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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Mr. Munchausen, by John Kendrick Bangs,
+Illustrated by Peter Newell
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Mr. Munchausen
+       Being a True Account of Some of the Recent Adventures beyond the Styx of the Late Hieronymus Carl Friedrich, Sometime Baron Munchausen of Bodenwerder
+
+
+Author: John Kendrick Bangs
+
+
+
+Release Date: August 14, 2010  [eBook #33432]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MR. MUNCHAUSEN***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Barbara Tozier, Bill Tozier, and the Project Gutenberg
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file
+      which includes the original illustrations in color.
+      See 33432-h.htm or 33432-h.zip:
+      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/33432/33432-h/33432-h.htm)
+      or
+      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/33432/33432-h.zip)
+
+
+
+
+
+MR. MUNCHAUSEN
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+MR. MUNCHAUSEN
+
+_Being a TRUE ACCOUNT of some of the RECENT ADVENTURES beyond the STYX
+of the late HIERONYMUS CARL FRIEDRICH, sometime BARON MUNCHAUSEN of
+BODENWERDER, as originally reported for the SUNDAY EDITION of the
+GEHENNA GAZETTE by its SPECIAL INTERVIEWER the late Mr. ANANIAS
+formerly of JERUSALEM and now first transcribed from the columns of
+that JOURNAL by_
+
+JOHN KENDRICK BANGS
+
+Embellished with Drawings by Peter Newell
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Boston: _Printed for Noyes, Platt & Company and published by them at
+their offices in the Pierce Building in Copley Square_, A.D. 1901
+
+Copyright, 1901, by Noyes, Platt & Company, (Incorporated)
+
+Entered at Stationers' Hall
+
+The lithographed illustrations are printed in eight colours by George
+H. Walker and Company, Boston
+
+Press of Riggs Printing and Publishing Co. Albany, N. Y., U. S. A.
+
+
+
+
+EDITOR'S APOLOGY _and_ DEDICATION
+
+
+_In order that there may be no misunderstanding as to the why and the
+wherefore of this collection of tales it appears to me to be desirable
+that I should at the outset state my reasons for acting as the medium
+between the spirit of the late Baron Munchausen and the reading
+public. In common with a large number of other great men in history
+Baron Munchausen has suffered because he is not understood. I have
+observed with wondering surprise the steady and constant growth of the
+idea that Baron Munchausen was not a man of truth; that his statements
+of fact were untrustworthy, and that as a realist he had no standing
+whatsoever. Just how this misconception of the man's character has
+arisen it would be difficult to say. Surely in his published writings
+he shows that same lofty resolve to be true to life as he has seen it
+that characterises the work of some of the high Apostles of Realism,
+who are writing of the things that will teach future generations how
+we of to-day ordered our goings-on. The note of veracity in Baron
+Munchausen's early literary venturings rings as clear and as true
+certainly as the similar note in the charming studies of Manx Realism
+that have come to us of late years from the pen of Mr. Corridor
+Walkingstick, of Gloomster Abbey and London. We all remember the glow
+of satisfaction with which we read Mr. Walkingstick's great story of
+the love of the clergyman, John Stress, for the charming little
+heroine, Glory Partridge. Here was something at last that rang true.
+The picture was painted in the boldest of colours, and, regardless of
+consequences to himself, Mr. Walkingstick dared to be real when he
+might have given rein to his imagination. Mr. Walkingstick was,
+thereupon, lifted up by popular favour to the level of an
+apostle--nay, he even admitted the soft impeachment--and now as a
+moral teacher he is without a rival in the world of literature. Yet
+the same age that accepts this man as a moral teacher, rejects Baron
+Munchausen, who, in different manner perhaps, presented to the world
+as true and life-like a picture of the conditions of his day as that
+given to us by Mr. Walkingstick in his deservedly popular romance,
+"Episcopalians I have Met." Of course, I do not claim that Baron
+Munchausen's stories in bulk or in specified instances, have the
+literary vigour that is so marked a quality of the latter-day writer,
+but the point I do wish to urge is that to accept the one as a
+veracious chronicler of his time and to reject the other as one who
+indulges his pen in all sorts of grotesque vagaries, without proper
+regard for the facts, is a great injustice to the man of other times.
+The question arises, _why_ is this? How has this wrong upon the worthy
+realist of the eighteenth century been perpetrated? Is it an
+intentional or an unwitting wrong? I prefer to believe that it is
+based upon ignorance of the Baron's true quality, due to the fact that
+his works are rarely to be found within the reach of the public: in
+some cases, because of the failure of librarians to comprehend his
+real motives, his narratives are excluded from Public and
+Sunday-School libraries; and because of their extreme age, they are
+not easily again brought into vogue. I have, therefore, accepted the
+office of intermediary between the Baron and the readers of the
+present day, in order that his later work, which, while it shows to a
+marked degree the decadence of his literary powers, may yet serve to
+demonstrate to the readers of my own time how favourably he compares
+with some of the literary idols of to-day, in the simple matter of
+fidelity to fact. If these stories which follow shall serve to
+rehabilitate Baron Munchausen as a lover and practitioner of the arts
+of Truth, I shall not have made the sacrifice of my time in vain. If
+they fail of this purpose I shall still have the satisfaction of
+knowing that I have tried to render a service to an honest and
+defenceless man._
+
+_Meanwhile I dedicate this volume, with sentiments of the highest
+regard, to that other great realist_
+
+                      MR. CORRIDOR WALKINGSTICK
+
+                                 _of_
+
+                           GLOOMSTER ABBEY
+
+                               J. K. B.
+
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+
+     I. I Encounter the Old Gentleman
+    II. The Sporting Tour of Mr. Munchausen
+   III. Three Months in a Balloon
+    IV. Some Hunting Stories for Children
+     V. The Story of Jang
+    VI. He Tells the Twins of Fire-Works
+   VII. Saved by a Magic Lantern
+  VIII. An Adventure in the Desert
+    IX. Decoration Day in the Cannibal Islands
+     X. Mr. Munchausen's Adventure with a Shark
+    XI. The Baron as a Runner
+   XII. Mr. Munchausen Meets His Match
+  XIII. Wriggletto
+   XIV. The Poetic June-Bug, Together with Some
+          Remarks on the Gillyhooly Bird
+    XV. A Lucky Stroke
+
+
+
+
+List of Illustrations
+
+
+  Portrait of Mr. Munchausen
+  "There was the whale, drawn by magnetic influence to the
+        side of _The Lyre_"
+  "As their bullets got to their highest point and began to
+        drop back, I reached out and caught them"
+  "I got nearer and nearer my haven of safety, the bellowing
+        beasts snorting with rage as they followed"
+  "Jang buzzed over and sat on his back, putting his sting
+        where it would do the most good"
+  "Out of what appeared to be a clear sky came the most
+        extraordinary rain storm you ever saw"
+  "'I am your slave,' he replied to my greeting, kneeling
+        before me, 'I yield all to you'"
+  "I reached the giraffe, raised myself to his back, crawled
+        along his neck and dropped fainting into the tree"
+  "They were celebrating Decoration Day, strewing flowers on
+        the graves of departed missionaries"
+  "I laughed in the poor disappointed thing's face, and with a
+        howl of despair he rushed back into the sea"
+  "This brought my speed down ten minutes to the mile which
+        made it safe for me to run into a haystack"
+  "At the first whoop Mr. Bear jumped ten feet and fell over
+        backward on the floor"
+  "He used to wind his tail about a fan and he'd wave it to
+        and fro by the hour"
+  "Most singular of all was the fact that, consciously or
+        unconsciously, the insect had butted out a verse"
+  "Again I swung my red-flagged brassey in front of the angry
+        creature's face, and what I had hoped for followed"
+
+
+
+
+MR. MUNCHAUSEN
+
+AN ACCOUNT OF HIS RECENT ADVENTURES
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+I ENCOUNTER THE OLD GENTLEMAN
+
+
+There are moments of supreme embarrassment in the lives of persons
+given to veracity,--indeed it has been my own unusual experience in
+life that the truth well stuck to is twice as hard a proposition as a
+lie so obvious that no one is deceived by it at the outset. I cannot
+quite agree with my friend, Caddy Barlow, who says that in a tight
+place it is better to lie at once and be done with it than to tell the
+truth which will need forty more truths to explain it, but I must
+confess that in my forty years of absolute and conscientious devotion
+to truth I have found myself in holes far deeper than any my most
+mendacious of friends ever got into. I do not propose, however, to
+desert at this late hour the Goddess I have always worshipped because
+she leads me over a rough and rocky road, and whatever may be the
+hardships involved in my wooing I intend to the very end to remain the
+ever faithful slave of Mademoiselle Veracite. All of which I state
+here in prefatory mood, and in order, in so far as it is possible for
+me to do so, to disarm the incredulous and sniffy reader who may be
+inclined to doubt the truth of my story of how the manuscript of the
+following pages came into my possession. I am quite aware that to some
+the tale will appear absolutely and intolerably impossible. I know
+that if any other than I told it to me I should not believe it. Yet
+despite these drawbacks the story is in all particulars, essential and
+otherwise, absolutely truthful.
+
+The facts are briefly these:
+
+It was not, to begin with, a dark and dismal evening. The snow was not
+falling silently, clothing a sad and gloomy world in a mantle of
+white, and over the darkling moor a heavy mist was not rising, as is
+so frequently the case. There was no soul-stirring moaning of bitter
+winds through the leafless boughs; so far as I was aware nothing
+soughed within twenty miles of my bailiwick; and my dog, lying before
+a blazing log fire in my library, did not give forth an occasional
+growl of apprehension, denoting the presence or approach of an uncanny
+visitor from other and mysterious realms: and for two good reasons.
+The first reason is that it was midsummer when the thing happened, so
+that a blazing log fire in my library would have been an extravagance
+as well as an anachronism. The second is that I have no dog. In fact
+there was nothing unusual, or uncanny in the whole experience. It
+happened to be a bright and somewhat too sunny July day, which is not
+an unusual happening along the banks of the Hudson. You could see the
+heat, and if anything had soughed it could only have been the mercury
+in my thermometer. This I must say clicked nervously against the top
+of the glass tube and manifested an extraordinary desire to climb
+higher than the length of the tube permitted. Incidentally I may add,
+even if it be not believed, that the heat was so intense that the
+mercury actually did raise the whole thermometer a foot and a half
+above the mantel-shelf, and for two mortal hours, from midday until
+two by the Monastery Clock, held it suspended there in mid-air with no
+visible means of support. Not a breath of air was stirring, and the
+only sounds heard were the expanding creaks of the beams of my house,
+which upon that particular day increased eight feet in width and
+assumed a height which made it appear to be a three instead of a two
+story dwelling. There was little work doing in the house. The children
+played about in their bathing suits, and the only other active factor
+in my life of the moment was our hired man who was kept busy in the
+cellar pouring water on the furnace coal to keep it from spontaneously
+combusting.
+
+We had just had luncheon, burning our throats with the iced tea and
+with considerable discomfort swallowing the simmering cold roast
+filet, which we had to eat hastily before the heat of the day
+transformed it into smoked beef. My youngest boy Willie perspired so
+copiously that we seriously thought of sending for a plumber to solder
+up his pores, and as for myself who have spent three summers of my
+life in the desert of Sahara in order to rid myself of nervous chills
+to which I was once unhappily subject, for the first time in my life I
+was impelled to admit that it was intolerably warm. And then the
+telephone bell rang.
+
+"Great Scott!" I cried, "Who in thunder do you suppose wants to play
+golf on a day like this?"--for nowadays our telephone is used for no
+other purpose than the making or the breaking of golf engagements.
+
+"Me," cried my eldest son, whose grammar is not as yet on a par with
+his activity. "I'll go."
+
+The boy shot out of the dining room and ran to the telephone,
+returning in a few moments with the statement that a gentleman with a
+husky voice whose name was none of his business wished to speak with
+me on a matter of some importance to myself.
+
+I was loath to go. My friends the book agents had recently acquired
+the habit of approaching me over the telephone, and I feared that here
+was another nefarious attempt to foist a thirty-eight volume tabloid
+edition of _The World's Worst Literature_ upon me. Nevertheless I
+wisely determined to respond.
+
+"Hello," I said, placing my lips against the rubber cup. "Hello there,
+who wants 91162 Nepperhan?"
+
+"Is that you?" came the answering question, and, as my boy had
+indicated, in a voice whose chief quality was huskiness.
+
+"I guess so," I replied facetiously;--"It was this morning, but the
+heat has affected me somewhat, and I don't feel as much like myself as
+I might. What can I do for you?"
+
+"Nothing, but you can do a lot for yourself," was the astonishing
+answer. "Pretty hot for literary work, isn't it?" the voice added
+sympathetically.
+
+"Very," said I. "Fact is I can't seem to do anything these days but
+perspire."
+
+"That's what I thought; and when you can't work ruin stares you in the
+face, eh? Now I have a manuscript--"
+
+"Oh Lord!" I cried. "Don't. There are millions in the same fix. Even
+my cook writes."
+
+"Don't know about that," he returned instantly. "But I do know that
+there's millions in my manuscript. And you can have it for the asking.
+How's that for an offer?"
+
+"Very kind, thank you," said I. "What's the nature of your story?"
+
+"It's extremely good-natured," he answered promptly.
+
+I laughed. The twist amused me.
+
+"That isn't what I meant exactly," said I, "though it has some bearing
+on the situation. Is it a Henry James dandy, or does it bear the mark
+of Caine? Is it realism or fiction?"
+
+"Realism," said he. "Fiction isn't in my line."
+
+"Well, I'll tell you," I replied; "you send it to me by post and I'll
+look it over. If I can use it I will."
+
+"Can't do it," said he. "There isn't any post-office where I am."
+
+"What?" I cried. "No post-office? Where in Hades are you?"
+
+"Gehenna," he answered briefly. "The transportation between your
+country and mine is all one way," he added. "If it wasn't the
+population here would diminish."
+
+"Then how the deuce am I to get hold of your stuff?" I demanded.
+
+"That's easy. Send your stenographer to the 'phone and I'll dictate
+it," he answered.
+
+The novelty of the situation appealed to me. Even if my new found
+acquaintance were some funny person nearer at hand than Gehenna trying
+to play a practical joke upon me, still it might be worth while to get
+hold of the story he had to tell. Hence I agreed to his proposal.
+
+"All right, sir," said I. "I'll do it. I'll have him here to-morrow
+morning at nine o'clock sharp. What's your number? I'll ring you up."
+
+"Never mind that," he replied. "I'm merely a tapster on your wires.
+I'll ring _you_ up as soon as I've had breakfast and then we can get
+to work."
+
+"Very good," said I. "And may I ask your name?"
+
+"Certainly," he answered. "I'm Munchausen."
+
+"What? The Baron?" I roared, delighted.
+
+"Well--I used to be Baron," he returned with a tinge of sadness in his
+voice, "but here in Gehenna we are all on an equal footing. I'm plain
+Mr. Munchausen of Hades now. But that's a detail. Don't forget. Nine
+o'clock. Good-bye."
+
+"Wait a moment, Baron," I cried. "How about the royalties on this
+book?"
+
+"Keep 'em for yourself," he replied. "We have money to burn over here.
+You are welcome to all the earthly rights of the book. I'm satisfied
+with the returns on the Asbestos Edition, already in its 468th
+thousand. Good-bye."
+
+There was a rattle as of the hanging up of the receiver, a short sharp
+click and a ring, and I realised that he had gone.
+
+The next morning in response to a telegraphic summons my stenographer
+arrived and when I explained the situation to him he was incredulous,
+but orders were orders and he remained. I could see, however, that as
+nine o'clock approached he grew visibly nervous, which indicated that
+he half believed me anyhow, and when at nine to the second the sharp
+ring of the 'phone fell upon our ears he jumped as if he had been
+shot.
+
+"Hello," said I again. "That you, Baron?"
+
+"The same," the voice replied. "Stenographer ready?"
+
+"Yes," said I.
+
+The stenographer walked to the desk, placed the receiver at his ear,
+and with trembling voice announced his presence. There was a response
+of some kind, and then more calmly he remarked, "Fire ahead, Mr.
+Munchausen," and began to write rapidly in short-hand.
+
+Two days later he handed me a type-written copy of the following
+stories. The reader will observe that they are in the form of
+interviews, and it should be stated here that they appeared originally
+in the columns of the Sunday edition of the _Gehenna Gazette_, a
+publication of Hades which circulates wholly among the best people of
+that country, and which, if report saith truly, would not print a line
+which could not be placed in the hands of children, and to whose
+columns such writers as Chaucer, Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Jonah and
+Ananias are frequent contributors.
+
+Indeed, on the statement of Mr. Munchausen, all the interviews herein
+set forth were between himself as the principal and the Hon. Henry B.
+Ananias as reporter, or were scrupulously edited by the latter before
+being published.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+THE SPORTING TOUR OF MR. MUNCHAUSEN
+
+
+"Good morning, Mr. Munchausen," said the interviewer of the _Gehenna
+Gazette_ entering the apartment of the famous traveller at the Hotel
+Deville, where the late Baron had just arrived from his sporting tour
+in the Blue Hills of Cimmeria and elsewhere.
+
+"The interests of truth, my dear Ananias," replied the Baron, grasping
+me cordially by the hand, "require that I should state it as my
+opinion that it is not a good morning. In fact, my good friend, it is
+a very bad morning. Can you not see that it is raining cats and dogs
+without?"
+
+"Sir," said I with a bow, "I accept the spirit of your correction but
+not the letter. It is raining indeed, sir, as you suggest, but having
+passed through it myself on my way hither I can personally testify
+that it is raining rain, and not a single cat or canine has, to my
+knowledge, as yet fallen from the clouds to the parched earth,
+although I am informed that down upon the coast an elephant and three
+cows have fallen upon one of the summer hotels and irreparably damaged
+the roof."
+
+Mr. Munchausen laughed.
+
+"It is curious, Ananias," said he, "what sticklers for the truth you
+and I have become."
+
+"It is indeed, Munchausen," I returned. "The effects of this climate
+are working wonders upon us. And it is just as well. You and I are
+outclassed by these twentieth century prevaricators concerning whom
+late arrivals from the upper world tell such strange things. They tell
+me that lying has become a business and is no longer ranked among the
+Arts or Professions."
+
+"Ah me!" sighed the Baron with a retrospective look in his eye, "lying
+isn't what it used to be, Ananias, in your days and mine. I fear it
+has become one of the lost arts."
+
+"I have noticed it myself, my friend, and only last night I observed
+the same thing to my well beloved Sapphira, who was lamenting the
+transparency of the modern lie, and said that lying to-day is no
+better than the truth. In our day a prevarication had all of the
+opaque beauty of an opalescent bit of glass, whereas to-day in the
+majority of cases it is like a great vulgar plate-glass window,
+through which we can plainly see the ugly truths that lie behind. But,
+sir, I am here to secure from you not a treatise upon the lost art of
+lying, but some idea of the results of your sporting tour. You fished,
+and hunted, and golfed, and doubtless did other things. You, of
+course, had luck and made the greatest catch of the season; shot all
+the game in sight, and won every silver, gold and pewter golf mug in
+all creation?"
+
+"You speak truly, Ananias," returned Mr. Munchausen. "My luck _was_
+wonderful--even for one who has been so singularly fortunate as I. I
+took three tons of speckled beauties with one cast of an ordinary
+horse whip in the Blue Hills, and with nothing but a silken line and a
+minnow hook landed upon the deck of my steam yacht a whale of most
+tremendous proportions; I shot game of every kind in great abundance
+and in my golf there was none to whom I could not give with ease seven
+holes in every nine and beat him out."
+
+"Seven?" said I, failing to see how the ex-Baron could be right.
+
+"Seven," said he complacently. "Seven on the first, and seven on the
+second nine; fourteen in all of the eighteen holes."
+
+"But," I cried, "I do not see how that could be. With fourteen holes
+out of the eighteen given to your opponent even if you won all the
+rest you still would be ten down."
+
+"True, by ordinary methods of calculation," returned the Baron, "but I
+got them back on a technicality, which I claim is a new and valuable
+discovery in the game. You see it is impossible to play more than one
+hole at a time, and I invariably proved to the Greens Committee that
+in taking fourteen holes at once my opponent violated the physical
+possibilities of the situation. In every case the point was accepted
+as well taken, for if we allow golfers to rise above physical
+possibilities the game is gone. The integrity of the Card is the soul
+of Golf," he added sententiously.
+
+"Tell me of the whale," said I, simply. "You landed a whale of large
+proportions on the deck of your yacht with a simple silken line and a
+minnow hook."
+
+"Well it's a tough story," the Baron replied, handing me a cigar. "But
+it is true, Ananias, true to the last word. I was fishing for eels.
+Sitting on the deck of _The Lyre_ one very warm afternoon in the early
+stages of my trip, I baited a minnow hook and dropped it overboard. It
+was the roughest day at sea I had ever encountered. The waves were
+mountain high, and it is the sad fact that one of our crew seated in
+the main-top was drowned with the spray of the dashing billows.
