All Chapters of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court: Chapter 41 - Chapter 48

SIR LAUNCELOT AND KNIGHTS TO THE RESCUENearing four in the afternoon.  The scene was just outside the walls of London.  A cool, comfortable, superb day, with a brilliant sun; the kind of day to make one want to live, not die.  The multitude was prodigious and far-reaching; and yet we fifteen poor devils hadn’t a friend in it.  There was something painful in that thought, look at it how you might.  There we sat, on our tall scaffold, the butt of the hate and mockery of all those enemies.  We were being made a holiday spectacle.  They had built a sort of grand stand for the nobility and gentry, and these were there in full force, with their ladies.  We recognized a good many of them. The crowd got a brief and unexpected dash of diversion out of the king.  The moment we were freed of our bonds he sprang up, in his fantastic rags, with face bruised out of all recognition, and proclaimed himself Arthur, King of Britain, and denounced

THREE YEARS LATERWhen I broke the back of knight-errantry that time, I no longer felt obliged to work in secret.  So, the very next day I exposed my hidden schools, my mines, and my vast system of clandestine factories and workshops to an astonished world.  That is to say, I exposed the nineteenth century to the inspection of the sixth.Well, it is always a good plan to follow up an advantage promptly. The knights were temporarily down, but if I would keep them so I must just simply paralyze them—nothing short of that would answer.  You see, I was “bluffing” that last time in the field; it would be natural for them to work around to that conclusion, if I gave them a chance.  So I must not give them time; and I didn’t.I renewed my challenge, engraved it on brass, posted it up where any priest could read it to them, and also kept it standing in the advertising columns of the paper.I not only renewed it, but added to its proportions.  I said, name the day, and I would take fifty as

WAR!I found Clarence alone in his quarters, drowned in melancholy; and in place of the electric light, he had reinstituted the ancient rag-lamp, and sat there in a grisly twilight with all curtains drawn tight.  He sprang up and rushed for me eagerly, saying:“Oh, it’s worth a billion milrays to look upon a live person again!”He knew me as easily as if I hadn’t been disguised at all.  Which frightened me; one may easily believe that.“Quick, now, tell me the meaning of this fearful disaster,” I said. “How did it come about?”“Well, if there hadn’t been any Queen Guenever, it wouldn’t have come so early; but it would have come, anyway.  It would have come on your own account by and by; by luck, it happened to come on the queen’s.”“And Sir Launcelot’s?”“Just so.”“Give me the details.”“I reckon you will grant that during some years there has been only one pair of eyes in these kingdoms that has not been looking steadily askance at the queen and Sir Launcelot—”“Yes, King A

A POSTSCRIPT BY CLARENCEI, Clarence, must write it for him.  He proposed that we two go out and see if any help could be accorded the wounded.  I was strenuous against the project.  I said that if there were many, we could do but little for them; and it would not be wise for us to trust ourselves among them, anyway.  But he could seldom be turned from a purpose once formed; so we shut off the electric current from the fences, took an escort along, climbed over the enclosing ramparts of dead knights, and moved out upon the field.  The first wounded mall who appealed for help was sitting with his back against a dead comrade.  When The Boss bent over him and spoke to him, the man recognized him and stabbed him.  That knight was Sir Meliagraunce, as I found out by tearing off his helmet.  He will not ask for help any more.We carried The Boss to the cave and gave his wound, which was not very serious, the best care we could.  In this service we had the help of Merlin, though we did not