were various workmen about, and one morning when I visited the hutches,
Daisy and Ally Mitchinson were missing. There is no more to say about
it; they were never seen again. I felt like a mother, who, having
complained of the burden and size of her family, is deprived of one of
them.
But that was not the worst. Atahualpa was still flourishing, although a
great-great-grandmother. One morning I found reason to seclude her from
the rest of the community, and by an arrangement of hutches, I shut off
a little yard for her by herself.
I came back a few hours later, and I found Brastias had displayed
himself in his true colours at last. He had leaped the barrier, and
was standing with gory mouth and fiery eye, over the carcase of a baby
guinea-pig. In another corner of the hutch was Atahualpa, behaving with
the supremest indifference to six more.
That day I gave away sixteen guinea-pigs. But I believe that we should
have had a repetition of Bishop Hatto, if it had not been for the last
check--namely, massacre.
We were overrun with rats, and rat-catchers were sent for. One morning
two men came up with their dogs. The men were looking at the rat-holes,
and arranging a plan of campaign, when suddenly they found that the
dogs were not with them. Across the wall which separated the cow
stables and haystacks from the garden and guinea-pig yard, they heard a
doleful noise. They ran round, and found that the dogs had been doing
their duty nobly, and all the guinea-pigs but two lay dead on the
ground.
The victims were buried in a large grave, and my brother found a
suitable slate and wrote a Latin epitaph on it. He put it up as a
headstone, and enjoyed the proceeding very much.
But I did not enjoy it. I had not the heart to keep guinea-pigs any
more. I gave away the two survivors, and the hutches mouldered away,
and cucumbers grew over the yard, and only the genealogy and the
tombstone were left as memorials of that very large family with the
white coats and jewelled eyes.
[Illustration]
XI
FINISHED SOLOMON
King Solomon was journeying through a thirsty land--sand beneath his
feet, sand around as far as a man could see, above the pitiless blue
sky. No tree could grow here, and no rock was there to cast its shadow
on the sand. “What shall shield me,” said the king, “from the fury of
this sun?” Then was heard the sound of light wings beating the air, for
all creatures knew the voice of the words of King Solomon; and there
came through the air a cloud of hoopoes, and they spread their barred
wings, and closed them together, wing to wing, and they shielded King
Solomon. So, when the toilsome journey was over, the king called the
hoopoes, and said, “O hoopoes, what will ye that I give you for your
service done to me this day?” And the hoopoes said, “O King, give us
crowns of gold”; and the king gave the hoopoes crowns of pure gold.
But men hunted the hoopoes through the length and breadth of the land,
and they killed them for the sake of their golden crowns; then the
hoopoes cried to King Solomon, for King Solomon knew the voice of all
beasts and birds, yea of the creeping things also, and the hoopoes
said, “Take away our crowns, O king, for men kill us for the sake of
our golden crowns.” And Solomon took away their crowns. “Yet,” said he,
“it shall be known what the hoopoes did for the King,” and he gave them
crowns of golden feathers.
* * * * *
So says the _Book of the Enchantments of the King_, and that is why my
hoopoe was called Solomon.
* * * * *
I was riding through a village near Thebes in the evening, and among
the groups of children who held out grimy hands and cried “Backsheesh”;
and the half-blind boys who made the somewhat startling statement,
“Finished Fazzer, finished Muzzer, I yam berry hongerry”; I saw at the
door of a mud house three children, one of whom swung towards me a bird
he held by the wings,--and I recognised the helpless, half-dead, fluffy
mass for a hoopoe.
I refused to give them the wages of sin, and they were too much
surprised to attempt to hinder the departure of the hoopoe. Indeed, if
they had kept it much longer, it would have departed without assistance
by the silent road, for one claw had been tied back to its leg, and it
had been swung in that manner till its tormentors happened to think
that they had better try the wings instead; its crown of feathers had
been pulled out; and when I got back to the hotel, it shut its eyes
and fell forwards on the point of its beak as if it was about to die.
The string had been tied so tightly that it was with difficulty that
we got it free from its bonds, and then we plied it with whisky and
water. That was no easy matter either, for it would not open its mouth,
and one had first to get the long beak open, and then to hold it so,
while from a feather dipped in the refreshing beverage a drop trickled
down the pink throat; then the bill was shut, and one watched to see
if the feathers of the throat would ruffle and give sign that the
drop was passing down. The method succeeded, for presently the little
forked tongue was shot out to suck up the liquid, the little brown
eyes opened, and the hoopoe, taking in the situation, hurried into the
corner of the window-sill, and supposed that he was hiding himself by
laying his long bill up the wall.
It would certainly be necessary to provide the hoopoe with a
habitation, were he only the guest of a day; so a crate which had
contained pottery was found, its straw was arranged nestwise, and the
bird was bestowed in it, much to its own satisfaction.
But the diet was a problem. Its natural food was live insects. I went
so far as to kill a housefly, but it was a very disgusting process, and
the fly was not at all well received; moreover, I was not sure whether
the hoopoe was of an age to receive, shall I say _peptonised_ food from
his parents, or whether he preferred the raw material. But as the best
compromise, including the carnivorous and the more-or-less-peptonised
element, I decided on hard-boiled egg; that had to be administered in
the same way as the whisky, with drops of water to help it to run
down. After this I put the hoopoe into the crate for the night.
