Beasts and Super-Beasts

by Saki

  THE NAME-DAY

  Adventures, according to the proverb, are to the adventurous. Quite asoften they are to the non-adventurous, to the retiring, to theconstitutionally timid. John James Abbleway had been endowed by Naturewith the sort of disposition that instinctively avoids Carlist intrigues,slum crusades, the tracking of wounded wild beasts, and the moving ofhostile amendments at political meetings. If a mad dog or a Mad Mullahhad come his way he would have surrendered the way without hesitation.At school he had unwillingly acquired a thorough knowledge of the Germantongue out of deference to the plainly-expressed wishes of aforeign-languages master, who, though he taught modern subjects, employedold-fashioned methods in driving his lessons home. It was this enforcedfamiliarity with an important commercial language which thrust Abblewayin later years into strange lands where adventures were less easy toguard against than in the ordered atmosphere of an English country town.The firm that he worked for saw fit to send him one day on a prosaicbusiness errand to the far city of Vienna, and, having sent him there,continued to keep him there, still engaged in humdrum affairs ofcommerce, but with the possibilities of romance and adventure, or evenmisadventure, jostling at his elbow. After two and a half years ofexile, however, John James Abbleway had embarked on only one hazardousundertaking, and that was of a nature which would assuredly haveovertaken him sooner or later if he had been leading a sheltered,stay-at-home existence at Dorking or Huntingdon. He fell placidly inlove with a placidly lovable English girl, the sister of one of hiscommercial colleagues, who was improving her mind by a short trip toforeign parts, and in due course he was formally accepted as the youngman she was engaged to. The further step by which she was to become Mrs.John Abbleway was to take place a twelvemonth hence in a town in theEnglish midlands, by which time the firm that employed John James wouldhave no further need for his presence in the Austrian capital.

  It was early in April, two months after the installation of Abbleway asthe young man Miss Penning was engaged to, when he received a letter fromher, written from Venice. She was still peregrinating under the wing ofher brother, and as the latter’s business arrangements would take himacross to Fiume for a day or two, she had conceived the idea that itwould be rather jolly if John could obtain leave of absence and run downto the Adriatic coast to meet them. She had looked up the route on themap, and the journey did not appear likely to be expensive. Between thelines of her communication there lay a hint that if he really cared forher—

  Abbleway obtained leave of absence and added a journey to Fiume to hislife’s adventures. He left Vienna on a cold, cheerless day. The flowershops were full of spring blooms, and the weekly organs of illustratedhumour were full of spring topics, but the skies were heavy with cloudsthat looked like cotton-wool that has been kept over long in a shopwindow.

  “Snow comes,” said the train official to the station officials; and theyagreed that snow was about to come. And it came, rapidly, plenteously.The train had not been more than an hour on its journey when thecotton-wool clouds commenced to dissolve in a blinding downpour ofsnowflakes. The forest trees on either side of the line were speedilycoated with a heavy white mantle, the telegraph wires became thickglistening ropes, the line itself was buried more and more completelyunder a carpeting of snow, through which the not very powerful engineploughed its way with increasing difficulty. The Vienna-Fiume line isscarcely the best equipped of the Austrian State railways, and Abblewaybegan to have serious fears for a breakdown. The train had slowed downto a painful and precarious crawl and presently came to a halt at a spotwhere the drifting snow had accumulated in a formidable barrier. Theengine made a special effort and broke through the obstruction, but inthe course of another twenty minutes it was again held up. The processof breaking through was renewed, and the train doggedly resumed its way,encountering and surmounting fresh hindrances at frequent intervals.After a standstill of unusually long duration in a particularly deepdrift the compartment in which Abbleway was sitting gave a huge jerk anda lurch, and then seemed to remain stationary; it undoubtedly was notmoving, and yet he could hear the puffing of the engine and the slowrumbling and jolting of wheels. The puffing and rumbling grew fainter,as though it were dying away through the agency of intervening distance.Abbleway suddenly gave vent to an exclamation of scandalised alarm,opened the window, and peered out into the snowstorm. The flakes perchedon his eyelashes and blurred his vision, but he saw enough to help him torealise what had happened. The engine had made a mighty plunge throughthe drift and had gone merrily forward, lightened of the load of its rearcarriage, whose coupling had snapped under the strain. Abbleway wasalone, or almost alone, with a derelict railway waggon, in the heart ofsome Styrian or Croatian forest. In the third-class compartment next tohis own he remembered to have seen a peasant woman, who had entered thetrain at a small wayside station. “With the exception of that woman,” heexclaimed dramatically to himself, “the nearest living beings areprobably a pack of wolves.”

  Before making his way to the third-class compartment to acquaint hisfellow-traveller with the extent of the disaster Abbleway hurriedlypondered the question of the woman’s nationality. He had acquired asmattering of Slavonic tongues during his residence in Vienna, and feltcompetent to grapple with several racial possibilities.

  “If she is Croat or Serb or Bosniak I shall be able to make herunderstand,” he promised himself. “If she is Magyar, heaven help me! Weshall have to converse entirely by signs.”

