The Lost Valley | Page 2

if he had been any shorter he would have been a human
Humpty-Dumpty. He was so obviously enjoying himself and getting
the best out of his gambols in the water that my heart went out to him.
He was ducking and splashing about, rolling and wallowing in a way
that reminded me of a hippopotamus I had once shot at--and missed--in
happier if not more spacious days spent on the lower Nile. "The Hippo"
I christened him, and then chuckled to myself at the singular
appropriateness of the name.
Even his bathing dress seemed designed expressly to add to his
rotundity. It was one of those queer garments bearing a faint
resemblance to a convict's uniform, and the wide stripes of it went
round and round his figure like hoops on a barrel. It was so funny that I
chuckled again and forgot all about my burning feet and my burst boot.
Presently he stopped his antics and looked over my way. He gave one
glance at me, and then started to run inshore with short, jumpy little
steps. Something seemed to have struck him all of a sudden, and I was
just beginning to wonder what the deuce it could be when, out of the
corner of my eyes, I caught sight of a pile of neatly folded clothes
thrust into the cleft of the rock a little above my head. I began to
understand then. I looked more disreputable than I really was; my suit
was in the last stages of ruinous decay, while his brand-new clothes just
above me would have been a gift from the gods to a man with less
conscience and more figure than I possessed. He evidently presumed on
the strength of my proximity that I had evil designs on his clothes, but
he needn't have troubled himself. If I could judge anything from his
own figure I would have been completely lost in them. I didn't like to
confirm his suspicions by running away now that I found I was
observed, so I just sat there and waited for him. There was a piece of
something that looked very like driftwood protruding from the sand
close to me, and I kicked idly at it as he came pounding up the beach. It

was set loosely in the sand, and a more accurate kick than usual
knocked it out of its resting-place. Something queer about it caught my
eye, and I bent over to pick it up.
"Whatever else it is, it isn't driftwood," I said to myself. "I'll bet----,"
and then I stopped short, for I remembered that my sole worldly wealth
at the moment consisted of exactly three pennies. All the same I was
right about it. Driftwood doesn't get the dry rot, nor does it come ashore
covered with rich black loam.
"Somebody's planted it here," was my next thought, and my mind
strayed to the panting bulk of a man who was thundering down on top
of me.
"It's his, I suppose," I said, and looked up at him. At that precise instant
he tripped and fell full length on the sand. I've seen a good many lucky
escapes in my day--a man who has travelled the out-of-the-way places
of the world from the Yukon and the White Nile down to the
headwaters of the Fly River in the snow-mountains of Dutch New
Guinea does see a bit of life--but the way that fat chap upset himself
into the sand was the most wonderful piece of good fortune I ever came
across. He must have missed death by a fraction of an inch. I saw him
fall, heard the shot ring out and watched the sand spurt up all in the one
crowded second. The next moment I was running towards him, my
hand moving instinctively to my empty pistol-pocket. But my mind
readjusted itself in a flash, and I recollected that I wasn't dodging
cannibals in the upper reaches of the Mambare, but was living in a
civilised country where a man who carries a revolver, and gets caught
at it, is fined more money than I'd seen in the last twelve months.
The other chap seemed to divine instinctively that I was a friend, for he
yelled at me even while he was hauling himself up from the sand.
"There's one in my pocket," he shouted and gesticulated back towards
his clothes.
I didn't waste a moment, but sped over the intervening yards like a man
possessed. As luck would have it his coat was the first thing I grabbed,

and the weight of it told me at once in which pocket to look. I plunged
my hand in and drew out the sweetest little automatic it has ever been
my lot to handle. As a rule I prefer