Beeches and Bluebells : 無料・フリー素材/写真
Beeches and Bluebells / Giles Watson's poetry and prose
| ライセンス | クリエイティブ・コモンズ 表示-継承 2.1 |
|---|---|
| 説明 | Badbury Clump, near Faringdon, Oxfordshire.HINGEFINKLE'S LOGBOOK (Second Instalment)The Gnomish FactoryorThe Wonderful World of Gladys SparkbrightAt Agrimony’s insistence I am persuaded, my dear little Alias, that once you have recovered from the shock and revulsion occasioned by my revelations about the hideous fate of Coxcold, Catriona, Edwardes and Gwydion, you will decide that the chief feature of interest in that grotesque tale has nothing to do with Harpies at all. Microscopes are far more significant. Agrimony, you will remember, insisted in his altercation with King Math that plants and animals could be distinguished once and for all by microscopic examination: plants have cell walls; animals have cell membranes. No doubt you are wondering why it is that Agrimony and I, of all people, should be alone in these parts in possessing microscopes. You may well, my clever little Alias, extend this observation to cover all manner of other contraptions: astrolabes, armillary spheres, stethoscopes – all of which Agrimony and I have hoarded in abundance, while others go without and seem perfectly ignorant of the intriguing facts thus revealed. Gnomes, my dear Alias, Gnomes: that is your answer, and in particular, Gladys Sparkbright, who, in those halcyon days before the darkness and treachery of the Great Goblin War, possessed one of the smallest bodies and one of the greatest minds to be found anywhere west of the Marches of the Elf-Lords.It was Agrimony himself who brought the wonderful achievements of Gladys Sparkbright to my attention. He had dropped by my cottage one balmy summer evening – just before dinner, of course. He had just partaken of four helpings of my particularly delicious mushroom stew (made the more meretricious by the addition of a few slices of magically detoxified fly-agaric), and I had lit my pipe and begun to converse with him about matters of great moment. We began by discussing tigers: I was convinced that tigers had four toes on each paw (I was later proven right – though they have a dew claw as well), whilst Agrimony obstinately insisted that according to his Bestiary, tigers, like all other exotic beasts, had only three. He ended, naturally, by pounding on the table and shouting “Codswallop!” quite a lot, and then at last, perceiving that I too was in a somewhat belligerent mood, he changed the subject to oozes and ectoplasms. I heaved a sigh of relief, for it is an established fact that oozes and ectoplasms do not possess legs, let alone toes. I made some remark to that effect, and to my mild surprise, Agrimony scowled and pounded upon the table once more.“Really, Hingefinkle, your knowledge of such matters is hopelessly outdated,” he scolded. “And you call yourself an expert on monsters? Pah!”“Hum. You mean to suggest, Agrimony, that oozes do have legs after all? How ever could you come to imagine such a thing?”“I do not imagine, Hingefinkle. I observe. I deduce. You have not heard, then, I take it, of the Pseudopodic Monster discovered by Gladys Sparkbright?”I must confess that Agrimony’s question left me feeling not a little flummoxed and embarrassed. “Hum. Pseudopodic Monster? Gladys Darknight? I don’t think I have made the acquaintance-”“Sparkbright not Darknight, you moronic old codger!” blustered Agrimony, his eyebrows bristling and his monocle trembling. “Frankly, Hingefinkle, I can’t be bothered standing around explaining it to you. Come with me!” With that, he seized me by the piece of string with which I habitually suspend my hat from my neck, dragged me from the cottage, and insisted that I seat myself atop his cart.“Hurry up, Snowdrop!” he roared. “Take us to the Gnomish workshops. Hingefinkle has not heard of the Pseudopodic Monster!” Snowdrop shook his long, black mane and snorted, though whether at my ignorance, or at the necessity of physical exertion, I am not sure.“Hum. Pseudopodic Monster, eh?” I said. “Is there a possibility of danger?”Agrimony groaned audibly. “The only danger, Hingefinkle, is ignorance.” And until we reached the workshop of Gladys Sparkbright, Agrimony spoke no more of the strange creature which awaited us, for his lips were sealed in a determined and ominous silence.