They began to gather about him
in a way he did not relish, and he retreated towards the wall.
They pressed upon him.
'Stand back,' said Curdie, grasping his pickaxe tighter by his
knee.
They only grinned and pressed closer. Curdie bethought himself and
began to rhyme.
'Ten, twenty, thirty -
You're all so very dirty!
Twenty, thirty, forty -
You're all so thick and snorty!
'Thirty, forty, fifty -
You're all so puff-and-snifty!
Forty, fifty, sixty -
Beast and man so mixty!
'Fifty, sixty, seventy -
Mixty, maxty, leaventy!
Sixty, seventy, eighty -
All your cheeks so slaty!
'Seventy, eighty, ninety,
All your hands so flinty!
Eighty, ninety, hundred,
Altogether dundred!'
The goblins fell back a little when he began, and made horrible
grimaces all through the rhyme, as if eating something so
disagreeable that it set their teeth on edge and gave them the
creeps; but whether it was that the rhyming words were most of them
no words at all, for, a new rhyme being considered the more
efficacious, Curdie had made it on the spur of the moment, or
whether it was that the presence of the king and queen gave them
courage, I cannot tell; but the moment the rhyme was over they
crowded on him again, and out shot a hundred long arms, with a
multitude of thick nailless fingers at the ends of them, to lay
hold upon him.
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