+Fortunately for myself, directly behind my deck chair, to which I was
+securely lashed, was a powerful electric fan which blew the spray away
+from me, else I too might have suffered the same horrid fate. Suddenly
+there came a tug on my line. I was half asleep at the time and let the
+line pay out involuntarily, but I was wide-awake enough to know that
+something larger than an eel had taken hold of the hook. I had hooked
+either a Leviathan or a derelict. Caution and patience, the chief
+attributes of a good angler were required. I hauled the line in until
+it was taut. There were a thousand yards of it out, and when it
+reached the point of tensity, I gave orders to the engineers to steam
+closer to the object at the other end. We steamed in five hundred
+yards, I meanwhile hauling in my line. Then came another tug and I let
+out ten yards. 'Steam closer,' said I. 'Three hundred yards
+sou-sou-west by nor'-east.' The yacht obeyed on the instant. I called
+the Captain and let him feel the line. 'What do you think it is?' said
+I. He pulled a half dozen times. 'Feels like a snag,' he said, 'but
+seein' as there ain't no snags out here, I think it must be a fish.'
+'What kind?' I asked. I could not but agree that he was better
+acquainted with the sea and its denizens than I. 'Well,' he replied,
+'it is either a sea serpent or a whale.' At the mere mention of the
+word whale I was alert. I have always wanted to kill a whale.
+'Captain,' said I, 'can't you tie an anchor onto a hawser, and bait
+the flukes with a boa constrictor and make sure of him?' He looked at
+me contemptuously. 'Whales eats fish,' said he, 'and they don't bite
+at no anchors. Whales has brains, whales has.' 'What shall we do?' I
+asked. 'Steam closer,' said the Captain, and we did so."
+
+Munchausen took a long breath and for the moment was silent.
+
+"Well?" said I.
+
+"Well, Ananias," said he. "We resolved to wait. As the Captain said to
+me, 'Fishin' is waitin'.' So we waited. 'Coax him along,' said the
+Captain. 'How can we do it?' I asked. 'By kindness,' said he. 'Treat
+him gently, persuasive-like and he'll come.' We waited four days and
+nobody moved and I grew weary of coaxing. 'We've got to do something,'
+said I to the Captain. 'Yes,' said he, 'Let's _make_ him move. He
+doesn't seem to respond to kindness.' 'But how?' I cried. 'Give him an
+electric shock,' said the Captain. 'Telegraph him his mother's sick
+and may be it'll move him.' 'Can't you get closer to him?' I demanded,
+resenting his facetious manner. 'I can, but it will scare him off,'
+replied the Captain. So we turned all our batteries on the sea. The
+dynamo shot forth its bolts and along about four o'clock in the
+afternoon there was the whale drawn by magnetic influence to the side
+of _The Lyre_. He was a beauty, Ananias," Munchausen added with
+enthusiasm. "You never saw such a whale. His back was as broad as the
+deck of an ocean steamer and in his length he exceeded the dimensions
+of _The Lyre_ by sixty feet."
+
+"And still you got him on deck?" I asked,--I, Ananias, who can stand
+something in the way of an exaggeration.
+
+"Yes," said Munchausen, lighting his cigar, which had gone out.
+"Another storm came up and we rolled and rolled and rolled, until I
+thought _The Lyre_ was going to capsize."
+
+"But weren't you sea-sick?" I asked.
+
+"Didn't have a chance to be," said Munchausen. "I was thinking of the
+whale all the time. Finally there came a roll in which we went
+completely under, and with a slight pulling on the line the whale was
+landed by the force of the wave and laid squarely upon the deck."
+
+"Great Sapphira!" said I. "But you just said he was wider and longer
+than the yacht!"
+
+[Illustration: "There was the whale drawn by magnetic influence to the
+side of _The Lyre_." _Chapter II._]
+
+"He was," sighed Munchausen. "He landed on the deck and by sheer force
+of his weight the yacht went down under him. I swam ashore and the
+whole crew with me. The next day Mr. Whale floated in strangled. He'd
+swallowed the thousand yards of line and it got so tangled in his
+tonsils that it choked him to death. Come around next week and I'll
+give you a couple of pounds of whalebone for Mrs. Ananias, and all the
+oil you can carry."
+
+I thanked the old gentleman for his kind offer and promised to avail
+myself of it, although as a newspaper man it is against my principles
+to accept gifts from public men.
+
+"It was great luck, Baron," said I. "Or at least it would have been if
+you hadn't lost your yacht."
+
+"That was great luck too," he observed nonchalantly. "It cost me ten
+thousand dollars a month keeping that yacht in commission. Now she's
+gone I save all that. Why it's like finding money in the street,
+Ananias. She wasn't worth more than fifty thousand dollars, and in six
+months I'll be ten thousand ahead."
+
+I could not but admire the cheerful philosophy of the man, but then I
+was not surprised. Munchausen was never the sort of man to let little
+things worry him.
+
+"But that whale business wasn't a circumstance to my catch of three
+tons of trout with a single cast of a horse-whip in the Blue Hills,"
+said the Baron after a few moments of meditation, during which I could
+see that he was carefully marshalling his facts.
+
+"I never heard of its equal," said I. "You must have used a derrick."
+
+"No," he replied suavely. "Nothing of the sort. It was the simplest
+thing in the world. It was along about five o'clock in the afternoon
+when with my three guides and my valet I drove up the winding roadway
+of Great Sulphur Mountain on my way to the Blue Mountain House where I
+purposed to put up for a few days. I had one of those big mountain
+wagons with a covered top to it such as the pioneers used on the
+American plains, with six fine horses to the fore. I held the reins
+myself, since we were in the midst of a terrific thunderstorm and I
+felt safer when I did my own driving. All the flaps of the leathern
+cover were let down at the sides and at the back, and were securely
+fastened. The roads were unusually heavy, and when we came to the last
+great hill before the lake all but I were walking, as a measure of
+relief to the horses. Suddenly one of the horses balked right in the
+middle of the ascent, and in a moment of impatience I gave him a
+stinging flick with my whip, when like a whirlwind the whole six
+swerved to one side and started on a dead run upward. The jolt and the
+unexpected swerving of the wagon threw me from my seat and I landed
+clear of the wheels in the soft mud of the roadway, fortunately
+without injury. When I arose the team was out of sight and we had to
+walk the remainder of the distance to the hotel. Imagine our surprise
+upon arriving there to find the six panting steeds and the wagon
+standing before the main entrance to the hotel dripping as though they
+had been through the Falls of Niagara, and, would you believe it,
+Ananias, inside that leather cover of the wagon, packed as tightly as
+sardines, were no less than three thousand trout, not one of them
+weighing less than a pound and some of them getting as high as four.
+The whole catch weighed a trifle over six thousand pounds."
+
+"Great Heavens, Baron," I cried. "Where the dickens did they come
+from?"
+
+"That's what I asked myself," said the Baron easily. "It seemed
+astounding at first glance, but investigation showed it after all to
+be a very simple proposition. The runaways after reaching the top of
+the hill turned to the left, and clattered on down toward the bridge
+over the inlet to the lake. The bridge broke beneath their weight and
+the horses soon found themselves struggling in the water. The harness
+was strong and the wagon never left them. They had to swim for it, and
+I am told by a small boy who was fishing on the lake at the time that
+they swam directly across it, pulling the wagon after them. Naturally
+with its open front and confined back and sides the wagon acted as a
+sort of drag-net and when the opposite shore was gained, and the wagon
+was pulled ashore, it was found to have gathered in all the fish that
+could not get out of the way."
+
+The Baron resumed his cigar, and I sat still eyeing the ample pattern
+of the drawing-room carpet.
+
+"Pretty good catch for an afternoon, eh?" he said in a minute.
+
+"Yes," said I. "Almost too good, Baron. Those horses must have swam
+like the dickens to get over so quickly. You would think the trout
+would have had time to escape."
+
+"Oh I presume one or two of them did," said Munchausen. "But the
+majority of them couldn't. The horses were all fast, record-breakers
+anyhow. I never hire a horse that isn't."
+
+And with that I left the old gentleman and walked blushing back to the
+office. I don't doubt for an instant the truth of the Baron's story,
+but somehow or other I feel that in writing it my reputation is in
+some measure at stake.
+
+    NOTE--Mr. Munchausen, upon request of the Editor of the
+    _Gehenna Gazette_ to write a few stories of adventure for his
+    Imp's page, conducted by Sapphira, contributed the tales which
+    form the substance of several of the following chapters.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+THREE MONTHS IN A BALLOON
+
+
+Mr. Munchausen was not handsome, but the Imps liked him very much, he
+was so full of wonderful reminiscences, and was always willing to tell
+anybody that would listen, all about himself. To the Heavenly Twins he
+was the greatest hero that had ever lived. Napoleon Bonaparte, on Mr.
+Munchausen's own authority, was not half the warrior that he, the late
+Baron had been, nor was Caesar in his palmiest days, one-quarter so
+wise or so brave. How old the Baron was no one ever knew, but he had
+certainly lived long enough to travel the world over, and stare every
+kind of death squarely in the face without flinching. He had fought
+Zulus, Indians, tigers, elephants--in fact, everything that fights,
+the Baron had encountered, and in every contest he had come out
+victorious. He was the only man the children had ever seen that had
+lost three legs in battle and then had recovered them after the fight
+was over; he was the only visitor to their house that had been lost in
+the African jungle and wandered about for three months without food or
+shelter, and best of all he was, on his own confession, the most
+truthful narrator of extraordinary tales living. The youngsters had to
+ask the Baron a question only, any one, it mattered not what it
+was--to start him off on a story of adventure, and as he called upon
+the Twins' father once a month regularly, the children were not long
+in getting together a collection of tales beside which the most
+exciting episodes in history paled into insignificant commonplaces.
+
+"Uncle Munch," said the Twins one day, as they climbed up into the
+visitor's lap and disarranged his necktie, "was you ever up in a
+balloon?"
+
+"Only once," said the Baron calmly. "But I had enough of it that time
+to last me for a lifetime."
+
+"Was you in it for long?" queried the Twins, taking the Baron's watch
+out of his pocket and flinging it at Cerberus, who was barking outside
+of the window.
+
+"Well, it seemed long enough," the Baron answered, putting his
+pocket-book in the inside pocket of his vest where the Twins could not
+reach it. "Three months off in the country sleeping all day long and
+playing tricks all night seems a very short time, but three months in
+a balloon and the constant centre of attack from every source is too
+long for comfort."
+
+"Were you up in the air for three whole months?" asked the Twins,
+their eyes wide open with astonishment.
+
+"All but two days," said the Baron. "For two of those days we rested
+in the top of a tree in India. The way of it was this: I was always,
+as you know, a great favourite with the Emperor Napoleon, of France,
+and when he found himself involved in a war with all Europe, he
+replied to one of his courtiers who warned him that his army was not
+in condition: 'Any army is prepared for war whose commander-in-chief
+numbers Baron Munchausen among his advisers. Let me have Munchausen at
+my right hand and I will fight the world.' So they sent for me and as
+I was not very busy I concluded to go and assist the French, although
+the allies and I were also very good friends. I reasoned it out this
+way: In this fight the allies are the stronger. They do not need me.
+Napoleon does. Fight for the weak, Munchausen, I said to myself, and
+so I went. Of course, when I reached Paris I went at once to the
+Emperor's palace and remained at his side until he took the field,
+after which I remained behind for a few days to put things to rights
+for the Imperial family. Unfortunately for the French, the King of
+Prussia heard of my delay in going to the front, and he sent word to
+his forces to intercept me on my way to join Napoleon at all hazards,
+and this they tried to do. When I was within ten miles of the
+Emperor's headquarters, I was stopped by the Prussians, and had it not
+been that I had provided myself with a balloon for just such an
+emergency, I should have been captured and confined in the King's
+palace at Berlin, until the war was over.
+
+"Foreseeing all this, I had brought with me a large balloon packed
+away in a secret section of my trunk, and while my body-guard was
+fighting with the Prussian troops sent to capture me, I and my valet
+inflated the balloon, jumped into the car and were soon high up out of
+the enemy's reach. They fired several shots at us, and one of them
+would have pierced the balloon had I not, by a rare good shot, fired
+my own rifle at the bullet, and hitting it squarely in the middle, as
+is my custom, diverted it from its course, and so saved our lives.
+
+"It had been my intention to sail directly over the heads of the
+attacking party and drop down into Napoleon's camp the next morning,
+but unfortunately for my calculations, a heavy wind came up in the
+night and the balloon was caught by a northerly blast, and blown into
+Africa, where, poised in the air directly over the desert of Sahara,
+we encountered a dead calm, which kept us stalled up for two miserable
+weeks."
+
+"Why didn't you come down?" asked the Twins, "wasn't the elevator
+running?"
+
+"We didn't dare," explained the Baron, ignoring the latter part of the
+question. "If we had we'd have wasted a great deal of our gas, and our
+condition would have been worse than ever. As I told you we were
+directly over the centre of the desert. There was no way of getting
+out of it except by long and wearisome marches over the hot, burning
+sands with the chances largely in favour of our never getting out
+alive. The only thing to do was to stay just where we were and wait
+for a favouring breeze. This we did, having to wait four mortal weeks
+before the air was stirred."
+
+"You said two weeks a minute ago, Uncle Munch," said the Twins
+critically.
+
+"Two? Hem! Well, yes it was two, now that I think of it. It's a
+natural mistake," said the Baron stroking his mustache a little
+nervously. "You see two weeks in a balloon over a vast desert of sand,
+with nothing to do but whistle for a breeze, is equal to four weeks
+anywhere else. That is, it seems so. Anyhow, two weeks or four,
+whichever it was, the breeze came finally, and along about midnight
+left us stranded again directly over an Arab encampment near Wady
+Halfa. It was a more perilous position really, than the first, because
+the moment the Arabs caught sight of us they began to make frantic
+efforts to get us down. At first we simply laughed them to scorn and
+made faces at them, because as far as we could see, we were safely out
+of reach. This enraged them and they apparently made up their minds to
+kill us if they could. At first their idea was to get us down alive
+and sell us as slaves, but our jeers changed all that, and what should
+they do but whip out a lot of guns and begin to pepper us.
+
+"'I'll settle them in a minute,' I said to myself, and set about
+loading my own gun. Would you believe it, I found that my last bullet
+was the one with which I had saved the balloon from the Prussian
+shot?"
+
+"Mercy, how careless of you, Uncle Munch!" said one of the Twins.
+"What did you do?"
+
+"I threw out a bag of sand ballast so that the balloon would rise just
+out of range of their guns, and then, as their bullets got to their
+highest point and began to drop back, I reached out and caught them in
+a dipper. Rather neat idea, eh? With these I loaded my own rifle and
+shot every one of the hostile party with their own ammunition, and
+when the last of the attacking Arabs dropped I found there were enough
+bullets left to fill the empty sand bag again, so that the lost
+ballast was not missed. In fact, there were enough of them in weight
+to bring the balloon down so near to the earth that our anchor rope
+dangled directly over the encampment, so that my valet and I, without
+wasting any of our gas, could climb down and secure all the
+magnificent treasures in rugs and silks and rare jewels these robbers
+of the desert had managed to get together in the course of their
+depredations. When these were placed in the car another breeze came
+up, and for the rest of the time we drifted idly about in the heavens
+waiting for a convenient place to land. In this manner we were blown
+hither and yon for three months over land and sea, and finally we were
+wrecked upon a tall tree in India, whence we escaped by means of a
+convenient elephant that happened to come our way, upon which we rode
+triumphantly into Calcutta. The treasures we had secured from the
+Arabs, unfortunately, we had to leave behind us in the tree, where I
+suppose they still are. I hope some day to go back and find them."
+
+Here Mr. Munchausen paused for a moment to catch his breath. Then he
+added with a sigh. "Of course, I went back to France immediately, but
+by the time I reached Paris the war was over, and the Emperor was in
+exile. I was too late to save him--though I think if he had lived some
+sixty or seventy years longer I should have managed to restore his
+throne, and Imperial splendour to him."
+
+The Twins gazed into the fire in silence for a minute or two. Then one
+of them asked:
+
+"But what did you live on all that time, Uncle Munch?"
+
+"Eggs," said the Baron. "Eggs and occasionally fish. My servant had
+had the foresight when getting the balloon ready to include, among the
+things put into the car, a small coop in which were six pet chickens I
+owned, and without which I never went anywhere. These laid enough eggs
+every day to keep us alive. The fish we caught when our balloon stood
+over the sea, baiting our anchor with pieces of rubber gas pipe used
+to inflate the balloon, and which looked very much like worms."
+
+[Illustration: "As their bullets got to their highest point and began
+to drop back, I reached out and caught them." _Chapter III._]
+
+"But the chickens?" said the Twins. "What did they live on?"
+
+The Baron blushed.
+
+"I am sorry you asked that question," he said, his voice trembling
+somewhat. "But I'll answer it if you promise never to tell anyone. It
+was the only time in my life that I ever practised an intentional
+deception upon any living thing, and I have always regretted it,
+although our very lives depended upon it."
+
+"What was it, Uncle Munch?" asked the Twins, awed to think that the
+old warrior had ever deceived anyone.
+
+"I took the egg shells and ground them into powder, and fed them to
+the chickens. The poor creatures supposed it was corn-meal they were
+getting," confessed the Baron. "I know it was mean, but what could I
+do?"
+
+"Nothing," said the Twins softly. "And we don't think it was so bad of
+you after all. Many another person would have kept them laying eggs
+until they starved, and then he'd have killed them and eaten them up.
+You let them live."
+
+"That may be so," said the Baron, with a smile that showed how
+relieved his conscience was by the Twins' suggestion. "But I couldn't
+do that you know, because they were pets. I had been brought up from
+childhood with those chickens."
+
+Then the Twins, jamming the Baron's hat down over his eyes, climbed
+down from his lap and went to their play, strongly of the opinion
+that, though a bold warrior, the Baron was a singularly kind,
+soft-hearted man after all.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+SOME HUNTING STORIES FOR CHILDREN
+
+
+The Heavenly Twins had been off in the mountains during their summer
+holiday, and in consequence had seen very little of their good old
+friend, Mr. Munchausen. He had written them once or twice, and they
+had found his letters most interesting, especially that one in which
+he told how he had killed a moose up in Maine with his Waterbury watch
+spring, and I do not wonder that they marvelled at that, for it was
+one of the most extraordinary happenings in the annals of the chase.
+It seems, if his story is to be believed, and I am sure that none of
+us who know him has ever had any reason to think that he would deceive
+intentionally; it seems, I say, that he had gone to Maine for a week's
+sport with an old army acquaintance of his, who had now become a guide
+in that region. Unfortunately his rifle, of which he was very fond,
+and with which his aim was unerring, was in some manner mislaid on the
+way, and when they arrived in the woods they were utterly without
+weapons; but Mr. Munchausen was not the man to be daunted by any such
+trifle as that, particularly while his friend had an old army musket,
+a relic of the war, stored away in the attic of his woodland domicile.
+
+"Th' only trouble with that ar musket," said the old guide, "ain't so
+much that she won't shoot straight, nor that she's got a kick onto her
+like an unbroke mule. What I'm most afeard 'on about your shootin'
+with her ain't that I think she'll bust neither, for the fact is we
+ain't got nothin' for to bust her with, seein' as how ammynition is
+skeerce. I got powder, an' I got waddin', but I ain't got no shot."
+
+"That doesn't make any difference," the Baron replied. "We can make
+the shot. Have you got any plumbing in the camp? If you have, rip it
+out, and I'll melt up a water-pipe into bullets."
+
+"No, sir," retorted the old man. "Plumbin' is one of the things I came
+here to escape from."
+
+"Then," said the Baron, "I'll use my watch for ammunition. It is only
+a three-dollar watch and I can spare it."
+
+With this determination, Mr. Munchausen took his watch to pieces, an
+ordinary time-piece of the old-fashioned kind, and, to make a long
+story short, shot for several days with the component parts of that
+useful affair rammed down into the barrel of the old musket. With the
+stem-winding ball he killed an eagle; with pieces of the back cover
+chopped up to a fineness of medium-sized shot he brought down several
+other birds, but the great feat of all was when he started for moose
+with nothing but the watch-spring in the barrel of the gun. Having
+rolled it up as tight as he could, fastened it with a piece of twine,
+and rammed it well into the gun, he set out to find the noble animal
+upon whose life he had designs. After stalking the woods for several
+hours, he came upon the tracks which told him that his prey was not
+far off, and in a short while he caught sight of a magnificent
+creature, his huge antlers held proudly up and his great eyes full of
+defiance.
+
+For a moment the Baron hesitated. The idea of destroying so beautiful
+an animal seemed to be abhorrent to his nature, which, warrior-like as
+he is, has something of the tenderness of a woman about it. A second
+glance at the superb creature, however, changed all that, for the
+Baron then saw that to shoot to kill was necessary, for the beast was
+about to force a fight in which the hunter himself would be put upon
+the defensive.
+
+"I won't shoot you through the head, my beauty," he said, softly, "nor
+will I puncture your beautiful coat with this load of mine, but I'll
+kill you in a new way."
