the Baron with a shake of his head. "I was frightened half to death.
It seemed to me that I'd reached the end of my tether at last. I was
studying the fauna and flora of India, in a small Indian village,
known as ah--what was the name of that town! Ah--something like
Rathabad--no, that isn't quite it--however, one name does as well as
another in India. It was a good many miles from Calcutta, and I'd been
living there about three months. The village lay in a small valley
between two ranges of hills, none of them very high. On the other side
of the westerly hills was a great level stretch of country upon which
herds of elephants used to graze. Out of this rose these hills, very
precipitously, which was a very good thing for the people in the
valley, else those elephants would have come over and played havoc
with their homes and crops. To me the plains had a great fascination,
and I used to wander over them day after day in search of new
specimens for my collection of plants and flowers, never thinking of
the danger I ran from an encounter with these elephants, who were very
ferocious and extremely jealous of the territory they had come through
years of occupation to regard as their own. So it happened, that one
day, late in the afternoon, I was returning from an expedition over
the plains, and, as I had found a large number of new specimens, I was
feeling pretty happy. I whistled loudly as I walked, when suddenly
coming to a slight undulation in the plain what should I see before me
but a herd of sixty-three elephants, some eating, some thinking, some
romping, and some lying asleep on the soft turf. Now, if I had come
quietly, of course, I could have passed them unobserved, but as I told
you I was whistling. I forget what the tune was, The Marsellaise or
Die Wacht Am Rhein, or maybe Tommie Atkins, which enrages the
elephants very much, being the national anthem of the British invader.
At any rate, whatever the tune was it attracted the attention of the
elephants, and then their sport began. The leader lifted his trunk
high in the air, and let out a trumpet blast that echoed back from the
cliff three miles distant. Instantly every elephant was on the alert.
Those that had been sleeping awoke, and sprang to their feet. Those
that had been at play stopped in their romp, and under the leadership
of the biggest brute of the lot they made a rush for me. I had no gun;
nothing except my wits and my legs with which to defend myself, so I
naturally began to use the latter until I could get the former to
work. It was nip and tuck. They could run faster than I could, and I
saw in an instant that without stratagem I could not hope to reach a
place of safety. As I have said, the cliff, which rose straight up
from the plain like a stone-wall, was three miles away, nor was there
any other spot in which I could find a refuge. It occurred to me as I
ran that if I ran in circles I could edge up nearer to the cliff all
the time, and still keep my pursuers at a distance for the simple
reason that an elephant being more or less unwieldy cannot turn as
rapidly as a man can, so I kept running in circles. I could run around
my short circle in less time than the enemy could run around his
larger one, and in this manner I got nearer and nearer my haven of
safety, the bellowing beasts snorting with rage as they followed.
Finally, when I began to see that I was tolerably safe, another idea
occurred to me, which was that if I could manage to kill those huge
creatures the ivory I could get would make my fortune. But how! That
was the question. Well, my dearly beloved Imps, I admit that I am a
fast runner, but I am also a fast thinker, and in less than two
minutes I had my plan arranged. I stopped short when about two hundred
feet from the cliff, and waited until the herd was fifty feet away.
Then I turned about and ran with all my might up to within two feet of
the cliff, and then turning sharply to the left ran off in that
direction. The elephants, thinking they had me, redoubled their speed,
but failed to notice that I had turned, so quickly was that movement
executed. They failed likewise to notice the cliff, as I had intended.
The consequence was the whole sixty-three of them rushed head first,
bang! with all their force, into the rock. The hill shook with the
force of the blow and the sixty-three elephants fell dead. They had
simply butted their brains out."
[Illustration: "I got nearer and nearer my haven of safety, the
bellowing beasts snorting with rage as they followed." _Chapter IV._]
Here the Baron paused and pulled vigourously on his cigar, which had
almost gone out.
"That was fine," said the Twins.
"What a narrow escape it was for you, Uncle Munch," said Diavolo.
"Very true," said the great soldier rising, as a signal that his story
was done. "In fact you might say that I had sixty-three narrow
escapes, one for each elephant."
"But what became of the ivory?" asked Angelica.
