第9章 THE INVALIDS STORY(3)

Thompson nodded "All ready,"and then we threw ourselves forward with all our might;but Thompson slipped,and slumped down with his nose on the cheese,and his breath got loose.He gagged and gasped,and floundered up and made a break for the door,pawing the air and saying hoarsely,"Don't hender me!--gimme the road!I'm a-dying;gimme the road!"Out on the cold platform I sat down and held his head a while,and he revived.Presently he said,"Do you reckon we started the Gen'rul any?"I said no;we hadn't budged him.

"Well,then,that idea's up the flume.We got to think up something else.He's suited wher'he is,I reckon;and if that's the way he feels about it,and has made up his mind that he don't wish to be disturbed,you bet he's a-going to have his own way in the business.Yes,better leave him right wher'he is,long as he wants it so;becuz he holds all the trumps,don't you know,and so it stands to reason that the man that lays out to alter his plans for him is going to get left."But we couldn't stay out there in that mad storm;we should have frozen to death.So we went in again and shut the door,and began to suffer once more and take turns at the break in the window.By and by,as we were starting away from a station where we had stopped a moment Thompson.

Pranced in cheerily,and exclaimed,"We're all right,now!I reckon we've got the Commodore this time.Ijudge I've got the stuff here that'll take the tuck out of him."It was carbolic acid.He had a carboy of it.He sprinkled it all around everywhere;in fact he drenched everything with it,rifle-box,cheese and all.Then we sat down,feeling pretty hopeful.But it wasn't for long.

You see the two perfumes began to mix,and then--well,pretty soon we made a break for the door;and out there Thompson swabbed his face with his bandanna and said in a kind of disheartened way,"It ain't no use.We can't buck agin him.He just utilizes everything we put up to modify him with,and gives it his own flavor and plays it back on us.Why,Cap.,don't you know,it's as much as a hundred times worse in there now than it was when he first got a-going.I never did see one of 'em warm up to his work so,and take such a dumnation interest in it.No,Sir,I never did,as long as I've ben on the road;and I've carried a many a one of 'em,as I was telling you."We went in again after we were frozen pretty stiff;but my,we couldn't stay in,now.So we just waltzed back and forth,freezing,and thawing,and stifling,by turns.In about an hour we stopped at another station;and as we left it Thompson came in with a bag,and said,--"Cap.,I'm a-going ,to chance him once more,--just this once;and if we don't fetch him this time,the thing for us to do,is to just throw up the sponge and withdraw from the canvass.That's the way I put it up."He had brought a lot of chicken feathers,and dried apples,and leaf tobacco,and rags,and old shoes,and sulphur,and asafoetida,and one thing or another;and he,piled them on a breadth of sheet iron in the middle of the floor,and set fire to them.

When they got well started,I couldn't see,myself,how even the corpse could stand it.All that went before was just simply poetry to that smell,--but mind you,the original smell stood up out of it just as sublime as ever,--fact is,these other smells just seemed to give it a better hold;and my,how rich it was!I didn't make these reflections there--there wasn't time--made them on the platform.And breaking for the platform,Thompson got suffocated and fell;and before I got him dragged out,which I did by the collar,I was mighty near gone myself.

When we revived,Thompson said dejectedly,--

"We got to stay out here,Cap.We got to do it.They ain't no other way.The Governor wants to travel alone,and he's fixed so he can outvote us."And presently he added,"And don't you know,we're pisoned.It's our last trip,you can make up your mind to it.Typhoid fever is what's going to come of this.I feel it acoming right now.Yes,sir,we're elected,just as sure as you're born."We were taken from the platform an hour later,frozen and insensible,at the next station,and I went straight off into a virulent fever,and never knew anything again for three weeks.I found out,then,that I had spent that awful night with a harmless box of rifles and a lot of innocent cheese;but the news was too late to save me;imagination had done its work,and my health was permanently shattered;neither Bermuda nor any other land can ever bring it back tome.This is my last trip;Iam on my way home to die.