+
+With this he pulled the trigger. The powder exploded, the string
+binding the long black spring into a coil broke, and immediately the
+strip of steel shot forth into the air, made directly toward the neck
+of the rushing moose, and coiling its whole sinuous length tightly
+about the doomed creature's throat strangled him to death.
+
+As the Twins' father said, a feat of that kind entitled the Baron to a
+high place in fiction at least, if not in history itself. The Twins
+were very much wrought up over the incident, particularly, when one
+too-smart small imp who was spending the summer at the same hotel
+where they were said that he didn't believe it,--but he was an imp who
+had never seen a cheap watch, so how should he know anything about
+what could be done with a spring that cannot be wound up by a great
+strong man in less than ten minutes?
+
+As for the Baron he was very modest about the achievement, for when he
+first appeared at the Twins' home after their return he had actually
+forgotten all about it, and, in fact, could not recall the incident at
+all, until Diavolo brought him his own letter, when, of course, the
+whole matter came back to him.
+
+"It wasn't so very wonderful, anyhow," said the Baron. "I should not
+think, for instance, of bragging about any such thing as that. It was
+a simple affair all through."
+
+"And what did you do with the moose's antlers?" asked Angelica. "I
+hope you brought 'em home with you, because I'd like to see 'em."
+
+"I wanted to," said the Baron, stroking the Twins' soft brown locks
+affectionately. "I wanted to bring them home for your father to use as
+a hat rack, dear, but they were too large. When I had removed them
+from the dead animal, I found them so large that I could not get them
+out of the forest, they got so tangled up in the trees. I should have
+had to clear a path twenty feet wide and seven miles long to get them
+even as far as my friend's hut, and after that they would have had to
+be carried thirty miles through the woods to the express office."
+
+"I guess it's just as well after all," said Diavolo. "If they were as
+big as all that, Papa would have had to build a new house to get 'em
+into."
+
+"Exactly," said the Baron. "Exactly. That same idea occurred to me,
+and for that reason I concluded not to go to the trouble of cutting
+away those miles of trees. The antlers would have made a very
+expensive present for your father to receive in these hard times."
+
+"It was a good thing you had that watch," the Twins observed, after
+thinking over the Baron's adventure. "If you hadn't had that you
+couldn't have killed the moose."
+
+"Very likely not," said the Baron, "unless I had been able to do as I
+did in India thirty years ago at a man hunt."
+
+"What?" cried the Twins. "Do they hunt men in India?"?
+
+"That all depends, my dears," replied the Baron. "It all depends upon
+what you mean by the word they. Men don't hunt men, but animals, great
+wild beasts sometimes hunt them, and it doesn't often happen that the
+men escape. In the particular man hunt I refer to I was the creature
+that was being hunted, and I've had a good deal of sympathy for foxes
+ever since. This was a regular fox hunt in a way, although I was the
+fox, and a herd of elephants were the huntsmen."
+
+"How queer," said Diavolo, unscrewing one of the Baron's shirt studs
+to see if he would fall apart.
+
+"Not half so queer as my feelings when I realised my position," said
+the Baron with a shake of his head. "I was frightened half to death.
+It seemed to me that I'd reached the end of my tether at last. I was
+studying the fauna and flora of India, in a small Indian village,
+known as ah--what was the name of that town! Ah--something like
+Rathabad--no, that isn't quite it--however, one name does as well as
+another in India. It was a good many miles from Calcutta, and I'd been
+living there about three months. The village lay in a small valley
+between two ranges of hills, none of them very high. On the other side
+of the westerly hills was a great level stretch of country upon which
+herds of elephants used to graze. Out of this rose these hills, very
+precipitously, which was a very good thing for the people in the
+valley, else those elephants would have come over and played havoc
+with their homes and crops. To me the plains had a great fascination,
+and I used to wander over them day after day in search of new
+specimens for my collection of plants and flowers, never thinking of
+the danger I ran from an encounter with these elephants, who were very
+ferocious and extremely jealous of the territory they had come through
+years of occupation to regard as their own. So it happened, that one
+day, late in the afternoon, I was returning from an expedition over
+the plains, and, as I had found a large number of new specimens, I was
+feeling pretty happy. I whistled loudly as I walked, when suddenly
+coming to a slight undulation in the plain what should I see before me
+but a herd of sixty-three elephants, some eating, some thinking, some
+romping, and some lying asleep on the soft turf. Now, if I had come
+quietly, of course, I could have passed them unobserved, but as I told
+you I was whistling. I forget what the tune was, The Marsellaise or
+Die Wacht Am Rhein, or maybe Tommie Atkins, which enrages the
+elephants very much, being the national anthem of the British invader.
+At any rate, whatever the tune was it attracted the attention of the
+elephants, and then their sport began. The leader lifted his trunk
+high in the air, and let out a trumpet blast that echoed back from the
+cliff three miles distant. Instantly every elephant was on the alert.
+Those that had been sleeping awoke, and sprang to their feet. Those
+that had been at play stopped in their romp, and under the leadership
+of the biggest brute of the lot they made a rush for me. I had no gun;
+nothing except my wits and my legs with which to defend myself, so I
+naturally began to use the latter until I could get the former to
+work. It was nip and tuck. They could run faster than I could, and I
+saw in an instant that without stratagem I could not hope to reach a
+place of safety. As I have said, the cliff, which rose straight up
+from the plain like a stone-wall, was three miles away, nor was there
+any other spot in which I could find a refuge. It occurred to me as I
+ran that if I ran in circles I could edge up nearer to the cliff all
+the time, and still keep my pursuers at a distance for the simple
+reason that an elephant being more or less unwieldy cannot turn as
+rapidly as a man can, so I kept running in circles. I could run around
+my short circle in less time than the enemy could run around his
+larger one, and in this manner I got nearer and nearer my haven of
+safety, the bellowing beasts snorting with rage as they followed.
+Finally, when I began to see that I was tolerably safe, another idea
+occurred to me, which was that if I could manage to kill those huge
+creatures the ivory I could get would make my fortune. But how! That
+was the question. Well, my dearly beloved Imps, I admit that I am a
+fast runner, but I am also a fast thinker, and in less than two
+minutes I had my plan arranged. I stopped short when about two hundred
+feet from the cliff, and waited until the herd was fifty feet away.
+Then I turned about and ran with all my might up to within two feet of
+the cliff, and then turning sharply to the left ran off in that
+direction. The elephants, thinking they had me, redoubled their speed,
+but failed to notice that I had turned, so quickly was that movement
+executed. They failed likewise to notice the cliff, as I had intended.
+The consequence was the whole sixty-three of them rushed head first,
+bang! with all their force, into the rock. The hill shook with the
+force of the blow and the sixty-three elephants fell dead. They had
+simply butted their brains out."
+
+[Illustration: "I got nearer and nearer my haven of safety, the
+bellowing beasts snorting with rage as they followed." _Chapter IV._]
+
+Here the Baron paused and pulled vigourously on his cigar, which had
+almost gone out.
+
+"That was fine," said the Twins.
+
+"What a narrow escape it was for you, Uncle Munch," said Diavolo.
+
+"Very true," said the great soldier rising, as a signal that his story
+was done. "In fact you might say that I had sixty-three narrow
+escapes, one for each elephant."
+
+"But what became of the ivory?" asked Angelica.
+
+"Oh, as for that!" said the Baron, with a sigh, "I was disappointed in
+that. They turned out to be all young elephants, and they had lost
+their first teeth. Their second teeth hadn't grown yet. I got only
+enough ivory to make one paper cutter, which is the one I gave your
+father for Christmas last year."
+
+Which may account for the extraordinary interest the Twins have taken
+in their father's paper cutter ever since.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+THE STORY OF JANG
+
+
+"Did you ever own a dog, Baron Munchausen?" asked the reporter of the
+_Gehenna Gazette_, calling to interview the eminent nobleman during
+Dog Show Week in Cimmeria.
+
+"Yes, indeed I have," said the Baron, "I fancy I must have owned as
+many as a hundred dogs in my life. To be sure some of the dogs were
+iron and brass, but I was just as fond of them as if they had been
+made of plush or lamb's wool. They were so quiet, those iron dogs
+were; and the brass dogs never barked or snapped at any one."
+
+"I never saw a brass dog," said the reporter. "What good are they?"
+
+"Oh they are likely to be very useful in winter," the Baron replied.
+"My brass dogs used to guard my fire-place and keep the blazing logs
+from rolling out into my room and setting fire to the rug the Khan of
+Tartary gave me for saving his life from a herd of Antipodes he and I
+were hunting in the Himalaya Mountains."
+
+"I don't see what you needed dogs to do that for," said the reporter.
+"A fender would have done just as well, or a pair of andirons," he
+added.
+
+"That's what these dogs were," said the Baron. "They were fire dogs
+and fire dogs are andirons."
+
+Ananias pressed his lips tightly together, and into his eyes came a
+troubled look. It was evident that, revolting as the idea was to him,
+he thought the Baron was trying to deceive him. Noting his
+displeasure, the Baron inwardly resolving to be careful how he handled
+the truth, hastened on with his story.
+
+"But dogs were never my favourite animals," he said. "With my pets I
+am quite as I am with other things. I like to have pets that are
+entirely different from the pets of other people, and that is why in
+my day I have made companions of such animals as the sangaree, and the
+camomile, and the--ah--the two-horned piccolo. I've had tame bees
+even--in fact my bees used to be the wonder of Siam, in which country
+I was stationed for three years, having been commissioned by a British
+company to make a study of its climate with a view to finding out if
+it would pay the company to go into the ice business there. Siam is,
+as you have probably heard, a very warm country, and as ice is a very
+rare thing in warm countries these English people thought they might
+make a vast fortune by sending tug-boats up to the Arctic Ocean, and
+with them capture and tow icebergs to Siam, where they might be cut up
+and sold to the people at tremendous profit. The scheme was certainly
+a good one, and I found many of the wealthy Siamese quite willing to
+subscribe for a hundred pounds of ice a week at ten dollars a pound,
+but it never came to anything because we had no means of preserving
+the icebergs after we got them into the Gulf of Siam. The water was so
+hot that they melted before we could cut them up, and we nearly got
+ourselves into very serious trouble with the coast people for that
+same reason. An iceberg, as you know, is a huge affair, and when a
+dozen or two of them had melted in the Gulf they added so to the
+quantity of water there that fifty miles of the coast line were
+completely flooded, and thousands of valuable fish, able to live in
+warm water only, were so chilled that they got pneumonia, and died.
+You can readily imagine how indignant the Siamese fishermen were with
+my company over the losses they had to bear, but their affection for
+me personally was so great that they promised not to sue the company
+if I would promise not to let the thing occur again. This I promised,
+and all went well. But about the bees, it was while I was living in
+Bangkok that I had them, and they were truly wonderful. There was
+hardly anything those bees couldn't do after I got them tamed."
+
+"How did you tame them, Baron," asked Ananias.
+
+"Power of the eye, my boy," returned the Baron. "I attracted their
+attention first and then held it. Of course, I tried my plan on one
+bee first. He tamed the rest. Bees are very like children. They like
+to play stunts--I think it is called stunts, isn't it, when one boy
+does something, and all his companions try to do the same thing?"
+
+"Yes," said Ananias, "I believe there is such a game, but I shouldn't
+like to play it with you."
+
+"Well, that was the way I did with the bees," said Mr. Munchausen. "I
+tamed the king bee, and when he had learned all sorts of funny little
+tricks, such as standing on his head and humming tunes, I let him go
+back to the swarm. He was gone a week, and then he came back, he had
+grown so fond of me--as well he might, because I fed him well, giving
+him a large basket of flowers three times a day. Back with him came
+two or three thousand other bees, and whatever Jang did they did."
+
+"Who was Jang?" asked Ananias.
+
+"That was the first bee's name. King Jang. Jang is Siamese for Billie,
+and as I was always fond of the name, Billie, I called him Jang. By
+and by every bee in the lot could hum the Star Spangled Banner and
+Yankee Doodle as well as you or I could, and it was grand on those
+soft moonlight nights we had there, to sit on the back porch of my
+pagoda and listen to my bee orchestra discoursing sweet music. Of
+course, as soon as Jang had learned to hum one tune it was easy enough
+for him to learn another, and before long the bee orchestra could give
+us any bit of music we wished to have. Then I used to give musicales
+at my house and all the Siamese people, from the King down asked to be
+invited, so that through my pets my home became one of the most
+attractive in all Asia.
+
+"And the honey those bees made! It was the sweetest honey you ever
+tasted, and every morning when I got down to breakfast there was a
+fresh bottleful ready for me, the bees having made it in the bottle
+itself over night. They were the most grateful pets I ever had, and
+once they saved my life. They used to live in a hive I had built for
+them in one corner of my room and I could go to bed and sleep with
+every door in my house open, and not be afraid of robbers, because
+those bees were there to protect me. One night a lion broke loose from
+the Royal Zoo, and while trotting along the road looking for something
+to eat he saw my front door wide open. In he walked, and began to
+sniff. He sniffed here and he sniffed there, but found nothing but a
+pot of anchovy paste, which made him thirstier and hungrier than ever.
+So he prowled into the parlour, and had his appetite further
+aggravated by a bronze statue of the Emperor of China I had there. He
+thought in the dim light it was a small-sized human being, and he
+pounced on it in a minute. Well, of course, he couldn't make any
+headway trying to eat a bronze statue, and the more he tried the more
+hungry and angry he got. He roared until he shook the house and would
+undoubtedly have awakened me had it not been that I am always a sound
+sleeper and never wake until I have slept enough. Why, on one
+occasion, on the Northern Pacific Railway, a train I was on ran into
+and completely telescoped another while I was asleep in the smoking
+car, and although I was severely burned and hurled out of the car
+window to land sixty feet away on the prairie, I didn't wake up for
+two hours. I was nearly buried alive because they thought I'd been
+killed, I lay so still.
+
+"But to return to the bees. The roaring of the lion disturbed them,
+and Jang buzzed out of his hive to see what was the matter just as the
+lion appeared at my bed-room door. The intelligent insect saw in a
+moment what the trouble was, and he sounded the alarm for the rest of
+the bees, who came swarming out of the hive in response to the
+summons. Jang kept his eye on the lion meanwhile, and just as the
+prowler caught sight of your uncle peacefully snoring away on the bed,
+dreaming of his boyhood, and prepared to spring upon me, Jang buzzed
+over and sat down upon his back, putting his sting where it would do
+the most good. The angry lion, who in a moment would have fastened his
+teeth upon me, turned with a yelp of pain, and the bite which was to
+have been mine wrought havoc with his own back. Following Jang's
+example, the other bees ranged themselves in line over the lion's
+broad shoulders, and stung him until he roared with pain. Each time he
+was stung he would whisk his head around like a dog after a flea, and
+bite himself, until finally he had literally chewed himself up, when
+he fainted from sheer exhaustion, and I was saved. You can imagine my
+surprise when next morning I awakened to find a dying lion in my
+room."
+
+"But, Baron," said Ananias. "I don't understand one thing about it. If
+you were fast asleep while all this was happening how did you know
+that Jang did those things?"
+
+[Illustration: "Jang buzzed over and sat down upon his back, putting
+his sting where it would do the most good." _Chapter V._]
+
+"Why, Jang told me himself," replied the Baron calmly.
+
+"Could he talk?" cried Ananias in amazement.
+
+"Not as you and I do," said the Baron. "Of course not, but Jang could
+spell. I taught him how. You see I reasoned it out this way. If a bee
+can be taught to sing a song which is only a story in music, why can't
+he be taught to tell a story in real words. It was worth trying
+anyhow, and I tried. Jang was an apt pupil. He was the most
+intelligent bee I ever met, and it didn't take me more than a month to
+teach him his letters, and when he once knew his letters it was easy
+enough to teach him how to spell. I got a great big sheet and covered
+it with twenty-six squares, and in each of these squares I painted a
+letter of the alphabet, so that finally when Jang came to know them,
+and wanted to tell me anything he would fly from one square to another
+until he had spelled out whatever he wished to say. I would follow his
+movements closely, and we got so after awhile that we could converse
+for hours without any trouble whatsoever. I really believe that if
+Jang had been a little heavier so that he could push the keys down far
+enough he could have managed a typewriter as well as anybody, and when
+I think about his wonderful mind and delicious fancy I deeply regret
+that there never was a typewriting machine so delicately made that a
+bee of his weight could make it go. The world would have been very
+much enriched by the stories Jang had in his mind to tell, but it is
+too late now. He is gone forever."
+
+"How did you lose Jang, Baron?" asked Ananias, with tears in his eyes.
+
+"He thought I had deceived him," said the Baron, with a sigh. "He was
+as much of a stickler for truth as I am. An American friend of mine
+sent me a magnificent parterre of wax flowers which were so perfectly
+made that I couldn't tell them from the real. I was very proud of
+them, and kept them in my room near the hive. When Jang and his tribe
+first caught sight of them they were delighted and they sang as they
+had never sung before just to show how pleased they were. Then they
+set to work to make honey out of them. They must have laboured over
+those flowers for two months before I thought to tell them that they
+were only wax and not at all real. As I told Jang this, I
+unfortunately laughed, thinking that he could understand the joke of
+the thing as well as I, but I was mistaken. All that he could see was
+that he had been deceived, and it made him very angry. Bees don't seem
+to have a well-developed sense of humour. He cast a reproachful glance
+at me and returned to his hive and on the morning of the third day
+when I waked up they were moving out. They flew to my lattice and
+ranged themselves along the slats and waited for Jang. In a moment he
+appeared and at a given signal they buzzed out of my sight, humming a
+farewell dirge as they went. I never saw them again."
+
+Here the Baron wiped his eyes.
+
+"I felt very bad about it," he went on, "and resolved then never again
+to do anything which even suggested deception, and when several years
+later I had my crest designed I had a bee drawn on it, for in my eyes
+my good friend the bee, represents three great factors of the good and
+successful life--Industry, Fidelity, and Truth."
+
+Whereupon the Baron went his way, leaving Ananias to think it over.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+HE TELLS THE TWINS OF FIRE-WORKS
+
+
+There was a great noise going on in the public square of Cimmeria when
+Mr. Munchausen sauntered into the library at the home of the Heavenly
+Twins.
+
+"These Americans are having a great time of it celebrating their
+Fourth of July," said he, as the house shook with the explosion of a
+bomb. "They've burnt powder enough already to set ten revolutions
+revolving, and they're going to outdo themselves to-night in the park.
+They've made a bicycle out of the two huge pin-wheels, and they're
+going to make Benedict Arnold ride a mile on it after it's lit."
+
+The Twins appeared much interested. They too had heard much of the
+celebration and some of its joys and when the Baron arrived they were
+primed with questions.
+
+"Uncle Munch," they said, helping the Baron to remove his hat and
+coat, which they threw into a corner so anxious were they to get to
+work, "do you think there's much danger in little boys having
+fire-crackers and rockets and pin-wheels, or in little girls having
+torpeters?"
+
+"Well, I don't know," the Baron answered, warily. "What does your
+venerable Dad say about it?"
+
+"He thinks we ought to wait until we are older, but we don't," said
+the Twins.
+
+"Torpeters never sets nothing afire," said Angelica.
+
+"That's true," said the Baron, kindly; "but after all your father is
+right. Why do you know what happened to me when I was a boy?"
+
+"You burnt your thumb," said the Twins, ready to make a guess at it.
+
+"Well, you get me a cigar, and I'll tell you what happened to me when
+I was a boy just because my father let me have all the fire-works I
+wanted, and then perhaps you will see how wise your father is in not
+doing as you wish him to," said Mr. Munchausen.
+
+The Twins readily found the desired cigar, after which Mr. Munchausen
+settled down comfortably in the hammock, and swinging softly to and
+fro, told his story.
+
+"My dear old father," said he, "was the most indulgent man that ever
+lived. He'd give me anything in the world that I wanted whether he
+could afford it or not, only he had an original system of giving which
+kept him from being ruined by indulgence of his children. He gave me a
+Rhine steamboat once without its costing him a cent. I saw it, wanted
+it, was beginning to cry for it, when he patted me on the head and
+told me I could have it, adding, however, that I must never take it
+away from the river or try to run it myself. That satisfied me. All I
+wanted really was the happiness of feeling it was mine, and my dear
+old daddy gave me permission to feel that way. The same thing happened
+with reference to the moon. He gave it to me freely and ungrudgingly.
+He had received it from his father, he said, and he thought he had
+owned it long enough. Only, he added, as he had about the steamboat, I
+must leave it where it was and let other people look at it whenever
+they wanted to, and not interfere if I found any other little boys or
+girls playing with its beams, which I promised and have faithfully
+observed to this day.
+
+"Of course from such a parent as this you may very easily see
+everything was to be expected on such a day as the Tenth of August
+which the people in our region celebrated because it was my birthday.
+He used to let me have my own way at all times, and it's a wonder I
+wasn't spoiled. I really can't understand how it is that I have become
+the man I am, considering how I was indulged when I was small.
