Bump! bump! bump! went his head. Through a confused vision of stars, veined marble, stained glass, and flying stair-rails he saw his legs trail helplessly after, close in above, fling violently across him feet foremost, and dash out of view. In other words, having reached the bottom of the grand staircase he had turned a complete and homely somersault.
For awhile he lay half stunned, unable to move. Something had undoubtedly happened to his head, but he was still conscious. Cautiously he turned himself over and looked round. No one was about; no one had seen this ignominious downfall of Jingalo's topmost symbol on the too highly polished floors of its own abode; and nobody must know. It was not the right and dignified way for a royal accident to happen: falling down-stairs suggested the same failing as that to which steeplejacks were prone.
He picked himself up, and aware now of a sharp pain in the middle of his spine as well as at the back of his head, crawled slowly and in a rather doubled-up attitude toward the royal apartments.
As he moved cautiously along the private corridor, he met the Queen coming from her room, dressed for going out. She detected at once his painful and decrepit attitude. "What is the matter, dear?" she inquired.
"Nothing, nothing," mumbled the King, "only a touch of sciatica." And as he did not encourage her impulse to pause and make further inquiries, she let him go past.
He went into his room, and sat very carefully down, for he was still uncertain whether some vertebral bit of him was not broken. Then he put his hand to the back of his head and felt it. Yes, undoubtedly something had happened; at contact with his finger it made a sound curiously like the ticking of a clock, and under the scalp a portion of bone seemed to move. And yet he was not threatened with unconsciousness; on the contrary he felt very wide awake: shaken though he was, ideas positively bubbled in his brain, his whole being effervesced. For a moment a fear flickered across his mind that he was going mad. But if so it was a wholly pleasurable sensation, for though his fancy went at a gallop, it was orderly, logical, and consecutive, not like madness at all. He dismissed the notion; but further reflection confirmed him in his determination not to tell anybody; he did not want to explain how he had walked upstairs fancying himself a steeplejack. It would have sounded stupid.