Part 21 (1/2)
Nickie saw the hunters on the chock-and-log fence ready to retire precipitately should he advance with homicidal intentions, and a vague idea that he was performing professionally before an attentive audience took possession of his bleary mind. He capered fantastically, and made a foolish attempt to climb a tree. Then he jumped up and down like a monkey on a stick, throwing out his long arms, and growling ominously.
”By cripes, he's er dangerous beggar,” said Scott. ”He'd tear yer limb from limb. Better cripple him. I think.”
Scott raised his gun and fired. Fortunately, Scott was nervous, and missed, but the miss was a narrow thing, and Nickie heard the ping of the bullet and the plunk as it buried it in the bark of the tree behind him.
Suddenly a spasm of comprehension came to Nickie, despite the whisky, and he made a leap the gum-b.u.t.t, and hastily entrenched himself. He was being fired at, and it was neither pleasant nor healthy to be fired at, that much he realised. He peered, monkey-like, from behind the tree, and made an effort to grasp the situation. Scott was taking aim again.
”No no,” said Watkins, ”we mustn't kill him unless it's necessary. He's very valuable. The Professor says he's worth a matter o' four thousand pounds. Let's scatter an' surround him, come up on him from all points, an' knock him out with the sticks. Scott and Peters holdin' their guns ready t' pot him if he gets hold of anyone.”
This plan was adopted after some argument, and the party of hunters scattered, and commenced to close in towards Mahdi, the man-monkey, going very warily. Nickie had forgotten everything by this, however, and sitting with his back to the tree was drowsing, and faintly a.s.serting that he was a king, the most mighty and dazzling' of all monarchs known to man, when the valiant hunters fell upon him.
The rush came suddenly, and in a twinkling half-a-dozen clubs were battering at Mahdi's unhappy head and thumping on his unfortunate ribs.
Every man wanted to get a lick at the monster, and every man got it.
Luckily, Nickie's skull was thick, and the Mahdi head-dress offered it some protection, otherwise there would have been an instantaneous and fatal termination to the artistic career of Nicholas Crips.
As it was, Nickie's senses were battered out of him, and within a few minutes, he was so bound round with rope that he looked like a huge Coc.o.o.n. Two saplings were cut, and suspended between these, and borne on the shoulders of eight men, the Missing Link was carried back through the towns.h.i.+p of 'Tween Bridges. The hunters shouted jubilantly, fired their guns, and yelled triumphant songs as they went, and the whole of the inhabitants turned out and made a triumphal march of it, pressing forward to see the monstrous ape dangling between the saplings.
So Mahdi, the Missing Link, was brought home to the Museum of Marvels.
When Nickie was dumped on the floor of the tent, Madame Marve screamed believing he was dead.
”We shot him first,” Watkins explained, ”an' then we got at him with our sticks.”
”Great heavens!” gasped the Professor, thought of manslaughter flas.h.i.+ng upon him. ”You might have murdered him.”
”He might 'ave murdered us,” replied the veracious Watkins, ”Why, his struggles was somethin' awful, an' he roared like a lion an' bit an'
tore. It took ten of us t' down him, an' then he bit through Orton's leg, all' knocked Billy Tett sick and 'epless. I reckon it's worth a flyer, mister.”
”But if he's killed--if he's killed!” cried the tremulous Professor.
Thunder and Madame Marve carried Nickie into he Mystic's tent; the cut away the ropes that were choking him, and discovered that although gory and bruised, he still lived and breathed, and then the Professor, always quick to seize, an opportunity, stood the hunters a whole barrel of beer, and till well on to daylight 'Tween Bridges was agitated by drink and reiterations of the sensational story of the capture of the man-eating Missing Link.
At sunrise, Bonypart returned to the show, contrite and trembling for his billet, and by this time Nickie the Kid, his bruises painted with iodine, and his battered head liberally patched with court plaster, was sleeping off the effects of his overdose of whisky.
The truants had to be on duty early that day, for the story of the escape of the man-monkey and, his capture by the heroes of 'Tween Bridges brought people from all over the district to inspect the marvel, but Madhi remained on his straw in the dark recesses of his cage, stiff, sore and filled with bitterness, while Professor Thunder explained to his awed patrons the animal's amazingly human viciousness, his love for drink, and his utterly depraved nature.
”D'yeh think I'm fallin' into fat. Nickie?” whispered the Living Skeleton, from his pedestal that evening. ”I ate an awful lot o' cheese.”
The Missing Link shook his head and groaned. ”Next time I get tight I won't do it in character,” he said, ”my realisation of the part is too convincing.”
CHAPTER XIX.
THE LINK'S LAST APPEARANCE.
IT is not forgotten that Mr. Nicholas Crips was a man of amatory instincts; he had a very warm if not particularly sincere regard for the s.e.x, and in his brighter moments, when a relapse from his natural dilatoriness induced him to have a clean-shave, a perfunctory combing, and a general tr.i.m.m.i.n.g-up, ladies of a certain cla.s.s approaching the middle-ages found him not wholly forbidding.
Nickie's close application to an artistic career as the leading feature of Professor Thunder's Museum of Marvels had lifted him out of what had become an habitual impecuniosity, and in his brief unprofessional moments he wore a whole suit and boots that did not openly advertise his sockless condition.
In addition, Nickie was leading a fairly fat and easy life; he had put on condition; he was quite at his best; and a flirtatious matron might have found him a fairly presentable person. Madame Marve, the Egyptian Mystic, was a good wife to Professor Thunder, and a good mother to Let.i.tia, according to the lights of show people at the conventions of the game, but she was still young enough to appreciate genuine admiration, and had sufficient of the vanity of the profession to roll a lively, dark eye for effect now and again.
Naturally, the lively, dark eye rolled in Nickie's direction once in a way, and Nickie responded with the beams of a tender, grey orb. He had a way of languis.h.i.+ng a little when only Madame Marve was near, and he breathed sighs of simple eloquence.