h his combs; and then, when they steamed
up through them against his wings, they were changed into showers and
streams of metal. From one wing fell gold-dust, and from another silver,
and from another copper, and from another tin, and from another lead,
and so on, and sank into the soft mud, into veins and cracks, and
hardened there. Whereby it comes to pass that the rocks are full of
metal.

But, all of a sudden, somebody shut off the steam below, and the hole
was left empty in an instant: and then down rushed the water into the
hole, in such a whirlpool that the bogy spun round and round as fast as
a teetotum. But that was all in his day's work, like a fair fall with
the hounds; so all he did was to say to Tom--

"Now is your time, youngster, to get down, if you are in earnest, which
I don't believe."

"You'll soon see," said Tom; and away he went, as bold as Baron
Munchausen, and shot down the rushing cataract like a salmon at
Ballisodare.

And, when he got to the bottom, he swam till he was washed on shore safe
upon the Other-end-of-Nowhere; and he found it, to his surprise, as most
other people do, much more like This-End-of-Somewhere than he had been
in the habit of expecting.

And first he went through Waste-paper-land, where all the stupid books
lie in heaps, up hill and down dale, like leaves in a winter wood; and
there he saw people digging and grubbing among them, to make worse books
out of bad ones, and thrashing chaff to save the dust of it; and a very
good trade they drove thereby, especially among children.

Then he went by the sea of slops, to the mountain of messes, and the
territory of tuck, where the ground was very sticky, for it was all made
of bad toffee (not Everton toffee, of course), and full of deep cracks
and holes choked with wind-fallen fruit, and green gooseberries, and
sloes, and crabs, and whinberries, and hips and haws, and all the nasty
things which little children will eat, if they can get them. But the
fairies hide them out of the way in that country as fast as they can,
and very hard work they have, and of very little use it is. For as fast
as they hide away the old trash, foolish and wicked people make fresh
trash full of lime and poisonous paints, and actually go and steal
receipts out of old Madame Science's big book to invent poisons for
little children, and sell them at wakes and fairs and tuck-shops. Very
well. Let them go on. Dr. Letheby and Dr. Hassall cannot catch the