CHAPTER X.
THE MAJOR'S TALE.
"A great many years ago when I was a souvenir spoon," said the major, "Ibelonged to a very handsome and very powerful potentate."
"I didn't quite understand what it was you said you were," said thesprite, bending forward as if to hear better.
"At the beginning of my story I was a souvenir spoon," returned themajor.
"Did you begin your career as a spoon?" asked the sprite.
"I did not, sir," replied the major. "I began my career as a nugget in alead mine where I was found by the king of whom I have just spoken, andon his return home with me he gave me to his wife who sent me out to alead smith's and had me made over into a souvenir spoon--and a mightyhandsome spoon I was too. I had a poem engraved on me that said:
'Aka majo te roo li sah, Pe mink y rali mis tebah.'
Rather pretty thought, don't you think so?" added the major as hecompleted the couplet.
"Very!" said the sprite, with a knowing shake of his head.
"Well, I don't understand it at all," said Jimmieboy.
"Ask this native of Twinkleville what it means," observed the major witha snicker. "He says it's a pretty thought, so of course he understandsit--though I assure you I don't, for it doesn't mean anything. I made itup, this very minute."
The sprite colored deeply. It was quite evident that he had fallen intothe trap the major had set for him.
"I was only fooling," he said, with a sickly attempt at a smile. "Go onwith your story."
"I think perhaps the happiest time of my life was during the hundreds ofyears that I existed in the royal museum as a spoon," resumed the major."I was brought into use only on state occasions. When the King ofMangapore gave a state banquet to other kings in the neighborhood I wasthe spoon that was used to ladle out the royal broth."
Here the major paused to smack his lips, and then a small tear appearedin one corner of his eye and trickled slowly down the side of his nose.
"I always weep," he said, as soon as he could speak, "when I think ofthat broth. Here is what it was made of:
'Seven pies of sweetest mince, Then a ripe and mellow quince, Then a quart of tea. Then a pint of cinnamon, Next a roasted apple, done Brown as brown can be.
Add of orange juice, a gill, And a sugared daffodil, Then a yellow yam. Sixty-seven strawberries Should be added then to these, And a pot of jam.
Mix with maple syrup and Let it in the ice-box stand Till it's good and cold-- Throw a box of raisins in, Stir it well--just make it spin-- Till it looks like gold.'
Oh, my!" cried the major. "What a dish it was, and I, I used to bedipped into a tureen full of it sixteen times at every royal feast,and before the war we had royal feasts on an average of three timesa day."
"Three royal banquets a day?" cried Jimmieboy, his mouth watering tothink of it.
"Yes," returned the major. "Three a day until the unhappy war broke outwhich destroyed all my happiness, and resulted in the downfall ofsixty-four kings."
"How on earth did such a war as that ever happen to be fought?" askedthe sprite.
"I am sorry to say," replied the major, sadly, "that I was the innocentcause of it all. It was on the king's birthday that war was declared. Heused to have magnificent birthday parties, quite like those that boyslike Jimmieboy here have, only instead of having a cake with a candle init for each year, King Fuzzywuz used to have one guest for each year,and one whole cake for each guest. On his twenty-first birthday he hadtwenty-one guests; on his thirtieth, thirty, and so on; and at every oneof these parties I used to be passed around to be admired, I was so veryhandsome and valuable."
"Absurd!" said the sprite, with a sneering laugh. "The idea of a leadspoon being valuable!"
"If you had ever been able to get into the society of kings," the majoranswered, with a great deal of dignity, "you would know that on thetable of a monarch lead is much more rare than silver and gold. It wasthis fact that made me so overpoweringly valuable, and it is notsurprising that a great many of the kings who used to come to thesebirthday parties should become envious of Fuzzywuz and wish they owned atreasure like myself. One very old king died of envy because of me, andhis heir-apparent inherited his father's desire to possess me to such adegree that he too pined away and finally disappeared entirely. Justregularly faded out of sight. Didn't die, you know, as you would, butvanished.