*It would be quite impossible for me to adequately describe the workshop in which Gladys Sparkbright and over a hundred other gnomes worked industriously and with apparent indifference to the outside world. It consisted of a higgledy-piggledy tower constructed of wood, various metals, brass screws and – where the screws had proven ineffective – pieces of knotted string. The ground surrounding it was mostly bare rock, and here and there, there were massive craters filled with rock-dust; the rest of the area was strewn with an apparently endless array of machines, all of them well oiled, and some of them whirring contentedly to themselves. On the doorstep there was a flower-pot with a single geranium in it: this, it seemed, was the only organic object in the entire landscape. There was apparently no door, just a gaping hole in the side of the tower, but when I attempted to walk through it, I found myself thrown backwards to the ground, and stared up at the geranium in bewilderment.Agrimony laughed uproariously. “Let that be a lesson to you, Hingefinkle. With Gladys Sparkbright, nothing is predictable.” He stooped at the flower-pot, grasped the geranium with both hands, and tugged on it as hard as he could. I could hear a grinding of cogs and pulleys, and presently a cacophony of ringing bells drifted down from somewhere on top of the tower.Soon, there was a pitter-patter of footsteps running hurriedly down the spiral staircase at the side of the tower, and a grandmotherly voice said from above, “Dear me, dear me, Agrimony my boy, yer ‘aven’t let yer friend go walkin’ into mah force-field without ringin’ t’ doorbell, ‘ave yer? ‘E’ll be thinkin’ we gnomes are raht in’ospitable, that ‘e will!”“Ha!” said Agrimony, ignoring the reproof. “Hingefinkle, let me introduce Gladys Sparkbright, inventor of the microscope!”A tiny little woman, clad in a cardigan and not much taller than my knee-cap, clambered down the last two stairs, stuffed a loose strand of long grey hair back into a bun fastened with a pair of knitting needles, and offered me her hand. “Aye,” she said. “It’s raht good ter meet yer.” She glanced at Agrimony, the faintest shadow of annoyance in her eyes. “Inventor of the mahcroscope? Ah hardly count that among mah finest achievements. Besides, other gnomes worked on it too, yer know!”“Yes, yes,” said Agrimony impatiently, “but they couldn’t have done it without you. It was you, wasn’t it, who developed the magic required to fire the glass-blowing furnaces, which made it possible to produce lenses which did not mar the image with colour fringes-”Gladys swept Agrimony’s question aside with a little, lily white hand, and pushed her horn-rimmed half-moon spectacles further up her nose. “Aye, but now they’re workin’ on oil-immersion objectives to improve resolution, but so far they 'aven’t improved on my eighth-of-an-inch model. Aye, and ah suppose ‘twas me who invented a means of ‘lumination which made th’ ol’ candle-behin’-a-lens method a wee bit outdated,” she added modestly. “Ah, but that’s all in th’ past now, so it is. Explosives. Now, they be somethin’ ter really get th’ creative juices flowin’! Massive explosions: that’s th’ way o’th’ future!” she enthused, eyeing her assortment of craters appreciatively. “Bring th’ ores up ter th’ surface! Mining! That’s the thing-”“Mining schlmining!” said Agrimony impatiently. “Hingefinkle here needs to know about microscopes. Don’t be so modest, Gladys. Wasn’t it you who discovered the Formula of Microscopic Resolution?”“Well, yes-” said Gladys with a blush. She put her hands on her hips, looked over the rim of her spectacles at a distant cloud, and recited nostalgically:I know a formula, ‘twill never fail,For the resolution of detail:First, light’s wavelength is decided;By these things, ‘tis then divided:The Refractive Index of thin air –Double that to make a pair,Multiply by the sine of Theta(Which is light’s angle) and Eureka!Do this fraction properlyAnd you will find out easilyIf two microbes side by sideWill be resolved when magnified!“Capital!” laughed Agrimony. “You are also, I do believe, the only person alive who can acquaint my friend Hingefinkle with the Pseudopodic Monster.”Gladys looked at him with a mischievous twinkle in her eye. “Oh, aye! So that’s yer plan, is it? Well, mind yer don’t go tellin’ everybody about mah mahcroscopical discoveries, now. I’ th’ wrong ‘ands, a knowledge of mahcroscopes could be dangerous. Now, explosives, on t’other hand-” Her voice petered out as she perceived the expression on Agrimony’s face, and without another word, she turned towards the doorway, clapped her hands, and walked inside, motioning for us to follow her.“Now, m’boys, ah suppose you’d both be likin’ a nice cup o’ tea?” she said, after we had negotiated a series of passages, stairways, forcefields and elevators, and entered a laboratory, the benches of which were festooned with brass and silver instruments. I shrugged my shoulders, for I did not, of course, know what tea was, but Agrimony nodded for both of us, and soon Gladys was squeezing out the teabags with a pair of copper forceps and enquiring whether we desired milk and sugar. I said no, but Agrimony said yes, and Gladys excused herself and hurried off to another room. I distinctly heard the protesting moo of a cow, and presently Gladys reappeared with a little jug and a lump of sugar. At last Agrimony succeeded in convincing Gladys that she did not need to go and bake us any biscuits, and we drank our tea. It was, as you well know, most agreeable.