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Smashed seven ribs, one arm, and one thigh. Doctors gave him up; undertaker's man called on his wife for coffin order but a sailor chap said he'd pull him through. Got an indiarubber tube and made him suck up as much beer as he could hold; kept it up till all his bones "setted" again, and he recovered. Why shouldn't I if I only drank enough? "Hurry up, old dark-skin!" this to the faded Marie.
It was a battle royal, and the Indiarubber Man, interned on the aft-deck, yelped encouragement to his erstwhile conquerors because they were fighting valiantly against hopeless odds. A Rugby International and a middle-weight boxer of some pretensions, although hampered by aiguilettes and outnumbered six to one, were not easily disposed of.
One moment he lay still, puffing and blowing, bemoaning past youth, and bewailing loss of strength; the next, like an indiarubber ball, he had bounced to his feet, and was strutting forward, waving his short arms in the air, the white silk handkerchief streaming behind him like a flag. "Allons, mes enfants! No lolling allowed on the moors.
The craze for substitutes has spread so extensively that there have been some unpleasant results both for the purchaser and the producer, as was the case with several bakers, who were finally detected and convicted of a liberal use of sawdust in their cakes. Germany has worked especially hard to find a substitute for indiarubber, though with only moderate success.
The Thermos flask slid with a clatter on to the steel deck of the top, and the Indiarubber Man opened his eyes. He yawned and stretched himself and rose stiffly to his feet. The first rays of the sun were rising out of the sea. "Hai-yah!" He yawned. "Another bloomin' day. . . . I was dreaming . . . about . . . blowed if I can remember what I was dreaming about."
On the baize cloth at the other end stood an indiarubber plant and four little artificial ferns. A gas fire flickered in the grate, a wire blind shut out the view, the chairs stood ranged in mathematical order against the walls, the very newspaper was folded into an accurate square and put away in the rack, and Pixie looked round with awed eyes the while she was introduced.
It was just before we mobilised for the summer a mobilisation which, had we but known it, was to last until our book of pleasant memories was thumbed and dog-eared and tattered with much usage that the Indiarubber Man suggested taking a day off and having what he called a "stamp."
This was the dwelling of the trader; and alongside of it, under the same roof, was the store, in which were kept the guns, beads, powder and shot, etcetera, etcetera, which he exchanged with the natives of the interior for elephants' tusks and bar-wood, from which latter a beautiful dye is obtained; also ebony, indiarubber, and other products of the country.
"I have an idea," said Elsie; "get a box with an air-tight lid, and bore a small hole in it, just big enough to let in an indiarubber tube. Pop Louis, kennel and all, into the box, shut it down, and put the other end of the tube over the gas-bracket. There you have a perfect lethal chamber.
Lavender, somewhat dazed, for the indiarubber had been hard, sat gazing through the little back window at the great city he was leaving. His lips moved, expressing unconsciously the sentiments of innumerable Lord Mayors: "Greatest City in the world, Queen of Commerce, whose full heart I can still hear beating behind me, in mingled pride and regret I leave you.
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