"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 ship-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 ship 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."
"Did you go all the way around?" queried Jimmieboy.
"Did I? Well, rather. I went around once and a half. And sad to say I killed the giant who threw me," returned the major. "I went around the world so swiftly that when I got back to the island the poor fellow hadn"t had time to get out of my way, and as I came whizzing along I struck him in the back, went right through him, and leaving him dead on the island went on again and finally fell into a great gun manufactory in Ma.s.sachusetts where I was smelted over into a bullet, and sent to the war. I did lots of work for George Washington. I think I must have killed off half a dozen regiments of his enemies, and between you and me, General Washington said I was his favorite bullet, and added that as long 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 beginning to look a little blue. It was rather plain, the sprite thought, that the major was getting the best of the duel.
"Go on," said Jimmieboy. "What next? How long did you stay with George Washington?"
"Six months," said the major. "I"d never have left him if he hadn"t ordered me to do work that I wasn"t made for. When a bullet goes to war he doesn"t want to waste himself on ducks. I wanted to go after hostile generals and majors and cornet players, and if Mr. Washington had used me for them I"d have hit home every time, but instead of that he took me off duck shooting one day and actually asked me to knock over a miserable wild bird he happened to want. I rebelled at this. He insisted, and I said, "very well, General, fire away." He fired, the duck laughed, and I simply flew off into the woods on the border of the bay and rested there for nearly a hundred years. The rest of my story is soon told. I lay where I had fallen until six years ago when I was picked 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 the Fifteenth of November, 1892, I became what I am, Major Blueface, the handsomest soldier, the bravest warrior, the most talented tin poet that ever breathed."
A long silence followed the completion of the major"s story. Which of the two he liked the better Jimmieboy could not make up his mind, and he hoped his two companions would be considerate enough not to ask him to decide between them.
"I thought they had to be true stories," said the sprite, gloomily. "I don"t think it"s fair to tell stories like yours--the idea of your being thrown one and a half times around the world!"
"It"s just as true as yours, anyhow," retorted the major, "but if you want 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 just about even."
"Do you really think so?" asked the sprite, his face beaming with pleasure.
"Yes," said Jimmieboy. "We"ll settle it this way: we"ll give five points to the one who told the best, five points to the one who told the longest, and five points to the one who told the shortest story. As the stories are equally good you both get five points for that. The major"s was the longest, I think, so he gets five more, but so does the sprite because 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, "and so do I."
Which after all, I think, was the best way to decide a duel of that sort.
CHAPTER XI.
PLANNING A VISIT.
"Well, now that that is settled," said the major with a sigh of relief, "I suppose we had better start off and see whether Fortyforefoot will attend to this business of getting the provisions for us."
"Yes," said the sprite. "The major is right there, Jimmieboy. You have delayed so long on the way that it is about time you did something, and the only way I know of for you to do it is by getting hold of Fortyforefoot. If you wanted an apple pie and there was nothing in sight but a cart-wheel he would change it into an apple pie for you."
"That"s all very well," replied Jimmieboy, "but I"m not going to call on any giant who"d want to eat me. You might just as well understand that right off. I"ll try on your invisible coat and if that makes me invisible I"ll go. If it doesn"t we"ll have to try some other plan."
"That is the prudent thing to do," said the major, nodding his approval to the little general. "As my poem tries to teach, it is always wise to use your eyes--or look before you leap. The way it goes is this:
"If you are asked to make a jump, Be careful lest you prove a gump-- Awake or e"en in sleep-- Don"t hesitate the slightest bit To show that you"ve at least the wit To look before you leap.
Why, in a dream one night, I thought A fellow told me that I ought To jump to Labrador.