“Aye, well,” she said. “This ‘ere is th’ mahcroscopy laboratory. Those there are th’ mahcroscopes.” She pointed to a jumble of contraptions – some of them made of brass, others of pasteboard covered with fish-skin; some of them binocular, others monocular. “That’s t’ latest model,” she smiled, indicating a large brass binocular microscope. She muttered something under her breath and clapped her hands, and a bright light glowed beneath the glass slide on the microscope stage. “Raht,” she said, clambering up onto a stool and squinting into the microscope through her spectacles. She focused it minutely. “Mah apprentice Maxwell Rotifergazer ‘as just prepared this ‘ere slide wit’ pondwater, and – aha! There! As fine a specimen o’ th’ Pseudopodic Monster as ever ah saw!” She seized me by the arm and yanked me up onto a nearby stool. “Go on! ‘Ave a look!”I looked, and then jerked my head away from the eyepieces in horror. It was an ooze, quite definitely, and an enormous one, or so I judged. “Hum,” I said, looking at the slide with my naked eye. “Is this some sort of magic?”“Magic? Nay!” laughed Gladys. “Only th’ light source is magic. Th’ rest is-”“Elementary,” said Agrimony, finishing her sentence. “Now then, Hingefinkle, observe!” He motioned me to look down the microscope once more.I obeyed, and there the Monster was again, as large as – well – as large as life. It was making its way slowly across my field of vision, first oozing in this direction, then in that, its body bulging out into little projections, apparently at random.“Ha!” said Agrimony. “Now try to tell me that oozes don’t have feet!”“Hum. Well, granted. They do have feet, but they’re not very – well – they’re not very permanent feet, are they-” But my argument was consumed by a gasp of horror, for another monster, this one covered all over with undulating bristles, had swum suddenly into view and crashed into the Pseudopodic Monster. Now, before my astonished eyes, it was being slowly engulfed and digested. The whole ghastly affair was the more disturbing for the fact that it was conducted in complete silence. I have no idea how long I sat there watching, but by the end of it, the second monster had completely disappeared, and I stepped back from the microscope feeling dazzled and ever-so-slightly nauseous.“Hum,” I said when I had regained my breath. “Well, I wouldn’t like to meet that thing on a dark night!” I turned to find Agrimony and Gladys engaged in a heated but friendly argument about the dangerousness of explosive magic. My mind was reeling, but I think Agrimony was saying that he was afraid the explosives might be used as weapons, and Gladys was retorting that she did not know what a weapon was, and besides, she did not care, unless a weapon was something useful to Gnomes. It was going dark outside, and when the argument was finished, Gladys invited us to spend the night in the tower. Agrimony agreed, but I do not think, my dear Alias, that I have ever spent a night more devoid of sleep, for whenever I closed my eyes, I saw the insatiable Pseudopodic Monster seeping inexorably towards me, its gelatinous appendages preparing to wrap themselves about my body and digest it slowly in one piece.*The next morning, as Snowdrop plodded reluctantly towards the Hermitage, the cart weighed-down with microscopes, astrolabes, armillary spheres and a bulk-supply of tea-bags, Agrimony put his monocle to his eye, and triumphantly handed me a piece of paper.“I think you will admit, Hingefinkle, that I have done better than Gladys Sparkbright herself. I was in little need of sleep last night, and so I spent a few hours converting her Formula of Microscopic Resolution into something more readily memorable and useful. Well what do you think of that!” he cried triumphantly.I put on my brand new pince-nez and looked doubtfully at the piece of paper. On it he had scribbled an inexplicable jumble of letters and numerals which, for no particular reason, I duplicate here:d = (2n sin)“Hum,” I said at last. “Well, at least Gladys will be pleased. With the Formula of Microscopic Resolution reduced to that gobbledygook, nobody but a Gnome is even remotely likely to invent the microscope for at least a thousand years!” |
| 撮影日 | 2009-05-02 12:29:24 |
| 撮影者 | Giles Watson's poetry and prose , Oxfordshire, England |
| タグ | |
| 撮影地 | |
| カメラ | E8700 , NIKON |
| 露出 | 0.014 sec (1/70) |
| 開放F値 | f/5.6 |