The Stranger, the Eclipse and the Boss (A Word of Explanation, Chapters 1–7)

A Word of Explanation. It was in Warwick Castle that I came across the curious stranger. He attracted me by three things: his candid simplicity, his marvellous familiarity with ancient armour, and the restfulness of his company — for he did all the talking. As we were being shown round the armoury, he talked, as if to himself, about the transmigration of souls, and the transposition of epochs — and bodies; and when the guide pointed out a bullet-hole in a mail shirt said to belong to Sir Sagramor le Desirous, my stranger said, softly, "Wit ye well, I saw it done. I did it myself." That night, in my room at the Warwick Arms, he came and told me his story, and then left me a manuscript to read. It was a palimpsest, written over old monkish Latin; and this is it.

The Stranger's History. I am an American. I was born and reared in Hartford, in the State of Connecticut — anyway, just over the river, in the country. So I am a Yankee of the Yankees — and practical; yes, and nearly barren of sentiment, I suppose — or poetry, in other words. My father was a blacksmith, my uncle was a horse doctor, and I was both, along at first. Then I went over to the great arms factory and learned my real trade; learned all there was to it; learned to make everything: guns, revolvers, cannon, boilers, engines, all sorts of labour-saving machinery. I became head superintendent, and had a couple of thousand men under me.

Well, a man like that is a man that is full of fight — that goes without saying. I had my share of it; and at last I met my match. I had a misunderstanding conducted with crowbars with a fellow we used to call Hercules. He laid me out with a crushing blow on the side of the head that made everything crack, and the world went out in darkness.

When I came to again, I was sitting under an oak tree, on the grass, with a whole beautiful and broad country landscape all to myself — nearly. Not entirely; for there was a fellow on a horse, looking down at me — a fellow fresh out of a picture-book. He was in old-time iron armour from head to heel, with a helmet on his head the shape of a nail-keg with slits in it; and he had a shield, and a sword, and a prodigious spear. "Fair sir, will ye just?" said this fellow. "Will I which?" "Will ye try a passage of arms for land or lady or for —" "What are you giving me?" I said. "Get along back to your circus, or I'll report you." He came at me, and I found myself up the tree; and he made me his prisoner, and marched me off to a town and a castle on a hill.

It was Camelot. A boy in the crowd — a slim, slender page in flaming red tights, with a blue silk hat — told me so, and that it was the year 528, the nineteenth of June. "Camelot," said I to myself. "I don't seem to remember hearing of it before. Name of the asylum, likely." And the boy, whose name was Clarence, said I was the prisoner of Sir Kay the Seneschal, and that I would be put on show at the Round Table, and then cast into a dungeon, and then — burned, perhaps.

The great hall was full of knights at a round table as big as a circus ring, with dogs fighting for bones under it, and ladies in the galleries, and minstrels. They told one another tremendous lies about their adventures, with immense childlike simplicity. There was not a man of them who could read or write, but they were a fine lot, all the same — like animals, a sort of noble animals. Sir Kay told how he had captured me — a horrible ogre, from a far land of barbarians called America, whose people went about in clothes enchanted so as to protect them from wounds. Then Merlin, an old man with a white beard, got up and told a long story out of Malory that put everyone to sleep, dogs and all. And Sir Kay announced that I should die by fire at noon on the twenty-first; and they stripped me naked, for fear of my enchanted clothes, and nobody was a bit embarrassed by it but me.

In the dungeon Clarence brought me news that Merlin had woven a spell around it, and that every man in the kingdom feared him. That gave me an idea. I told Clarence to go and tell the king that I was a magician myself — the supreme and unapproachable Merlin's master — and that if they touched me I would blot out the sun, and the whole world should die in the dark.

I had remembered, you see, that there was a total eclipse of the sun in the first half of the sixth century, on the twenty-first of June, A.D. 528, beginning at three minutes past twelve, noon. I'd read it somewhere. If it was true, and I was really in the sixth century, I was saved.

They came for me — but, I found to my horror, not on the twenty-first as I had been told; they had moved it up to today, and today was, as I believed, the twentieth. My eclipse was due tomorrow. They led me out to a stake in a great courtyard, with all the court and thousands of people watching, and piled up the faggots, and a monk began a prayer, and a man stooped with a torch — and then the whole crowd gasped. A blackness was creeping into the edge of the sun. It was the eclipse — I had lost a day while I was asleep in the dungeon, and this was the twenty-first.

I raised my arm and stood still, with the solemn air of one who could stop it whenever he pleased. The king begged me to name any terms. I took my time, letting the darkness grow, for I had to get the best terms I could, and an eclipse can't be kept going for ever. I said I'd remain the king's perpetual minister and executive, and be given for my services one per cent of such actual increase of revenue over and above its present amount as I might succeed in creating for the State. Then I waved my arms and told the sun to go on — and it went on. They wrapped me in clothes; they carried me off on their shoulders; and I was the second personage in the kingdom.

Merlin was furious, and said it was all a fraud. I let it be known that I was going to blow up Merlin's stone tower by fire from heaven, and set a date. I spent a few nights quietly packing the tower with gunpowder, which I had made, and setting a lightning rod; then I waited for a cloudy night, and gave Merlin a chance to save his tower by his spells — he worked himself to a lather, waving his hands — and then I gave the signal, and a bolt of lightning came down and the tower went up in a fountain of fire and stone. That settled Merlin. People said I was the greatest magician in the world. They gave me a new name: The Boss. Sir Boss. I liked it. It was a title won by my own efforts, and there was not another like it in the kingdom.