II
THE SPORTING TOUR OF MR. MUNCHAUSEN
"Good morning, Mr. Munchausen," said the interviewer of the _GehennaGazette_ entering the apartment of the famous traveller at the HotelDeville, where the late Baron had just arrived from his sporting tourin the Blue Hills of Cimmeria and elsewhere.
"The interests of truth, my dear Ananias," replied the Baron, graspingme cordially by the hand, "require that I should state it as myopinion that it is not a good morning. In fact, my good friend, it isa very bad morning. Can you not see that it is raining cats and dogswithout?"
"Sir," said I with a bow, "I accept the spirit of your correction butnot the letter. It is raining indeed, sir, as you suggest, but havingpassed through it myself on my way hither I can personally testifythat it is raining rain, and not a single cat or canine has, to myknowledge, as yet fallen from the clouds to the parched earth,although I am informed that down upon the coast an elephant and threecows have fallen upon one of the summer hotels and irreparably damagedthe roof."
Mr. Munchausen laughed.
"It is curious, Ananias," said he, "what sticklers for the truth youand I have become."
"It is indeed, Munchausen," I returned. "The effects of this climateare working wonders upon us. And it is just as well. You and I areoutclassed by these twentieth century prevaricators concerning whomlate arrivals from the upper world tell such strange things. They tellme that lying has become a business and is no longer ranked among theArts or Professions."
"Ah me!" sighed the Baron with a retrospective look in his eye, "lyingisn't what it used to be, Ananias, in your days and mine. I fear ithas become one of the lost arts."
"I have noticed it myself, my friend, and only last night I observedthe same thing to my well beloved Sapphira, who was lamenting thetransparency of the modern lie, and said that lying to-day is nobetter than the truth. In our day a prevarication had all of theopaque beauty of an opalescent bit of glass, whereas to-day in themajority of cases it is like a great vulgar plate-glass window,through which we can plainly see the ugly truths that lie behind. But,sir, I am here to secure from you not a treatise upon the lost art oflying, but some idea of the results of your sporting tour. You fished,and hunted, and golfed, and doubtless did other things. You, ofcourse, had luck and made the greatest catch of the season; shot allthe game in sight, and won every silver, gold and pewter golf mug inall creation?"
"You speak truly, Ananias," returned Mr. Munchausen. "My luck _was_wonderful--even for one who has been so singularly fortunate as I. Itook three tons of speckled beauties with one cast of an ordinaryhorse whip in the Blue Hills, and with nothing but a silken line and aminnow hook landed upon the deck of my steam yacht a whale of mosttremendous proportions; I shot game of every kind in great abundanceand in my golf there was none to whom I could not give with ease sevenholes in every nine and beat him out."
"Seven?" said I, failing to see how the ex-Baron could be right.
"Seven," said he complacently. "Seven on the first, and seven on thesecond nine; fourteen in all of the eighteen holes."
"But," I cried, "I do not see how that could be. With fourteen holesout of the eighteen given to your opponent even if you won all therest you still would be ten down."
"True, by ordinary methods of calculation," returned the Baron, "but Igot them back on a technicality, which I claim is a new and valuablediscovery in the game. You see it is impossible to play more than onehole at a time, and I invariably proved to the Greens Committee thatin taking fourteen holes at once my opponent violated the physicalpossibilities of the situation. In every case the point was acceptedas well taken, for if we allow golfers to rise above physicalpossibilities the game is gone. The integrity of the Card is the soulof Golf," he added sententiously.
"Tell me of the whale," said I, simply. "You landed a whale of largeproportions on the deck of your yacht with a simple silken line and aminnow hook."