+
+"However, like all boys, I was very fond of celebrating the Tenth, and
+being a more or less ingenious lad, I usually prepared my own
+fire-works and many things happened which might not otherwise have
+come to pass if I had been properly looked after as you are. The first
+thing that happened to me on the Tenth of August that would have a
+great deal better not have happened, was when I was--er--how old are
+you Imps?"
+
+"Sixteen," said they. "Going on eighteen."
+
+"Nonsense," said the Baron. "Why you're not more than eight."
+
+"Nope--we're sixteen," said Diavolo. "I'm eight and Angelica's eight
+and twice eight is sixteen."
+
+"Oh," said the Baron. "I see. Well, that was exactly the age I was at
+the time. Just eight to a day."
+
+"Sixteen we said," said the Twins.
+
+"Yes," nodded the Baron. "Just eight, but going on towards sixteen. My
+father had given me ten thalers to spend on noises, but unlike most
+boys I did not care so much for noises as I did for novelties. It
+didn't give me any particular pleasure to hear a giant cracker go off
+with a bang. What I wanted to do most of all was to get up some kind
+of an exhibition that would please the people and that could be seen
+in the day-time instead of at night when everybody is tired and
+sleepy. So instead of spending my money on fire-crackers and torpedoes
+and rockets, I spent nine thalers of it on powder and one thaler on
+putty blowers. My particular object was to make one grand effort and
+provide passers-by with a free exhibition of what I was going to call
+'Munchausen's Grand Geyser Cascade.' To do this properly I had set my
+eye upon a fish pond not far from the town hall. It was a very deep
+pond and about a mile in circumference, I should say. Putty blowers
+were then selling at five for a pfennig and powder was cheap as sand
+owing to the fact that the powder makers, expecting a war, had made a
+hundred times as much as was needed, and as the war didn't come off,
+they were willing to take almost anything they could get for it. The
+consequence was that the powder I got was sufficient in quantity to
+fill a rubber bag as large as five sofa cushions. This I sank in the
+middle of the pond, without telling anybody what I intended to do, and
+through the putty blowers, sealed tightly together end to end, I
+conducted a fuse, which I made myself, from the powder bag to the
+shore. My idea was that I could touch the thing off, you know, and
+that about sixty square feet of the pond would fly up into the air and
+then fall gracefully back again like a huge fountain. If it had worked
+as I expected everything would have been all right, but it didn't. I
+had too much powder, for a second after I had lit the fuse there came
+a muffled roar and the whole pond in a solid mass, fish and all, went
+flying up into the air and disappeared. Everybody was astonished, not
+a few were very much frightened. I was scared to death but I never let
+on to any one that I was the person that had blown the pond off. How
+high the pond went I don't know, but I do know that for a week there
+wasn't any sign of it, and then most unexpectedly out of what appeared
+to be a clear sky there came the most extraordinary rain-storm you
+ever saw. It literally poured down for two days, and, what I alone
+could understand, with it came trout and sunfish and minnows, and most
+singular to all but myself an old scow that was recognised as the
+property of the owner of the pond suddenly appeared in the sky falling
+toward the earth at a fearful rate of speed. When I saw the scow
+coming I was more frightened than ever because I was afraid it might
+fall upon and kill some of our neighbours. Fortunately, however, this
+possible disaster was averted, for it came down directly over the
+sharp-pointed lightning-rod on the tower of our public library and
+stuck there like a piece of paper on a file.
+
+"The rain washed away several acres of finely cultivated farms, but
+the losses on crops and fences and so forth were largely reduced by
+the fish that came with the storm. One farmer took a rake and caught
+three hundred pounds of trout, forty pounds of sun-fish, eight
+turtles, and a minnow in his potato patch in five minutes. Others were
+almost as fortunate, but the damage was sufficiently large to teach me
+that parents cannot be too careful about what they let their children
+do on the day they celebrate."
+
+"And weren't you ever punished?" asked the Twins.
+
+"No, indeed," said the Baron. "Nobody ever knew that I did it because
+I never told them. In fact you are the only two persons who ever heard
+about it, and you mustn't tell, because there are still a number of
+farmers around that region who would sue me for damages in case they
+knew that I was responsible for the accident."
+
+[Illustration: "Out of what appeared to be a clear sky came the most
+extraordinary rain storm you ever saw." _Chapter VI._]
+
+"That was pretty awful," said the Twins. "But we don't want to blow up
+ponds so as to get cascadeses, but we do want torpeters. Torpeters
+aren't any harm, are they, Uncle Munch?"
+
+"Well, you can never tell. It all depends on the torpedo. Torpedoes
+are sometimes made carelessly," said the Baron. "They ought to be made
+as carefully as a druggist makes pills. So many pebbles, so much
+paper, and so much saltpeter and sulphur, or whatever else is used to
+make them go off. I had a very unhappy time once with a carelessly
+made torpedo. I had two boxes full. They were those tin-foil torpedoes
+that little girls are so fond of, and I expected they would make quite
+a lot of noise, but the first ten I threw down didn't go off at all.
+The eleventh for some reason or other, I never knew exactly what, I
+hurled with all my force against the side of my father's barn, and my,
+what a surprise it was! It smashed in the whole side of the barn and
+sent seven bales of hay, and our big farm plough bounding down the
+hillside into the town. The hay-bales smashed down fences; one of them
+hit a cow-shed on its way down, knocked the back of it to smithereens
+and then proceeded to demolish the rear end of a small crockery shop
+that fronted on the main street. It struck the crockery shop square in
+the middle of its back and threw down fifteen dozen cups and saucers,
+thirty-two water pitchers, and five china busts of Shakespeare. The
+din was frightful--but I couldn't help that. Nobody could blame me,
+because I had no means of knowing that the man who made the torpedoes
+was careless and had put a solid ball of dynamite into one of them. So
+you see, my dear Imps, that even torpedoes are not always safe."
+
+"Yes," said Angelica. "I guess I'll play with my dolls on my birthday.
+They never goes off and blows things up."
+
+"That's very wise of you," said the Baron.
+
+"But what became of the plough, Uncle Munch?" said Diavolo.
+
+"Oh, the plough didn't do much damage," replied Mr. Munchausen. "It
+simply furrowed its way down the hill, across the main street, to the
+bowling green. It ploughed up about one hundred feet of this before it
+stopped, but nobody minded that much because it was to have been
+ploughed and seeded again anyhow within a few days. Of course the
+furrow it made in crossing the road was bad, and to make it worse the
+share caught one of the water pipes that ran under the street, and
+ripped it in two so that the water burst out and flooded the street
+for a while, but one hundred and sixty thousand dollars would have
+covered the damage."
+
+The Twins were silent for a few moments and then they asked:
+
+"Well, Uncle Munch, what kind of fire-works are safe anyhow?"
+
+"My experience has taught me that there are only two kinds that are
+safe," replied their old friend. "One is a Jack-o-lantern and the
+other is a cigar, and as you are not old enough to have cigars, if you
+will put on your hats and coats and go down into the garden and get me
+two pumpkins, I'll make each of you a Jack-o'-lantern. What do you
+say?"
+
+"We say yes," said the Twins, and off they went, while the Baron
+turning over in the hammock, and arranging a pillow comfortably under
+his head, went to sleep to dream of more birthday recollections in
+case there should be a demand for them later on.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+SAVED BY A MAGIC LANTERN
+
+
+When the Sunday dinner was over, the Twins, on Mr. Munchausen's
+invitation, climbed into the old warrior's lap, Angelica kissing him
+on the ear, and Diavolo giving his nose an affectionate tweak.
+
+"Ah!" said the Baron. "That's it!"
+
+"What's what, Uncle Munch?" demanded Diavolo.
+
+"Why that," returned the Baron. "I was wondering what it was I needed
+to make my dinner an unqualified success. There was something lacking,
+but what it was, we have had so much, I could not guess until you two
+Imps kissed me and tweaked my nasal feature. Now I know, for really a
+feeling of the most blessed contentment has settled upon my soul."
+
+"Don't you wish _you_ had two youngsters like us, Uncle Munch?" asked
+the Twins.
+
+"Do I wish I had? Why I have got two youngsters like you," the Baron
+replied. "I've got 'em right here too."
+
+"Where?" asked the Twins, looking curiously about them for the other
+two.
+
+"On my knees, of course," said he. "You are mine. Your papa gave you
+to me--and you are as like yourselves as two peas in a pod."
+
+"I--I hope you aren't going to take us away from here," said the
+Twins, a little ruefully. They were very fond of the Baron, but they
+didn't exactly like the idea of being given away.
+
+"Oh no--not at all," said the Baron. "Your father has consented to
+keep you here for me and your mother has kindly volunteered to look
+after you. There is to be no change, except that you belong to me,
+and, vice versa, I belong to you."
+
+"And I suppose, then," said Diavolo, "if you belong to us you've got
+to do pretty much what we tell you to?"
+
+"Exactly," responded Mr. Munchausen. "If you should ask me to tell you
+a story I'd have to do it, even if you were to demand the full
+particulars of how I spent Christmas with Mtulu, King of the Taafe
+Eatars, on the upper Congo away down in Africa--which is a tale I have
+never told any one in all my life."
+
+"It sounds as if it might be interesting," said the Twins. "Those are
+real candy names, aren't they?"
+
+"Yes," said the Baron. "Taafe sounds like taffy and Mtulu is very
+suggestive of chewing gum. That's the curious thing about the savage
+tribes of Africa. Their names often sound as if they might be things
+to eat instead of people. Perhaps that is why they sometimes eat each
+other--though, of course, I won't say for sure that that is the real
+explanation of cannibalism."
+
+"What's cannon-ballism?" asked Angelica.
+
+"He didn't say cannon-ballism," said Diavolo, scornfully. "It was
+candy-ballism."
+
+"Well--you've both come pretty near it," said the Baron, "and we'll
+let the matter rest there, or I won't have time to tell you how
+Christmas got me into trouble with King Mtulu."
+
+The Baron called for a cigar, which the Twins lighted for him and then
+he began.
+
+"You may not have heard," he said, "that some twenty or thirty years
+ago I was in command of an expedition in Africa. Our object was to
+find Lake Majolica, which we hoped would turn up half way between
+Lollokolela and the Clebungo Mountains. Lollokolela was the
+furthermost point to which civilisation had reached at that time, and
+was directly in the pathway to the Clebungo Mountains, which the
+natives said were full of gold and silver mines and scattered all over
+which were reputed to be caves in which diamonds and rubies and other
+gems of the rarest sort were to be found in great profusion. No white
+man had ever succeeded in reaching this marvellously rich range of
+hills for the reason that after leaving Lollokolela there was, as far
+as was known, no means of obtaining water, and countless adventurous
+spirits had had to give up because of the overpowering thirst which
+the climate brought upon them.
+
+"Under such circumstances it was considered by a company of gentlemen
+in London to be well worth their while to set about the discovery of a
+lake, which they decided in advance to call Majolica, for reasons best
+known to themselves; they probably wanted to jar somebody with it. And
+to me was intrusted the mission of leading the expedition. I will
+confess that I did not want to go for the very good reason that I did
+not wish to be eaten alive by the savage tribes that infested that
+region, but the company provided me with a close fitting suit of mail,
+which I wore from the time I started until I returned. It was very
+fortunate for me that I was so provided, for on three distinct
+occasions I was served up for state dinners and each time successfully
+resisted the carving knife and as a result, was thereafter well
+received, all the chiefs looking upon me as one who bore a charmed
+existence."
+
+Here the Baron paused long enough for the Twins to reflect upon and
+realise the terrors which had beset him on his way to Lake Majolica,
+and be it said that if they had thought him brave before they now
+deemed him a very hero of heroes.
+
+"When I set out," said the Baron, "I was accompanied by ten Zanzibaris
+and a thousand tins of condensed dinners."
+
+"A thousand what, Uncle Munch?" asked Jack, his mouth watering.
+
+"Condensed dinners," said the Baron, "I had a lot of my favourite
+dinners condensed and put up in tins. I didn't expect to be gone more
+than a year and a thousand dinners condensed and tinned, together with
+the food I expected to find on the way, elephant meat, rhinoceros
+steaks, and tiger chops, I thought would suffice for the trip. I could
+eat the condensed dinners and my followers could have the elephant's
+meat, rhinoceros steaks, and tiger chops--not to mention the bananas
+and other fruits which grow wild in the African jungle. It was not
+long, however, before I made the discovery that the Zanzibaris, in
+order to eat tigers, need to learn first how to keep tigers from
+eating them. We went to bed late one night on the fourth day out from
+Lollokolela, and when we waked up the next morning every mother's son
+of us, save myself, had been eaten by tigers, and again it was nothing
+but my coat of mail that saved me. There were eighteen tigers' teeth
+sticking into the sleeve of the coat, as it was. You can imagine my
+distress at having to continue the search for Lake Majolica alone. It
+was then that I acquired the habit of talking to myself, which has
+kept me young ever since, for I enjoy my own conversation hugely, and
+find myself always a sympathetic listener. I walked on for days and
+days, until finally, on Christmas Eve, I reached King Mtulu's palace.
+Of course your idea of a palace is a magnificent five-story building
+with beautiful carvings all over the front of it, marble stair-cases
+and handsomely painted and gilded ceilings. King Mtulu's palace was
+nothing of the sort, although for that region it was quite
+magnificent, the walls being decorated with elephants' tusks,
+crocodile teeth and many other treasures such as delight the soul of
+the Central African.
+
+"Now as I may not have told you, King Mtulu was the fiercest of the
+African chiefs, and it is said that up to the time when I outwitted
+him no white man had ever encountered him and lived to tell the tale.
+Consequently, when without knowing it on this sultry Christmas Eve,
+laden with the luggage and the tinned dinners and other things I had
+brought with me I stumbled upon the blood-thirsty monarch I gave
+myself up for lost.
+
+"'Who comes here to disturb the royal peace?' cried Mtulu, savagely,
+as I crossed the threshold.
+
+"'It is I, your highness,' I returned, my face blanching, for I
+recognized him at once by the ivory ring he wore in the end of his
+nose.
+
+"'Who is I?' retorted Mtulu, picking up his battle axe and striding
+forward.
+
+"A happy thought struck me then. These folks are superstitious.
+Perhaps the missionaries may have told these uncivilised creatures the
+story of Santa Claus. I will pretend that I am Santa Claus. So I
+answered, 'Who is I, O Mtulu, Bravest of the Taafe Chiefs? I am Santa
+Claus, the Children's Friend, and bearer of gifts to and for all.'
+
+"Mtulu gazed at me narrowly for a moment and then he beat lightly upon a
+tom-tom at his side. Immediately thirty of the most villainous-looking
+natives, each armed with a club, appeared.
+
+"'Arrest that man,' said Mtulu, 'before he goes any farther. He is an
+impostor.'
+
+"'If your majesty pleases,' I began.
+
+"'Silence!' he cried, 'I am fierce and I eat men, but I love truth.
+The truthful man has nothing to fear from me, for I have been
+converted from my evil ways and since last New Year's day I have eaten
+only those who have attempted to deceive me. You will be served raw at
+dinner to-morrow night. My respect for your record as a man of courage
+leads me to spare you the torture of the frying-pan. You are Baron
+Munchausen. I recognized you the moment you turned pale. Another man
+would have blushed.'
+
+"So I was carried off and shut up in a mud hovel, the interior walls
+of which were of white, a fact which strangely enough, preserved my
+life when later I came to the crucial moment. I had brought with me,
+among other things, for my amusement solely, a magic lantern. As a
+child, I had always been particularly fond of pictures, and when I
+thought of the lonely nights in Africa, with no books at hand, no
+theatres, no cotillions to enliven the monotony of my life, I resolved
+to take with me my little magic-lantern as much for company as for
+anything else. It was very compact in form. It folded up to be hardly
+larger than a wallet containing a thousand one dollar bills, and the
+glass lenses of course could be carried easily in my trousers pockets.
+The views, instead of being mounted on glass, were put on a substance
+not unlike glass, but thinner, called gelatine. All of these things I
+carried in my vest pockets, and when Mtulu confiscated my luggage the
+magic lantern and views of course escaped his notice.
+
+"Christmas morning came and passed and I was about to give myself up
+for lost, for Mtulu was not a king to be kept from eating a man by
+anything so small as a suit of mail, when I received word that before
+dinner my captor and his suite were going to pay me a formal parting
+call. Night was coming on and as I sat despondently awaiting the
+king's arrival, I suddenly bethought me of a lantern slide of the
+British army, standing and awaiting the command to fire, I happened to
+have with me. It was a superb view--lifelike as you please. Why not
+throw that on the wall and when Mtulu enters he will find me
+apparently with a strong force at my command, thought I. It was no
+sooner thought than it was done and my life was saved. Hardly was that
+noble picture reflected upon the rear wall of my prison when the door
+opened and Mtulu, followed by his suite, appeared. I rose to greet
+him, but apparently he saw me not. Mute with terror he stood upon the
+threshold gazing at that terrible line of soldiers ready as he thought
+to sweep him and his men from the face of the earth with their
+death-dealing bullets.
+
+[Illustration: "'I am your slave,' he replied to my greeting, kneeling
+before me, 'I yield all to you.'" _Chapter VII._]
+
+"'I am your slave,' he replied to my greeting, kneeling before me, 'I
+yield all to you.'
+
+"'I thought you would,' said I. 'But I ask nothing save the discovery
+of Lake Majolica. If within twenty-four hours Lake Majolica is not
+discovered I give the command to fire!' Then I turned and gave the
+order to carry arms, and lo! by a quick change of slides, the army
+appeared at a carry. Mtulu gasped with terror, but accepted my
+ultimatum. I was freed, Lake Majolica was discovered before ten
+o'clock the next morning, and at five o'clock I was on my way home,
+the British army reposing quietly in my breast pocket. It was a mighty
+narrow escape!"
+
+"I should say so," said the Twins. "But Mtulu must have been awful
+stupid not to see what it was."
+
+"Didn't he see through it when he saw you put the army in your
+pocket?" asked Diavolo.
+
+"No," said the Baron, "that frightened him worse than ever, for you
+see he reasoned this way. If I could carry an army in my pocket-book,
+what was to prevent my carrying Mtulu himself and all his tribe off in
+the same way! He thought I was a marvellous man to be able to do
+that."
+
+"Well, we guess he was right," said the Twins, as they climbed down
+from the Baron's lap to find an atlas and search the map of Africa for
+Lake Majolica. This they failed to find and the Baron's explanation is
+unknown to me, for when the Imps returned, the warrior had departed.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+AN ADVENTURE IN THE DESERT
+
+
+"The editor has a sort of notion, Mr. Munchausen," said Ananias, as he
+settled down in the big arm-chair before the fire in the Baron's
+library, "that he'd like to have a story about a giraffe. Public taste
+has a necky quality about it of late."
+
+"What do you say to that, Sapphira?" asked the Baron, politely turning
+to Mrs. Ananias, who had called with her husband. "Are you interested
+in giraffes?"
+
+"I like lions better," said Sapphira. "They roar louder and bite more
+fiercely."
+
+"Well, suppose we compromise," said the Baron, "and have a story about
+a poodle dog. Poodle dogs sometimes look like lions, and as a rule
+they are as gentle as giraffes."
+
+"I know a better scheme than that," put in Ananias. "Tell us a story
+about a lion and a giraffe, and if you feel disposed throw in a few
+poodles for good measure. I'm writing on space this year."
+
+"That's so," said Sapphira, wearily. "I could say it was a story about
+a lion and Ananias could call it a giraffe story, and we'd each be
+right."
+
+"Very well," said the Baron, "it shall be a story of each, only I must
+have a cigar before I begin. Cigars help me to think, and the
+adventure I had in the Desert of Sahara with a lion, a giraffe, and a
+slippery elm tree was so long ago that I shall have to do a great deal
+of thinking in order to recall it."
+
+So the Baron went for a cigar, while Ananias and Sapphira winked
+enviously at each other and lamented their lost glory. In a minute the
+Baron returned with the weed, and after lighting it, began his story.
+
+"I was about twenty years old when this thing happened to me," said
+he. "I had gone to Africa to investigate the sand in the Desert of
+Sahara for a Sand Company in America. As you may already have heard,
+sand is a very useful thing in a great many ways, more particularly
+however in the building trades. The Sand Company was formed for the
+purpose of supplying sand to everybody that wanted it, but land in
+America at that time was so very expensive that there was very little
+profit in the business. People who owned sand banks and sand lots
+asked outrageous prices for their property; and the sea-shore people
+were not willing to part with any of theirs because they needed it in
+their hotel business. The great attraction of a seaside hotel is the
+sand on the beach, and of course the proprietors weren't going to sell
+that. They might better even sell their brass bands. So the Sand
+Company thought it might be well to build some steam-ships, load them
+with oysters, or mowing machines, or historical novels, or anything
+else that is produced in the United States, and in demand elsewhere;
+send them to Egypt, sell the oysters, or mowing machines, or
+historical novels, and then have the ships fill up with sand from the
+Sahara, which they could get for nothing, and bring it back in ballast
+to the United States."
