The little Author sat and listened to this tale of a wonder that never
for a moment struck him as incredible. And outside his rain-lashed
window the strung-out fishing smacks pitched and rolled on their way
home to Folkestone harbour....
The Wild Asses escaped.
They got away to the world. And his superior officers took the poor
herdsman and tried him and bullied him and passed this judgement upon
him: that he must go to the earth and find the Wild Asses, and say to
them that certain string of oaths that otherwise must never be
repeated, and so control them and bring them back to hell. That--or
else one pinch of salt on their tails. It did not matter which. One by
one he must bring them back, driving them by spell and curse to the
cattle-boat of the ferry. And until he had caught and brought them all
back he might never return again to the warmth and comfort of his
accustomed life. That was his sentence and punishment. And they put
him into a shrapnel shell and fired him out among the stars, and when
he had a little recovered he pulled himself together and made his way
to the world.
But he never found his Wild Asses and after a little time he gave up
trying.
He gave up trying because the Wild Asses, once they had got out of
control, developed the most amazing gifts. They could, for instance,
disguise themselves with any sort of human shape, and the only way in
which they differed then from a normal human being was--according to
the printed paper of instructions that had been given to their
custodian when he was fired out--that "their general conduct remains
that of a Wild Ass of the Devil."
"And what interpretation can we put upon _that_?" he asked the
listening Author.
And there was one night in the year--Walpurgis Night, when the Wild
Asses became visibly great black wild asses and kicked up their hind
legs and brayed. They had to. "But then, of course," said the devil,
"they would take care to shut themselves up somewhere when they felt
that coming on."
Like most weak characters, the stoker devil was intensely egotistical.
He was anxious to dwell upon his own miseries and discomforts and
difficulties and the general injustice of his treatment, and he was
careless and casually indicative about the peculiarities of the Wild
Asses, the matter which most excited and interested the Author. He
bored on with his doleful story, and the Author had to interrupt with
questions again and again in order to get any clear idea of the
situation.
The devil's main excuse for his nervelessness was his profound
ignorance of human nature. "So far as I can see," he said, "they might
all be Wild Asses. I tried it once----"
"Tried what?"
"The formula. You know."
"Yes?"
"On a man named Sir Edward Carson."
"Well?"
"_Ugh!_" said the devil.
"Punishment?"
"Don't speak of it. He was just a professional lawyer-politician who
had lost his sense of values.... How was _I_ to know?... But our
people certainly know how to hurt...."
After that it would seem this poor devil desisted absolutely from any
attempt to recover his lost charges. He just tried to live for the
moment and make his earthly existence as tolerable as possible. It was
clear he hated the world. He found it cold, wet, draughty.... "I can't
understand why everybody insists upon living outside of it," he said.
"If you went inside----"
He sought warmth and dryness. For a time he found a kind of
contentment in charge of the upcast furnace of a mine, and then he was
superseded by an electric-fan. While in this position he read a vivid
account of the intense heat in the Red Sea, and he was struck by the
idea that if he could get a job as stoker upon an Indian liner he
might snatch some days of real happiness during that portion of the
voyage. For some time his natural ineptitude prevented his realizing
this project, but at last, after some bitter experiences of
homelessness during a London December, he had been able to ship on an
Indiaward boat--only to get stranded in Folkestone in consequence of a
propeller breakdown. And so here he was!
He paused.
"But about these Wild Asses?" said the Author.
The mournful, dark eyes looked at him hopelessly.
"Mightn't they do a lot of mischief?" asked the Author.
"They'll do no end of mischief," said the despondent devil.
"Ultimately you'll catch it for that?"
"Ugh!" said the stoker, trying not to think of it.