THE YANKEE AND THE KING SOLD AS SLAVES
Well, what had I better do? Nothing in a hurry,
sure. I must get up a diversion; anything to
employ me while I could think, and while these poor
fellows could have a chance to come to life again.
There sat Marco, petrified in the act of trying to
get the hang of his miller-gun—turned to
stone, just in the attitude he was in when my pile-driver
fell, the toy still gripped in his unconscious fingers.
So I took it from him and proposed to explain its
mystery. Mystery! a simple little thing like
that; and yet it was mysterious enough, for that race
and that age.
I never saw such an awkward people, with machinery;
you see, they were totally unused to it. The
miller-gun was a little double-barreled tube of toughened
glass, with a neat little trick of a spring to it,
which upon pressure would let a shot escape.
But the shot wouldn’t hurt anybody, it would
only drop into your hand. In the gun were two
sizes—wee mustard-seed shot, and another
sort that were several times larger. They were
money. The mustard-seed shot represented milrays,
the larger ones mills. So the gun was a purse;
and very handy, too; you could pay out money in the
dark with it, with accuracy; and you could carry it
in your mouth; or in your vest pocket, if you had
one. I made them of several sizes —one
size so large that it would carry the equivalent of
a dollar. Using shot for money was a good thing
for the government; the metal cost nothing, and the
money couldn’t be counterfeited, for I was the
only person in the kingdom who knew how to manage a
shot tower. “Paying the shot” soon
came to be a common phrase. Yes, and I knew
it would still be passing men’s lips, away down
in the nineteenth century, yet none would suspect
how and when it originated.
The king joined us, about this time, mightily refreshed
by his nap, and feeling good. Anything could
make me nervous now, I was so uneasy—for
our lives were in danger; and so it worried me to
detect a complacent something in the king’s eye
which seemed to indicate that he had been loading
himself up for a performance of some kind or other;
confound it, why must he go and choose such a time
as this?
I was right. He began, straight off, in the
most innocently artful, and transparent, and lubberly
way, to lead up to the subject of agriculture.
The cold sweat broke out all over me. I wanted
to whisper in his ear, “Man, we are in awful
danger! every moment is worth a principality till
we get back these men’s confidence; don’t
waste any of this golden time.” But of
course I couldn’t do it. Whisper to him?
It would look as if we were conspiring. So
I had to sit there and look calm and pleasant while
the king stood over that dynamite mine and mooned along
about his damned onions and things. At first
the tumult of my own thoughts, summoned by the danger-signal
and swarming to the rescue from every quarter of my
skull, kept up such a hurrah and confusion and fifing
and drumming that I couldn’t take in a word;
but presently when my mob of gathering plans began
to crystallize and fall into position and form line
of battle, a sort of order and quiet ensued and I
caught the boom of the king’s batteries, as if
out of remote distance:
