Chikunin

The Earthmen are Underland’s numerous, armed inhabitants, a varied people whom the travelers encounter first as a hundred-strong force and later amid the crowded streets of a dim subterranean port. They serve the Queen of the Deep Realm, arrest Jill Pole, Eustace Scrubb, and Puddleglum, and escort them through the caverns toward her city. Their pale faces, quiet movement, and unquestioned obedience make them agents of the Queen’s authority, but their words also reveal a world shaped by an old, sorrowful passage between the upper lands and the depths.

Identity and Appearance

The Earthmen identify their leader as the Warden of the Marches of Underland, who announces that a hundred armed followers stand with him. When cold light suddenly fills the cavern, the travelers see a dense crowd ranging from gnomes barely a foot high to figures taller than men. Each carries a three-pronged spear; all are pale and still, but their bodies differ strikingly. Some have tails and some do not; their faces may be bearded or smooth, their noses long and pointed, soft and trunklike, or broad and blobby, and several bear a single horn in the middle of the forehead.

Their common feature is not a shared shape but an overwhelming sadness. The faces are so solemn that Jill almost forgets to fear them and instead feels she would like to cheer them up. Puddleglum, characteristically, jokes that their grave appearance is just what he needs to teach him to take life seriously. Their grotesque variety and collective melancholy make the force less like a uniform army than a multitude of distinct beings gathered under one authority.

Authority and the Capture

The Warden speaks for the Queen of the Deep Realm and orders the travelers to come before her. When Eustace cautiously asks what she wants with them, the Warden says he does not know; her will is not to be questioned but obeyed. The statement defines the Earthmen’s political role through submission rather than explanation: the Warden can command the travelers, but does not offer them a reason for the Queen’s summons.

After the armed crowd appears, the travelers have no choice but to rise and join hands, seeking the reassurance of one another’s touch. The Earthmen close around them and lead them away, padding on large, soft feet. Some have ten toes, some twelve, and others none. The Warden’s brief command to march turns the encounter into an escort under guard. At the head of the procession, the tallest gnome carries a large ball on a long pole, whose cold, faintly blue-grey light reveals the route through the natural cavern.

Through the Caverns

The Earthmen guide their captives down a floor that slopes deeper underground. As the passage narrows and lowers, they stoop one by one through a small, dark crack, while Jill finds the darkness increasingly hard to bear. The route opens into a softly lit place with moss underfoot and strange, flabby, tree-shaped growths; there, the travelers pass animals that may be dead or asleep. Eustace asks whether the beasts grow in the cavern. The Warden explains that they came down from Overland through chasms and caves, and that many descend while few return to the sunlit lands. According to what is said there, the beasts will all wake at the end of the world.

That account gives the Earthmen’s escort a significance beyond the physical journey: they know the depths as a place into which living things pass and from which return is rare. Their brief explanation is surrounded by a silence in which the travelers feel they dare not speak again. The gnomes’ bare feet make no sound on the moss; there is no wind, birdcall, or running water to interrupt the stillness. The Earthmen guide the group through this strange landscape without dispelling its uncertainty.

The City and Its Inhabitants

After a long journey, the procession reaches ships and then a city whose scattered lights reveal glimpses of a great seaport: ships loading and unloading, bales and warehouses, and walls and pillars suggesting palaces or temples. Hundreds of Earthmen move through streets, squares, and stairways. They jostle and hurry about their business, yet the city makes no ordinary civic noise—there are no songs, shouts, bells, or rattling wheels. Only the soft murmur of continual movement accompanies the travelers as their ship approaches.

The Earthmen’s number and variety persist in the city: the travelers are marched ashore through crowded streets where no two inhabitants look alike, and sad, grotesque faces fill the dim light. The strangers attract no visible interest. Each Earthman seems busy, though Jill cannot discover what occupies them. The ceaseless shoving and padding suggests organized activity without revealing its purpose, while the quiet port gives their society a distinctive contrast between constant motion and near-silence.

Narrative Role

As armed escorts, the Earthmen carry the travelers from an encounter in a cavern into the Queen’s domain, making the hidden authority of the Deep Realm tangible. Their first appearance is a sudden revelation: a voice claims a hundred followers, then an abrupt burst of cold light exposes the crowd and its spears. Later, the same people become the inhabitants of a whole city, moving through an extensive subterranean world rather than appearing only as a guard party.

The Warden’s few answers establish both the reach and the limits of what the Earthmen reveal. He can speak for the Queen and direct the captives, but he neither knows nor explains the purpose of her command. He does, however, describe the descent of creatures from Overland and the rarity of their return. In this way, the Earthmen are at once agents of immediate danger and guides to the underworld’s larger geography: a people whose authority is unquestioned, whose society is always in motion, and whose home lies along a route from which few find their way back to sunlight.