Part 15 (1/2)
”Absurd!” said the sprite, with a sneering laugh. ”The idea of a lead spoon being valuable!”
”If you had ever been able to get into the society of kings,” the major answered, with a great deal of dignity, ”you would know that on the table of a monarch lead is much more rare than silver and gold. It was this fact that made me so overpoweringly valuable, and it is not surprising that a great many of the kings who used to come to these birthday parties should become envious of Fuzzywuz and wish they owned a treasure like myself. One very old king died of envy because of me, and his heir-apparent inherited his father's desire to possess me to such a degree that he too pined away and finally disappeared entirely. Just regularly faded out of sight. Didn't die, you know, as you would, but vanished.
”So it went on for years, and finally on his sixty-fourth birthday King Fuzzywuz gave his usual party, and sixty-four of the choicest kings in the world were invited. They every one came, the feast was made ready, and just as the guests took their places around the table, the broth with me lying at the side of the tureen was brought in. The kings all took their crowns off in honor of my arrival, when suddenly pouf! a gust of wind came along and blew out every light in the hall. All was darkness, and in the midst of it I felt myself grabbed by the handle and shoved hastily into an entirely strange pocket.
”'What, ho, without there!' cried Fuzzywuz. 'Turn off the wind and bring a light.'
”The slaves hastened to do as they were told, and in less time than it takes to tell it, light and order were restored. And then a terrible scene ensued. I could see it very plainly through a b.u.t.ton-hole in the cloak of the potentate who had seized me and hidden me in his pocket.
Fuzzywuz immediately discovered that I was missing.
”'What has become of our royal spoon?' he roared to the head-waiter, who, though he was an African of the blackest hue, turned white as a sheet with fear.
”'It was in the broth, oh, Nepotic Fuzzywuz, King of the Desert and most n.o.ble Potentate of the Sand Dunes, when I, thy miserable servant, brought it into the gorgeous banqueting hall and set it here before thee, who art ever my most Serene and Egotistic Master,' returned the slave, trembling with fear and throwing himself flat upon the dining-hall floor.
”'Caitiff!' cried the king. 'I believe thou hast played me false. Do spoons take wings unto themselves and fly away? Are they tadpoles that they develop legs and hop as frogs from our royal presence? Do spoons evapidate----'
”'Evaporate, my dear,' suggested the queen in a whisper.
”'Thanks,' returned the king. 'Do spoons evaporate like water in the sun? Do they raise sails like sloops of war and thunder noiselessly out of sight? No, no. Thou hast stolen it and thou must bear the penalty of thy predilection----'
”'Dereliction,' whispered the queen, impatiently.
”'He knows what I mean,' roared the king, 'or if he doesn't he will when his head is cut off.'”
”Is that what all those big words meant?” asked Jimmieboy.
”As I remember the occurrence, it is,” returned the major. ”What the king really meant was always uncertain; he always used such big words and rarely got them right. Reprehensibility and tremulousness were great favorites of his, though I don't believe he ever knew what they meant.
But, to continue my story, at this point the king rose and sharpening the carving knife was about to behead the slave's head off when the potentate who had me in his pocket cried out:
”'Hold, oh Fuzzywuz! The slave is right. I saw the spoon myself at the side of yon tureen when it was brought hither.'
”'Then,' returned the king, 'it has been percolated----'
”'Peculated,' whispered the queen.
”'That's what I said,' retorted Fuzzywuz, angrily. 'The spoon has been speculated by some one of our royal brethren at this board. The point to be liquidated now is, who has done this deed. What, ho, without there! A guard about the palace gates--and lock the doors and bar the windows. We shall have a search. I am sorry to say, that every king in this room save only myself and my friend Prince Bigaroo, who at the risk of his kingly dignity deigned to come to the rescue of my slave, must repeal--I should say reveal--the contents of his pockets. Prince Bigaroo must be innocent or he would not have e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed as he hath.'
”You see,” said the major, in explanation, ”Bigaroo having stolen me was smart enough to see how it would be if he spoke. A guilty person in nine cases out of ten would have kept silent and let the slave suffer. So Bigaroo escaped; but all the others were searched and of course I was not found. Fuzzywuz was wild with sorrow and anger, and declared that unless I was returned within ten minutes he would wage war upon, and utterly destroy, every king in the place. The kings all turned pale--even Bigaroo's cheek grew white, but having me he was determined to keep me and so the war began.”
”Why didn't you speak and save the innocent kings?” asked the sprite.
”How could I?” retorted the major. ”Did you ever see a spoon with a tongue?”
The sprite made no answer. He evidently had never seen a spoon with a tongue.
”The war was a terrible one,” said the major, resuming his story. ”One by one the kings were destroyed, and finally only Bigaroo remained, and Fuzzywuz not having found me in the treasures of the others, finally came to see that it was Bigaroo who had stolen me. So he turned his forces toward the wicked monarch, defeated his army, and set fire to his palace. In that fire I was destroyed as a souvenir spoon and became a lump of lead once more, lying in the ruins for nearly a thousand years, when I was sold along with a lot of iron and other things to a junk dealer. He in turn sold me to a s.h.i.+p-maker, who worked me over into a sounding lead for a steamer he had built. On my first trip out I was sent overboard to see how deep the ocean was. I fell in between two huge rocks down on the ocean's bed and was caught, the rope connecting me with the s.h.i.+p snapped, and there I was, twenty thousand fathoms under the sea, lost, as I supposed, forever. The effect of the salt water upon me was very much like that of hair restorer on some people's heads. I began to grow a head of green hair--seaweed some people call it--and to this fact, strangely enough, I owed my escape from the water. A sea-cow who used to graze about where I lay, thinking that I was only a tuft of gra.s.s gathered me in one afternoon and swallowed me without blinking, and some time after, the cow having been caught and killed by some giant fishermen, I was found by the wife of one of the men when the great cow was about to be cooked. These giants were very strange people who inhabited an island out in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, which was gradually sinking into the water with the weight of the people on it, and which has now entirely disappeared. There wasn't one of the inhabitants that was less than one hundred feet tall, and in those days they used to act as light-houses for each other at night. They had but one eye apiece, and when that was open it used to flash just like a great electric light, and they'd take turns at standing up in the middle of the island all night long and turning round and round and round until you'd think they'd drop with dizziness. I staid with these people, I should say, about forty years, when one morning two of the giants got disputing as to which of them could throw a stone the farthest. One of them said he could throw a pebble two thousand miles, and the other said he could throw one all the way round the world. At this the first one laughed and jeered, and to prove that he had told the truth the second grabbed up what he thought was a pebble, but which happened to be me and threw me from him with all his force.”