+
+"It must have cost a lot!" said Ananias.
+
+"Not at all," returned the Baron. "The profits on the oysters and
+mowing machines and historical novels were so large that all expenses
+both ways were more than paid, so that when it was delivered in
+America the sand had really cost less than nothing. We could have
+thrown it all overboard and still have a profit left. It was I who
+suggested the idea to the President of the Sand Company--his name was
+Bartlett, or--ah--Mulligan--or some similar well-known American name,
+I can't exactly recall it now. However, Mr. Bartlett, or Mr. Mulligan,
+or whoever it was, was very much pleased with the idea and asked me if
+I wouldn't go to the Sahara, investigate the quality of the sand, and
+report; and as I was temporarily out of employment I accepted the
+commission. Six weeks later I arrived in Cairo and set out immediately
+on a tour of the desert. I went alone because I preferred not to take
+any one into my confidence, and besides one can always be more
+independent when he has only his own wishes to consult. I also went on
+foot, for the reason that camels need a great deal of care--at least
+mine would have, if I'd had one, because I always like to have my
+steeds well groomed whether there is any one to see them or not. So to
+save myself trouble I started off alone on foot. In twenty-four hours
+I travelled over a hundred miles of the desert, and the night of the
+second day found me resting in the shade of a slippery elm tree in the
+middle of an oasis, which after much suffering and anxiety I had
+discovered. It was a beautiful moonlight night and I was enjoying it
+hugely. There were no mosquitoes or insects of any kind to interfere
+with my comfort. No insects could have flown so far across the sands.
+I have no doubt that many of them have tried to get there, but up to
+the time of my arrival none had succeeded, and I felt as happy as
+though I were in Paradise.
+
+"After eating my supper and taking a draught of the delicious spring
+water that purled up in the middle of the oasis, I threw myself down
+under the elm tree, and began to play my violin, without which in
+those days I never went anywhere."
+
+"I didn't know you played the violin," said Sapphira. "I thought your
+instrument was the trombone--plenty of blow and a mighty stretch."
+
+"I don't--now," said the Baron, ignoring the sarcasm. "I gave it up
+ten years ago--but that's a different story. How long I played that
+night I don't know, but I do know that lulled by the delicious strains
+of the music and soothed by the soft sweetness of the atmosphere I
+soon dropped off to sleep. Suddenly I was awakened by what I thought
+to be the distant roar of thunder. 'Humph!' I said to myself. 'This is
+something new. A thunder storm in the Desert of Sahara is a thing I
+never expected to see, particularly on a beautifully clear moonlight
+night'--for the moon was still shining like a great silver ball in the
+heavens, and not a cloud was anywhere to be seen. Then it occurred to
+me that perhaps I had been dreaming, so I turned over to go to sleep
+again. Hardly had I closed my eyes when a second ear-splitting roar
+came bounding over the sands, and I knew that it was no dream, but an
+actual sound that I heard. I sprang to my feet and looked about the
+horizon and there, a mere speck in the distance, was something--for
+the moment I thought a cloud, but in another instant I changed my
+mind, for glancing through my telescope I perceived it was not a cloud
+but a huge lion with the glitter of hunger in his eye. What I had
+mistaken for the thunder was the roar of this savage beast. I seized
+my gun and felt for my cartridge box only to discover that I had lost
+my ammunition and was there alone, unarmed, in the great desert, at
+the mercy of that savage creature, who was drawing nearer and nearer
+every minute and giving forth the most fearful roars you ever heard.
+It was a terrible moment and I was in despair.
+
+"'It's all up with you, Baron,' I said to myself, and then I caught
+sight of the tree. It seemed my only chance. I must climb that. I
+tried, but alas! As I have told you it was a slippery elm tree, and I
+might as well have tried to climb a greased pole. Despite my frantic
+efforts to get a grip upon the trunk I could not climb more than two
+feet without slipping back. It was impossible. Nothing was left for me
+to do but to take to my legs, and I took to them as well as I knew
+how. My, what a run it was, and how hopeless. The beast was gaining on
+me every second, and before me lay mile after mile of desert. 'Better
+give up and treat the beast to a breakfast, Baron,' I moaned to
+myself. 'When there's only one thing to do, you might as well do it
+and be done with it. Your misery will be over the more quickly if you
+stop right here.' As I spoke these words, I slowed up a little, but
+the frightful roaring of the lion unnerved me for an instant, or
+rather nerved me on to a spurt, which left the lion slightly more to
+the rear--and which resulted in the saving of my life; for as I ran
+on, what should I see about a mile ahead but another slippery elm
+tree, and under it stood a giraffe who had apparently fallen asleep
+while browsing among its upper branches, and filling its stomach with
+its cooling cocoanuts. The giraffe had its back to me, and as I sped
+on I formed my plan. I would grab hold of the giraffe's tail; haul
+myself up onto his back; climb up his neck into the tree, and then
+give my benefactor a blow between the eyes which would send him flying
+across the desert before the lion could come along and get up into the
+tree the same way I did. The agony of fear I went through as I
+approached the long-necked creature was something dreadful. Suppose
+the giraffe should be awakened by the roaring of the lion before I got
+there and should rush off himself to escape the fate that awaited me?
+I nearly dropped, I was so nervous, and the lion was now not more than
+a hundred yards away. I could hear his breath as he came panting on. I
+redoubled my speed; his pants came closer, closer, until at length
+after what seemed a year, I reached the giraffe, caught his tail,
+raised myself up to his back, crawled along his neck and dropped
+fainting into the tree just as the lion sprang upon the giraffe's back
+and came on toward me. What happened then I don't know, for as I have
+told you I swooned away; but I do know that when I came to, the
+giraffe had disappeared and the lion lay at the foot of the tree dead
+from a broken neck."
+
+"A broken neck?" demanded Sapphira.
+
+"Yes," returned the Baron. "A broken neck! From which I concluded that
+as the lion reached the nape of the giraffe's neck, the giraffe had
+waked up and bent his head toward the earth, thus causing the lion to
+fall head first to the ground instead of landing as he had expected in
+the tree with me."
+
+"It was wonderful," said Sapphira, scornfully.
+
+"Yes," said Ananias, "but I shouldn't think a lion could break his
+neck falling off a giraffe. Perhaps it was one of the slippery elm
+cocoanuts that fell on him."
+
+"Well, of course," said the Baron, rising, "that would all depend upon
+the height of the giraffe. Mine was the tallest one I ever saw."
+
+"About how tall?" asked Ananias.
+
+"Well," returned the Baron, thoughtfully, as if calculating, "did you
+ever see the Eiffel Tower?"
+
+"Yes," said Ananias.
+
+"Well," observed the Baron, "I don't think my giraffe was more than
+half as tall as that."
+
+With which estimate the Baron bowed his guests out of the room, and
+with a placid smile on his face, shook hands with himself.
+
+"Mr. and Mrs. Ananias are charming people," he chuckled, "but amateurs
+both--deadly amateurs."
+
+[Illustration: "I reached the giraffe, raised myself to his back, crawled
+along his neck and dropped fainting into the tree." _Chapter VIII._]
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+DECORATION DAY IN THE CANNIBAL ISLANDS
+
+
+"Uncle Munch," said Diavolo as he clambered up into the old warrior's
+lap, "I don't suppose you could tell us a story about Decoration Day
+could you?"
+
+"I think I might try," said Mr. Munchausen, puffing thoughtfully upon
+his cigar and making a ring with the smoke for Angelica to catch upon
+her little thumb. "I might try--but it will all depend upon whether
+you want me to tell you about Decoration Day as it is celebrated in
+the United States, or the way a band of missionaries I once knew in
+the Cannibal Islands observed it for twenty years or more."
+
+"Why can't we have both stories?" said Angelica. "I think that would
+be the nicest way. Two stories is twice as good as one."
+
+"Well, I don't know," returned Mr. Munchausen. "You see the trouble is
+that in the first instance I could tell you only what a beautiful
+thing it is that every year the people have a day set apart upon which
+they especially honour the memory of the noble fellows who lost their
+lives in defence of their country. I'm not much of a poet and it takes
+a poet to be able to express how beautiful and grand it all is, and so
+I should be afraid to try it. Besides it might sadden your little
+hearts to have me dwell upon the almost countless number of heroes who
+let themselves be killed so that their fellow-citizens might live in
+peace and happiness. I'd have to tell you about hundreds and hundreds
+of graves scattered over the battle fields that no one knows about,
+and which, because no one knows of them, are not decorated at all,
+unless Nature herself is kind enough to let a little dandelion or a
+daisy patch into the secret, so that they may grow on the green grass
+above these forgotten, unknown heroes who left their homes, were shot
+down and never heard of afterwards."
+
+"Does all heroes get killed?" asked Angelica.
+
+"No," said Mr. Munchausen. "I and a great many others lived through
+the wars and are living yet."
+
+"Well, how about the missionaries?" said Diavolo. "I didn't know they
+had Decoration Day in the Cannibal Islands."
+
+"I didn't either until I got there," returned the Baron. "But they
+have and they have it in July instead of May. It was one of the most
+curious things I ever saw and the natives, the men who used to be
+cannibals, like it so much that if the missionaries were to forget it
+they'd either remind them of it or have a celebration of their own. I
+don't know whether I ever told you about my first experience with the
+cannibals--did I?"
+
+"I don't remember it, but if you had I would have," said Diavolo.
+
+"So would I," said Angelica. "I remember most everything you say,
+except when I want you to say it over again, and even then I haven't
+forgotten it."
+
+"Well, it happened this way," said the Baron. "It was when I was
+nineteen years old. I sort of thought at that time I'd like to be a
+sailor, and as my father believed in letting me try whatever I wanted
+to do I took a position as first mate of a steam brig that plied
+between San Francisco and Nepaul, taking San Francisco canned tomatoes
+to Nepaul and bringing Nepaul pepper back to San Francisco, making
+several dollars both ways. Perhaps I ought to explain to you that
+Nepaul pepper is red, and hot; not as hot as a furnace fire, but hot
+enough for your papa and myself when we order oysters at a club and
+have them served so cold that we think they need a little more warmth
+to make them palatable and digestible. You are not yet old enough to
+know the meaning of such words as palatable and digestible, but some
+day you will be and then you'll know what your Uncle means. At any
+rate it was on the return voyage from Nepaul that the water tank on
+the _Betsy S._ went stale and we had to stop at the first place we
+could to fill it up with fresh water. So we sailed along until we came
+in sight of an Island and the Captain appointed me and two sailors a
+committee of three to go ashore and see if there was a spring anywhere
+about. We went, and the first thing we knew we were in the midst of a
+lot of howling, hungry savages, who were crazy to eat us. My
+companions were eaten, but when it came to my turn I tried to reason
+with the chief. 'Now see here, my friend,' said I, 'I'm perfectly
+willing to be served up at your breakfast, if I can only be convinced
+that you will enjoy eating me. What I don't want is to have my life
+wasted!' 'That's reasonable enough,' said he. 'Have you got a sample
+of yourself along for me to taste?' 'I have,' I replied, taking out a
+bottle of Nepaul pepper, that by rare good luck I happened to have in
+my pocket. 'That is a portion of my left foot powdered. It will give
+you some idea of what I taste like,' I added. 'If you like that,
+you'll like me. If you don't, you won't.'"
+
+"That was fine," said Diavolo. "You told pretty near the truth, too,
+Uncle Munch, because you are hot stuff yourself, ain't you?"
+
+"I am so considered, my boy," said Mr. Munchausen. "The chief took a
+teaspoonful of the pepper down at a gulp, and let me go when he
+recovered. He said he guessed I wasn't quite his style, and he thought
+I'd better depart before I set fire to the town. So I filled up the
+water bag, got into the row-boat, and started back to the ship, but
+the _Betsy S._ had gone and I was forced to row all the way to San
+Francisco, one thousand, five hundred and sixty-two miles distant. The
+captain and crew had given us all up for lost. I covered the distance
+in six weeks, living on water and Nepaul pepper, and when I finally
+reached home, I told my father that, after all, I was not so sure that
+I liked a sailor's life. But I never forgot those cannibals or their
+island, as you may well imagine. They and their home always interested
+me hugely and I resolved if the fates ever drove me that way again, I
+would go ashore and see how the people were getting on. The fates,
+however, were a long time in drawing me that way again, for it was not
+until July, ten years ago that I reached there the second time. I was
+off on a yachting trip, with an English friend, when one afternoon we
+dropped anchor off that Cannibal Island.
+
+"'Let's go ashore,' said I. 'What for?' said my host; and then I told
+him the story and we went, and it was well we did so, for it was then
+and there that I discovered the new way the missionaries had of
+celebrating Decoration Day.
+
+"No sooner had we landed than we noticed that the Island had become
+civilised. There were churches, and instead of tents and mud-hovels,
+beautiful residences appeared here and there, through the trees. 'I
+fancy this isn't the island,' said my host. 'There aren't any
+cannibals about here.' I was about to reply indignantly, for I was
+afraid he was doubting the truth of my story, when from the top of a
+hill, not far distant, we heard strains of music. We went to see
+whence it came, and what do you suppose we saw? Five hundred
+villainous looking cannibals marching ten abreast along a fine street,
+and, cheering them from the balconies of the houses that fronted on
+the highway, were the missionaries and their friends and their
+children and their wives.
+
+"'This can't be the place, after all,' said my host again.
+
+"'Yes it is,' said I, 'only it has been converted. They must be
+celebrating some native festival.' Then as I spoke the procession
+stopped and the head missionary followed by a band of beautiful girls,
+came down from a platform and placed garlands of flowers and beautiful
+wreaths on the shoulders and heads of those reformed cannibals. In
+less than an hour every one of the huge black fellows was covered with
+roses and pinks and fragrant flowers of all kinds, and then they
+started on parade again. It was a fine sight, but I couldn't
+understand what it was all done for until that night, when I dined
+with the head missionary--and what do you suppose it was?"
+
+"I give it up," said Diavolo, "maybe the missionaries thought the
+cannibals didn't have enough clothes on."
+
+"I guess I can't guess," said Angelica.
+
+"They were celebrating Decoration Day," said Mr. Munchausen. "They
+were strewing flowers on the graves of departed missionaries."
+
+"You didn't tell us about any graves," said Diavolo.
+
+[Illustration: "They were celebrating Decoration Day ... strewing
+flowers on the graves of departed missionaries." _Chapter IX._]
+
+"Why certainly I did," said the Baron. "The cannibals themselves were
+the only graves those poor departed missionaries ever had. Every one
+of those five hundred savages was the grave of a missionary, my dears,
+and having been converted, and taught that it was not good to eat
+their fellow-men, they did all in their power afterwards to show their
+repentance, keeping alive the memory of the men they had treated so
+badly by decorating themselves on memorial day--and one old fellow,
+the savagest looking, but now the kindest-hearted being in the world,
+used always to wear about his neck a huge sign, upon which he had
+painted in great black letters:
+
+                              HERE LIES
+                         JOHN THOMAS WILKINS,
+                               SAILOR.
+                 DEPARTED THIS LIFE, MAY 24TH, 1861.
+                   HE WAS A MAN OF SPLENDID TASTE.
+
+"The old cannibal had eaten Wilkins and later when he had been
+converted and realised that he himself was the grave of a worthy man,
+as an expiation he devoted his life to the memory of John Thomas
+Wilkins, and as a matter of fact, on the Cannibal Island Decoration
+Day he would lie flat on the floor all the day, groaning under the
+weight of a hundred potted plants, which he placed upon himself in
+memory of Wilkins."
+
+Here Mr. Munchausen paused for breath, and the twins went out into the
+garden to try to imagine with the aid of a few practical experiments
+how a cannibal would look with a hundred potted plants adorning his
+person.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+MR. MUNCHAUSEN'S ADVENTURE WITH A SHARK
+
+
+                    Mr. and Mrs. Henry B. Ananias.
+          _THURSDAYS._                         _CIMMERIA._
+
+This was the card sent by the reporter of the _Gehenna Gazette_, and
+Mrs. Ananias to Mr. Munchausen upon his return from a trip to mortal
+realms concerning which many curious reports have crept into
+circulation. Owing to a rumour persistently circulated at one time,
+Mr. Munchausen had been eaten by a shark, and it was with the
+intention of learning, if possible, the basis for the rumour that
+Ananias and Sapphira called upon the redoubtable Baron of other days.
+
+Mr. Munchausen graciously received the callers and asked what he could
+do for them.
+
+"Our readers, Mr. Munchausen," explained Ananias, "have been much
+concerned over rumours of your death at the hands of a shark."
+
+"Sharks have no hands," said the Baron quietly.
+
+"Well--that aside," observed Ananias. "Were you killed by a shark?"
+
+"Not that I recall," said the Baron. "I may have been, but I don't
+remember it. Indeed I recall only one adventure with a shark. That
+grew out of my mission on behalf of France to the Czar of Russia. I
+carried letters once from the King of France to his Imperial Coolness
+the Czar."
+
+"What was the nature of the letters?" asked Ananias.
+
+"I never knew," replied the Baron. "As I have said, it was a secret
+mission, and the French Government never took me into its confidence.
+The only thing I know about it is that I was sent to St. Petersburg,
+and I went, and in the course of time I made myself much beloved of
+both the people and his Majesty the Czar. I am the only person that
+ever lived that was liked equally by both, and if I had attached
+myself permanently to the Czar, Russia would have been a different
+country to-day."
+
+"What country would it have been, Mr. Munchausen," asked Sapphira
+innocently, "Germany or Siam?"
+
+"I can't specify, my dear madame," the Baron replied. "It wouldn't be
+fair. But, at any rate, I went to Russia, and was treated warmly by
+everybody, except the climate, which was, as it is at all times, very
+freezing. That's the reason the Russian people like the climate. It is
+the only thing the Czar can't change by Imperial decree, and the
+people admire its independence and endure it for that reason. But as I
+have said, everybody was pleased with me, and the Czar showed me
+unusual attention. He gave fetes in my honour. He gave the most
+princely dinners, and I met the very best people in St. Petersburg,
+and at one of these dinners I was invited to join a yachting party on
+a cruise around the world.
+
+"Well, of course, though a landsman in every sense of the word, I am
+fond of yachting, and I immediately accepted the invitation. The yacht
+we went on was the Boomski Zboomah, belonging to Prince--er--now
+what was that Prince's name! Something like--er--Sheeroff or
+Jibski--or--er--well, never mind that. I meet so many princes it is
+difficult to remember their names. We'll say his name was Jibski."
+
+"Suppose we do," said Ananias, with a jealous grin. "Jibski is such a
+remarkable name. It will look well in print."
+
+"All right," said the Baron, "Jibski be it. The yacht belonged to
+Prince Jibski, and she was a beauty. There was a stateroom and a
+steward for everybody on board, and nothing that could contribute to a
+man's comfort was left unattended to. We set sail on the 23rd of
+August, and after cruising about the North coast of Europe for a week
+or two, we steered the craft south, and along about the middle of
+September we reached the Amphibian Islands, and anchored. It was here
+that I had my first and last experience with sharks. If they had been
+plain, ordinary sharks I'd have had an easy time of it, but when you
+get hold of these Amphibian sharks you are likely to get yourself into
+twenty-three different kinds of trouble."
+
+"My!" said Sapphira. "All those? Does the number include being struck
+by lightning?"
+
+"Yes," the Baron answered, "And when you remember that there are only
+twenty-four different kinds altogether you can see what a peck of
+trouble an Amphibian shark can get you into. I thought my last hour
+had come when I met with him. You see when we reached the Amphibian
+Islands, we naturally thought we'd like to go ashore and pick the
+cocoanuts and raisins and other things that grow there, and when I got
+upon dry land again I felt strongly tempted to go down upon the
+beautiful little beach in the harbour and take a swim. Prince Jibski
+advised me against it, but I was set upon going. He told me the place
+was full of sharks, but I wasn't afraid because I was always a
+remarkably rapid swimmer, and I felt confident of my ability, in case
+I saw a shark coming after me, to swim ashore before he could possibly
+catch me, provided I had ten yards start. So in I went leaving my gun
+and clothing on the beach. Oh, it was fun! The water was quite warm,
+and the sandy bottom of the bay was deliciously soft and pleasant to
+the feet. I suppose I must have sported in the waves for ten or
+fifteen minutes before the trouble came. I had just turned a
+somersault in the water, when, as my head came to the surface, I saw
+directly in front of me, the unmistakable fin of a shark, and to my
+unspeakable dismay not more than five feet away. As I told you, if it
+had been ten yards away I should have had no fear, but five feet meant
+another story altogether. My heart fairly jumped into my mouth. It
+would have sunk into my boots if I had had them on, but I hadn't, so
+it leaped upward into my mouth as I turned to swim ashore, by which
+time the shark had reduced the distance between us by one foot. I
+feared that all was up with me, and was trying to think of an
+appropriate set of last words, when Prince Jibski, noting my peril,
+fired one of the yacht's cannon in our direction. Ordinarily this
+would have been useless, for the yacht's cannon was never loaded with
+anything but a blank charge, but in this instance it was better than
+if it had been loaded with ball and shot, for not only did the sound
+of the explosion attract the attention of the shark and cause him to
+pause for a moment, but also the wadding from the gun dropped directly
+upon my back, so showing that Prince Jibski's aim was not as good as
+it might have been. Had the cannon been loaded with a ball or a shell,
+you can very well understand how it would have happened that yours
+truly would have been killed then and there."
