TALL TALES OF SPORT AND ADVENTURE.
I.—THE PINK HIPPOPOTAMUS. (continued.)
It did not take me long to make my preparations and devise my plans. In such matters as these I have always found it best to prepare for every possible contingency, and then, with a trustful heart, to leave the rest to chance. I therefore calculated to a nicety the number of miles we should have to traverse, took into account the physical configuration of the country through which we should have to pass, the height of its various mountains, the depth of its valleys, the breadth and current of its rivers, its capacity for food supply, and the nature of its inhabitants. Having done all this, I spare the reader unnecessary details. It would profit him but little if I were to set down exactly the equipment, the clothing, the arms, and all the other preparations which my matchless experience prompted me to make. Such an expedition as that which I was about to engage in can never be undertaken again, for the simple reasons that there are now no pink hippopotami in the world, and that improved methods of communication, ridiculous railways, absurd telegraphs, preposterous telephones, and ludicrously well-metalled roads have robbed life, even in Seringapatam, of all the romance which, in my younger days, cast a halo of adventure round the smallest undertaking. How gloriously we revelled, how grandly we fought, how magnificently contemptuous we were of danger! But now we clothe ourselves in patent wool, we tremble at the shadow of a policeman, we judge everything by the mean standard of its money value. Some day we shall awake from our dreams of false security, when the crash of invasion sounds in our ears, and we see our homesteads ruthlessly trampled down by the hoof of some despised and foreign foe. Then, when it is too late, the public will remember that England still possesses one great leader inured to hardship and danger from his earliest youth, one whom, though a perverse Parliament has slighted him, the greatest warriors and the gallantest sportsmen have been proud to salute as their unquestioned superior. I shall answer to the call with what strength I may still possess, and my prematurely grizzled hair shall be seen waving in the van of my country's defenders; but even an Orlando Wilbraham (have I mentioned that that was my name?) must fail if he has only shop-reared dummies to support his efforts. Enough, however, of these mournful prognostications.
My preparations, then, were quickly made. I resolved on confining the numbers of the expedition within the smallest possible limits, and, after much thought, I decided to take only one associate. My choice fell upon Major Theophilus Ganderdown. He had gone through the whole of the previous campaign with me, and had proved his solid worth on many a hard-fought field. A man, like myself, of herculean strength, and of inexhaustible endurance, he was eminently fitted to help me in those perilous situations in which I had no doubt we should find ourselves before the adventure was over and the task performed. It was not his fault that he lacked those brilliant powers of initiative, that wonderful ingenuity of resource for which I had already become famous. But one genius of that kind is sufficient in any adventure, and I knew that for courage, strength, and bulldog tenacity, I could reckon on Ganderdown to the death.
We fixed our start for a Thursday, always a lucky day for any expedition in which I have been engaged. I gave Ganderdown rendezvous at the western gate, at midnight, and bade him maintain the complete secrecy in which all our plans had hitherto been involved. I myself set forth when dinner was over to bid farewell to the beautiful and affectionate Chuddah, the last scion of the glorious Rampore dynasty, who was at that time dwelling in the little marble palace on the outskirts of the park of her vindictive aunt, the Ranee of Seringapatam.
Ah, Chuddah, loveliest of olive maidens, even now, when I think of thee, this war-worn heart beats faster in my breast, and the unaccustomed tear trickles down a cheek seamed by many a scar. How different would my life have been had cruel fate not stepped in to prevent us from fulfilling those mutual vows of eternal love which we had pledged to one another, I, who water these lines with my tears, might now have been the ruler over hosts of dusky myrmidons, the acclaimed chief of the fierce and warlike Châl tribes, whilst thou, a queen, a wife, a mother, wouldst have—— But, bah, these wailing regrets are unmanly. To my story.
(To be continued.)