“But say,” I wailed, “we’re aground! The clothes—!”
“Stretch a leg and get tiffin!” cried the ringmaster; “Walhalla’s rags are all here.”
From nightfall until the audience, which “Fitz” was holding back as long as possible, stormed the tent, I worked feverishly with Faust in perfecting “gags,” tumbles, and the time-honored brands of “horse-play.” When our privacy was invaded, I scurried away to the dressing-tent to be made up. Several long-established antics we were obliged to omit until the next day gave more opportunity for rehearsal; but the clouted audience was uncritical, the Europeans indifferent to “tommy-rot,” and the performance passed with no worse mishap to the new member of the troupe than one too realistic fall and an occasional relapse into seriousness.
Yet life as a circus clown was nothing if not serious—under the paint. The least difficult functions of this new calling were those executed in public. To strike “Mlle. Montgomery” squarely on the head with a paper hoop while holding one leg in the air, and to fall down from the imaginary impact with a whoop was as simple a matter as to do the same thing in all solemnity and the uniform of a “swipe.” It was back in the dressing-tent, scraping dried paint off one side of my blistered countenance while my fellow fool daubed fresh colors on the other, jumping out of one ridiculous costume into one more idiotic, turning the place topsy-turvy in a mad scramble for a misplaced dunce cap or a lost slap-stick, that I began to lose my fascination for this honored profession. On those days when we favored Colomboans with two performances, there was little hilarity in the dethroned scaramouch who made his bed of chairs at the ring side. I wondered no more at the funereal countenance with which Walhalla had been wont to haunt our morning hours before the fever fell upon him.
One long week I wore the cap and bells on the cricket ground of Colombo. All good fortune, however, must have an end—even ten-rupee incomes for stranded wanderers. There dawned a day when our canvas dwelling came down by the run, and the mixed odor of sweat and sawdust was wafted away on the hot monsoon that sweeps across the playground of Ceylon. The season of Fitzgerald was over. The naked stevedores bundled into the ship’s hold the chest that contained Walhalla’s merry raiment as carelessly as they threw the sections of the lion’s cage on top of it. On the forward deck the moth-eaten tiger peered through the bars at his native jungle behind the city, and rubbed a watery eye; at the rail an unpainted Faust stared gloomily down at the churning screw. There were no tears shed by the united quartet that, from the far end of the breakwater, watched the circus sink hull-down on the southern horizon; but as we straggled back at dusk to join the beachcombers under the palms of Gordon Gardens, I caught myself feeling now and then in the band of my trousers for the sovereigns I had sewed there.
CHAPTER XIV
THREE HOBOES IN INDIA
The departure of Ole for home as a consul passenger, closely followed by that of Askins for India, “ere his elusive chips made their escape,” left me the oldest “comber” on the beach. That honor might quickly have fallen to the next of heir but for the pleading of a fellow-countryman; for the merry circus days had left me a fortune that would carry me far afield in the vast peninsula to the north. Marten of Tacoma, tally clerk of the British Steam Navigation Company, promised to secure me a place in the same capacity if I would delay my departure until pay day, that he might accompany me. I agreed, for the ex-pearl-fisher spoke Hindustanee fluently. Within an hour I was seated, notebook in hand, at the edge of a hatch of a newly arrived vessel, drawing four rupees a day and free from the dread of losing caste.
On the morning of April fourth, we took leave of the navigation company and, having purchased tickets on the afternoon steamer to Tuticorin, set out to bid farewell to our acquaintances in the city. The hour of sailing was close at hand when Haywood, the much-wanted, burst in upon us at Almeida’s.
“I hear,” he shouted, “that you fellows are off for India.”
We nodded.