“The trouble with my lions,” said I, “is that they were born in captivity. Give me a wild lion, caught on his native heath, and I’ll know what to expect from him when I tame him. But no man on earth can tell what a lion born in captivity will do.”
The hard cider had cheered Byram a little; he drew a cherished cigar from his vest-pocket, offered it to me, and when I considerately refused, he carefully set it alight with a splinter from the fire. Its odor was indescribable.
“Luck’s a curious phenomena, ain’t it, Mr. Scarlett?” he said.
I agreed with him.
“Luck,” continued Byram, waving his cigar toward the four quarters of the globe, “is the rich man’s slave an’ the poor man’s tyrant. It’s also a see-saw. When the devil plays in luck the cherubim git spanked—or words to that effec’—not meanin’ no profanity.”
“It’s about like that, governor,” admitted Speed, lazily.
Byram leaned back and sucked meditatively at his cigar. The new moon was just rising over the elephant’s hindquarters, and the poetry of the incident appeared to move the manager profoundly. He turned and surveyed the dim bivouac, the two silent tents, the 183 monstrous, shadowy bulk of the elephant, rocking monotonously against the sky. “Kind of Silurian an’ solemn, ain’t it,” he murmured, “the moon shinin’ onto the rump of that primeval pachyderm. It’s like the dark ages of the behemoth an’ the cony. I tell you, gentlemen, when them fearsome an’ gigantic mamuels was aboundin’ in the dawn of creation, the public missed the greatest show on earth—by a few million years!”
We nodded sleepily but gravely.
Byram appeared to have recovered something of his buoyancy and native optimism.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “let’s kinder saunter over to the inn and have a night-cap with Kelly Eyre.”