FIAM WEARS A FUR COAT
One day when we were far away from our post there was a great storm. It
rained cats and dogs, and the brim of my hat dripped all around like an
overflowing gutter.
I walked through the wood with my head bent forward, completely
forgetting Fiam, who was fastened to the band of the crown and was
soaked through and through. After many hours I reached my tent. I took
off my hat and pulled out Fiam, whom I placed on a blanket, knowing
how he loved to climb around the folds. But to my dismay I saw that he
didn’t move. He stayed just as I had put him; flat on his back, with
his arms stretched out and one leg in the air. He looked as if he were
dead.
“Fiam!” I called frightened. “Fiam, my friend, speak to me.”
But he was quite still.
“He is dead, he is dead!” I exclaimed, almost with tears in my eyes.
“The rain has killed him, and it is all my fault. I was so cruel to
forget him.” I continued to call, “Fiam, come back. Forgive me! Fiam!”
It seemed to me as if I had lost a brother of whom I should have been
careful and should have protected better. I was overcome with remorse.
I thought of all the delightful times we had had together, of his
kindness, of his courage, of the work we had shared and of our sincere
friendship.
“Fiam, Fiam!” I called, now and again, hoping to hear once more his
little affectionate voice.
At last I thought of trying a radical way of reviving him if there were
still the tiniest hope.
I took a flask of saki which I had had on the ship and dropped a little
on Fiam. Then I put a wad of cotton (which I kept handy in case it
was needed for wounds) in the cigarette box; then put my friend on the
cotton, as if he were in a beautiful white feather bed, shut the box
and put it near the fire, which I lighted as best I could in the midst
of my small shelter.
When I again opened the box and looked in, he was lying there
immovable, his arms stretched out and his little leg raised up.
“Fiam!” I called.
No answer. I closed the box and waited, and am not ashamed to say that
I waited in tears. At last after about an hour had passed, during which
I had looked in for the hundredth time, I jumped for joy. His little
voice had answered.
But it was a tiny voice, even smaller and feebler than usual. I asked
him no end of questions most anxiously.
“Speak. What is the matter? How do you feel? What can I do for you?
Tell me—why don’t you move?”
“Why,” he replied faintly, “because the water has swollen my joints.”
That was it. The dampness had enlarged the wood and shrunk the thread
in such a way that the little fellow couldn’t move ever so slightly.
“But you ought to have told me at once,” I said to him reprovingly and
in an affectionate tone.
“I couldn’t. I was suffocated by the melted phosphorus. Now I begin to
feel stronger.”
“Wait a minute; I will put you near the fire again, and when you are
comfortably dry you will be as well as you ever were.”
“I am so afraid of the flames! Shut up the imperial tomb, and don’t put
me too near the fire,” he warned me.
“Just keep quiet.”
Three hours later Fiam was completely cured of his cold, and walked
carefully, like a person on stilts, around the house.
But a queer thing had happened. You remember that after the incident
of the postage stamps Fiam had always been covered with little gummed
pieces of paper showing parts of the Emperor’s face in different
colors. The rain had softened the gum, and when he was put in the
cotton to dry it had stuck to him, and with all my attempts to get him
free I was unable to succeed, so that now my companion was completely
covered with thick down, a kind of white fur coat, which made him look
like a miniature automobilist.
I proposed to shave him with my razor, but he opposed this
energetically.
“Don’t do it!” he said. “In the first place your razor frightens me.
I see that you can’t even shave yourself without cutting your chin,
and one of those slips would cut me in two. Then I like this fur; it
is becoming. It makes me look bigger, you know how thin I am, and it
protects me from bad weather. Let it be.”
[Illustration: Fiam’s Silver Armour]