02-Chapter 2-kv

Chapter 2

So I lived my life alone, without anyone that I could really talk to, until I had an accident with my plane in the Desert of Sahara , six years ago. Something was broken in my engine . And as I had with me neither a mechanic nor any passengers, I set myself to attempt the difficult repairs all alone . It was a question of life or death for me: I had scarcely enough drinking water to last a week. 

The first night, then, I went to sleep on the sand, a thousand miles from any human habitation . I was more isolated than a shipwrecked sailor on a raft in the middle of theocean. Thus you can imagine my amazement , at sunrise , when I was awakened by an odd little voice. It said: 

“If you please—draw me a sheep!” 

“What!” 

“Draw me a sheep!” 

I jumped to my feet , completely thunderstruck . I blinked my eyes hard. I looked carefully all around me. And I saw a most extraordinary small person, who stood there examining me with great seriousness . Here you may see the best portrait that, later, I was able to make of him. But my drawing is certainly very much less charming than its model . 

That, however, is not my fault. The grown-ups discouraged me in my painter’s career when I was six years old, and I never learned to draw anything, except boas from the outside and boas from the inside. 

Now I stared at this sudden apparition with my eyes fairly starting out of my head in astonishment . Remember, I had crashed in the desert a thousand miles from any inhabitedregion. And yet my little man seemed neither to be straying uncertainly among the sands,nor to be fainting from fatigue , or hunger, or thirst, or fear. Nothing about him gave any suggestion of a child lost in the middle of the desert, a thousand miles from any human habitation. When at last I was able to speak, I said to him: 

“But —what are you doing here?” 

And in answer he repeated, very slowly, as if he were speaking of a matter of great consequence: 

“If you please—draw me a sheep...” 

When a mystery is too overpowering , one dare not disobey . Absurd as it might seem to me, a thousand miles from any human habitation and in danger of death, I took out of my pocket a sheet of paper and my fountain-pen . But then I remembered how my studies had been concentrated on geography, history, arithmetic, and grammar, and I told the littlechap (a little crossly , too) that I did not know how to draw. He answered me: 

“That doesn’t matter. Draw me a sheep...” 

But I had never drawn a sheep. So I drew for him one of the two pictures I had drawn so often. It was that of the boa constrictor from the outside. And I was astounded to hear the little fellow greet it with, 

“No, no, no! I do not want an elephant inside a boa constrictor. A boa constrictor is a very dangerous creature , and an elephant is very cumbersome . Where I live, everything is very small. What I need is a sheep. Draw me a sheep.” 

So then I made a drawing. 

He looked at it carefully, then he said: 

“No. This sheep is already very sickly . Make me another.” 

So I made another drawing. 

My friend smiled gently and indulgently . 

“You see yourself,” he said, “that this is not a sheep. This is a ram . It has horns .” 

So then I did my drawing over once more. 

But it was rejected too, just like the others. 

“This one is too old. I want a sheep that will live a long time.” 

By this time my patience was exhausted , because I was in a hurry to start taking my engine apart . So I tossed off this drawing. 

And I threw out an explanation with it. 

“This is only his box. The sheep you asked for is inside.” 

I was very surprised to see a light break over the face of my young judge: 

“That is exactly the way I wanted it! Do you think that this sheep will have to have a great deal of grass ?” 

“Why?” 

“Because where I live everything is very small...” 

“There will surely be enough grass for him,” I said. “It is a very small sheep that I have given you.” 

He bent his head over the drawing: 

“Not so small that—Look! He has gone to sleep...” 

And that is how I made the acquaintance of the little prince.