"Well it's a tough story," the Baron replied, handing me a cigar. "Butit is true, Ananias, true to the last word. I was fishing for eels.Sitting on the deck of _The Lyre_ one very warm afternoon in the earlystages of my trip, I baited a minnow hook and dropped it overboard. Itwas the roughest day at sea I had ever encountered. The waves weremountain high, and it is the sad fact that one of our crew seated inthe main-top was drowned with the spray of the dashing billows.Fortunately for myself, directly behind my deck chair, to which I wassecurely lashed, was a powerful electric fan which blew the spray awayfrom me, else I too might have suffered the same horrid fate. Suddenlythere came a tug on my line. I was half asleep at the time and let theline pay out involuntarily, but I was wide-awake enough to know thatsomething larger than an eel had taken hold of the hook. I had hookedeither a Leviathan or a derelict. Caution and patience, the chiefattributes of a good angler were required. I hauled the line in untilit was taut. There were a thousand yards of it out, and when itreached the point of tensity, I gave orders to the engineers to steamcloser to the object at the other end. We steamed in five hundredyards, I meanwhile hauling in my line. Then came another tug and I letout ten yards. 'Steam closer,' said I. 'Three hundred yardssou-sou-west by nor'-east.' The yacht obeyed on the instant. I calledthe Captain and let him feel the line. 'What do you think it is?' saidI. He pulled a half dozen times. 'Feels like a snag,' he said, 'butseein' as there ain't no snags out here, I think it must be a fish.''What kind?' I asked. I could not but agree that he was betteracquainted with the sea and its denizens than I. 'Well,' he replied,'it is either a sea serpent or a whale.' At the mere mention of theword whale I was alert. I have always wanted to kill a whale.'Captain,' said I, 'can't you tie an anchor onto a hawser, and baitthe flukes with a boa constrictor and make sure of him?' He looked atme contemptuously. 'Whales eats fish,' said he, 'and they don't biteat no anchors. Whales has brains, whales has.' 'What shall we do?' Iasked. 'Steam closer,' said the Captain, and we did so."
Munchausen took a long breath and for the moment was silent.
"Well?" said I.
"Well, Ananias," said he. "We resolved to wait. As the Captain said tome, 'Fishin' is waitin'.' So we waited. 'Coax him along,' said theCaptain. 'How can we do it?' I asked. 'By kindness,' said he. 'Treathim gently, persuasive-like and he'll come.' We waited four days andnobody moved and I grew weary of coaxing. 'We've got to do something,'said I to the Captain. 'Yes,' said he, 'Let's _make_ him move. Hedoesn't seem to respond to kindness.' 'But how?' I cried. 'Give him anelectric shock,' said the Captain. 'Telegraph him his mother's sickand may be it'll move him.' 'Can't you get closer to him?' I demanded,resenting his facetious manner. 'I can, but it will scare him off,'replied the Captain. So we turned all our batteries on the sea. Thedynamo shot forth its bolts and along about four o'clock in theafternoon there was the whale drawn by magnetic influence to the sideof _The Lyre_. He was a beauty, Ananias," Munchausen added withenthusiasm. "You never saw such a whale. His back was as broad as thedeck of an ocean steamer and in his length he exceeded the dimensionsof _The Lyre_ by sixty feet."
"And still you got him on deck?" I asked,--I, Ananias, who can standsomething in the way of an exaggeration.
"Yes," said Munchausen, lighting his cigar, which had gone out."Another storm came up and we rolled and rolled and rolled, until Ithought _The Lyre_ was going to capsize."
"But weren't you sea-sick?" I asked.
"Didn't have a chance to be," said Munchausen. "I was thinking of thewhale all the time. Finally there came a roll in which we wentcompletely under, and with a slight pulling on the line the whale waslanded by the force of the wave and laid squarely upon the deck."
"Great Sapphira!" said I. "But you just said he was wider and longerthan the yacht!"
"There was the whale drawn by magnetic influence to theside of _The Lyre_." _Chapter II._]
"He was," sighed Munchausen. "He landed on the deck and by sheer forceof his weight the yacht went down under him. I swam ashore and thewhole crew with me. The next day Mr. Whale floated in strangled. He'dswallowed the thousa
nd yards of line and it got so tangled in histonsils that it choked him to death. Come around next week and I'llgive you a couple of pounds of whalebone for Mrs. Ananias, and all theoil you can carry."