"So it went on for years, and finally on his sixty-fourth birthday KingFuzzywuz gave his usual party, and sixty-four of the choicest kings inthe world were invited. They every one came, the feast was made ready,and just as the guests took their places around the table, the brothwith me lying at the side of the tureen was brought in. The kings alltook their crowns off in honor of my arrival, when suddenly pouf! a gustof wind came along and blew out every light in the hall. All wasdarkness, and in the midst of it I felt myself grabbed by the handle andshoved hastily into an entirely strange pocket.
"'What, ho, without there!' cried Fuzzywuz. 'Turn off the wind and bringa light.'
"The slaves hastened to do as they were told, and in less time than ittakes to tell it, light and order were restored. And then a terriblescene ensued. I could see it very plainly through a button-hole in thecloak 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 asheet with fear.
"'It was in the broth, oh, Nepotic Fuzzywuz, King of the Desert and mostnoble Potentate of the Sand Dunes, when I, thy miserable servant,brought it into the gorgeous banqueting hall and set it here beforethee, who art ever my most Serene and Egotistic Master,' returned theslave, trembling with fear and throwing himself flat upon thedining-hall floor.
"'Caitiff!' cried the king. 'I believe thou hast played me false. Dospoons take wings unto themselves and fly away? Are they tadpoles thatthey develop legs and hop as frogs from our royal presence? Do spoonsevapidate----'
"'Evaporate, my dear,' suggested the queen in a whisper.
"'Thanks,' returned the king. 'Do spoons evaporate like water in thesun? Do they raise sails like sloops of war and thunder noiselessly outof sight? No, no. Thou hast stolen it and thou must bear the penalty ofthy predilection----'
"'Dereliction,' whispered the queen, impatiently.
"'He knows what I mean,' roared the king, 'or if he doesn't he will whenhis 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 theking really meant was always uncertain; he always used such big wordsand rarely got them right. Reprehensibility and tremulousness were greatfavorites 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 sharpeningthe carving knife was about to behead the slave's head off when thepotentate who had me in his pocket cried out:
"'Hold, oh Fuzzywuz! The slave is right. I saw the spoon myself at theside 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 beenspeculated by some one of our royal brethren at this board. The point tobe liquidated now is, who has done this deed. What, ho, without there! Aguard about the palace gates--and lock the doors and bar the windows. Weshall have a search. I am sorry to say, that every king in this roomsave only myself and my friend Prince Bigaroo, who at the risk of hiskingly dignity deigned to come to the rescue of my slave, must repeal--Ishould say reveal--the contents of his pockets. Prince Bigaroo must beinnocent or he would not have ejaculated as he hath.'
"You see," said the major, in explanation, "Bigaroo having stolen me wassmart enough to see how it would be if he spoke. A guilt
y person in ninecases out of ten would have kept silent and let the slave suffer. SoBigaroo escaped; but all the others were searched and of course I wasnot found. Fuzzywuz was wild with sorrow and anger, and declared thatunless I was returned within ten minutes he would wage war upon, andutterly destroy, every king in the place. The kings all turnedpale--even Bigaroo's cheek grew white, but having me he was determinedto 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 atongue?"
The sprite made no answer. He evidently had never seen a spoon with atongue.
