Part 9

About this time, when the colony was not too large, I used to take them out for picnics.

Opposite the front door, at the corner of the lawn, there is a large escalonia tree; on warm summer evenings it sheds a delicious fragrant smell from leaves and flowers. Opposite this there is a stile made to get into the fields. The stile is made in such a manner as to be a very comfortable seat. Here, under the escalonia, I used to turn out the guinea-pigs for a day in the country, while I read a book on the stile, and Watch was put to guard them; if any little pig strayed too far, he saw where it went to, and helped me to find it again.

But, in time, the colony grew too large for this, and at last it began to increase with a rapidity that alarmed me; for, as you see, it is not a case of the simple geometrical progression of creatures which have the same number in every family; but, as guinea-pigs get older, each family gets larger, so that it is like a sum in compound interest, at an accelerating rate of interest. I began to be frightened when the “five Mitchinsons” were born, and the next family was larger still.

In fact, they would have eaten us out of garden and farm, if it had not been for what political economists call “violent checks”; these violent checks were kidnapping, nepoticide, and massacre.

Kidnapping was the first check. Our house was being added to, and there were various workmen about, and one morning when I visited the hutches, Daisy and Ally Mitchinson were missing. There is no more to say about it; they were never seen again. I felt like a mother, who, having complained of the burden and size of her family, is deprived of one of them.

But that was not the worst. Atahualpa was still flourishing, although a great-great-grandmother. One morning I found reason to seclude her from the rest of the community, and by an arrangement of hutches, I shut off a little yard for her by herself.

I came back a few hours later, and I found Brastias had displayed himself in his true colours at last. He had leaped the barrier, and was standing with gory mouth and fiery eye, over the carcase of a baby guinea-pig. In another corner of the hutch was Atahualpa, behaving with the supremest indifference to six more.

That day I gave away sixteen guinea-pigs. But I believe that we should have had a repetition of Bishop Hatto, if it had not been for the last check--namely, massacre.

We were overrun with rats, and rat-catchers were sent for. One morning two men came up with their dogs. The men were looking at the rat-holes, and arranging a plan of campaign, when suddenly they found that the dogs were not with them. Across the wall which separated the cow stables and haystacks from the garden and guinea-pig yard, they heard a doleful noise. They ran round, and found that the dogs had been doing their duty nobly, and all the guinea-pigs but two lay dead on the ground.

The victims were buried in a large grave, and my brother found a suitable slate and wrote a Latin epitaph on it. He put it up as a headstone, and enjoyed the proceeding very much.

But I did not enjoy it. I had not the heart to keep guinea-pigs any more. I gave away the two survivors, and the hutches mouldered away, and cucumbers grew over the yard, and only the genealogy and the tombstone were left as memorials of that very large family with the white coats and jewelled eyes.

FINISHED SOLOMON

King Solomon was journeying through a thirsty land--sand beneath his feet, sand around as far as a man could see, above the pitiless blue sky. No tree could grow here, and no rock was there to cast its shadow on the sand. “What shall shield me,” said the king, “from the fury of this sun?” Then was heard the sound of light wings beating the air, for all creatures knew the voice of the words of King Solomon; and there came through the air a cloud of hoopoes, and they spread their barred wings, and closed them together, wing to wing, and they shielded King Solomon. So, when the toilsome journey was over, the king called the hoopoes, and said, “O hoopoes, what will ye that I give you for your service done to me this day?” And the hoopoes said, “O King, give us crowns of gold”; and the king gave the hoopoes crowns of pure gold.

But men hunted the hoopoes through the length and breadth of the land, and they killed them for the sake of their golden crowns; then the hoopoes cried to King Solomon, for King Solomon knew the voice of all beasts and birds, yea of the creeping things also, and the hoopoes said, “Take away our crowns, O king, for men kill us for the sake of our golden crowns.” And Solomon took away their crowns. “Yet,” said he, “it shall be known what the hoopoes did for the King,” and he gave them crowns of golden feathers.

* * * * *

So says the Book of the Enchantments of the King, and that is why my hoopoe was called Solomon.

