It would require the perfection of language to describe the amazement of
Captain Bragg when he beheld a slimy figure, looking like one of the
powers by whom he continually swore, and heard a voice issuing from its
ugly lips, and saying "I am Botts." The placards, in which he was about
to doom his absconding adversary to eternal infamy, dropped from his
hand, and were picked up by a boy, and converted into the tail for a
kite. Toney and Tom were also astonished at the sudden and strange
appearance of the missing man. After a moment of silence, Belton said,--
"Where did you come from?"
"From the bottom of a well," said an Irishman.
"Good heavens!" said Pate, who had just arrived in company with Wiggins
and Perch,--"good heavens! did Botts fall into a well?"
"And shure it's not for me to say how he got there. We found him in the
well on his knees in the wather, and praying to the blessed Vargin and
all the saints."
"I'm almost dead! I'll never get over it!" said Botts.
"Run for a doctor! run, Perch! run!" said Pate.
Perch went off at the double-quick in search of medical aid, while Pate
and Wiggins conducted their friend to the hotel.
"Don't bring that man in here. I can't have my house covered with mud
and filth. Take him to the bath-house and wash him," said the landlord.
Pate pleaded and implored, but the landlord was inexorable; and they
were compelled to conduct the miserable man to the bath-house. With some
difficulty he was divested of his clothing; and, while Wiggins assisted
him in performing his ablutions, Pate proceeded to his apartment and
procured a change of raiment. His two friends then led him to his room,
where they found Perch with the doctor. The physician examined his
patient, and discovered that no bones were broken, and that there was
no internal injury of any sort. He ordered Botts a strong tonic, and,
telling him to keep quiet in bed and he would be well in the morning,
took his departure. Perch soon after left the room, saying that he had
an engagement to walk with Miss Imogen Hazlewood. Pate and Wiggins sat
by the bedside of their afflicted friend, who, with many a moan and
dolorous ejaculation, told the story of his misfortune, which we will
endeavor to abbreviate and relate in more intelligible language.
It will be recollected that after Botts had executed his last will and
testament, and addressed letters of farewell to his friends, he had
proceeded to the outskirts of the town, and walked to and fro over the
common, meditating on his approaching end. About the middle of the
night, as he continued to walk with his gaze fixed on the star which he
had selected for his future abode, he tumbled into an unfinished well,
about twelve feet deep, with six inches of water at the bottom. It being
night, and he being under the earth, his loud cries for assistance were
unheard, and he remained in the well until a late hour in the morning,
when the Irish laborers discovered him on his knees in the water praying
fervently; he having experienced a change of heart, and repented of the
great crime he had intended to commit.
While Pate and Wiggins were consoling their friend, they were startled
by loud shrieks from a female voice in an adjacent apartment.
"Good heavens!" said Pate.
"What's that?" exclaimed Wiggins.
"There's murder in the house!" bawled out Botts; and he jumped from his
bed and ran to the door.
"Come back, Botts! you haven't got your breeches on," said Wiggins; and
he seized Botts by the caudal extremity of his under-garment and held
him with a firm grasp.
Shrieks after shrieks were heard, and then the heavy tread of feet
hurrying along the corridor. Pate and Wiggins rushed to the scene of
action, and beheld the landlord, with loud and violent imprecations,
kicking Captain Bragg's monkey out of a room. The creature had got
loose, and climbing over the transom of a door, had leaped down on a
bed where a lady was taking her siesta. The hideous apparition had
nearly thrown the fair inmate of the room into convulsions.
"Get out of here, you infernal imp!" said the landlord, giving the
monkey a kick which sent it rolling over and over along the corridor.
The agile creature gathered itself up, and with an active bound sprang
on the railing of the stairway, where it sat making ugly grimaces, and
shaking both fists at Boniface in intense indignation.
"Get me a gun!" shouted the landlord, in a towering passion.
"Don't shoot!" exclaimed Pate; and a dozen female voices shrieked in
apprehension of the report of fire-arms.
"What are you doing to my monkey?" said Bragg, hurrying to the spot.
"Get out of my house with that incarnate devil of yours!" said the
landlord. The monkey grinned and shook its fists, and the landlord
stamped his foot and swore with vim and vehemence.
"I'll have satisfaction for this outrage offered to my monkey," said
Bragg.
"I'll give you satisfaction, sir! I'm no Botts, to be bullied by you,
sir! If you don't get out of this house, I'll take you by the neck and
heels and throw you out, and your monkey after you!"
The landlord was a powerful and determined man. He had fought under Old
Hickory at New Orleans. He stood six feet three in his stockings, and
could easily have executed his threat.
"Do you not keep a house for the accommodation of travelers?" said
Bragg. "For the entertainment of man and beast?"
"But not for the entertainment of man and devil! That monkey is a born
devil, sir!"
"He was a royal present from her Majesty the Queen of Madagascar," said
Bragg.
"A royal present from his Majesty the Old Boy!" said Boniface. "He gets
loose just when he pleases. He chased the cooks out of the kitchen, and
ate up the eggs they had got for breakfast. He stole a negro baby out of
its cradle and hid it in the wood-house."
"He is a cannibal!" said Seddon.
"One of the captain's long-tailed African friends," said Toney.
"Dines on babies," said Tom. "He'll be after a Dutchman next."
"Out of this house he goes, and you, too!" said the landlord. "Here,
Caesar, Scipio! carry Captain Bragg's baggage down and set it on the
pavement." The negroes proceeded to obey orders. "And now be off!" said
Boniface. "I don't ask you to settle your bill; I want no money from
you. I want you to leave, and take that monkey with you!"
"You had better go," said Seddon to Bragg, "or he will call on the
sheriff to summon a _posse comitatus_ and put you out."
"I want no comitatus, Mr. Seddon," said the landlord, overhearing the
remark; "I can manage him and his monkey both."
The sagacity of Bragg enabled him to comprehend the situation. He
perceived that the indignant Boniface was not to be intimidated even by
a harpoon or a boomerang. Toney Belton had whispered to the cosmopolite
that the landlord was the very man who had shot General Packenham from
his horse, and thereby gained for Old Hickory his glorious victory on
the banks of the Mississippi; and Tom Seddon asseverated that he had
decapitated three Indians with a bowie-knife, in a hand-to-hand
encounter, in the Everglades of Florida. Upon calm consideration Bragg
determined to leave the hotel. His baggage was conveyed to a
boarding-house which Seddon had found for him in the suburbs of the
town. Here he secured comfortable quarters for himself and an asylum for
his monkey.
At night, after smoking their cigars, Belton proposed to his friend that
they should call on Botts. They were sitting in his room, with Wiggins,
talking to the unfortunate man, and getting him in a cheerful mood by
pleasant conversation, when Pate rushed in with horror depicted in his
countenance.
"What's the matter, Mr. Pate?" said Belton.
"Oh!--oh!--oh!"
"What's the matter?" said Wiggins.
"Help--help--help!"
"What's the matter? What's the matter?" exclaimed everybody at once.
"Perch--Perch!"
"What has he done?" said Wiggins.
"Has committed suicide!"
And Pate rushed from the room like one bereft of his reason. Toney, Tom,
and Wiggins ran after him, while Botts jumped from his bed and hurried
through the door; and several affrighted females loudly screamed as they
beheld him swiftly gliding along the corridor, in his white garments,
and looking like a ghost.