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Updated: May 23, 2025
Shutters slammed; chairs were over-turned on the porch; a brick fell with a thud from the top of the chimney to the roof; another fell down the chimney into the fireplace where its arrival was followed by a roar that seemed to shake the old building on its foundation. "Grrreat Scott!" ejaculated Mr. Schuler, who had learned some English expressions from his pupils.
Spence went out slowly. There would be time for everything now since time had ceased to matter. He laid the hat aside gently. There might be work for his hands to do. With mechanical care he searched the cottage. No trace of disturbance met him anywhere until he reached the kitchen. Something had happened there Over-turned chairs and broken table a door half off its hinge.
I was well sheltered from the rain, that fell pattering on my lid, and thus I started off for the town, lying in this box, flat on my stomach, rocked by one wave, roughly shaken by another, at moments almost over-turned; and through the half-opened door of my rat-trap I saw, upside down, the two little creatures to whom I had entrusted my fate, children of eight or ten years of age at the most, who, with little monkeyish faces, had however fully developed muscles like miniature men, and were already as skillful as any regular old salts.
Borne onward in their basket cradle, they were at length swept ashore where the river had overflown its banks at the foot of the afterwards famous Palatine Hill. Here the cradle was over-turned near the roots of a wild fig-tree, and the infants left at the edge of the shallow waters. What follows sounds still more like fable.
The piece of money I had put into the claw of the child I had over-turned was clawed out of it, and was again clawed out of that wolfish gripe, and again out of that, and soon I had no notion in what part of the obscene scuffle in the mud, of rags and legs and arms and dirt, the money might be.
But, when she came to the door and suddenly saw the splashes of blood in the village, the swords in the orchard, the cradles over-turned in the street, women on their knees and women waving their arms around the dead, she began to cry out with all her strength and to strike the soldiers, who put down the tub to defend themselves.
"Examine that rock stool on which you are seated, and you will find that it can be moved," the voice of the hermit went on, steadily. "There, now that you have over-turned the seat, you discover something in the cavity. Keep your word, and place in my hands my precious packet of manuscript.
Of course I was not to be foiled, so I cast about for another method of "fixing." I tried several dodges, but nothing answered exactly; something always gave way after a few minutes of repose either I came down with a bump, or some abominable, ramshackle chest of drawers got over-turned. Now my friend was very tired and sleepy, and desired nothing so much as a little repose.
It was when he was riding slowly around the boulder marked "Palace Hotel, Rates Reasnible," that he came upon the place where a horse had stood, on the side best sheltered from the storm. Deep hoof marks closely overlapping, an over-turned stone here and there gave proof enough, and the rain-beaten soil that blurred the hoofprints farthest from the rock told him more.
Umboo learned to lie down and "play dead," he learned to stand on a little stool, like an over-turned washtub, he learned to kneel down over a man stretched on the ground, and not crush him with the great body, weighing more than two tons of coal.
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