I frankly confess that I expected to find a stiff little body there in
the morning, but instead I saw a bright brown eye fixed upon me, and a
smooth, compact, though crownless little hoopoe, sitting in the straw.
If the hoopoe was going to live, other things became necessary--first
and foremost, a name.
[Illustration]
The name suited him exactly. From the time that he was called Solomon,
he _became_ Solomon. We never spoke of him as the hoopoe; indeed, it
is with great difficulty that I have avoided so far using his name.
Now I have told you when and why he was named; henceforth, then, he is
Solomon.
But, secondly, Solomon must have exercise, and fresh animal food. It
would be better, both for the sake of digestion and economy of time, if
the two could be combined, and I spent most of my time in effecting the
combination in one of the garden beds.
The beds in the hotel garden are excellently convenient for feeding and
exercising half-fledged hoopoes; they are lowered three or four inches
below the level of the paths, for the purposes of irrigation. Thus
when, once a week, the water is turned in, the beds become a series
of pools, until the water has gradually soaked away through the rich
black mud. Further, the beds are surrounded with a bushy little plant,
so that when Solomon tried to spring over the edge and escape me, his
wings were not strong enough for the purpose; he sprawled on the bushy
plant, wings spread and legs kicking, and was easily captured.
But it was Sunday, and the hour drew towards church time. Solomon must
go home and be fed before I went to church. Accordingly, I went to
catch him, but there was one thing I had forgotten. At the corner of
the bed was a drain through which the irrigation was effected. Quick as
thought Solomon ran in there, and was out of arm’s length in a minute.
What was to be done? The bell was already ringing to church; decent
and godly people, with their prayer-books in their hands, were walking
down the garden path; and there was I plunging round the drain in
search of an ungrateful, half-fledged, discrowned hoopoe. I dared not
leave him there, to be the prey of the numerous and ravenous hawks and
crows.
But suddenly, as a _Deus ex machina_, Mahmoud the gardener hove in
sight; so I called to Mahmoud, and Mahmoud called to Ibrahim, and
Ibrahim brought a dry palm leaf, and we put it in at the opposite end
of the drain, and made a very terrible shaking noise in the inside with
it; and there hurried out a very long beak, supported by a very small
bird at the end of it; and Solomon was captured in time for church.
When I came back from church, Solomon’s crate was empty. We trod
carefully over the room for fear of squashing him flat, like a
botanical specimen; we looked under the sofa, under the chairs, and
Solomon was not there. Then a little scuffling noise on the balcony
attracted our attention, and there was Solomon with a guilty look in
his face. We lined the inside of his crate with stiff newspaper.
But when I came back from lunch I saw a ridiculous silhouette far up
the half-lighted passage. There again was Solomon! He had carried on
mining operations on the paper during lunch, and had escaped again.
Another crate with narrower bars had to be procured. Of course he
instantly put his head through and got it fixed, and I had to seize him
by the beak and push him back.
[Illustration]
Now, by all the laws of animal literature, Solomon ought to have been
devoted to me by this time. If he had studied the _Whole Duty of
Birds_, he would have found out that he must wake me at dawn (I cannot
feel sure that I should have appreciated that); that he must flutter
his wings with joy and chirp when I came into the room, even if he did
not feel equal to opening his little bill and pouring forth a grateful
song (do hoopoes sing?); that he must follow me round the room; that he
must eat out of my hand; that he must beat his breast against the bars
of his cage when I went away.
Solomon did none of these things. He shut his beak tightly when I
wished to feed him, he pecked at me when I tried to open it, he ran
away when I attempted to catch him, he struggled when I had got him,
he hurled himself from my hand into the crate as soon as possible, and
he did not like me at all.
By the third day Solomon had immensely developed. People who had
considerately told me that it was impossible to rear a hoopoe, now
foretold that he would live. He extended his mining operations to the
garden. I am not sure that he found any insects, but he did great
execution on the loose earth at the foot of the palm-tree. He looked
quite like a real grown-up hoopoe when he ran about the garden bed and
dug his bill in up to its roots; and in the evening he flopped off the
window-sill while I was feeding him, and had a grand race round the
room.
That night I dismissed the fear of finding the little cold corpse in
the morning.
But when I opened the shutters and looked at Solomon in the morning,
he was not awake; his head was tucked behind his wing. I took him out,
he looked round dreamily, and sank on to the ground. I got whisky and
water again, and fed him with a feather; he pecked and struggled at
first, but presently he allowed me to open his beak, and I saw that the
little pink mouth was getting very white. Still I gave him more, hoping
it would have the same reviving effect as at first. But presently
Solomon dropped his beak on the window-sill, and the drop trickled down
it again, for he had stopped swallowing. He laid his head down, and
stretched out his little black claws; and heaved gently once or twice;
and no more.
As the Arabs say, it was “Finished Solomon.”
[Illustration]
MORRISON AND GIBB, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH
Transcriber’s Note:
Attempts have been made to produce this eBook as a faithful reproduction
of the original publication, preserving spellings including “anyrate”,
“developes” and “skwug”; and the alternative spelling of “laurustinus”
and “laurestinus”.