* * * * *

I was riding through a village near Thebes in the evening, and among the groups of children who held out grimy hands and cried “Backsheesh”; and the half-blind boys who made the somewhat startling statement, “Finished Fazzer, finished Muzzer, I yam berry hongerry”; I saw at the door of a mud house three children, one of whom swung towards me a bird he held by the wings,--and I recognised the helpless, half-dead, fluffy mass for a hoopoe.

I refused to give them the wages of sin, and they were too much surprised to attempt to hinder the departure of the hoopoe. Indeed, if they had kept it much longer, it would have departed without assistance by the silent road, for one claw had been tied back to its leg, and it had been swung in that manner till its tormentors happened to think that they had better try the wings instead; its crown of feathers had been pulled out; and when I got back to the hotel, it shut its eyes and fell forwards on the point of its beak as if it was about to die. The string had been tied so tightly that it was with difficulty that we got it free from its bonds, and then we plied it with whisky and water. That was no easy matter either, for it would not open its mouth, and one had first to get the long beak open, and then to hold it so, while from a feather dipped in the refreshing beverage a drop trickled down the pink throat; then the bill was shut, and one watched to see if the feathers of the throat would ruffle and give sign that the drop was passing down. The method succeeded, for presently the little forked tongue was shot out to suck up the liquid, the little brown eyes opened, and the hoopoe, taking in the situation, hurried into the corner of the window-sill, and supposed that he was hiding himself by laying his long bill up the wall.

It would certainly be necessary to provide the hoopoe with a habitation, were he only the guest of a day; so a crate which had contained pottery was found, its straw was arranged nestwise, and the bird was bestowed in it, much to its own satisfaction.

But the diet was a problem. Its natural food was live insects. I went so far as to kill a housefly, but it was a very disgusting process, and the fly was not at all well received; moreover, I was not sure whether the hoopoe was of an age to receive, shall I say peptonised food from his parents, or whether he preferred the raw material. But as the best compromise, including the carnivorous and the more-or-less-peptonised element, I decided on hard-boiled egg; that had to be administered in the same way as the whisky, with drops of water to help it to run down. After this I put the hoopoe into the crate for the night.

I frankly confess that I expected to find a stiff little body there in the morning, but instead I saw a bright brown eye fixed upon me, and a smooth, compact, though crownless little hoopoe, sitting in the straw.

If the hoopoe was going to live, other things became necessary--first and foremost, a name.

The name suited him exactly. From the time that he was called Solomon, he became Solomon. We never spoke of him as the hoopoe; indeed, it is with great difficulty that I have avoided so far using his name. Now I have told you when and why he was named; henceforth, then, he is Solomon.

But, secondly, Solomon must have exercise, and fresh animal food. It would be better, both for the sake of digestion and economy of time, if the two could be combined, and I spent most of my time in effecting the combination in one of the garden beds.

The beds in the hotel garden are excellently convenient for feeding and exercising half-fledged hoopoes; they are lowered three or four inches below the level of the paths, for the purposes of irrigation. Thus when, once a week, the water is turned in, the beds become a series of pools, until the water has gradually soaked away through the rich black mud. Further, the beds are surrounded with a bushy little plant, so that when Solomon tried to spring over the edge and escape me, his wings were not strong enough for the purpose; he sprawled on the bushy plant, wings spread and legs kicking, and was easily captured.

But it was Sunday, and the hour drew towards church time. Solomon must go home and be fed before I went to church. Accordingly, I went to catch him, but there was one thing I had forgotten. At the corner of the bed was a drain through which the irrigation was effected. Quick as thought Solomon ran in there, and was out of arm’s length in a minute. What was to be done? The bell was already ringing to church; decent and godly people, with their prayer-books in their hands, were walking down the garden path; and there was I plunging round the drain in search of an ungrateful, half-fledged, discrowned hoopoe. I dared not leave him there, to be the prey of the numerous and ravenous hawks and crows.

But suddenly, as a Deus ex machina, Mahmoud the gardener hove in sight; so I called to Mahmoud, and Mahmoud called to Ibrahim, and Ibrahim brought a dry palm leaf, and we put it in at the opposite end of the drain, and made a very terrible shaking noise in the inside with it; and there hurried out a very long beak, supported by a very small bird at the end of it; and Solomon was captured in time for church.