+
+"We should have missed you," said Ananias sweetly.
+
+"Thanks," said the Baron. "But to resume. The shark's pause gave me
+the start I needed, and the heat from the burning wadding right
+between my shoulders caused me to redouble my efforts to get away from
+the shark and it, so that I never swam faster in my life, and was soon
+standing upon the shore, jeering at my fearful pursuer, who, strange
+to say, showed no inclination to stop the chase now that I was, as I
+thought, safely out of his reach. I didn't jeer very long I can tell
+you, for in another minute I saw why the shark didn't stop chasing me,
+and why Amphibian sharks are worse than any other kind. That shark had
+not only fins like all other sharks to swim with, but he had likewise
+three pairs of legs that he could use on land quite as well as he
+could use the fins in the water. And then began the prettiest chase
+you ever saw in your life. As he emerged from the water I grabbed up
+my gun and ran. Round and round the island we tore, I ahead, he thirty
+or forty yards behind, until I got to a place where I could stop
+running and take a hasty shot at him. Then I aimed, and fired. My aim
+was good, but struck one of the huge creature's teeth, broke it off
+short, and bounded off to one side. This made him more angry than
+ever, and he redoubled his efforts to catch me. I redoubled mine,
+until I could get another shot at him. The second shot, like the
+first, struck the creature in the teeth, only this time it was more
+effective. The bullet hit his jaw lengthwise, and knocked every tooth
+on that side of his head down his throat. So it went. I ran. He
+pursued. I fired; he lost his teeth, until finally I had knocked out
+every tooth he had, and then, of course, I wasn't afraid of him, and
+let him come up with me. With his teeth he could have ground me to
+atoms at one bite. Without them he was as powerless as a bowl of
+currant jelly, and when he opened his huge jaws, as he supposed to
+bite me in two, he was the most surprised looking fish you ever saw on
+land or sea to discover that the effect his jaws had upon my safety
+was about as great as had they been nothing but two feather bed
+mattresses."
+
+"You must have been badly frightened, though," said Ananias.
+
+"No," said the Baron. "I laughed in the poor disappointed thing's
+face, and with a howl of despair, he rushed back into the sea again. I
+made the best time I could back to the yacht for fear he might return
+with assistance."
+
+"And didn't you ever see him again, Baron?" asked Sapphira.
+
+"Yes, but only from the deck of the yacht as we were weighing anchor,"
+said Mr. Munchausen. "I saw him and a dozen others like him doing
+precisely what I thought they would do, going ashore to search me out
+so as to have a little cold Munch for dinner. I'm glad they were
+disappointed, aren't you?"
+
+"Yes, indeed," said Ananias and Sapphira, but not warmly.
+
+Ananias was silent for a moment, and then walking over to one of the
+bookcases, he returned in a moment, bringing with him a huge atlas.
+
+"Where are the Amphibian Islands, Mr. Munchausen?" he said, opening
+the book. "Show them to me on the map. I'd like to print the map with
+my story."
+
+"Oh, I can't do that," said the Baron, "because they aren't on the map
+any more. When I got back to Europe and told the map-makers about the
+dangers to man on those islands, they said that the interests of
+humanity demanded that they be lost. So they took them out of all the
+geographies, and all the cyclopaedias, and all the other books, so that
+nobody ever again should be tempted to go there; and there isn't a
+school-teacher or a sailor in the world to-day who could tell you
+where they are."
+
+"But, you know, don't you?" persisted Ananias.
+
+"Well, I did," said the Baron; "but, really I have had to remember so
+many other things that I have forgotten that. All that I know is that
+they were named from the fact that they were infested by Amphibious
+animals, which are animals that can live on land as well as on water."
+
+"How strange!" said Sapphira.
+
+"It's just too queer for anything," said Ananias, "but on the whole
+I'm not surprised."
+
+And the Baron said he was glad to hear it.
+
+[Illustration: "I laughed in the poor disappointed thing's face, and
+with a howl of despair he rushed back into the sea." _Chapter X._]
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+THE BARON AS A RUNNER
+
+
+The Twins had been on the lookout for the Baron for at least an hour,
+and still he did not come, and the little Imps were beginning to feel
+blue over the prospect of getting the usual Sunday afternoon story. It
+was past four o'clock, and for as long a time as they could remember
+the Baron had never failed to arrive by three o'clock. All sorts of
+dreadful possibilities came up before their mind's eye. They pictured
+the Baron in accidents of many sorts. They conjured up visions of him
+lying wounded beneath the ruins of an apartment house, or something
+else equally heavy that might have fallen upon him on his way from his
+rooms to the station, but that he was more than wounded they did not
+believe, for they knew that the Baron was not the sort of man to be
+killed by anything killing under the sun.
+
+"I wonder where he can be?" said Angelica, uneasily to her brother,
+who was waiting with equal anxiety for their common friend.
+
+"Oh, he's all right!" said Diavolo, with a confidence he did not
+really feel. "He'll turn up all right, and even if he's two hours late
+he'll be here on time according to his own watch. Just you wait and
+see."
+
+And they did wait and they did see. They waited for ten minutes, when
+the Baron drove up, smiling as ever, but apparently a little out of
+breath. I should not dare to say that he was really out of breath, but
+he certainly did seem to be so, for he panted visibly, and for two or
+three minutes after his arrival was quite unable to ask the Imps the
+usual question as to their very good health. Finally, however, the
+customary courtesies of the greeting were exchanged, and the decks
+were cleared for action.
+
+"What kept you, Uncle Munch?" asked the Twins, as they took up their
+usual position on the Baron's knees.
+
+"What what?" replied the warrior. "Kept me? Why, am I late?"
+
+"Two hours," said the Twins. "Dad gave you up and went out for a
+walk."
+
+"Nonsense," said the Baron. "I'm never that late."
+
+Here he looked at his watch.
+
+"Why I do seem to be behind time. There must be something wrong with
+our time-pieces. I can't be two hours late, you know."
+
+"Well, let's say you are on time, then," said the Twins. "What kept
+you?"
+
+"A very funny accident on the railroad," said the Baron lighting a
+cigar. "Queerest accident that ever happened to me on the railroad,
+too. Our engine ran away."
+
+The Twins laughed as if they thought the Baron was trying to fool
+them.
+
+"Really," said the Baron. "I left town as usual on the two o'clock
+train, which, as you know, comes through in half an hour, without a
+stop. Everything went along smoothly until we reached the Vitriol
+Reservoir, when much to the surprise of everybody the train came to a
+stand-still. I supposed there was a cow on the track, and so kept in
+my seat for three or four minutes as did every one else. Finally the
+conductor came through and called to the brakeman at the end of our
+car to see if his brakes were all right.
+
+"'It's the most unaccountable thing,' he said to me. 'Here's this
+train come to a dead stop and I can't see why. There isn't a brake out
+of order on any one of the cars, and there isn't any earthly reason
+why we shouldn't go ahead.'
+
+"'Maybe somebody's upset a bottle of glue on the track,' said I. I
+always like to chaff the conductor, you know, though as far as that is
+concerned, I remember once when I was travelling on a South American
+Railway our train was stopped by highwaymen, who smeared the tracks
+with a peculiar sort of gum. They'd spread it over three miles of
+track, and after the train had gone lightly over two miles of it the
+wheels stuck so fast ten engines couldn't have moved it. That was a
+terrible affair."
+
+"I don't think we ever heard of that, did we?" asked Angelica.
+
+"I don't remember it," said Diavolo.
+
+"Well, you would have remembered it, if you had ever heard of it,"
+said the Baron. "It was too dreadful to be forgotten--not for us, you
+know, but for the robbers. It was one of the Imperial trains in
+Brazil, and if it hadn't been for me the Emperor would have been
+carried off and held for ransom. The train was brought to a
+stand-still by this gluey stuff, as I have told you, and the
+desperadoes boarded the cars and proceeded to rifle us of our
+possessions. The Emperor was in the car back of mine, and the robbers
+made directly for him, but fathoming their intention I followed close
+upon their heels.
+
+"'You are our game,' said the chief robber, tapping the Emperor on the
+shoulder, as he entered the Imperial car.
+
+"'Hands off,' I cried throwing the ruffian to one side.
+
+"He scowled dreadfully at me, the Emperor looked surprised, and
+another one of the robbers requested to know who was I that I should
+speak with so much authority. 'Who am I?' said I, with a wink at the
+Emperor. 'Who am I? Who else but Baron Munchausen of the Bodenwerder
+National Guard, ex-friend of Napoleon of France, intimate of the
+Mikado of Japan, and famed the world over as the deadliest shot in two
+hemispheres.'
+
+"The desperadoes paled visibly as I spoke, and after making due
+apologies for interfering with the train, fled shrieking from the car.
+They had heard of me before.
+
+"'I thank you, sir,' began the Emperor, as the would-be assassins
+fled, but I cut him short. 'They must not be allowed to escape,' I
+said, and with that I started in pursuit of the desperate fellows,
+overtook them, and glued them with the gum they had prepared for our
+detention to the face of a precipice that rose abruptly from the side
+of the railway, one hundred and ten feet above the level. There I left
+them. We melted the glue from the tracks by means of our steam heating
+apparatus, and were soon booming merrily on our way to Rio Janeiro
+when I was feted and dined continuously for weeks by the people,
+though strange to say the Emperor's behaviour toward me was very
+cool."
+
+"And did the robbers ever get down?" asked the Twins.
+
+"Yes, but not in a way they liked," Mr. Munchausen replied. "The sun
+came out, and after a week or two melted the glue that held them to
+the precipice, whereupon they fell to its base and were shattered into
+pieces so small there wasn't an atom of them to be found when a month
+later I passed that way again on my return trip."
+
+"And didn't the Emperor treat you well, Uncle Munch?" asked the Imps.
+
+"No--as I told you he was very cool towards me, and I couldn't
+understand it, then, but I do now," said the Baron. "You see he was
+very much in need of ready cash, the Emperor was, and as the taxpayers
+were already growling about the expenses of the Government he didn't
+dare raise the money by means of a tax. So he arranged with the
+desperadoes to stop the train, capture him, and hold him for ransom.
+Then when the ransom came along he was going to divide up with them.
+My sudden appearance, coupled with my determination to rescue him,
+spoiled his plan, you see, and so he naturally wasn't very grateful.
+Poor fellow, I was very sorry for it afterward, because he really was
+an excellent ruler, and his plan of raising the money he needed wasn't
+a bit less honest than most other ways rulers employ to obtain revenue
+for State purposes."
+
+"Well, now, let's get back to the runaway engine," said the Twins.
+"You can tell us more about South America after you get through with
+that. How did the engine come to run away?"
+
+"It was simple enough," said the Baron. "The engineer, after starting
+the train came back into the smoking car to get a light for his pipe,
+and while he was there the coupling-pin between the engine and the
+train broke, and off skipped the engine twice as fast as it had been
+going before. The relief from the weight of the train set its pace to
+a mile a minute instead of a mile in two minutes, and there we were at
+a dead stop in front of the Vitriol Station with nothing to move us
+along. When the engineer saw what had happened he fainted dead away,
+because you know if a collision had occurred between the runaway
+engine and the train ahead he would have been held responsible."
+
+"Couldn't the fireman stop the engine?" asked the Twins.
+
+"No. That is, it wouldn't be his place to do it, and these railway
+fellows are queer about that sort of thing," said the Baron. "The
+engineers would go out upon a strike if the railroad were to permit a
+stoker to manage the engine, and besides that the stoker wouldn't
+undertake to do it at a stoker's wages, so there wasn't any help to be
+looked for there. The conductor happened to be nearsighted, and so he
+didn't find out that the engine was missing until he had wasted ten or
+twenty minutes examining the brakes, by which time, of course, the
+runaway was miles and miles up the track. Then the engineer came to,
+and began to wring his hands and moan in a way that was heart-rending.
+The conductor, too, began to cry, and all the brakemen left the train
+and took to the woods. They weren't going to have any of the
+responsibility for the accident placed on their shoulders. Whether
+they will ever turn up again I don't know. But I realised as soon as
+anybody else that something had to be done, so I rushed into the
+telegraph office and telegraphed to all the station masters between
+the Vitriol Reservoir and Cimmeria to clear the track of all trains,
+freight, local, or express, or somebody would be hurt, and that I
+myself would undertake to capture the runaway engine. This they all
+promised to do, whereupon I bade good-bye to my fellow-travellers, and
+set off up the track myself at full speed. In a minute I strode past
+Sulphur Springs, covering at least eight ties at a stretch. In two
+minutes I thundered past Lava Hurst, where I learned that the engine
+had twenty miles start of me. I made a rapid calculation mentally--I
+always was strong in mental arithmetic, which showed that unless I was
+tripped up or got side-tracked somewhere I might overtake the runaway
+before it reached Noxmere. Redoubling my efforts, my stride increased
+to twenty ties at a jump, and I made the next five miles in two
+minutes. It sounds impossible, but really it isn't so. It is hard to
+run as fast as that at the start, but when you have got your start the
+impetus gathered in the first mile's run sends you along faster in the
+second, and so your speed increases by its own force until finally you
+go like the wind. At Gasdale I had gained two miles on the engine, at
+Sneakskill I was only fifteen miles behind, and upon my arrival at
+Noxmere there was scarcely a mile between me and the fugitive.
+Unfortunately a large crowd had gathered at Noxmere to see me pass
+through, and some small boy had brought a dog along with him and the
+dog stood directly in my path. If I ran over the dog it would kill him
+and might trip me up. If I jumped with the impetus I had there was no
+telling where I would land. It was a hard point to decide either way,
+but I decided in favour of the jump, simply to save the dog's life,
+for I love animals. I landed three miles up the road and ahead of the
+engine, though I didn't know that until I had run ten miles farther
+on, leaving the engine a hundred yards behind me at every stride. It
+was at Miasmatica that I discovered my error and then I tried to stop.
+It was almost in vain; I dragged my feet over the ties, but could only
+slow down to a three-minute gait. Then I tried to turn around and slow
+up running backward; this brought my speed down ten minutes to the
+mile, which made it safe for me to run into a hay-stack at the side of
+the railroad just this side of Cimmeria. Then, of course, I was all
+right. I could sit down and wait for the engine, which came booming
+along forty minutes later. As it approached I prepared to board it,
+and in five minutes was in full control. That made it easy enough for
+me to get back here without further trouble. I simply reversed the
+lever, and back we came faster than I can describe, and just one hour
+and a half from the time of the mishap the runaway engine was restored
+to its deserted train and I reached your station here in good order. I
+should have walked up, but for my weariness after that exciting run,
+which as you see left me very much out of breath, and which made it
+necessary for me to hire that worn-out old hack instead of walking up
+as is my wont."
+
+[Illustration: "This brought my speed down ten minutes to the mile,
+which made it safe for me to run into a haystack." _Chapter XI._]
+
+"Yes, we see you are out of breath," said the Twins, as the Baron
+paused. "Would you like to lie down and take a rest?"
+
+"Above all things," said the Baron. "I'll take a nap here until your
+father returns," which he proceeded at once to do.
+
+While he slept the two Imps gazed at him curiously, Angelica, a little
+suspiciously.
+
+"Bub," said she, in a whisper, "do you think that was a true story?"
+
+"Well, I don't know," said Diavolo. "If anybody else than Uncle Munch
+had told it, I wouldn't have believed it. But he hates untruth. I know
+because he told me so."
+
+"That's the way I feel about it," said Angelica. "Of course, he can
+run as fast as that, because he is very strong, but what I can't see
+is how an engine ever could run away from its train."
+
+"That's what stumps me," said Diavolo.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+MR. MUNCHAUSEN MEETS HIS MATCH
+
+(Reported by Henry W. Ananias for the _Gehenna Gazette_.)
+
+
+When Mr. Munchausen, accompanied by Ananias and Sapphira, after a long
+and tedious journey from Cimmeria to the cool and wooded heights of
+the Blue Sulphur Mountains, entered the portals of the hotel where the
+greater part of his summers are spent, the first person to greet him
+was Beelzebub Sandboy,--the curly-headed Imp who acted as "Head Front"
+of the Blue Sulphur Mountain House, his eyes a-twinkle and his swift
+running feet as ever ready for a trip to any part of the hostelry and
+back. Beelzy, as the Imp was familiarly known, as the party entered,
+was in the act of carrying a half-dozen pitchers of iced-water
+upstairs to supply thirsty guests with the one thing needful and best
+to quench that thirst, and in his excitement at catching sight once
+again of his ancient friend the Baron, managed to drop two of the
+pitchers with a loud crash upon the office floor. This, however, was
+not noticed by the powers that ruled. Beelzy was not perfect, and as
+long as he smashed less than six pitchers a day on an average the
+management was disposed not to complain.
+
+"There goes my friend Beelzy," said the Baron, as the pitchers fell.
+"I am delighted to see him. I was afraid he would not be here this
+year since I understand he has taken up the study of theology."
+
+"Theology?" cried Ananias. "In Hades?"
+
+"How foolish," said Sapphira. "We don't need preachers here."
+
+"He'd make an excellent one," said Mr. Munchausen. "He is a lad of
+wide experience and his fish and bear stories are wonderful. If he can
+make them gee, as he would put it, with his doctrines he would prove a
+tremendous success. Thousands would flock to hear him for his bear
+stories alone. As for the foolishness of his choice, I think it is a
+very wise one. Everybody can't be a stoker, you know."
+
+At any rate, whatever the reasons for Beelzebub's presence, whether he
+had given up the study of theology or not, there he was plying his old
+vocation with the same perfection of carelessness as of yore, and
+apparently no farther along in the study of theology than he was the
+year before when he bade Mr. Munchausen "good-bye forever" with the
+statement that now that he was going to lead a pious life the chances
+were he'd never meet his friend again.
+
+"I don't see why they keep such a careless boy as that," said
+Sapphira, as Beelzy at the first landing turned to grin at Mr.
+Munchausen, emptying the contents of one of his pitchers into the lap
+of a nervous old gentleman in the office below.
+
+"He adds an element of excitement to a not over-exciting place,"
+explained Mr. Munchausen. "On stormy days here the men make bets on
+what fool thing Beelzy will do next. He blacked all the russet shoes
+with stove polish one year, and last season in the rush of his daily
+labours he filled up the water-cooler with soft coal instead of ice.
+He's a great bell-boy, is my friend Beelzy."
+
+A little while later when Mr. Munchausen and his party had been shown
+to their suite, Beelzy appeared in their drawing-room and was warmly
+greeted by Mr. Munchausen, who introduced him to Mr. and Mrs. Ananias.
+
+"Well," said Mr. Munchausen, "you're here again, are you?"
+
+"No, indeed," said Beelzy. "I ain't here this year. I'm over at the
+Coal-Yards shovellin' snow. I'm my twin brother that died three years
+before I was born."
+
+"How interesting," said Sapphira, looking at the boy through her
+lorgnette.
+
+Beelzy bowed in response to the compliment and observed to the Baron:
+
+"You ain't here yourself this season, be ye?"
+
+"No," said Mr. Munchausen, drily. "I've gone abroad. You've given up
+theology I presume?"
+
+"Sorter," said Beelzy. "It was lonesome business and I hadn't been at
+it more'n twenty minutes when I realised that bein' a missionary ain't
+all jam and buckwheats. It's kind o' dangerous too, and as I didn't
+exactly relish the idea o' bein' et up by Samoans an' Feejees I made
+up my mind to give it up an' stick to bell-boyin' for another season
+any how; but I'll see you later, Mr. Munchausen. I've got to hurry
+along with this iced-water. It's overdue now, and we've got the
+kickinest lot o' folks here this year you ever see. One man here the
+other night got as mad as hookey because it took forty minutes to soft
+bile an egg. Said two minutes was all that was necessary to bile an
+egg softer'n mush, not understanding anything about the science of
+eggs in a country where hens feeds on pebbles."
+
+"Pebbles?" cried Mr. Munchausen. "What, do they lay Roc's eggs?"
+
+Beelzy grinned.
+
+"No, sir--they lay hen's eggs all right, but they're as hard as Adam's
+aunt."
+
+"I never heard of chickens eating pebbles," observed Sapphira with a
+frown. "Do they really relish them?"
+
+"I don't know, Ma'am," said Beelzy. "I ain't never been on speakin'
+terms with the hens, Ma'am, and they never volunteered no information.
+They eat 'em just the same. They've got to eat something and up here
+on these mountains there ain't anything but gravel for 'em to eat.
+That's why they do it. Then when it comes to the eggs, on a diet like
+that, cobblestones ain't in it with 'em for hardness, and when you
+come to bite 'em it takes a week to get 'em soft, an' a steam drill to
+get 'em open--an' this feller kicked at forty minutes! Most likely
+he's swearin' around upstairs now because this iced-water ain't came;
+and it ain't more than two hours since he ordered it neither."
