The train had stopped. I looked out of the window.
"Bristol!" I cried. "Wake up!"
[CHAPTER IX]
GRAN'PA DIGS UP AN OLD ROMANCE
As it was eleven o'clock when we reached Bristol, we immediately made for the nearest hotel, partook of a light supper, and went to bed.
"We're being called at six-thirty sharp in the morning," said Gran'pa, as we parted on the landing. "Breakfast's at a quarter-past seven, and we reach the menagerie at eight. They leave for Gloucester at ten. Night-night!"
In five minutes I was in bed, in another ten sound asleep. I dreamt a little, but not as hideously and consistently as during the previous night; and at the appointed hour next morning I arose with a feeling of exuberant expectation. To-day, I should witness the Great Prelude to Adventure. After ten years of lingering death in a Government office the resurrection had come. I was alive!
Although each of us tried to conceal the fact, we were very excited and ate far less breakfast than usual. Stringer, on whom the brunt of the situation would naturally fall, was quite abstemious. He consumed only one piece of bacon and a little toast. But he drank three cups of strong coffee—and looked much better for it. . . .
Breakfast over, we took a taxi to the huge canvas town on the outskirts of the city.
Already, at the early hour of eight o'clock, it was thronged with industrious, gesticulating citizens who were knocking pegs from out of the ground, loosening ropes, and lowering and rolling up the vast expanse of gray-white canvas. Little columns of blue smoke ascended vertically and steadily from the caravan chimneys into the still air; there was the confused noise of many people talking and shouting; the smell of trodden orange peel, frizzling bacon, and wild beasts; the thud of horses' feet on the soft turf; and then, suddenly, the sound of a man crying out: "Go easy, damn your eyes! . . . Mind that rope, Jim!"