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The race of men who put them up were extinct before the Egyptian pyramid-builders came upon the scene." "I don't quite see how that can be. You must understand, Mr. Cospatric " "Oh, what does it matter, man? If it pleases you, I'll grant that Cheops and Co. took to architecture first. But, anyway, these Minorcan pyramids were up long before Lully's time, and that's enough for us.
It all seems a great piece of foolery when one looks back, but at the time we thought it high-minded and justifiable rebellion. There is no doubt about it that Cospatric came to be a young man of much renown in those days. Had he been a popular person beforehand, far-seeing friends would have advised him to retire on his laurels after, say, the first half-dozen exploits.
Again the position was impregnable, and again the trophy drew delighted crowds till long past mid-day. And so one puerile outrage succeeded another, scarcely a day passing without some new triumph of the kind to report. Cospatric leaped at one bound into a public character.
Orchestral music was their formula for the highest form of the art, and orchestral music they accordingly played, that queer creature Haigh blinking over the upright grand, and Cospatric behind him bringing sounds out of his violin such as I never heard amateur produce before, with a combined result that was always marvellous, and sometimes verged upon that abstract goal, perfection.
"Three parts!" shrieked Weems, lifting up his pistol on to his elbow again, where it gleamed like a dancing mirror in the hot sunshine. Then as another thought struck him, he lowered the weapon to his side once more, and broke out into the ghost of a smile. "Oh, I see. Yes, of course. Two for me, Mr. Cospatric, and one for you. That's much more right and proper."
I spoke with Cospatric one day about keeping all these creative gifts to himself. Why did he not share them with the outside world? He gave a bit of a shudder. "Don't suggest such an idea," he said. "It's my one sensitive place. All the rest have been hammered dull in my roamings. I must keep that as it is."
He hadn't much voice, but he knew how to sing. "Like that?" inquired Cospatric. "Remarkably," said I. "Better than the other?" "A hundred per cent." "Then keep the same stop out, Haigh, and go ahead." And Haigh turned to the piano and rattled off half a dozen other goodish ballads.
Ulus had brought the tidings just as I was going to bed that his bjorn-ship was expected to call at a neighbouring farm to polish off the remains of a sheep; and as bear was the only sort of local game which Cospatric considered worth powder and ball, I thought I'd knock him up for the chance of a shot. So I went out, and tramped down to the shore opposite to where the ugly cutter was riding.
Every feather on its body was true to life, every spot on its tail a microscopic wonder. Cospatric said that dragon was a most finished piece of workmanship, and worth all he had cost.
He was never viewed or heard of again. His period of brilliance up there was very comet-like. "Hysterical madness" was the definition Cospatric clapped on to that culminating episode of his Cambridge life; "but," he added, with a chuckle, "I did enjoy myself whilst the fun lasted. That's just typical of the particular fool I am. Nature intended me for clown in a third-rate travelling circus.
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