Frenzied Fiction by Stephen Leacock (best sci fi novels of all time .TXT) 📕

“But stop a minute,” I said. “How is it that, if what you say is true, I haven’t seen or heard anybody in the bush, and I’ve been here since the middle of the morning?”

“Nonsense,” the man answered. “They were probably all round you but you didn’t recognize them.”

“No, no, it’s not possible. I lay here dreaming beneath a tree and there wasn’t a sound, except the twittering of a squirrel and, far away, the cry of a lake-loon, nothing else.”

“Exactly, the twittering of a squirrel! That was some feller up the tree twittering to beat the band to let on that he was a squirrel, and no doubt some other feller calling out like a loon over near the lake. I suppose you gave them the answering cry?”

“I did,” I said. “I gave that low guttural note which—”

“Precisely—which is the universal greeting in the freemasonry of animal speech. I see you’ve got it all down pat. Well, good-bye again. I’m off. Oh, don’t bother to growl, please. I’m sick of that line of stuff.”

“Good-bye,” I said.

He slid through the bushes and disappeared. I sat where I was, musing, my work interrupted, a mood of bitter disillusionment heavy upon me. So I sat, it may have been for hours.

In the far distance I could hear the faint cry of a bittern in some lonely marsh.

“Now, who the deuce is making that noise?” I muttered. “Some silly fool, I suppose, trying to think he’s a waterfowl. Cut it out!”

Long I lay, my dream of the woods shattered, wondering what to do.

Then suddenly there came to my ear the loud sound of voices, human voices, strident and eager, with nothing of the animal growl in them.

“He’s in there. I seen him!” I heard some one call.

Rapidly I dived sideways into the underbrush, my animal instinct strong upon me again, growling as I went. Instinctively I knew that it was I that they were after. All the animal joy of being hunted came over me. My union suit stood up on end with mingled fear and rage.

As fast as I could I retreated into the wood. Yet somehow, as I moved, the wood, instead of growing denser, seemed to thin out. I crouched low, still growling and endeavouring to bury myself in the thicket. I was filled with a wild sense of exhilaration such as any lover of the wild life would feel at the knowledge that he is being chased, that some one is after him, that some one is perhaps just a few feet behind him, waiting to stick a pitchfork into him as he runs. There is no ecstasy like this.

Then I realized that my pursuers had closed in on me. I was surrounded on all sides.

The woods had somehow grown thin. They were like the mere shrubbery of a park—it might be of Central Park itself. I could hear among the deeper tones of men the shrill voices of boys. “There he is,” one cried, “going through them bushes! Look at him humping himself!” “What is it, what’s the sport?” another called. “Some crazy guy loose in the park in his underclothes and the cops after him.”

Then they closed in on me. I recognized the blue suits of the police force and their short clubs. In a few minutes I was dragged out of the shrubbery and stood in the open park in my pyjamas, wide awake, shivering in the chilly air of early morning.

Fortunately for me, it was decided at the police-court that sleep-walking is not an offence against the law. I was dismissed with a caution.

My vacation is still before me, and I still propose to spend it naked. But I shall do so at Atlantic City.