I took the egg shells and ground them into powder, and fed them to the chickens. The poor creatures supposed it was corn-meal they were getting, confessed the Baron. I know it was mean, but what could I do?
Nothing, said the Twins softly. And we dont think it was so bad of you after all. Many another person would have kept them laying eggs until they starved, and then hed have killed them and eaten them up. You let them live.
That may be so, said the Baron, with a smile that showed how relieved his conscience was by the Twins suggestion. But I couldnt do that you know, because they were pets. I had been brought up from childhood with those chickens.
Then the Twins, jamming the Barons hat down over his eyes, climbed down from his lap and went to their play, strongly of the opinion that, though a bold warrior, the Baron was a singularly kind, soft-hearted man after all.
IV
SOME HUNTING STORIES FOR CHILDREN
The Heavenly Twins had been off in the mountains during their summer holiday, and in consequence had seen very little of their good old friend, Mr. Munchausen. He had written them once or twice, and they had found his letters most interesting, especially that one in which he told how he had killed a moose up in Maine with his Waterbury watch spring, and I do not wonder that they marvelled at that, for it was one of the most extraordinary happenings in the annals of the chase. It seems, if his story is to be believed, and I am sure that none of us who know him has ever had any reason to think that he would deceive intentionally; it seems, I say, that he had gone to Maine for a weeks sport with an old army acquaintance of his, who had now become a guide in that region. Unfortunately his rifle, of which he was very fond, and with which his aim was unerring, was in some manner mislaid on the way, and when they arrived in the woods they were utterly without weapons; but Mr. Munchausen was not the man to be daunted by any such trifle as that, particularly while his friend had an old army musket, a relic of the war, stored away in the attic of his woodland domicile.
Th only trouble with that ar musket, said the old guide, aint so much that she wont shoot straight, nor that shes got a kick onto her like an unbroke mule. What Im most afeard on about your shootin with her aint that I think shell bust neither, for the fact is we aint got nothin for to bust her with, seein as how ammynition is skeerce. I got powder, an I got waddin, but I aint got no shot.
That doesnt make any difference, the Baron replied. We can make the shot. Have you got any plumbing in the camp? If you have, rip it out, and Ill melt up a water-pipe into bullets.
No, sir, retorted the old man. Plumbin is one of the things I came here to escape from.
Then, said the Baron, Ill use my watch for ammunition. It is only a three-dollar watch and I can spare it.
With this determination, Mr. Munchausen took his watch to pieces, an ordinary time-piece of the old-fashioned kind, and, to make a long story short, shot for several days with the component parts of that useful affair rammed down into the barrel of the old musket. With the stem-winding ball he killed an eagle; with pieces of the back cover chopped up to a fineness of medium-sized shot he brought down several other birds, but the great feat of all was when he started for moose with nothing but the watch-spring in the barrel of the gun. Having rolled it up as tight as he could, fastened it with a piece of twine, and rammed it well into the gun, he set out to find the noble animal upon whose life he had designs. After stalking the woods for several hours, he came upon the tracks which told him that his prey was not far off, and in a short while he caught sight of a magnificent creature, his huge antlers held proudly up and his great eyes full of defiance.
For a moment the Baron hesitated. The idea of destroying so beautiful an animal seemed to be abhorrent to his nature, which, warrior-like as he is, has something of the tenderness of a woman about it. A second glance at the superb creature, however, changed all that, for the Baron then saw that to shoot to kill was necessary, for the beast was about to force a fight in which the hunter himself would be put upon the defensive.
I wont shoot you through the head, my beauty, he said, softly, nor will I puncture your beautiful coat with this load of mine, but Ill kill you in a new way.
With this he pulled the trigger. The powder exploded, the string binding the long black spring into a coil broke, and immediately the strip of steel shot forth into the air, made directly toward the neck of the rushing moose, and coiling its whole sinuous length tightly about the doomed creatures throat strangled him to death.
As the Twins father said, a feat of that kind entitled the Baron to a high place in fiction at least, if not in history itself. The Twins were very much wrought up over the incident, particularly, when one too-smart small imp who was spending the summer at the same hotel where they were said that he didnt believe it, but he was an imp who had never seen a cheap watch, so how should he know anything about what could be done with a spring that cannot be wound up by a great strong man in less than ten minutes?
As for the Baron he was very modest about the achievement, for when he first appeared at the Twins home after their return he had actually forgotten all about it, and, in fact, could not recall the incident at all, until Diavolo brought him his own letter, when, of course, the whole matter came back to him.