Armed with their light, broad, wooden shovels, their dusky arms rose and fell with wonderful precision and regularity, keeping time with the musical notes of their sneezing; now soft and low, now breaking out into a wild and galloping measure.
Down! Down! Down!
THREE PORTRAITS SHOWING THE WONDERFUL GROWTH OF MY BRAIN.
And yet they delved in vain!
No sign of me was there to gladden the hearts of my poor, grief-stricken parents.
But hark!
What is that shrill cry?
It is not human!
No; for it is Bulger’s bark, or rather it is Bulger’s yelp.
He had been watching the band of Melodious Sneezers, as their white shovels rose and fell all in vain, with his head thrust through the railings of the veranda.
No one was there with mind and heart enough to catch the meaning of that poor yelp.
Chew-chew-lô saw that his men were standing, leaning on their shovels, with looks of doubt and hesitation in their eyes.
The King was silent.
It was the great baron who spoke:
“Oh, let them not give o’er! My life, my wealth, my all, are thine, good, kind Chew-Chew——”
A fit of sneezing cut short his appeal.
Again Bulger’s cry was raised, and this time the King heeded it.
An attendant saw the royal nod, and hastening to bind broad wooden cups upon the dog’s feet, he was turned loose upon the surface of the mud.
What is man, with his boasted intelligence?
They were ten paces or more distant from the point where I had disappeared.
Yelping, barking, and whining by turns, my dear Bulger hurried to the spot where his unerring scent told him that his beloved little master had gone down.
Again the band of Melodious Sneezers set to work with renewed vigor, their white shovels flashing with strange effect against the inky blackness of the mud.
Bulger encouraged them with loud and joyful barkings.
Suddenly a clear, ringing, melodious “chew” rent the air.
They had caught sight of me!
With rare foresight for one of my months, I had closed my nostrils with one hand before reaching the mud, and had thus saved my lungs from filling up.
But how useless would have been this precaution, had not my faithful Bulger come to my rescue!
His joy now knew no bounds.
I thought that I caught a glimpse of a smile on the old baron’s tear-stained cheek, as his boy was borne to the veranda, more like an animated lump of earth than aught else, for the air had revived me. My eyes were not only wide open, but they were the only clean place on my whole body.
Utterly regardless of my filthy condition, my fond mother clasped me convulsively to her breast, and I verily believe that she would have pressed her lips upon my mud-covered head and face, had she not seen the baron’s broad palm held in suspicious proximity, while her mother’s heart was emptying itself out in words. A few basins of warm water, and I was myself again.
No, I was never myself again. My bath in the warm mud of Lâ-aah-chew-lâ effected a most remarkable change in me; it checked the growth of my body and turned all my strength upwards into my head and brain.
In one short month my head almost doubled in size.
My baby face and expression were gone!
And ere another moon had filled her horns I had grown to be a living wonder!
Not only was the size of my head something remarkable, but from my eyes beamed an astonishing intelligence.
The poor women of Lâ-aah-chew-lâ Land crouched in front of me as if I were a being from another world and then tapping their foreheads they approached my mother and whispered:
“Most gracious Chew-lâ-â-â-â-â-â the Great Spirit has made a mistake and put two souls in there instead of one!”
And then they bent their graceful bodies till their foreheads touched my mother’s feet and withdrew, going out backwards like the best regulated court ladies, each leveling her finger at me and opening wide her eyes as she disappeared through the door.
The whole scene was so grotesque that I burst out into a shout of laughter.
Upon hearing which, the poor creatures tumbled headlong over each other in their mad efforts to get outside of the house, shrieking at the top of their voices:
“Save us! save us! He will bewitch us!”
“Little Baron!” said my father in a tone of mock anger, “you should not have frightened the ladies of King Chew-chew-lô’s Court!”
Chew-pâ! Chew-pâ! (Idiots! Idiots!) I replied, looking up from my slate upon which I was working out an example in arithmetic, for I was very fond of figures.
In fact, my father had already taught me addition by showing me how to trade off worthless glass beads for valuable ivory, and division, by taking away ninety cents from every dollar I made. Long before I could read or write, I knew the letters of several languages by name, and could spell any word which had no silent letter in it. No one took more delight in my wonderful accomplishments than Bulger.
He seemed to know instinctively that his little master was no ordinary being and respected him accordingly. We now bade adieu to the Land of Lâ-aah-chew-lâ and the Melodious Sneezers.
King Chew-chew-lô with a mighty band of retainers accompanied us to his frontier, making the forests resound with their melodious chew-chew-a-ing. Standing on the old baron’s shoulders, I waved them a last goodbye to which they answered with such a perfect whirlwind of Chew-chew-â’s that Bulger fairly howled with delight.
Any special honor paid to his master was always a personal matter to him. The elder baron had intended to penetrate still further into the heart of Africa; but the fact is, that the continual growth of my mind was so wonderful that it engrossed his attention from morn till night. He endeavored to hide this from me; but all to no purpose.
Before I was two years old my brain had grown so heavy that my mother was obliged to sew pieces of lead in the soles of my shoes to keep me right end upwards, and yet, in spite of this precaution, I was often found standing upon my head working out difficult mathematical problems by making use of my toes, as the Chinese do their counting machines.
The first thing which my father did upon reaching home was to take me to a phrenologist in order to have a chart made of my head.
The examination lasted a month.
At length, upon the completion of the chart, it was found that I possessed thirty-two distinct bumps.
Well-developed ones, too!
It was, therefore, at once determined to engage thirty-two learned tutors, each tutor to have charge of a separate bump and to do his utmost to enlarge it even if it grew to be a horn.
My father was resolved to leave nothing undone in order to develop my mental powers to the utmost limit. I said nothing either for or against the scheme.
In one short year I had learned all that the thirty-two tutors could teach me, and, what is more, I had taught each one of them fifty things which he had not known before, and which I had learned while traveling in foreign lands with my parents.
One fine morning to the great surprise of my thirty-two tutors I discharged