  He entered the carriage and made his momentous announcement in the bestapproach to Croat speech that he could achieve.

  “The train has broken away and left us!”

  The woman shook her head with a movement that might be intended to conveyresignation to the will of heaven, but probably meant noncomprehension.Abbleway repeated his information with variations of Slavonic tongues andgenerous displays of pantomime.

  “Ah,” said the woman at last in German dialect, “the train has gone? Weare left. Ah, so.”

  She seemed about as much interested as though Abbleway had told her theresult of the municipal elections in Amsterdam.

  “They will find out at some station, and when the line is clear of snowthey will send an engine. It happens that way sometimes.”

  “We may be here all night!” exclaimed Abbleway.

  The woman nodded as though she thought it possible.

  “Are there wolves in these parts?” asked Abbleway hurriedly.

  “Many,” said the woman; “just outside this forest my aunt was devouredthree years ago, as she was coming home from market. The horse and ayoung pig that was in the cart were eaten too. The horse was a very oldone, but it was a beautiful young pig, oh, so fat. I cried when I heardthat it was taken. They spare nothing.”

  “They may attack us here,” said Abbleway tremulously; “they could easilybreak in, these carriages are like matchwood. We may both be devoured.”

  “You, perhaps,” said the woman calmly; “not me.”

  “Why not you?” demanded Abbleway.

  “It is the day of Saint Mariä Kleophä, my name-day. She would not allowme to be eaten by wolves on her day. Such a thing could not be thoughtof. You, yes, but not me.”

  Abbleway changed the subject.

  “It is only afternoon now; if we are to be left here till morning weshall be starving.”

  “I have here some good eatables,” said the woman tranquilly; “on myfestival day it is natural that I should have provision with me. I havefive good blood-sausages; in the town shops they cost twenty-five hellereach. Things are dear in the town shops.”

  “I will give you fifty heller apiece for a couple of them,” said Abblewaywith some enthusiasm.

  “In a railway accident things become very dear,” said the woman; “theseblood-sausages are four kronen apiece.”

  “Four kronen!” exclaimed Abbleway; “four kronen for a blood-sausage!”

  “You cannot get them any cheaper on this train,” said the woman, withre
lentless logic, “because there aren’t any others to get. In Agram youcan buy them cheaper, and in Paradise no doubt they will be given to usfor nothing, but here they cost four kronen each. I have a small pieceof Emmenthaler cheese and a honey-cake and a piece of bread that I canlet you have. That will be another three kronen, eleven kronen in all.There is a piece of ham, but that I cannot let you have on my name-day.”

  Abbleway wondered to himself what price she would have put on the ham,and hurried to pay her the eleven kronen before her emergency tariffexpanded into a famine tariff. As he was taking possession of his modeststore of eatables he suddenly heard a noise which set his heart thumpingin a miserable fever of fear. ‘There was a scraping and shuffling as ofsome animal or animals trying to climb up to the footboard. In anothermoment, through the snow-encrusted glass of the carriage window, he saw agaunt prick-eared head, with gaping jaw and lolling tongue and gleamingteeth; a second later another head shot up.

  “There are hundreds of them,” whispered Abbleway; “they have scented us.They will tear the carriage to pieces. We shall be devoured.”

  “Not me, on my name-day. The holy Mariä Kleophä would not permit it,”said the woman with provoking calm.

  The heads dropped down from the window and an uncanny silence fell on thebeleaguered carriage. Abbleway neither moved nor spoke. Perhaps thebrutes had not clearly seen or winded the human occupants of thecarriage, and had prowled away on some other errand of rapine.

  The long torture-laden minutes passed slowly away.

  “It grows cold,” said the woman suddenly, crossing over to the far end ofthe carriage, where the heads had appeared. “The heating apparatus doesnot work any longer. See, over there beyond the trees, there is achimney with smoke coming from it. It is not far, and the snow hasnearly stopped, I shall find a path through the forest to that house withthe chimney.”

  “But the wolves!” exclaimed Abbleway; “they may—”

  “Not on my name-day,” said the woman obstinately, and before he couldstop her she had opened the door and climbed down into the snow. Amoment later he hid his face in his hands; two gaunt lean figures rushedupon her from the forest. No doubt she had courted her fate, butAbbleway had no wish to see a human being torn to pieces and devouredbefore his eyes.

  When he looked at last a new sensation of scandalised astonishment tookpossession of him. He had been straitly brought up in a small Englishtown, and he was not prepared to be the witness of a miracle. The wolveswere not doing anything worse to the woman than drench her with snow asthey gambolled round her.

  A short, joyous bark revealed the clue to the situation.

  “Are those—dogs?” he called weakly.

  “My cousin Karl’s dogs, yes,” she answered; “that is his inn, over beyondthe trees. I knew it was there, but I did not want to take you there; heis always grasping with strangers. However, it grows too cold to remainin the train. Ah, ah, see what comes!”

  A whistle sounded, and a relief engine made its appearance, snorting itsway sulkily through the snow. Abbleway did not have the opportunity forfinding out whether Karl was really avaricious.