CHAPTER XV FIAM WEARS A FUR COAT

One day when we were far away from our post there was a great storm. It rained cats and dogs, and the brim of my hat dripped all around like an overflowing gutter.

I walked through the wood with my head bent forward, completely forgetting Fiam, who was fastened to the band of the crown and was soaked through and through. After many hours I reached my tent. I took off my hat and pulled out Fiam, whom I placed on a blanket, knowing how he loved to climb around the folds. But to my dismay I saw that he didn’t move. He stayed just as I had put him; flat on his back, with his arms stretched out and one leg in the air. He looked as if he were dead.

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“Fiam!” I called frightened. “Fiam, my friend, speak to me.”

But he was quite still.

“He is dead, he is dead!” I exclaimed, almost with tears in my eyes. “The rain has killed him, and it is all my fault. I was so cruel to forget him.” I continued to call, “Fiam, come back. Forgive me! Fiam!”

It seemed to me as if I had lost a brother of whom I should have been careful and should have protected better. I was overcome with remorse. I thought of all the delightful times we had had together, of his kindness, of his courage, of the work we had shared and of our sincere friendship.

“Fiam, Fiam!” I called, now and again, hoping to hear once more his little affectionate voice.

At last I thought of trying a radical way of reviving him if there were still the tiniest hope.

I took a flask of saki which I had had on the ship and dropped a little on Fiam. Then I put a wad of cotton (which I kept handy in case it was needed for wounds) in the cigarette box; then put my friend on the cotton, as if he were in a beautiful white feather [119] bed, shut the box and put it near the fire, which I lighted as best I could in the midst of my small shelter.

When I again opened the box and looked in, he was lying there immovable, his arms stretched out and his little leg raised up.

“Fiam!” I called.

No answer. I closed the box and waited, and am not ashamed to say that I waited in tears. At last after about an hour had passed, during which I had [120] looked in for the hundredth time, I jumped for joy. His little voice had answered.

But it was a tiny voice, even smaller and feebler than usual. I asked him no end of questions most anxiously.

“Speak. What is the matter? How do you feel? What can I do for you? Tell me—why don’t you move?”

“Why,” he replied faintly, “because the water has swollen my joints.” That was it. The dampness had enlarged the wood and shrunk the thread in such a way that the little fellow couldn’t move ever so slightly.

“But you ought to have told me at once,” I said to him reprovingly and in an affectionate tone.

“I couldn’t. I was suffocated by the melted phosphorus. Now I begin to feel stronger.”

“Wait a minute; I will put you near the fire again, and when you are comfortably dry you will be as well as you ever were.”

“I am so afraid of the flames! Shut up the imperial tomb, and don’t put me too near the fire,” he warned me.

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“Just keep quiet.”

Three hours later Fiam was completely cured of his cold, and walked carefully, like a person on stilts, around the house.

But a queer thing had happened. You remember that after the incident of the postage stamps Fiam had always been covered with little gummed pieces of paper showing parts of the Emperor’s face in different colors. The rain had softened the gum, and when he was put in the cotton to dry it had stuck to him, and with all my attempts to get him free I was unable to succeed, so that now my companion was completely covered with thick down, a kind of white fur coat, which made him look like a miniature automobilist.

I proposed to shave him with my razor, but he opposed this energetically.

“Don’t do it!” he said. “In the first place your razor frightens me. I see that you can’t even shave yourself without cutting your chin, and one of those slips would cut me in two. Then I like this fur; it is becoming. It makes me look bigger, you know how thin I am, and it protects me from bad weather. Let it be.”