CHAPTER X.
Dearth of Dogs.—The Blood Stream Begins to Fail.—Scheme to Recruit from Hungryland.—How it Worked to the Destruction of the White Leg Association, and the Little Box with the Little Slot in it.
AND it came to pass that there began to be visible a slackening of the Stream at the Spout, for the great greed of the fleas around the Tank was using up both the supply of dogs available for chucking in, and the strength of the weary toilers at the Handle.
Which caused a great fear to fall on the Brethren. But one of them, less blind, though not less greedy, than the others, called their attention to the State of Things.
“See ye not, my brethren,” said he, “that the Stream faileth? The arc it describeth is not so large as aforetime, which meaneth that the hopper above is not replenished to its full capacity, which further meaneth that either those rascally chuckers-in are not doing their full duty, or that the supply of dogs to chuck in is running low.”
This discovery filled the other Brethren with terror, and they looked first at their own big and bloated bodies—which by this time had become mere featureless blood bags—and then at the Stream, so visibly running low, and, trembling with a coward fear, cried out: “Oh, who will save us from perishing? For the Blood is our life and it faileth. Oh, pestilence, fury and plague, we shall grow less! Oh, we don’t mind bursting with bigness; but oh, to grow little again! Oh! all is vanity under the Sun! We did think that Providence, for whom we have done so much, would have given us this day our daily dogs to grind. But He has gone back on us. Us, brethren, who never went back on Him and never let his churches want for any good thing. All is lost! lost!! lost!!!”