"Oh, as for that!" said the Baron, with a sigh, "I was disappointed in
that. They turned out to be all young elephants, and they had lost
their first teeth. Their second teeth hadn't grown yet. I got only
enough ivory to make one paper cutter, which is the one I gave your
father for Christmas last year."
Which may account for the extraordinary interest the Twins have taken
in their father's paper cutter ever since.
V
THE STORY OF JANG
"Did you ever own a dog, Baron Munchausen?" asked the reporter of the
_Gehenna Gazette_, calling to interview the eminent nobleman during
Dog Show Week in Cimmeria.
"Yes, indeed I have," said the Baron, "I fancy I must have owned as
many as a hundred dogs in my life. To be sure some of the dogs were
iron and brass, but I was just as fond of them as if they had been
made of plush or lamb's wool. They were so quiet, those iron dogs
were; and the brass dogs never barked or snapped at any one."
"I never saw a brass dog," said the reporter. "What good are they?"
"Oh they are likely to be very useful in winter," the Baron replied.
"My brass dogs used to guard my fire-place and keep the blazing logs
from rolling out into my room and setting fire to the rug the Khan of
Tartary gave me for saving his life from a herd of Antipodes he and I
were hunting in the Himalaya Mountains."
"I don't see what you needed dogs to do that for," said the reporter.
"A fender would have done just as well, or a pair of andirons," he
added.
"That's what these dogs were," said the Baron. "They were fire dogs
and fire dogs are andirons."
Ananias pressed his lips tightly together, and into his eyes came a
troubled look. It was evident that, revolting as the idea was to him,
he thought the Baron was trying to deceive him. Noting his
displeasure, the Baron inwardly resolving to be careful how he handled
the truth, hastened on with his story.
"But dogs were never my favourite animals," he said. "With my pets I
am quite as I am with other things. I like to have pets that are
entirely different from the pets of other people, and that is why in
my day I have made companions of such animals as the sangaree, and the
camomile, and the--ah--the two-horned piccolo. I've had tame bees
even--in fact my bees used to be the wonder of Siam, in which country
I was stationed for three years, having been commissioned by a British
company to make a study of its climate with a view to finding out if
it would pay the company to go into the ice business there. Siam is,
as you have probably heard, a very warm country, and as ice is a very
rare thing in warm countries these English people thought they might
make a vast fortune by sending tug-boats up to the Arctic Ocean, and
with them capture and tow icebergs to Siam, where they might be cut up
and sold to the people at tremendous profit. The scheme was certainly
a good one, and I found many of the wealthy Siamese quite willing to
subscribe for a hundred pounds of ice a week at ten dollars a pound,
but it never came to anything because we had no means of preserving
the icebergs after we got them into the Gulf of Siam. The water was so
hot that they melted before we could cut them up, and we nearly got
ourselves into very serious trouble with the coast people for that
same reason. An iceberg, as you know, is a huge affair, and when a
dozen or two of them had melted in the Gulf they added so to the
quantity of water there that fifty miles of the coast line were
completely flooded, and thousands of valuable fish, able to live in
warm water only, were so chilled that they got pneumonia, and died.
You can readily imagine how indignant the Siamese fishermen were with
my company over the losses they had to bear, but their affection for
me personally was so great that they promised not to sue the company
if I would promise not to let the thing occur again. This I promised,
and all went well. But about the bees, it was while I was living in
Bangkok that I had them, and they were truly wonderful. There was
hardly anything those bees couldn't do after I got them tamed."
"How did you tame them, Baron," asked Ananias.
"Power of the eye, my boy," returned the Baron. "I attracted their
attention first and then held it. Of course, I tried my plan on one
bee first. He tamed the rest. Bees are very like children. They like
to play stunts--I think it is called stunts, isn't it, when one boy
does something, and all his companions try to do the same thing?"
"Yes," said Ananias, "I believe there is such a game, but I shouldn't
like to play it with you."
"Well, that was the way I did with the bees," said Mr. Munchausen. "I
tamed the king bee, and when he had learned all sorts of funny little
tricks, such as standing on his head and humming tunes, I let him go
back to the swarm. He was gone a week, and then he came back, he had
grown so fond of me--as well he might, because I fed him well, giving
him a large basket of flowers three times a day. Back with him came
two or three thousand other bees, and whatever Jang did they did."
