Читать книгу Munchausen XX - W. G. Worfel - Страница 5

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I here give further insight into my character for the delectation of the reader, recounting in precise and careful manner a short story concerning an experience that I had while waiting for the arrival of my twenty-fifth birthday.

INEED not detail all the vicissitudes through which I passed before I reached that day of all days, my twenty-fifth birthday. I may simply say, that, owing to the fault above mentioned, I was thrown upon the world with such force that I hit it good and hard, after my father’s death, and that the world and I seemed to find nothing in which we were in perfect harmony. I speak of the talking world; for with Nature I never had the slightest trouble—she understood me and I understood her. But nobody had any faith in my word, notwithstanding I never promised to do a thing which was not done. That very trait of character saved me from starvation on several occasions, one of which I may mention.

I was out in the country, among the mountains, and an eagle was carrying away a little child. I was near at hand as the bird got its prey, and I was then about ten years of age. I had been practicing with a sling and was traveling alone the mountain road from house to house, having had nothing to eat for several days. I had just gone into the barnyard of this particular house, when the bird of prey swept down and I heard the cry of the child and its mother.

I ran to where she stood, wringing her hands and screaming.

“Do you want the child?” I asked.

She turned her tear-stained face upon me with a look of astonishment, undoubtedly produced by my question.

“Yes, yes!” she cried. “But he is lost!”

“No,” said I with the greatest calmness, “I will get him for you.”

The bird was now far up in the air. I slipped a pebble into my sling, whirled it about my head, and shot the missile upward.

It caught the eagle just behind the ear and stunned it so that it stiffened its wings and began to soar gently downward. I had intended merely to stun it, and now put another pebble in the sling, for use when I saw the bird was beginning to recover. I, of course, knew it would never do to kill the bird in the air, for then the force of the fall from that height would most certainly injure the child severely if it did not kill it outright.

As the eagle showed signs of returning to consciousness, I sent forth the other pebble upon its errand of mercy and hit him in exactly the same place, but upon the other side of his head. This changed his direction just sufficiently to bring him gradually back, until, at last, he settled softly down, leaving the child in the very spot from whence he had taken it. I rushed up and hit him a smart rap on the top of the head and victory was mine.

It was the telling of this story at other places where I applied for assistance that caused them to set the dogs upon me, to threaten to shoot me, or to burn me at the stake.

I mention this incident in my variegated career to show that the brain of the ordinary mortal is powerless to comprehend the abilities of some people.