the
Prince, and said: "Comrade, let us away. Let us not stop for a moment in
this awful land of ghosts."

But the Prince said: "Comrades, these people resemble men, so I am going
to find out, by shaking them upside down and outside in, whether they
have a single drop of warm living blood left in their veins."

IV

The days passed one by one, and the placid existence of the Island went
on almost without a ripple. The Three Companions obeyed no rules nor
regulations. They never did anything correctly either in sitting or
standing or turning themselves round or lying on their back. On the
contrary, wherever they saw these things going on precisely and exactly
according to the Rules, they gave way to inordinate laughter. They
remained unimpressed altogether by the eternal gravity of those eternal
regulations.

One day the great Court Cards came to the Son of the Kotwal and the Son
of the Merchant and the Prince.

"Why," they asked slowly, "are you not moving according to the Rules?"

The Three Companions answered: "Because that is our Ichcha (wish)."

The great Court Cards with hollow, cavernous voices, as if slowly
awakening from an age-long dream, said together: "Ich-cha! And pray who
is Ich-cha?"

They could not understand who Ichcha was then, but the whole island
was to understand it by-and-by. The first glimmer of light passed the
threshold of their minds when they found out, through watching the
actions of the Prince, that they might move in a straight line in an
opposite direction from the one in which they had always gone before.
Then they made another startling discovery, that there was another side
to the Cards which they had never yet noticed with attention. This was
the beginning of the change.

Now that the change had begun, the Three Companions were able to
initiate them more and more deeply into the mysteries of Ichcha. The
Cards gradually became aware that life was not bound by regulations.
They began to feel a secret satisfaction in the kingly power of choosing
for themselves.

But with this first impact of Ichcha the whole pack of cards began to
totter slowly, and then tumble down to the ground. The scene was like
that of some huge python awaking from a long sleep, as it slowly unfolds
its numberless coils with a quiver that runs through its whole frame.

V

Hitherto the Queens of Spades and Clubs and Diamonds and Hearts had
remained behind curtains with eyes that gazed vacantly into space