The Ogre of Oglefort

But if the soldiers were frightened, the children and the rescuers on the battlements were utterly amazed. An hour ago the ogre had been lying limply in his bed waiting for death—and now he was roaring and threatening. Surely he would have a heart attack and drop dead?

Prince Umberto, who was already right at the back, edged his horse farther away. It was as though the ogre’s power could somehow reach them even from the roof.

But Prince Phillipe and Prince Tomas were made of sterner stuff. They repeated the signal to the archers and a volley of arrows sped toward the towering figure on the roof.

The arrows missed—and the ogre picked one up and scratched his armpits with it. Then he looked around for a weapon and Ivo handed him a coal bucket, which he hurled with all his might into the army—and a member of the Household Guards cried out and fell to the ground. The troll had made a sling from a sheet. He put in a metal cooking pot and sent it flying toward the Soldiers of the Bedchamber. It glanced off a sergeant’s arm, and he cried out but managed to stay on his horse.

A second hail of arrows flew up to the roof—and missed again.

“Come on you, lily-livered, cow-handed imbeciles. How dare you attack Oglefort Castle, which has stood for five hundred years. Just you wait till I get down there and crunch you up between my molars.”

But one of the fusiliers had broken ranks and was setting his horse at the moat. He could not jump it, but he meant to swim it—and he shouted to his sergeant to bring reinforcements. If he could get into the castle by the back he had a good chance of rescuing the princess.

The horse, however, had different ideas. It stopped dead and the soldier shot over his head into the deep and slimy water.

Mirella, emerging from the shelter of the chimney stacks, looked down and remembered what Bessie had said about the weeds in the moat. Well if the soldier drowned that was one less for the attack. But as the fusilier’s anguished face appeared above the surface and vanished again she saw, to her horror, that it was somebody she knew. One of the servants who had been kind to her in the palace: the son of the carpenter who had helped her to make her ant nest.

Without thinking, Mirella rushed down the curving stone staircase and out by the sally port. There was an old life belt fixed by a rope on a stand, and she threw it with all her might into the water.

“Go back,” she shouted. “The ogre will kill you if you come any farther.”

The soldier caught it and held on but as he did so he saw Mirella. Here was his chance for fame and glory—he and he alone would rescue the princess. Instead of swimming back to the army, he thrust out toward the castle side of the moat and grabbed Mirella’s legs.

Taken by surprise, Mirella let go of the rope and stumbled—and he pulled her into the water.

“Hold on, Your Highness,” he spluttered. “We’ll soon have you safe.”

Ivo, who had gone around to the back to fetch some loose bricks for ammunition, saw what had happened.

“They’ve got her—they’ve got Mirella,” he shouted. “I’m going down to help her.”

“No you’re not,” said Ulf, grabbing him. “They’ll only get you, too.”

But someone else was in the moat, swimming strongly toward the soldier and his burden. And when the fusilier saw who it was he screamed in terror.

A great mouth had opened in front of him, a crimson cavern with fearsome yellowing teeth. A mouth belonging to the most dangerous mammal in Africa, who could snap people in half with one movement of the jaw.

“Watch out!” Mirella shouted to the soldier, who held her in his grip. “It’s the Oglefort Hippo—she’s a killer!”

Mirella was right: it was indeed a hippopotamus. This gentle animal who wanted nothing except to live in peace had come lumbering up before the battle and taken it on herself to patrol the moat.

There was no way the soldier could have known that Bessie would have died rather than taste his horrid flesh. He saw only the gaping mouth, the terrible teeth, and he loosened his hold on Mirella and—still in the life belt—he struck out for the bank.

Mirella managed to swim back to the castle side of the moat, but the bank was steep and slimy. As she struggled to get out, Prince Phillipe rode over.

“Don’t worry, my dear,” he called to her in a patronizing voice. “We’ll soon have you out of here and safe back home.”

“I don’t want to be safe,” she spluttered. “And I’m not going home.”

“She’s been brainwashed,” said the prince to his aide—and since no one could swim the waters of the moat while the wild hippopotamus patrolled it, he gave orders that a big tree nearby should be cut down to make a bridge.

“Like that, we’ll be able to get her out of the water and storm the castle,” he said.

But Bessie was not the only animal who had come to help.

“We need more ammunition,” shouted the ogre—and vanished, to return with a grandfather clock, an iron bedstead, and an armchair, which he sent crashing down from the battlements.