I thanked the old gentleman for his kind offer and promised to availmyself of it, although as a newspaper man it is against my principlesto accept gifts from public men.
"It was great luck, Baron," said I. "Or at least it would have been ifyou hadn't lost your yacht."
"That was great luck too," he observed nonchalantly. "It cost me tenthousand dollars a month keeping that yacht in commission. Now she'sgone I save all that. Why it's like finding money in the street,Ananias. She wasn't worth more than fifty thousand dollars, and in sixmonths I'll be ten thousand ahead."
I could not but admire the cheerful philosophy of the man, but then Iwas not surprised. Munchausen was never the sort of man to let littlethings worry him.
"But that whale business wasn't a circumstance to my catch of threetons of trout with a single cast of a horse-whip in the Blue Hills,"said the Baron after a few moments of meditation, during which I couldsee that he was carefully marshalling his facts.
"I never heard of its equal," said I. "You must have used a derrick."
"No," he replied suavely. "Nothing of the sort. It was the simplestthing in the world. It was along about five o'clock in the afternoonwhen with my three guides and my valet I drove up the winding roadwayof Great Sulphur Mountain on my way to the Blue Mountain House where Ipurposed to put up for a few days. I had one of those big mountainwagons with a covered top to it such as the pioneers used on theAmerican plains, with six fine horses to the fore. I held the reinsmyself, since we were in the midst of a terrific thunderstorm and Ifelt safer when I did my own driving. All the flaps of the leatherncover were let down at the sides and at the back, and were securelyfastened. The roads were unusually heavy, and when we came to the lastgreat hill before the lake all but I were walking, as a measure ofrelief to the horses. Suddenly one of the horses balked right in themiddle of the ascent, and in a moment of impatience I gave him astinging flick with my whip, when like a whirlwind the whole sixswerved to one side and started on a dead run upward. The jolt and theunexpected swerving of the wagon threw me from my seat and I landedclear of the wheels in the soft mud of the roadway, fortunatelywithout injury. When I arose the team was out of sight and we had towalk the remainder of the distance to the hotel. Imagine our surpriseupon arriving there to find the six panting steeds and the wagonstanding before the main entrance to the hotel dripping as though theyhad been through the Falls of Niagara, and, would you believe it,Ananias, inside that leather cover of the wagon, packed as tightly assardines, were no less than three thousand trout, not one of themweighing less than a pound and some of them getting as high as four.The whole catch weighed a trifle over six thousand pounds."
"Great Heavens, Baron," I cried. "Where the dickens did they comefrom?"
"That's what I asked myself," said the Baron easily. "It seemedastounding at first glance, but investigation showed it after all tobe a very simple proposition. The runaways after reaching the top ofthe hill turned to the left, and clattered on down toward the bridgeover the inlet to the lake. The bridge broke beneath their weight andthe horses soon found themselves struggling in the water. The harnesswas strong and the wagon never left them. They had to swim for it, andI am told by a small boy who was fishing on the lake at the time thatthey swam directly across it, pulling the wagon after them. Naturallywith its open front and confined back and sides the wagon acted as asort of drag-net and when the opposite shore was gained, and the wagonwas pulled ashore, it was found to have gathered in all the fish thatcould not get out of the way."
The Baron resumed his cigar, and I sat still eyeing the ample patternof the drawing-room carpet.
"Pretty good catch for an afternoon, eh?" he said in a minute.
"Yes," said I. "Almost too good, Baron. Those horses must have swamlike the dickens to get over so quickly. You would think the troutwould have had time to escape."
"Oh I presume one or two of them did," said Munchausen. "But themajority of them couldn't. The horses were all fast, record-breakersanyhow. I never hire a horse that isn't."
And with that I left the old gentleman and walked blushing back to theoffice. I don't doubt for an instant the truth of the Baron's story,but somehow or other I feel that in writing it my reputation is insome measure at stake.
NOTE--Mr. Munchausen, upon request of the Editor of the _Gehenna Gazette_ to write a few stories of adventure for his Imp's page, conducted by Sapphira, contributed the tales which form the substance of several of the following chapters.