The Little Nugget

by P. G. Wodehouse

There was, fortunately for me, a laurel bush immediately below the window, or I should have been undone. I fell into it, all arms and legs, in a way which would have meant broken bones if I had struck the hard turf. I was on my feet in an instant, shaken and scratched and, incidentally, in a worse temper than ever in my life before. The idea of flight, which had obsessed me a moment before, to the exclusion of all other mundane affairs, had vanished absolutely. I was full of fight, I might say overflowing with it. I remember standing there, with the snow trickling in chilly rivulets down my face and neck, and shaking my fist at the window. Two of my pursuers were leaning out of it, while a third dodged behind them, like a small man on the outskirts of a crowd. So far from being thankful for my escape, I was conscious only of a feeling of regret that there was no immediate way of getting at them.

They made no move towards travelling the quick but trying route which had commended itself to me. They seemed to be waiting for something to happen. It was not long before I was made aware of what this something was. From the direction of the front door came the sound of one running. A sudden diminution of the noise of his feet told me that he had left the gravel and was on the turf. I drew back a pace or two and waited.

It was pitch dark, and I had no fear that I should be seen. I was standing well outside the light from the window.

The man stopped just in front of me. A short parley followed.

'Can'tja see him?'

The voice was not Buck's. It was Buck who answered. And when I realized that this man in front of me, within easy reach, on whose back I was shortly about to spring, and whose neck I proposed, under Providence, to twist into the shape of a corkscrew, was no mere underling, but Mr MacGinnis himself, I was filled with a joy which I found it hard to contain in silence.

Looking back, I am a little sorry for Mr MacGinnis. He was not a good man. His mode of speech was not pleasant, and his manners were worse than his speech. But, though he undoubtedly deserved all that was coming to him, it was nevertheless bad luck for him to be standing just there at just that moment. The reactions after my panic, added to the pain of my shoulder, the scratches on my face, and the general misery of being wet and cold, had given me a reckless fury and a determination to do somebody, whoever happened to come along, grievous bodily hurt, such as seldom invades the bosoms of the normally peaceful. To put it crisply, I was fighting mad, and I looked on Buck as something sent by Heaven.

He had got as far, in his reply, as 'Naw, I can't—' when I sprang.

I have read of the spring of the jaguar, and I have seen some very creditable flying-tackles made on the football field. My leap combined the outstanding qualities of both. I connected with Mr MacGinnis in the region of the waist, and the howl he gave as we crashed to the ground was music to my ears.

But how true is the old Roman saying, 'Surgit amari aliquid'. Our pleasures are never perfect. There is always something. In the programme which I had hastily mapped out, the upsetting of Mr MacGinnis was but a small item, a mere preliminary. There were a number of things which I had wished to do to him, once upset. But it was not to be. Even as I reached for his throat I perceived that the light of the window was undergoing an eclipse. A compact form had wriggled out on to the sill, as I had done, and I heard the grating of his shoes on the wall as he lowered himself for the drop.