+
+"What an unreasonable gentleman," said Sapphira.
+
+"Ain't he though!" said Beelzy. "And he ain't over liberal neither.
+He's been here two weeks now and all the money I've got out of him was
+a five-dollar bill I found on his bureau yesterday morning. There's
+more money in theology than there is in him."
+
+With this Beelzebub grabbed up the pitcher of water, and bounded out
+of the room like a frightened fawn. He disappeared into the dark of
+the corridor, and a few moments later was evidently tumbling head over
+heels up stairs, if the sounds that greeted the ears of the party in
+the drawing-room meant anything.
+
+The next morning when there was more leisure for Beelzy the Baron
+inquired as to the state of his health.
+
+"Oh it's been pretty good," said he. "Pretty good. I'm all right now,
+barrin' a little gout in my right foot, and ice-water on my knee, an'
+a crick in my back, an' a tired feelin' all over me generally. Ain't
+had much to complain about. Had the measles in December, and the mumps
+in February; an' along about the middle o' May the whoopin' cough got
+a holt of me; but as it saved my life I oughtn't to kick about that."
+
+Here Beelzy looked gratefully at an invisible something--doubtless the
+recollection in the thin air of his departed case of whooping cough,
+for having rescued him from an untimely grave.
+
+"That is rather curious, isn't it?" queried Sapphira, gazing intently
+into the boy's eyes. "I don't exactly understand how the whooping
+cough could save anybody's life, do you, Mr. Munchausen?"
+
+"Beelzy, this lady would have you explain the situation, and I must
+confess that I am myself somewhat curious to learn the details of this
+wonderful rescue," said Mr. Munchausen.
+
+"Well, I must say," said Beelzy, with a pleased smile at the very
+great consequence of his exploit in the lady's eyes, "if I was a-goin'
+to start out to save people's lives generally I wouldn't have thought
+a case o' whoopin' cough would be of much use savin' a man from
+drownin', and I'm sure if a feller fell out of a balloon it wouldn't
+help him much if he had ninety dozen cases o' whoopin' cough concealed
+on his person; but for just so long as I'm the feller that has to come
+up here every June, an' shoo the bears out o' the hotel, I ain't never
+goin' to be without a spell of whoopin' cough along about that time if
+I can help it. I wouldn't have been here now if it hadn't been for
+it."
+
+"You referred just now," said Sapphira, "to shooing bears out of the
+hotel. May I inquire what useful function in the menage of a hotel a
+bear-shooer performs?"
+
+"What useful what?" asked Beelzy.
+
+"Function--duty--what does the duty of a bear-shooer consist in?"
+explained Mr. Munchausen. "Is he a blacksmith who shoes bears instead
+of horses?"
+
+"He's a bear-chaser," explained Beelzy, "and I'm it," he added. "That,
+Ma'am, is the function of a bear-shooer in the menagerie of a hotel."
+
+Sapphira having expressed herself as satisfied, Beelzebub continued.
+
+"You see this here house is shut up all winter, and when everybody's
+gone and left it empty the bears come down out of the mountains and
+use it instead of a cave. It's more cosier and less windier than their
+dens. So when the last guest has gone, and all the doors are locked,
+and the band gone into winter quarters, down come the bears and take
+possession. They generally climb through some open window somewhere.
+They divide up all the best rooms accordin' to their position in bear
+society and settle down to a regular hotel life among themselves."
+
+"But what do they feed upon?" asked Sapphira.
+
+"Oh they'll eat anything when they're hungry," said Beelzy. "Sofa
+cushions, parlor rugs, hotel registers--anything they can fasten their
+teeth to. Last year they came in through the cupola, burrowin' down
+through the snow to get at it, and there they stayed enjoyin' life out
+o' reach o' the wind and storm, snug's bugs in rugs. Year before last
+there must ha' been a hundred of 'em in the hotel when I got here, but
+one by one I got rid of 'em. Some I smoked out with some cigars Mr.
+Munchausen gave me the summer before; some I deceived out, gettin' 'em
+to chase me through the winders, an' then doublin' back on my tracks
+an' lockin' 'em out. It was mighty wearin' work.
+
+"Last June there was twice as many. By actual tab I shooed two hundred
+and eight bears and a panther off into the mountains. When the last
+one as I thought disappeared into the woods I searched the house from
+top to bottom to see if there was any more to be got rid of. Every
+blessed one of the five hundred rooms I went through, and not a bear
+was left that I could see. I can tell you, I was glad, because there
+was a partickerly ugly run of 'em this year, an' they gave me a pile
+o' trouble. They hadn't found much to eat in the hotel, an' they was
+disappointed and cross. As a matter of fact, the only things they
+found in the place they could eat was a piano stool and an old hair
+trunk full o' paper-covered novels, which don't make a very hearty
+meal for two hundred and eight bears and a panther."
+
+"I should say not," said Sapphira, "particularly if the novels were as
+light as most of them are nowadays."
+
+"I can't say as to that," said Beelzy. "I ain't got time to read 'em
+and so I ain't any judge. But all this time I was sufferin' like
+hookey with awful spasms of whoopin' cough. I whooped so hard once it
+smashed one o' the best echoes in the place all to flinders, an' of
+course that made the work twice as harder. So, naturally, when I found
+there warn't another bear left in the hotel, I just threw myself down
+anywhere, and slept. My! how I slept. I don't suppose anything ever
+slept sounder'n I did. And then it happened."
+
+Beelzy gave his trousers a hitch and let his voice drop to a stage
+whisper that lent a wondrous impressiveness to his narration.
+
+"As I was a-layin' there unconscious, dreamin' of home and father, a
+great big black hungry bruin weighin' six hundred and forty-three
+pounds, that had been hidin' in the bread oven in the bakery, where I
+hadn't thought of lookin' for him, came saunterin' along, hummin' a
+little tune all by himself, and lickin' his chops with delight at the
+idee of havin' me raw for his dinner. I lay on unconscious of my
+danger, until he got right up close, an' then I waked up, an' openin'
+my eyes saw this great black savage thing gloatin' over me an' tears
+of joy runnin' out of his mouth as he thought of the choice meal he
+was about to have. He was sniffin' my bang when I first caught sight
+of him."
+
+"Mercy!" cried Sapphira, "I should think you'd have died of fright."
+
+[Illustration: "At the first whoop Mr. Bear jumped ten feet and fell
+over backwards on the floor." _Chapter XII._]
+
+"I did," said Beelzy, politely, "but I came to life again in a minute.
+'Oh Lor!' says I, as I see how hungry he was. 'This here's the end o'
+me;' at which the bear looked me straight in the eye, licked his chops
+again, and was about to take a nibble off my right ear when 'Whoop!' I
+had a spasm of whoopin'. Well, Ma'am, I guess you know what that
+means. There ain't nothin' more uncanny, more terrifyin' in the whole
+run o' human noises, barrin' a German Opery, than the whoop o' the
+whoopin' cough. At the first whoop Mr. Bear jumped ten feet and fell
+over backwards onto the floor; at the second he scrambled to his feet
+and put for the door, but stopped and looked around hopin' he was
+mistaken, when I whooped a third time. The third did the business.
+That third whoop would have scared Indians. It was awful. It was like
+a tornado blowin' through a fog-horn with a megaphone in front of it.
+When he heard that, Mr. Bear turned on all four of his heels and
+started on a scoot up into the woods that must have carried him ten
+miles before I quit coughin'.
+
+"An' that's why, Ma'am, I say that when you've got to shoo bears for a
+livin', an attack o' whoopin' cough is a useful thing to have around."
+
+Saying which, Beelzy departed to find Number 433's left boot which he
+had left at Number 334's door by some odd mistake.
+
+"What do you think of that, Mr. Munchausen?" asked Sapphira, as Beelzy
+left the room.
+
+"I don't know," said Mr. Munchausen, with a sigh. "I'm inclined to
+think that I am a trifle envious of him. The rest of us are not in his
+class."
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+WRIGGLETTO
+
+
+It was in the afternoon of a beautiful summer day, and Mr. Munchausen
+had come up from the simmering city of Cimmeria to spend a day or two
+with Diavolo and Angelica and their venerable parents. They had all
+had dinner, and were now out on the back piazza overlooking the
+magnificent river Styx, which flowed from the mountains to the sea,
+condescending on its way thither to look in upon countless
+insignificant towns which had grown up on its banks, among which was
+the one in which Diavolo and Angelica had been born and lived all
+their lives. Mr. Munchausen was lying comfortably in a hammock,
+collecting his thoughts.
+
+Angelica was somewhat depressed, but Diavolo was jubilant and all
+because in the course of a walk they had had that morning Diavolo had
+killed a snake.
+
+"It was fine sport," said Diavolo. "He was lying there in the sun, and
+I took a stick and put him out of his misery in two minutes."
+
+Here Diavolo illustrated the process by whacking the Baron over his
+waist-coat with a small malacca stick he carried.
+
+"Well, I didn't like it," said Angelica. "I don't care for snakes, but
+somehow or other it seems to me we'd ought to have left him alone. He
+wasn't hurting anybody off there. If he'd come walking on our place,
+that would have been one thing, but we went walking where he was, and
+he had as much right to take a sun-bath there as we had."
+
+"That's true enough," put in Mr. Munchausen, resolved after Diavolo's
+whack, to side against him. "You've just about hit it, Angelica. It
+wasn't polite of you in the first place, to disturb his snakeship in
+his nap, and having done so, I can't see why Diavolo wanted to kill
+him."
+
+"Oh, pshaw!" said Diavolo, airily. "What's snakes good for except to
+kill? I'll kill 'em every chance I get. They aren't any good."
+
+"All right," said Mr. Munchausen, quietly. "I suppose you know all
+about it; but I know a thing or two about snakes myself that do not
+exactly agree with what you say. They are some good sometimes, and, as
+a matter of fact, as a general rule, they are less apt to attack you
+without reason than you are to attack them. A snake is rather inclined
+to mind its own business unless he finds it necessary to do otherwise.
+Occasionally too you'll find a snake with a truly amiable character.
+I'll never forget my old pet Wriggletto, for instance, and as long as
+I remember him I can't help having a warm corner for snakes in my
+heart."
+
+Here Mr. Munchausen paused and puffed thoughtfully on his cigar as a
+far-away half-affectionate look came into his eye.
+
+"Who was Wriggletto?" asked Diavolo, transferring a half dollar from
+Mr. Munchausen's pocket to his own.
+
+"Who was he?" cried Mr. Munchausen. "You don't mean to say that I have
+never told you about Wriggletto, my pet boa-constrictor, do you?"
+
+"You never told me," said Angelica. "But I'm not everybody. Maybe
+you've told some other little Imps."
+
+"No, indeed!" said Mr. Munchausen. "You two are the only little Imps I
+tell stories to, and as far as I am concerned, while I admit you are
+not everybody you are somebody and that's more than everybody is.
+Wriggletto was a boa-constrictor I once knew in South America, and he
+was without exception, the most remarkable bit of a serpent I ever
+met. Genial, kind, intelligent, grateful and useful, and, after I'd
+had him a year or two, wonderfully well educated. He could write with
+himself as well as you or I can with a pen. There's a recommendation
+for you. Few men are all that--and few boa-constrictors either, as far
+as that goes. I admit Wriggletto was an exception to the general run
+of serpents, but he was all that I claim for him, nevertheless."
+
+"What kind of a snake did you say he was?" asked Diavolo.
+
+"A boa-constrictor," said Mr. Munchausen, "and I knew him from his
+childhood. I first encountered Wriggletto about ten miles out of Para
+on the river Amazon. He was being swallowed by a larger
+boa-constrictor, and I saved his life by catching hold of his tail and
+pulling him out just as the other was getting ready to give the last
+gulp which would have taken Wriggletto in completely, and placed him
+beyond all hope of ever being saved."
+
+"What was the other boa doing while you were saving Wriggletto?" asked
+Diavolo, who was fond always of hearing both sides to every question,
+and whose father, therefore, hoped he might some day grow up to be a
+great judge, or at least serve with distinction upon a jury.
+
+"He couldn't do anything," returned Mr. Munchausen. "He was powerless
+as long as Wriggletto's head stuck in his throat and just before I got
+the smaller snake extracted I killed the other one by cutting off his
+tail behind his ears. It was not a very dangerous rescue on my part as
+long as Wriggletto was likely to be grateful. I must confess for a
+minute I was afraid he might not comprehend all I had done for him,
+and it was just possible he might attack me, but the hug he gave me
+when he found himself free once more was reassuring. He wound himself
+gracefully around my body, squeezed me gently and then slid off into
+the road again, as much as to say 'Thank you, sir. You're a brick.'
+After that there was nothing Wriggletto would not do for me. He
+followed me everywhere I went from that time on. He seemed to learn
+all in an instant that there were hundreds of little things to be done
+about the house of an old bachelor like myself which a willing serpent
+could do, and he made it his business to do those things: like picking
+up my collars from the floor, and finding my studs for me when they
+rolled under the bureau, and a thousand and one other little services
+of a like nature, and when you, Master Diavolo, try in future to say
+that snakes are only good to kill and are of no use to any one, you
+must at least make an exception in favour of Wriggletto."
+
+"I will," said Diavolo, "But you haven't told us of the other useful
+things he did for you yet."
+
+"I was about to do so," said Mr. Munchausen. "In the first place,
+before he learned how to do little things about the house for me,
+Wriggletto acted as a watch-dog and you may be sure that nobody ever
+ventured to prowl around my house at night while Wriggletto slept out
+on the lawn. Para was quite full of conscienceless fellows, too, at
+that time, any one of whom would have been glad to have a chance to
+relieve me of my belongings if they could get by my watch-snake. Two
+of them tried it one dark stormy night, and Wriggletto when he
+discovered them climbing in at my window, crawled up behind them and
+winding his tail about them crept down to the banks of the Amazon,
+dragging them after him. There he tossed them into the river, and came
+back to his post once more."
+
+"Did you see him do it, Uncle Munch?" asked Angelica.
+
+"No, I did not. I learned of it afterwards. Wriggletto himself said
+never a word. He was too modest for that," said Mr. Munchausen. "One
+of the robbers wrote a letter to the Para newspapers about it,
+complaining that any one should be allowed to keep a reptile like that
+around, and suggested that anyhow people using snakes in place of dogs
+should be compelled to license them, and put up a sign at their gates:
+
+                         BEWARE OF THE SNAKE!
+
+"The man never acknowledged, of course, that he was the robber,--said
+that he was calling on business when the thing happened,--but he
+didn't say what his business was, but I knew better, and later on the
+other robber and he fell out, and they confessed that the business
+they had come on was to take away a few thousand gold coins of the
+realm which I was known to have in the house locked in a steel chest.
+
+"I bought Wriggletto a handsome silver collar after that, and it was
+generally understood that he was the guardian of my place, and robbers
+bothered me no more. Then he was finer than a cat for rats. On very
+hot days he would go off into the cellar, where it was cool, and lie
+there with his mouth wide open and his eyes shut, and catch rats by
+the dozens. They'd run around in the dark, and the first thing they'd
+know they'd stumble into Wriggletto's mouth; and he swallowed them and
+licked his chops afterwards, just as you or I do when we've swallowed
+a fine luscious oyster or a clam.
+
+"But pleasantest of all the things Wriggletto did for me--and he was
+untiring in his attentions in that way--was keeping me cool on hot
+summer nights. Para as you may have heard is a pretty hot place at
+best, lying in a tropical region as it does, but sometimes it is awful
+for a man used to the Northern climate, as I was. The act of fanning
+one's self, so far from cooling one off, makes one hotter than ever.
+Maybe you remember how it was with the elephant in the poem:
+
+  "'Oh my, oh dear!' the elephant said,
+    'It is so awful hot!
+  I've fanned myself for seventy weeks,
+    And haven't cooled a jot.'
+
+"And that was the way it was with me in Para on hot nights. I'd fan
+and fan and fan, but I couldn't get cool until Wriggletto became a
+member of my family, and then I was all right. He used to wind his
+tail about a huge palm-leaf fan I had cut in the forest, so large that
+I couldn't possibly handle it myself, and he'd wave it to and fro by
+the hour, with the result that my house was always the breeziest place
+in Para."
+
+"Where is Wriggletto now?" asked Diavolo.
+
+"Heigho!" sighed Mr. Munchausen. "He died, poor fellow, and all
+because of that silver collar I gave him. He tried to swallow a jibola
+that entered my house one night on wickedness intent, and while
+Wriggletto's throat was large enough when he stretched it to take down
+three jibolas, with a collar on which wouldn't stretch he couldn't
+swallow one. He didn't know that, unfortunately, and he kept on trying
+until the jibola got a quarter way down and then he stuck. Each
+swallow, of course, made the collar fit more tightly and finally poor
+Wriggletto choked himself to death. I felt so badly about it that I
+left Para within a month, but meanwhile I had a suit of clothes made
+out of Wriggletto's skin, and wore it for years, and then, when the
+clothes began to look worn, I had the skin re-tanned and made over
+into shoes and slippers. So you see that even after death he was
+useful to me. He was a faithful snake, and that is why when I hear
+people running down all snakes I tell the story of Wriggletto."
+
+[Illustration: "He used to wind his tail about a fan and he'd wave it
+to and fro by the hour." _Chapter XIII._]
+
+There was a pause for a few moments, when Diavolo said, "Uncle Munch,
+is that a true story you've been giving us?"
+
+"True?" cried Mr. Munchausen. "True? Why, my dear boy, what a
+question! If you don't believe it, bring me your atlas, and I'll show
+you just where Para is."
+
+Diavolo did as he was told, and sure enough, Mr. Munchausen did
+exactly as he said he would, which Diavolo thought was very
+remarkable, but he still was not satisfied.
+
+"You said he could write as well with himself as you or I could with a
+pen, Uncle Munch," he said. "How was that?"
+
+"Why that was simple enough," explained Mr. Munchausen. "You see he
+was very black, and thirty-nine feet long and remarkably supple and
+slender. After a year of hard study he learned to bunch himself into
+letters, and if he wanted to say anything to me he'd simply form
+himself into a written sentence. Indeed his favourite attitude when in
+repose showed his wonderful gift in chirography as well as his
+affection for me. If you will get me a card I will prove it."
+
+Diavolo brought Mr. Munchausen the card and upon it he drew the
+following:
+
+[Illustration: A snake in the form of 'UncleMunch']
+
+"There," said Mr. Munchausen. "That's the way Wriggletto always used
+to lie when he was at rest. His love for me was very affecting."
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+THE POETIC JUNE-BUG, TOGETHER WITH SOME REMARKS ON THE GILLYHOOLY BIRD
+
+
+"Uncle Munch," said Diavolo one afternoon as a couple of bicyclers
+sped past the house at breakneck speed, "which would you rather have,
+a bicycle or a horse?"
+
+"Well, I must say, my boy, that is a difficult question to answer,"
+Mr. Munchausen replied after scratching his head dubiously for a few
+minutes. "You might as well ask a man which he prefers, a hammock or a
+steam-yacht. To that question I should reply that if I wanted to sell
+it, I'd rather have a steam-yacht, but for a pleasant swing on a cool
+piazza in midsummer or under the apple-trees, a hammock would be far
+preferable. Steam-yachts are not much good to swing in under an apple
+tree, and very few piazzas that I know of are big enough--"
+
+"Oh, now, you know what I mean, Uncle Munch," Diavolo retorted,
+tapping Mr. Munchausen upon the end of his nose, for a twinkle in Mr.
+Munchausen's eye seemed to indicate that he was in one of his chaffing
+moods, and a greater tease than Mr. Munchausen when he felt that way
+no one has ever known. "I mean for horse-back riding, which would you
+rather have?"
+
+"Ah, that's another matter," returned Mr. Munchausen, calmly. "Now I
+know how to answer your question. For horse-back riding I certainly
+prefer a horse; though, on the other hand, for bicycling, bicycles are
+better than horses. Horses make very poor bicycles, due no doubt to
+the fact that they have no wheels."
+
+Diavolo began to grow desperate.
+
+"Of course," Mr. Munchausen went on, "all I have to say in this
+connection is based merely on my ideas, and not upon any personal
+experience. I've been horse-back riding on horses, and bicycling on
+bicycles, but I never went horse-back riding on a bicycle, or
+bicycling on horseback. I should think it might be exciting to go
+bicycling on horse-back, but very dangerous. It is hard enough for me
+to keep a bicycle from toppling over when I'm riding on a hard,
+straight, level well-paved road, without experimenting with my wheel
+on a horse's back. However if you wish to try it some day and will get
+me a horse with a back as big as Trafalgar Square I'm willing to make
+the effort."
+
+Angelica giggled. It was lots of fun for her when Mr. Munchausen
+teased Diavolo, though she didn't like it quite so much when it was
+her turn to be treated that way. Diavolo wanted to laugh too, but he
+had too much dignity for that, and to conceal his desire to grin from
+Mr. Munchausen he began to hunt about for an old newspaper, or a lump
+of coal or something else he could make a ball of to throw at him.
