and there is the box. Take them if you want them, and get you away if you can."
The Iron Man never moved or stirred, but slept on and on as David picked up the book and put it into the Wonder-Box, shut the lid, locked it, and took the key out of the lock, hanging the golden chain about his neck. There was a handle in the lid of the box; he lifted it and carried it out of the room, and still the Iron Man never stirred, but slept on and on. David went out of the room into the room beyond. The moon had risen high, and great barred patches of square light fell from the windows upon the iron floor beneath. In the vaulted spaces above, all was darkness and stillness. He hurried onward into the next room lit with moonlight, dark and still in the vault above. Beyond that was still another room, and so on and on, until he could not tell where he was. So he went from room to room, and around and around, and on and on, until he knew that he was lost in the vast dark spaces of the Iron Castle. But at last he smelt the night air in the distance, as though it came in at an open door. He ran across the squares of silent moonlight toward it. Yes; there at last was the open door, and there was the night sky outside, all milky with the silent moonlight.
"Now I am safe," thought David.
He did not know what was yet to come.