"The war was a terrible one," said the major, resuming his story. "Oneby one the kings were destroyed, and finally only Bigaroo remained, andFuzzywuz not having found me in the treasures of the others, finallycame to see that it was Bigaroo who had stolen me. So he turned hisforces toward the wicked monarch, defeated his army, and set fire to hispalace. In that fire I was destroyed as a souvenir spoon and became alump 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 junkdealer. He in turn sold me to a ship-maker, who worked me over into asounding lead for a steamer he had built. On my first trip out I wassent overboard to see how deep the ocean was. I fell in between twohuge rocks down on the ocean's bed and was caught, the rope connectingme with the ship snapped, and there I was, twenty thousand fathoms underthe sea, lost, as I supposed, forever. The effect of the salt water uponme was very much like that of hair restorer on some people's heads. Ibegan to grow a head of green hair--seaweed some people call it--and tothis fact, strangely enough, I owed my escape from the water. A sea-cowwho used to graze about where I lay, thinking that I was only a tuft ofgrass gathered me in one afternoon and swallowed me without blinking,and some time after, the cow having been caught and killed by some giantfishermen, I was found by the wife of one of the men when the great cowwas about to be cooked. These giants were very strange people whoinhabited an island out in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, which wasgradually sinking into the water with the weight of the people on it,and which has now entirely disappeared. There wasn't one of theinhabitants that was less than one hundred feet tall, and in those daysthey used to act as light-houses for each other at night. They had butone eye apiece, and when that was open it used to flash just like agreat electric light, and they'd take turns at standing up in themiddle of the island all night long and turning round and round andround until you'd think they'd drop with dizziness. I staid with thesepeople, I should say, about forty years, when one morning two of thegiants got disputing as to which of them could throw a stone thefarthest. 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. Atthis the first one laughed and jeered, and to prove that he had told thetruth the second grabbed up what he thought was a pebble, but whichhappened to be me and threw me from him with all his force."
"Did you go all the way around?" queried Jimmieboy.
"Did I? Well, rather. I went around once and a half. And sad to say Ikilled the giant who threw me," returned the major. "I went around theworld so swiftly that when I got back to the island the poor fellowhadn't had time to get out of my way, and as I came whizzing along Istruck him in the back, went right through him, and leaving him dead onthe island went on again and finally fell into a great gun manufactoryin Massachusetts where I was smelted over into a bullet, and sent to thewar. I did lots of work for George Washington. I think I must havekilled off half a dozen regiments of his enemies, and between you andme, General Washington said I was his favorite bullet, and added that aslong as he had me with him he wasn't afraid of anybody."
Here the major paused a minute to smile at the sprite who was beginningto look a little blue. It was rather plain, the sprite thought, that themajor was getting the best of the duel.
"Go on," said Jimmieboy. "What next? How long did you stay with GeorgeWashington?"
"Six months," said the major. "I'd never have left him if he hadn'tordered me to do work that I wasn't made for. When a bullet goes to warhe doesn't want to waste himself on ducks. I wanted to go after hostilegenerals and majors and cornet players, and if Mr. Washington had usedme for them I'd have hit home every time, but instead of that he took meoff duck shooting one day and actually asked me to knock over amiserable wild bird he happened to want. I rebelled at this. Heinsisted, and I said, 'very well, General, fire away.' He fired, theduck laughed, and I simply flew off into the woods on the border of thebay and rested there for nearly a hundred years. The rest of my storyis soon told. I lay where I had fallen until six years ago when I waspicked up by a small boy who used me for a sinker to go fishing with,after which I found my way into the smelting pot once more, and on theFifteenth of November, 1892, I became what I am, Major Blueface, thehandsomest soldier, the bravest warrior, the most talented tin poet thatever breathed."
A long silence followed the completion of the major's story. Which ofthe two he liked the better Jimmieboy could not make up his mind, and hehoped his two companions would be considerate enough not to ask him todecide between them.
"I thought they had to be true stories," said the sprite, gloomily. "Idon't think it's fair to tell stories like yours--the idea of your beingthrown one and a half times around the world!"
"It's just as true as yours, anyhow," retorted the major, "but if youwant to begin all over again and tell another I'm ready for you."
"No," said the sprite. "We'll leave it to Jimmieboy as it is."
"Then I win," said the major.
"I don't know about that, major," said Jimmieboy. "I think you are justabout even."
"Do you really think so?" asked the sprite, his face beaming withpleasure.
"Yes," said Jimmieboy. "We'll settle it this way: we'll give five pointsto the one who told the best, five points to the one who told thelongest, and five points to the one who told the shortest story. As thestories are equally good you both get five points for that. The major'swas the longest, I think, so he gets five more, but so does the spritebecause his was the shortest. That makes you both ten, so you both win."
"Hurrah!" cried the major. "Then I do win."
"Yes," said the sprite, squeezing Jimmieboy's hand affectionately, "andso do I."
Which after all, I think, was the best way to decide a duel of thatsort.
In Camp With A Tin Soldier Page 10