THE SAILING OF THE KING WHAT made Scrubb look so dingy (and Jill too, if she could only have seen herself) was the splendour of their surroundings. I had better describe them at once.
Through a cleft in those mountains which Jill had seen far inland as she approached the land, the su light over a level lawn. On the far side of the lawn, its weather-vanes glittering in the light, rose a many-towered and many- turreted castle; the most beautiful castle Jill had ever seen. On the near side was a quay of white marble and, moored to this, the ship: a tall ship with high forecastle and high poop, gilded and crimson, with a great flag at the mast-head, and many banners waving from the decks, and a row of shields, bright as silver, along the bulwarks. The gang-plank was laid to her, and at the foot of it, just ready to go on board, stood an old, old man. He wore a rich mantle of scarlet which opened in front to show his silver mail shirt. There was a thin circlet of gold on his head. His beard, white as wool, fell nearly to his waist. He stood straight enough, leaning one hand on the shoulder of a richly dressed lord who seemed youhan himself: but you could see he was very old and frail. He looked as if a puff of wind could blow him away, and his eyes were watery.
Immediately in front of the King - who had turned round to speak to his people befoing on board the ship - there was a little chair on wheels, and, haro it, a little donkey: not much bigger than a big retriever. In this chair sat a fat little dwarf. He was as richly dressed as the King, but because of his fatness and because he was sitting hunched up among cushions, the effect was quite different: it made him look like a shapeless little bundle of fur and silk a. He was as old as the King, but more hale ay, with very keen eyes. His bare head, which was bald aremely large, shone like a gigantic billiard ball in the su light.
Farther back, in a half-circle, stood what Jill at onew to be the courtiers. They were well worth looking at for their clothes and armour alone. As far as that went, they looked more like a flower-bed than a crowd. But what really made Jill open her eyes and mouth as wide as they would go, was the people themselves. If "people" was the right word. For only about one in every five was human. The rest were things you never see in our world.
Fauns, satyrs, taurs: Jill could give a o these, for she had seen pictures of them.
Dwarfs too. And there were a lot of animals she knew as well; bears, badgers, moles, leopards, mice, and various birds. But then they were so very different from the animals whie called by the same names in England. Some of them were much bigger - the mice, for instaood on their hind legs and were over two feet high. But quite apart from that, they all looked different. You could see by the expression in their faces that they could talk and think just as well as you could.
"Golly!" thought Jill. "So its true after all." But moment she added, "I wonder are they friendly?" For she had just noticed, oskirts of the crowd, one or two giants and some people whom she couldnt give a o at all.
At that moment Aslan and the signs rushed bato her mind. She had fotten all about them for the last half-hour.
"Scrubb!" she whispered, grabbing his arm. "Scrubb, quick! Do you see anyone you know?」
"So youve turned up again, have you?" said Scrubb disagreeably (for which