Part 34 (1/2)

The prospect was not inviting. But I saw no means of escape.

Presently Donelly said: ”It is good that we brought our luncheon with us, and above all some whisky, which is the staff of life. Look here, my dear fellow. I wish it were possible to get this stinking stuff off our hands and faces; it smells like the scouring poured down the sink in Satan's own back kitchen. Is there not a bottle of claret in the basket?”

”Yes, I put one in.”

”Then,” said he, ”the best use we can put it to is to wash our faces and hands in it. Claret is poor drink, and there is the whisky to fall back on.”

”The water has all ebbed away,” I remarked ”We cannot clean ourselves in that.”

”Then uncork the _Saint Julien_.”

There was really no help for it. The smell of the mud was disgusting, and it turned one's stomach. So I pulled out the cork, and we performed our ablutions in the claret.

That done, we returned to our seats on the gunwale, one on each side, and looked sadly at one another. Six hours! That was an interminable time to spend on a mudflat in the Blackwater. Neither of us was much inclined to speak. After the lapse of a quarter of an hour, the major proposed refreshments. Accordingly we crept together into the bottom of the boat and there discussed the contents of the hamper, and we certainly did full justice to the whisky bottle. For we were wet to the skin, and beplastered from head to foot in the ill-savoured mud.

When we had done the chicken and ham, and drained the whisky jar, we returned to our several positions _vis-a-vis_. It was essential that the balance of the boat should be maintained.

Major Donelly was now in a communicative mood.

”I will say this,” observed he; ”that you are the best-informed and most agreeable man I have met with in Colchester and Chelmsford.”

I would not record this remark but for what it led up to.

I replied--I dare say I blushed--but the claret in my face made it red, anyhow. I replied: ”You flatter me.”

”Not at all. I always say what I think. You have plenty of information, and you'll grow your wings, and put on rainbow colours.”

”What on earth do you mean?” I inquired.

”Do you not know,” said he, ”that we shall all of us, some day, develop wings? Grow into angels! What do you suppose that ethereal pinions spring out of? They do not develop out of nothing. Ex nihilo nihil fit.

You cannot think that they are the ultimate produce of ham and chicken.”

”Nor of whisky.”

”Nor of whisky,” he repeated. ”You know it is so with the grub.”

”Grub is ambiguous,” I observed.

”I do not mean victuals, but the caterpillar. That creature spends its short life in eating, eating, eating. Look at a cabbage-leaf, it is riddled with holes; the grub has consumed all that vegetable matter, and I will inform you for what purpose. It retires into its chrysalis, and during the winter a transformation takes place, and in spring it breaks forth as a glorious b.u.t.terfly. The painted wings of the insect in its second stage of existence are the sublimated cabbage it has devoured in its condition of larva.”

”Quite so. What has that to do with me?”

”We are also in our larva condition. But do not for a moment suppose that the wings we shall put on with rainbow painting are the produce of what we eat here--of ham and chicken, kidneys, beef, and the like. No, sir, certainly not. They are fas.h.i.+oned out of the information we have absorbed, the knowledge we have acquired during the first stage of life.”

”How do you know that?”

”I will tell you,” he answered. ”I had a remarkable experience once. It is a rather long story, but as we have some five hours and a half to sit here looking at one another till the tide rises and floats us, I may as well tell you, and it will help to the laying on of the colours on your pinions when you acquire them. You would like to hear the tale?”

”Above all things.”

”There is a sort of prologue to it,” he went on. ”I cannot well dispense with it as it leads up to what I particularly want to say.”