CHAPTER XLIII
—THE SHOUTING
That evening Jack and I gave a party. That is, we sent down to old Baines a box of cigars, a bottle of champagne, and a hamper of delicacies which—I have since reflected—must have made him very unwell, if he ate them. We did not forget Ginger; Ginger enjoyed, that night, a meal which he must, I am sure, have believed to have been cooked in the Happy Hunting Grounds, and to have been sent specially from that abode of canine bliss for the comfort of his declining years. To this day I sometimes see him, when asleep, licking his lips and going through the action of masticating imaginary food. Well, I believe he is, at such moments, enjoying once again—in the sweet glades of remembrance—the ecstasies of that gala banquet.
As for ourselves, Jack invited me and I him to a Gaudeamus, and together we celebrated the occasion in a manner befitting so glorious a finish to our wanderings and toil (not that Jack ever did much of the digging!) and sufferings and disappointments, and so on. Together we fought o'er again every encounter, whether with Strong, with elephants, with lions, or with the devils of despair and disappointment, and it was on this festive occasion that Jack made me promise to write down for your benefit, my dear reader, the record of our experiences and adventures. I may say that we drank your health, dear owner of this volume, whoever you may be, and voted you an excellent fellow for buying, or having presented to you, the book; and wished you were twins and each had a copy,—all for your own benefit, you know, because the tale is a jolly good—but perhaps I had better leave all this for others to say; only I should just like you to know that we thought of you, as of a wise person to have possessed yourself of the book, that's all. Well, among other things that night, absurd things that—in our joy and triumph—we said and did, we drank Strong's health and wished that he might escape the hangman's rope; we also breathed a fervent wish that we might never see the rascal again, and then, in more serious mood, discussed the question as to whether it was at all likely that we ever should.
We both decided that it was extremely unlikely. He certainly had audacity enough and—to do him justice—pluck enough for five men; but when a man knows that he is a murderer, and a double or treble murderer, and that if his crimes could be brought home to him he must "swing" for them, he is not likely to haunt those parts of the world where he would be most in danger. The world is big enough. He would keep away from us, at anyrate!
"I wonder what he is doing now?" said Jack with a laugh; "and where he is, and what he would say or do if he knew of to-day's little success, eh?"
"Well, I'm glad on the whole that he doesn't," I said; and in this conclusion Jack concurred; for, without being exactly afraid of the fellow, we had had enough of him, and that's the truth.
Now, the longer I live in this world the more I realise that we human beings are but a poor, blind, helpless lot of creatures; we are best pleased with ourselves when we have, in reality, little cause for satisfaction; we imagine ourselves safely out of what is familiarly termed "the wood," when, as a matter of fact, a very jungle of trouble lies immediately before us, could we but see it! Here is a case in point. We were very, very happy that night, and apparently with every legitimate reason; moreover, when I laid my head upon the pillow at about twelve o'clock, I imagined that I should awake at eight or so, ready to step into a new bright world which the sunshine of yesterday's success should have transformed for me into a very paradise of bliss. I had every reason to suppose that this would be so. I never for one moment imagined, for instance, that this might be the last time that I should lay my head to rest in this world, and that the sleep I now courted should be an endless one in so far as concerned the usual awaking to a terrestrial morrow!
And yet this came very near to being the actual and exact state of the case.
It was, I think, about two or three o'clock in the morning, when some pleasant dream I was enjoying began to be marred—I remember the feeling quite well—by a kind of choky sensation, a difficulty in breathing. I can even recall the fact that some friend—a dream-friend, I mean—made the heartless remark that prosperity was making me so fat that the function of getting breath had become a labour to me.