"Who was Jang?" asked Ananias.
"That was the first bee's name. King Jang. Jang is Siamese for Billie,
and as I was always fond of the name, Billie, I called him Jang. By
and by every bee in the lot could hum the Star Spangled Banner and
Yankee Doodle as well as you or I could, and it was grand on those
soft moonlight nights we had there, to sit on the back porch of my
pagoda and listen to my bee orchestra discoursing sweet music. Of
course, as soon as Jang had learned to hum one tune it was easy enough
for him to learn another, and before long the bee orchestra could give
us any bit of music we wished to have. Then I used to give musicales
at my house and all the Siamese people, from the King down asked to be
invited, so that through my pets my home became one of the most
attractive in all Asia.
"And the honey those bees made! It was the sweetest honey you ever
tasted, and every morning when I got down to breakfast there was a
fresh bottleful ready for me, the bees having made it in the bottle
itself over night. They were the most grateful pets I ever had, and
once they saved my life. They used to live in a hive I had built for
them in one corner of my room and I could go to bed and sleep with
every door in my house open, and not be afraid of robbers, because
those bees were there to protect me. One night a lion broke loose from
the Royal Zoo, and while trotting along the road looking for something
to eat he saw my front door wide open. In he walked, and began to
sniff. He sniffed here and he sniffed there, but found nothing but a
pot of anchovy paste, which made him thirstier and hungrier than ever.
So he prowled into the parlour, and had his appetite further
aggravated by a bronze statue of the Emperor of China I had there. He
thought in the dim light it was a small-sized human being, and he
pounced on it in a minute. Well, of course, he couldn't make any
headway trying to eat a bronze statue, and the more he tried the more
hungry and angry he got. He roared until he shook the house and would
undoubtedly have awakened me had it not been that I am always a sound
sleeper and never wake until I have slept enough. Why, on one
occasion, on the Northern Pacific Railway, a train I was on ran into
and completely telescoped another while I was asleep in the smoking
car, and although I was severely burned and hurled out of the car
window to land sixty feet away on the prairie, I didn't wake up for
two hours. I was nearly buried alive because they thought I'd been
killed, I lay so still.
"But to return to the bees. The roaring of the lion disturbed them,
and Jang buzzed out of his hive to see what was the matter just as the
lion appeared at my bed-room door. The intelligent insect saw in a
moment what the trouble was, and he sounded the alarm for the rest of
the bees, who came swarming out of the hive in response to the
summons. Jang kept his eye on the lion meanwhile, and just as the
prowler caught sight of your uncle peacefully snoring away on the bed,
dreaming of his boyhood, and prepared to spring upon me, Jang buzzed
over and sat down upon his back, putting his sting where it would do
the most good. The angry lion, who in a moment would have fastened his
teeth upon me, turned with a yelp of pain, and the bite which was to
have been mine wrought havoc with his own back. Following Jang's
example, the other bees ranged themselves in line over the lion's
broad shoulders, and stung him until he roared with pain. Each time he
was stung he would whisk his head around like a dog after a flea, and
bite himself, until finally he had literally chewed himself up, when
he fainted from sheer exhaustion, and I was saved. You can imagine my
surprise when next morning I awakened to find a dying lion in my
room."
"But, Baron," said Ananias. "I don't understand one thing about it. If
you were fast asleep while all this was happening how did you know
that Jang did those things?"
[Illustration: "Jang buzzed over and sat down upon his back, putting
his sting where it would do the most good." _Chapter V._]
"Why, Jang told me himself," replied the Baron calmly.
"Could he talk?" cried Ananias in amazement.
