PAGE 7
Taken By Surprise
by
I wiped my brow. ‘You are not going to ask me to climb that thing?’ I faltered.
‘Well,’ he suggested, ‘if you will just arrange yourself upon the cross-trees in a negligent attitude, upside down, with your tongue protruded as if for medical inspection, I shall be perfectly satisfied.’
I tried argument. ‘I should have no objection in the world,’ I said; ‘it’s an excellent idea–only, do sailors ever climb masts in that way? Wouldn’t it be better to have the thing correct while we’re about it?’
‘I was not aware that you were a sailor,’ he said; ‘are you?’
I was afraid to say I was, because I apprehended that, if I did, it might occur to him to put me through some still more frightful performance.
‘Come,’ he said, ‘you won’t compel me to shed blood so early in the afternoon, will you? Up with you.’
I got up, but, as I hung there, I tried to obtain a modification of some of the details. ‘I don’t think,’ I said artfully, ‘that I’ll put out my tongue–it’s rather overdone, eh? Everybody is taken with his tongue out nowadays.’
‘It is true,’ he said, ‘but I am not well enough known in the profession yet to depart entirely from the conventional. Your tongue out as far as it will go, please.’
‘I shall have a rush of blood to the head, I know I shall,’ I protested.
‘Look here,’ he said; ‘am I taking this photograph, or are you?’
There was no possible doubt, unfortunately, as to who was taking the photograph. I made one last remonstrance. ‘I put it to you as a sensible man,’ I began; but it is a waste of time to put anything to a raving lunatic as a sensible man. It is enough to say that he carried his point.
‘I wish you could see the negative!’ he said as he came back from his laboratory. ‘You were a little red in the face, but it will come out black, so it’s all right. That carte will be quite a novelty, I flatter myself.’
I groaned. However, this was the end; I would get away now at all hazards, and tell the police that there was a dangerous maniac at large. I got down from the mast with affected briskness. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘I mustn’t take advantage of your good nature any longer. I’m exceedingly obliged to you for the–the pains you have taken. You will send all the photographs to this address, please?’
‘Don’t go yet,’ he said. ‘Are you an equestrian, by the way?’
If I could only engage him in conversation I felt comparatively secure.
‘Oh, I put in an appearance in the Row sometimes, in the season,’ I replied; ‘and, while I think of it,’ I added, with what I thought at the time was an inspiration, ‘if you will come with me now, I’ll show you my horse–you might take me on horseback, eh?’ I did not possess any such animal, but I wanted to have that door unlocked.
‘Take you on horseback?’ he repeated. ‘That’s a good idea–I had rather thought of that myself.’
‘Then come along and bring your instrument,’ I said, ‘and you can take me at the stables; they’re close by.’
‘No need for that,’ he replied cheerfully. ‘I’ll find you a mount here.’
And the wretched lunatic went behind the screen and wheeled out a small wooden quadruped covered with large round spots!
‘She’s a strawberry roan,’ he said; ‘observe the strawberries. So, my beauty, quiet, then! Now settle yourself easily in the saddle, as if you were in the Row, with your face to the tail.’
‘Listen to me for one moment,’ I entreated tremulously. ‘I assure you that I am not in the habit of appearing in Rotten Row on a spotted wooden horse, nor does any one, I assure you–any one mount a horse of any description with his face towards the crupper! If you take me like that, you will betray your ignorance–you will be laughed at!’