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  12 The King was by this time so exasperated that he picked up his
scepter, which had a heavy ball, made from a sapphire, at the end of it,
and threw it with all his force at General Blug. The sapphire hit the
General upon his forehead and knocked him flat upon the ground, where he
lay motionless. Then the King rang his gong and told his guards to
drag out the General and throw him away; which they did.
This Nome King was named Roquat the Red, and no one loved him. He was
a bad man and a powerful monarch, and he had resolved to destroy the
Land of Oz and its magnificent Emerald City, to enslave Princess Ozma
and little Dorothy and all the Oz people, and recover his Magic Belt.
This same Belt had once enabled Roquat the Red to carry out many
wicked plans; but that was before Ozma and her people marched to the
underground cavern and captured it. The Nome King could not forgive
Dorothy or Princess Ozma, and he had determined to be revenged upon them.
But they, for their part, did not know they had so dangerous an enemy.
Indeed, Ozma and Dorothy had both almost forgotten that such a person
as the Nome King yet lived under the mountains of the Land of Ev--which
lay just across the deadly desert to the south of the Land of Oz.
An unsuspected enemy is doubly dangerous.
2. How Uncle Henry Got Into Trouble
Dorothy Gale lived on a farm in Kansas, with her Aunt Em and her Uncle
Henry. It was not a big farm, nor a very good one, because sometimes
the rain did not come when the crops needed it, and then everything
withered and dried up. Once a cyclone had carried away Uncle Henry's
house, so that he was obliged to build another; and as he was a poor
man he had to mortgage his farm to get the money to pay for the new
house. Then his health became bad and he was too feeble to work.
The doctor ordered him to take a sea voyage and he went to Australia
and took Dorothy with him. That cost a lot of money, too.
Uncle Henry grew poorer every year, and the crops raised on the farm
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