"Not as you and I do," said the Baron. "Of course not, but Jang could
spell. I taught him how. You see I reasoned it out this way. If a bee
can be taught to sing a song which is only a story in music, why can't
he be taught to tell a story in real words. It was worth trying
anyhow, and I tried. Jang was an apt pupil. He was the most
intelligent bee I ever met, and it didn't take me more than a month to
teach him his letters, and when he once knew his letters it was easy
enough to teach him how to spell. I got a great big sheet and covered
it with twenty-six squares, and in each of these squares I painted a
letter of the alphabet, so that finally when Jang came to know them,
and wanted to tell me anything he would fly from one square to another
until he had spelled out whatever he wished to say. I would follow his
movements closely, and we got so after awhile that we could converse
for hours without any trouble whatsoever. I really believe that if
Jang had been a little heavier so that he could push the keys down far
enough he could have managed a typewriter as well as anybody, and when
I think about his wonderful mind and delicious fancy I deeply regret
that there never was a typewriting machine so delicately made that a
bee of his weight could make it go. The world would have been very
much enriched by the stories Jang had in his mind to tell, but it is
too late now. He is gone forever."
"How did you lose Jang, Baron?" asked Ananias, with tears in his eyes.
"He thought I had deceived him," said the Baron, with a sigh. "He was
as much of a stickler for truth as I am. An American friend of mine
sent me a magnificent parterre of wax flowers which were so perfectly
made that I couldn't tell them from the real. I was very proud of
them, and kept them in my room near the hive. When Jang and his tribe
first caught sight of them they were delighted and they sang as they
had never sung before just to show how pleased they were. Then they
set to work to make honey out of them. They must have laboured over
those flowers for two months before I thought to tell them that they
were only wax and not at all real. As I told Jang this, I
unfortunately laughed, thinking that he could understand the joke of
the thing as well as I, but I was mistaken. All that he could see was
that he had been deceived, and it made him very angry. Bees don't seem
to have a well-developed sense of humour. He cast a reproachful glance
at me and returned to his hive and on the morning of the third day
when I waked up they were moving out. They flew to my lattice and
ranged themselves along the slats and waited for Jang. In a moment he
appeared and at a given signal they buzzed out of my sight, humming a
farewell dirge as they went. I never saw them again."
Here the Baron wiped his eyes.
"I felt very bad about it," he went on, "and resolved then never again
to do anything which even suggested deception, and when several years
later I had my crest designed I had a bee drawn on it, for in my eyes
my good friend the bee, represents three great factors of the good and
successful life--Industry, Fidelity, and Truth."
Whereupon the Baron went his way, leaving Ananias to think it over.
VI
HE TELLS THE TWINS OF FIRE-WORKS
There was a great noise going on in the public square of Cimmeria when
Mr. Munchausen sauntered into the library at the home of the Heavenly
Twins.
"These Americans are having a great time of it celebrating their
Fourth of July," said he, as the house shook with the explosion of a
bomb. "They've burnt powder enough already to set ten revolutions
revolving, and they're going to outdo themselves to-night in the park.
They've made a bicycle out of the two huge pin-wheels, and they're
going to make Benedict Arnold ride a mile on it after it's lit."
The Twins appeared much interested. They too had heard much of the
celebration and some of its joys and when the Baron arrived they were
primed with questions.
"Uncle Munch," they said, helping the Baron to remove his hat and
coat, which they threw into a corner so anxious were they to get to
work, "do you think there's much danger in little boys having
fire-crackers and rockets and pin-wheels, or in little girls having
torpeters?"
"Well, I don't know," the Baron answered, warily. "What does your
venerable Dad say about it?"
"He thinks we ought to wait until we are older, but we don't," said
the Twins.
"Torpeters never sets nothing afire," said Angelica.
"That's true," said the Baron, kindly; "but after all your father is
right. Why do you know what happened to me when I was a boy?"
"You burnt your thumb," said the Twins, ready to make a guess at it.
"Well, you get me a cigar, and I'll tell you what happened to me when
I was a boy just because my father let me have all the fire-works I
wanted, and then perhaps you will see how wise your father is in not
doing as you wish him to," said Mr. Munchausen.
The Twins readily found the desired cigar, after which Mr. Munchausen
settled down comfortably in the hammock, and swinging softly to and
fro, told his story.