+
+"Which would you rather do, Angelica," Mr. Munchausen resumed, "go to
+sea in a balloon or attend a dumb-crambo party in a chicken-coop?"
+
+"I guess I would," laughed Angelica.
+
+"That's a good answer," Mr. Munchausen put in. "It is quite as
+intelligent as the one which is attributed to the Gillyhooly bird.
+When the Gillyhooly bird was asked his opinion of giraffes, he
+scratched his head for a minute and said,
+
+  "'The question hath but little wit
+    That you have put to me,
+  But I will try to answer it
+    With prompt candidity.
+
+  The automobile is a thing
+    That's pleasing to the mind;
+  And in a lustrous diamond ring
+    Some merit I can find.
+
+  Some persons gloat o'er French Chateaux;
+    Some dote on lemon ice;
+  While others gorge on mixed gateaux,
+    Yet have no use for mice.
+
+  I'm very fond of oyster-stew,
+    I love a patent-leather boot,
+  But after all, 'twixt me and you,
+    The fish-ball is my favourite fruit.'"
+
+"Hoh" jeered Diavolo, who, attracted by the allusion to a kind of bird
+of which he had never heard before, had given up the quest for a paper
+ball and returned to Mr. Munchausen's side, "I don't think that was a
+very intelligent answer. It didn't answer the question at all."
+
+"That's true, and that is why it was intelligent," said Mr.
+Munchausen. "It was noncommittal. Some day when you are older and know
+less than you do now, you will realise, my dear Diavolo, how valuable
+a thing is the reply that answereth not."
+
+Mr. Munchausen paused long enough to let the lesson sink in and then
+he resumed.
+
+"The Gillyhooly bird is a perfect owl for wisdom of that sort," he
+said. "It never lets anybody know what it thinks; it never makes
+promises, and rarely speaks except to mystify people. It probably has
+just as decided an opinion concerning giraffes as you or I have, but
+it never lets anybody into the secret."
+
+"What is a Gillyhooly bird, anyhow?" asked Diavolo.
+
+"He's a bird that never sings for fear of straining his voice; never
+flies for fear of wearying his wings; never eats for fear of spoiling
+his digestion; never stands up for fear of bandying his legs and never
+lies down for fear of injuring his spine," said Mr. Munchausen. "He
+has no feathers, because, as he says, if he had, people would pull
+them out to trim hats with, which would be painful, and he never goes
+into debt because, as he observes himself, he has no hope of paying
+the bill with which nature has endowed him, so why run up others?"
+
+"I shouldn't think he'd live long if he doesn't eat?" suggested
+Angelica.
+
+"That's the great trouble," said Mr. Munchausen. "He doesn't live
+long. Nothing so ineffably wise as the Gillyhooly bird ever does live
+long. I don't believe a Gillyhooly bird ever lived more than a day,
+and that, connected with the fact that he is very ugly and keeps
+himself out of sight, is possibly why no one has ever seen one. He is
+known only by hearsay, and as a matter of fact, besides ourselves, I
+doubt if any one has ever heard of him."
+
+Diavolo eyed Mr. Munchausen narrowly.
+
+"Speaking of Gillyhooly birds, however, and to be serious for a
+moment," Mr. Munchausen continued flinching nervously under Diavolo's
+unyielding gaze; "I never told you about the poetic June-bug that
+worked the typewriter, did I?"
+
+"Never heard of such a thing," cried Diavolo. "The idea of a June-bug
+working a typewriter."
+
+"I don't believe it," said Angelica, "he hasn't got any fingers."
+
+"That shows all you know about it," retorted Mr. Munchausen. "You
+think because you are half-way right you are all right. However, if
+you don't want to hear the story of the June-bug that worked the
+type-writer, I won't tell it. My tongue is tired, anyhow."
+
+"Please go on," said Diavolo. "I want to hear it."
+
+"So do I," said Angelica. "There are lots of stories I don't believe
+that I like to hear--'Jack the Giant-killer' and 'Cinderella,' for
+instance."
+
+"Very well," said Mr. Munchausen. "I'll tell it, and you can believe
+it or not, as you please. It was only two summers ago that the thing
+happened, and I think it was very curious. As you may know, I often
+have a great lot of writing to do and sometimes I get very tired
+holding a pen in my hand. When you get old enough to write real long
+letters you'll know what I mean. Your writing hand will get so tired
+that sometimes you'll wish some wizard would come along smart enough
+to invent a machine by means of which everything you think can be
+transferred to paper as you think it, without the necessity of
+writing. But as yet the only relief to the man whose hand is worn out
+by the amount of writing he has to do is the use of the type-writer,
+which is hard only on the fingers. So to help me in my work two
+summers ago I bought a type-writing machine, and put it in the great
+bay-window of my room at the hotel where I was stopping. It was a
+magnificent hotel, but it had one drawback--it was infested with
+June-bugs. Most summer hotels are afflicted with mosquitoes, but this
+one had June-bugs instead, and all night long they'd buzz and butt
+their heads against the walls until the guests went almost crazy with
+the noise.
+
+"At first I did not mind it very much. It was amusing to watch them,
+and my friends and I used to play a sort of game of chance with them
+that entertained us hugely. We marked the walls off in squares which
+we numbered and then made little wagers as to which of the squares a
+specially selected June-bug would whack next. To simplify the game we
+caught the chosen June-bug and put some powdered charcoal on his head,
+so that when he butted up against the white wall he would leave a
+black mark in the space he hit. It was really one of the most exciting
+games of that particular kind that I ever played, and many a rainy day
+was made pleasant by this diversion.
+
+"But after awhile like everything else June-bug Roulette as we called
+it began to pall and I grew tired of it and wished there never had
+been such a thing as a June-bug in the world. I did my best to forget
+them, but it was impossible. Their buzzing and butting continued
+uninterrupted, and toward the end of the month they developed a
+particularly bad habit of butting the electric call button at the side
+of my bed. The consequence was that at all hours of the night,
+hall-boys with iced-water, and house-maids with bath towels, and
+porters with kindling-wood would come knocking at my door and routing
+me out of bed--summoned of course by none other than those horrible
+butting insects. This particular nuisance became so unendurable that I
+had to change my room for one which had no electric bell in it.
+
+"So things went, until June passed and July appeared. The majority of
+the nuisances promptly got out but one especially vigorous and
+athletic member of the tribe remained. He became unbearable and
+finally one night I jumped out of bed either to kill him or to drive
+him out of my apartment forever, but he wouldn't go, and try as I
+might I couldn't hit him hard enough to kill him. In sheer desperation
+I took the cover of my typewriting machine and tried to catch him in
+that. Finally I succeeded, and, as I thought, shook the heedless
+creature out of the window promptly slamming the window shut so that
+he might not return; and then putting the type-writer cover back over
+the machine, I went to bed again, but not to sleep as I had hoped. All
+night long every second or two I'd hear the type-writer click. This I
+attributed to nervousness on my part. As far as I knew there wasn't
+anything to make the type-writer click, and the fact that I heard it
+do so served only to convince me that I was tired and imagined that I
+heard noises.
+
+[Illustration: "Most singular of all was the fact that consciously or
+unconsciously the insect had butted out a verse." _Chapter XIV._]
+
+"The next morning, however, on opening the machine I found that the
+June-bug had not only not been shaken out of the window, but had
+actually spent the night inside of the cover, butting his head against
+the keys, having no wall to butt with it, and most singular of all was
+the fact that, consciously or unconsciously, the insect had butted out
+a verse which read:
+
+  "'I'm glad I haven't any brains,
+    For there can be no doubt
+  I'd have to give up butting
+    If I had, or butt them out.'"
+
+"Mercy! Really?" cried Angelica.
+
+"Well I can't prove it," said Mr. Munchausen, "by producing the
+June-bug, but I can show you the hotel, I can tell you the number of
+the room; I can show you the type-writing machine, and I have recited
+the verse. If you're not satisfied with that I'll have to stand your
+suspicions."
+
+"What became of the June-bug?" demanded Diavolo.
+
+"He flew off as soon as I lifted the top of the machine," said Mr.
+Munchausen. "He had all the modesty of a true poet and did not wish to
+be around while his poem was being read."
+
+"It's queer how you can't get rid of June-bugs, isn't it, Uncle
+Munch," suggested Angelica.
+
+"Oh, we got rid of 'em next season all right," said Mr. Munchausen. "I
+invented a scheme that kept them away all the following summer. I got
+the landlord to hang calendars all over the house with one full page
+for each month. Then in every room we exposed the page for May and
+left it that way all summer. When the June-bugs arrived and saw these,
+they were fooled into believing that June hadn't come yet, and off
+they flew to wait. They are very inconsiderate of other people's
+comfort," Mr. Munchausen concluded, "but they are rigorously bound by
+an etiquette of their own. A self-respecting June-bug would no more
+appear until the June-bug season is regularly open than a gentleman of
+high society would go to a five o'clock tea munching fresh-roasted
+peanuts. And by the way, that reminds me I happen to have a bag of
+peanuts right here in my pocket."
+
+Here Mr. Munchausen, transferring the luscious goobers to Angelica,
+suddenly remembered that he had something to say to the Imps' father,
+and hurriedly left them.
+
+"Do you suppose that's true, Diavolo?" whispered Angelica as their
+friend disappeared.
+
+"Well it might happen," said Diavolo, "but I've a sort of notion that
+it's 'maginary like the Gillyhooly bird. Gimme a peanut."
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+A LUCKY STROKE
+
+
+"Mr. Munchausen," said Ananias, as he and the famous warrior drove off
+from the first hole at the Missing Links, "you never seem to weary of
+the game of golf. What is its precise charm in your eyes,--the
+health-giving qualities of the game or its capacity for bad lies?"
+
+"I owe my life to it," replied the Baron. "That is to say to my
+precision as a player I owe one of the many preservations of my
+existence which have passed into history. Furthermore it is ever
+varying in its interest. Like life itself it is full of hazards and no
+man knows at the beginning of his stroke what will be the requirements
+of the next. I never told you of the bovine lie I got once while
+playing a match with Bonaparte, did I?"
+
+"I do not recall it," said Ananias, foozling his second stroke into
+the stone wall.
+
+"I was playing with my friend Bonaparte, for the Cosmopolitan
+Championship," said Munchausen, "and we were all even at the
+thirty-sixth hole. Bonaparte had sliced his ball into a stubble field
+from the tee, whereat he was inclined to swear, until by an odd
+mischance I drove mine into the throat of a bull that was pasturing on
+the fair green two hundred and ninety-eight yards distant. 'Shall we
+take it over?' I asked. 'No,' laughed Bonaparte, thinking he had me.
+'We must play the game. I shall play my lie. You must play yours.'
+'Very well,' said I. 'So be it. Golf is golf, bull or no bull.' And
+off we went. It took Bonaparte seven strokes to get on the green
+again, which left me a like number to extricate my ball from the
+throat of the unwelcome bovine. It was a difficult business, but I
+made short work of it. Tying my red silk handkerchief to the end of my
+brassey I stepped in front of the great creature and addressing an
+imaginary ball before him made the usual swing back and through
+stroke. The bull, angered by the fluttering red handkerchief, reared
+up and made a dash at me. I ran in the direction of the hole, the bull
+in pursuit for two hundred yards. Here I hid behind a tree while Mr.
+Bull stopped short and snorted again. Still there was no sign of the
+ball, and after my pursuer had quieted a little I emerged from my
+hiding place and with the same club and in the same manner played
+three. The bull surprised at my temerity threw his head back with an
+angry toss and tried to bellow forth his wrath, as I had designed he
+should, but the obstruction in his throat prevented him. The ball had
+stuck in his pharynx. Nothing came of his spasm but a short hacking
+cough and a wheeze--then silence. 'I'll play four,' I cried to
+Bonaparte, who stood watching me from a place of safety on the other
+side of the stone wall. Again I swung my red-flagged brassey in front
+of the angry creature's face and what I had hoped for followed. The
+second attempt at a bellow again resulted in a hacking cough and a
+sneeze, and lo the ball flew out of his throat and landed dead to the
+hole. The caddies drove the bull away. Bonaparte played eight, missed
+a putt for a nine, stymied himself in a ten, holed out in twelve and I
+went down in five."
+
+"Jerusalem!" cried Ananias. "What did Bonaparte say?"
+
+[Illustration: "Again I swung my red-flagged brassey in front of the angry
+creature's face, and what I had hoped for followed." _Chapter XV._]
+
+"He delivered a short, quick nervous address in Corsican and retired
+to the club-house where he spent the afternoon drowning his sorrows in
+Absinthe high-balls. 'Great hole that, Bonaparte,' said I when his
+geniality was about to return. 'Yes,' said he. 'A regular lu-lu, eh?'
+said I. 'More than that, Baron,' said he. 'It was a Waterlooloo.' It
+was the first pun I ever heard the Emperor make."
+
+"We all have our weak moments," said Ananias drily, playing nine from
+behind the wall. "I give the hole up," he added angrily.
+
+"Let's play it out anyhow," said Munchausen, playing three to the
+green.
+
+"All right," Ananias agreed, taking a ten and rimming the cup.
+
+Munchausen took three to go down, scoring six in all.
+
+"Two up," said he, as Ananias putted out in eleven.
+
+"How the deuce do you make that out? This is only the first hole,"
+cried Ananias with some show of heat.
+
+"You gave up a hole, didn't you?" demanded Munchausen.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And I won a hole, didn't I?"
+
+"You did--but--"
+
+"Well that's two holes. Fore!" cried Munchausen.
+
+The two walked along in silence for a few minutes, and the Baron
+resumed.
+
+"Yes, golf is a splendid game and I love it, though I don't think I'd
+ever let a good canvasback duck get cold while I was talking about it.
+When I have a canvasback duck before me I don't think of anything else
+while it's there. But unquestionably I'm fond of golf, and I have a
+very good reason to be. It has done a great deal for me, and as I have
+already told you, once it really saved my life."
+
+"Saved your life, eh?" said Ananias.
+
+"That's what I said," returned Mr. Munchausen, "and so of course that
+is the way it was."
+
+"I should admire to hear the details," said Ananias. "I presume you
+were going into a decline and it restored your strength and vitality."
+
+"No," said Mr. Munchausen, "it wasn't that way at all. It saved my
+life when I was attacked by a fierce and ravenously hungry lion. If I
+hadn't known how to play golf it would have been farewell forever to
+Mr. Munchausen, and Mr. Lion would have had a fine luncheon that day,
+at which I should have been the turkey and cranberry sauce and mince
+pie all rolled into one."
+
+Ananias laughed.
+
+"It's easy enough to laugh at my peril now," said Mr. Munchausen, "but
+if you'd been with me you wouldn't have laughed very much. On the
+contrary, Ananias, you'd have ruined what little voice you ever had
+screeching."
+
+"I wasn't laughing at the danger you were in," said Ananias. "I don't
+see anything funny in that. What I was laughing at was the idea of a
+lion turning up on a golf course. They don't have lions on any of the
+golf courses that I am familiar with."
+
+"That may be, my dear Ananias," said Mr. Munchausen, "but it doesn't
+prove anything. What you are familiar with has no especial bearing
+upon the ordering of the Universe. They had lions by the hundreds on
+the particular links I refer to. I laid the links out myself and I
+fancy I know what I am talking about. They were in the desert of
+Sahara. And I tell you what it is," he added, slapping his knee
+enthusiastically, "they were the finest links I ever played on. There
+wasn't a hole shorter than three miles and a quarter, which gives you
+plenty of elbow room, and the fair green had all the qualities of a
+first class billiard table, so that your ball got a magnificent roll
+on it."
+
+"What did you do for hazards?" asked Ananias.
+
+"Oh we had 'em by the dozen," replied Mr. Munchausen. "There weren't
+any ponds or stone walls, of course, but there were plenty of others
+that were quite as interesting. There was the Sphynx for instance; and
+for bunkers the pyramids can't be beaten. Then occasionally right in
+the middle of a game a caravan ten or twelve miles long, would begin
+to drag its interminable length across the middle of the course, and
+it takes mighty nice work with the lofting iron to lift a ball over a
+caravan without hitting a camel or killing an Arab, I can tell you.
+Then finally I'm sure I don't know of any more hazardous hazard for a
+golf player--or for anybody else for that matter--than a real hungry
+African lion out in search of breakfast, especially when you meet him
+on the hole furthest from home and have a stretch of three or four
+miles between him and assistance with no revolver or other weapon at
+hand. That's hazard enough for me and it took the best work I could do
+with my brassey to get around it."
+
+"You always were strong at a brassey lie," said Ananias.
+
+"Thank you," said Mr. Munchausen. "There are few lies I can't get
+around. But on this morning I was playing for the Mid-African
+Championship. I'd been getting along splendidly. My record for fifteen
+holes was about seven hundred and eighty-three strokes, and I was
+flattering myself that I was about to turn in the best card that had
+ever been seen in a medal play contest in all Africa. My drive from
+the sixteenth tee was a simple beauty. I thought the ball would never
+stop, I hit it such a tremendous whack. It had a flight of three
+hundred and eighty-two yards and a roll of one hundred and twenty
+more, and when it finally stopped it turned up in a mighty good lie on
+a natural tee, which the wind had swirled up. Calling to the monkey
+who acted as my caddy--we used monkeys for caddies always in Africa,
+and they were a great success because they don't talk and they use
+their tails as a sort of extra hand,--I got out my brassey for the
+second stroke, took my stance on the hardened sand, swung my club
+back, fixed my eye on the ball and was just about to carry through,
+when I heard a sound which sent my heart into my boots, my caddy
+galloping back to the club house, and set my teeth chattering like a
+pair of castanets. It was unmistakable, that sound. When a hungry lion
+roars you know precisely what it is the moment you hear it, especially
+if you have heard it before. It doesn't sound a bit like the miauing
+of a cat; nor is it suggestive of the rumble of artillery in an
+adjacent street. There is no mistaking it for distant thunder, as some
+writers would have you believe. It has none of the gently mournful
+quality that characterises the soughing of the wind through the
+leafless branches of the autumnal forest, to which a poet might liken
+it; it is just a plain lion-roaring and nothing else, and when you
+hear it you know it. The man who mistakes it for distant thunder might
+just as well be struck by lightning there and then for all the chance
+he has to get away from it ultimately. The poet who confounds it with
+the gentle soughing breeze never lives to tell about it. He gets
+himself eaten up for his foolishness. It doesn't require a Daniel come
+to judgment to recognise a lion's roar on sight.
+
+"I should have perished myself that morning if I had not known on the
+instant just what were the causes of the disturbance. My nerve did not
+desert me, however, frightened as I was. I stopped my play and looked
+out over the sand in the direction whence the roaring came, and there
+he stood a perfect picture of majesty, and a giant among lions, eyeing
+me critically as much as to say, 'Well this is luck, here's breakfast
+fit for a king!' but he reckoned without his host. I was in no mood to
+be served up to stop his ravening appetite and I made up my mind at
+once to stay and fight. I'm a good runner, Ananias, but I cannot beat
+a lion in a three mile sprint on a sandy soil, so fight it was. The
+question was how. My caddy gone, the only weapons I had with me were
+my brassey and that one little gutta percha ball, but thanks to my
+golf they were sufficient.
+
+"Carefully calculating the distance at which the huge beast stood, I
+addressed the ball with unusual care, aiming slightly to the left to
+overcome my tendency to slice, and drove the ball straight through the
+lion's heart as he poised himself on his hind legs ready to spring
+upon me. It was a superb stroke and not an instant too soon, for just
+as the ball struck him he sprang forward, and even as it was landed
+but two feet away from where I stood, but, I am happy to say, dead.
+
+"It was indeed a narrow escape, and it tried my nerves to the full,
+but I extracted the ball and resumed my play in a short while, adding
+the lucky stroke to my score meanwhile. But I lost the match,--not
+because I lost my nerve, for this I did not do, but because I lifted
+from the lion's heart. The committee disqualified me because I did not
+play from my lie and the cup went to my competitor. However, I was
+satisfied to have escaped with my life. I'd rather be a live runner-up
+than a dead champion any day."
+
+"A wonderful experience," said Ananias. "Perfectly wonderful. I never
+heard of a stroke to equal that."
+
+"You are too modest, Ananias," said Mr. Munchausen drily. "Too modest
+by half. You and Sapphira hold the record for that, you know."
+
+"I have forgotten the episode," said Ananias.
+
+"Didn't you and she make your last hole on a single stroke?" demanded
+Munchausen with an inward chuckle.
+
+"Oh--yes," said Ananias grimly, as he recalled the incident. "But you
+know we didn't win any more than you did."
+
+"Oh, didn't you?" asked Munchausen.
+
+"No," replied Ananias. "You forget that Sapphira and I were two down
+at the finish."
+
+And Mr. Munchausen played the rest of the game in silence. Ananias had
+at last got the best of him.
+
+
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+
+
+Transcriber's note:
+
+Spellings were left as found.
+
+Illustrations were moved when they interrupted paragraphs.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MR. MUNCHAUSEN***
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