were tumbling over each
other in heaps in their eagerness to rush from the cave, when a new
assailant suddenly faced him--the queen, with flaming eyes and expanded
nostrils, her hair standing half up from her head, rushed at him. She
trusted in her shoes: they were of granite--hollowed like French
sabots. Curdie would have endured much rather than hurt a woman, even
if she was a goblin; but here was an affair of life and death:
forgetting her shoes, he made a great stamp on one of her feet. But
she instantly returned it with very different effect, causing him
frightful pain, and almost disabling him. His only chance with her
would have been to attack the granite shoes with his pickaxe, but
before he could think of that she had caught him up in her arms and was
rushing with him across the cave. She dashed him into a hole in the
wall, with a force that almost stunned him. But although he could not
move, he was not too far gone to hear her great cry, and the rush of
multitudes of soft feet, followed by the sounds of something heaved up
against the rock; after which came a multitudinous patter of stones
falling near him. The last had not ceased when he grew very faint, for
his head had been badly cut, and at last insensible.

When he came to himself there was perfect silence about him, and utter
darkness, but for the merest glimmer in one tiny spot. He crawled to
it, and found that they had heaved a slab against the mouth of the
hole, past the edge of which a poor little gleam found its way from the
fire. He could not move it a hairbreadth, for they had piled a great
heap of stones against it. He crawled back to where he had been lying,
in the faint hope of finding his pickaxe, But after a vain search he
was at last compelled to acknowledge himself in an evil plight. He sat
down and tried to think, but soon fell fast asleep.

CHAPTER 19

Goblin Counsels

He must have slept a long time, for when he awoke he felt wonderfully
restored--indeed almost well--and very hungry. There were voices in
the outer cave.

Once more, then, it was night; for the goblins slept during the day and
went about their affairs during the night.

In the universal and constant darkness of their dwelling they had no
reason to prefer the one arrangement to the other; but from aversion to
the sun-people they chose to be busy when there was least chance of
their being met either by the miners below, when they were burrowing,
or by