"My dear old father," said he, "was the most indulgent man that ever
lived. He'd give me anything in the world that I wanted whether he
could afford it or not, only he had an original system of giving which
kept him from being ruined by indulgence of his children. He gave me a
Rhine steamboat once without its costing him a cent. I saw it, wanted
it, was beginning to cry for it, when he patted me on the head and
told me I could have it, adding, however, that I must never take it
away from the river or try to run it myself. That satisfied me. All I
wanted really was the happiness of feeling it was mine, and my dear
old daddy gave me permission to feel that way. The same thing happened
with reference to the moon. He gave it to me freely and ungrudgingly.
He had received it from his father, he said, and he thought he had
owned it long enough. Only, he added, as he had about the steamboat, I
must leave it where it was and let other people look at it whenever
they wanted to, and not interfere if I found any other little boys or
girls playing with its beams, which I promised and have faithfully
observed to this day.
"Of course from such a parent as this you may very easily see
everything was to be expected on such a day as the Tenth of August
which the people in our region celebrated because it was my birthday.
He used to let me have my own way at all times, and it's a wonder I
wasn't spoiled. I really can't understand how it is that I have become
the man I am, considering how I was indulged when I was small.
"However, like all boys, I was very fond of celebrating the Tenth, and
being a more or less ingenious lad, I usually prepared my own
fire-works and many things happened which might not otherwise have
come to pass if I had been properly looked after as you are. The first
thing that happened to me on the Tenth of August that would have a
great deal better not have happened, was when I was--er--how old are
you Imps?"
"Sixteen," said they. "Going on eighteen."
"Nonsense," said the Baron. "Why you're not more than eight."
"Nope--we're sixteen," said Diavolo. "I'm eight and Angelica's eight
and twice eight is sixteen."
"Oh," said the Baron. "I see. Well, that was exactly the age I was at
the time. Just eight to a day."
"Sixteen we said," said the Twins.
"Yes," nodded the Baron. "Just eight, but going on towards sixteen. My
father had given me ten thalers to spend on noises, but unlike most
boys I did not care so much for noises as I did for novelties. It
didn't give me any particular pleasure to hear a giant cracker go off
with a bang. What I wanted to do most of all was to get up some kind
of an exhibition that would please the people and that could be seen
in the day-time instead of at night when everybody is tired and
sleepy. So instead of spending my money on fire-crackers and torpedoes
and rockets, I spent nine thalers of it on powder and one thaler on
putty blowers. My particular object was to make one grand effort and
provide passers-by with a free exhibition of what I was going to call
'Munchausen's Grand Geyser Cascade.' To do this properly I had set my
eye upon a fish pond not far from the town hall. It was a very deep
pond and about a mile in circumference, I should say. Putty blowers
were then selling at five for a pfennig and powder was cheap as sand
owing to the fact that the powder makers, expecting a war, had made a
hundred times as much as was needed, and as the war didn't come off,
they were willing to take almost anything they could get for it. The
consequence was that the powder I got was sufficient in quantity to
fill a rubber bag as large as five sofa cushions. This I sank in the
middle of the pond, without telling anybody what I intended to do, and
through the putty blowers, sealed tightly together end to end, I
conducted a fuse, which I made myself, from the powder bag to the
shore. My idea was that I could touch the thing off, you know, and
that about sixty square feet of the pond would fly up into the air and
then fall gracefully back again like a huge fountain. If it had worked
as I expected everything would have been all right, but it didn't. I
had too much powder, for a second after I had lit the fuse there came
a muffled roar and the whole pond in a solid mass, fish and all, went
flying up into the air and disappeared. Everybody was astonished, not
a few were very much frightened. I was scared to death but I never let
on to any one that I was the person that had blown the pond off. How
high the pond went I don't know, but I do know that for a week there
wasn't any sign of it, and then most unexpectedly out of what appeared
to be a clear sky there came the most extraordinary rain-storm you
ever saw. It literally poured down for two days, and, what I alone
could understand, with it came trout and sunfish and minnows, and most
singular to all but myself an old scow that was recognised as the
property of the owner of the pond suddenly appeared in the sky falling
toward the earth at a fearful rate of speed. When I saw the scow
coming I was more frightened than ever because I was afraid it might
fall upon and kill some of our neighbours. Fortunately, however, this
possible disaster was averted, for it came down directly over the
sharp-pointed lightning-rod on the tower of our public library and
stuck there like a piece of paper on a file.