“Needless,” said Eszterhazy. “And, pray, do not forget to mention, when you speak to their leader, Deacon Philostr Grotz, that according to may exegetes and scholars, North and South America, in the singular shape of the conjoined continents, may have been mentioned in the Old Testament as ‘the land spread forth as though on wings—”
“Say” said Mr. Abernathy, “that’s right. No, I sure wont forget. They’ll be good customers for our line, Doctor, we prefer above all other types of settlers your You-roe-pene settler of a deeply rulligious nature. Say, we certainly must have you over for Sunday morning breakfast sometime in Bella, Mr. Abernathy, she makes waffles, sir, she makes pancakes—”
Eszterhazy with a look of apology having received consent, raised his right index finger and touched a part of Abernathy’s skull. “You are of a greatly philoprogentitive nature, I see.”
“Well sir (say, it is almost time for my train) well sir, the Mrs and I are both children of the great and fer-tyle prairies (the steppies, as you call um), and I don’t hesitate to say that we have five little ones of whom I am, yes, very fond, with promise of a sixth one in nothing flat, that is, in about five weeks three days, give er take a day er two. Say, are those gongs them guards are beating? Say, I really must go now. Say, I'll be sure to give your regards to Apollograd. Say, I sure do think—"
In the brief lull following the departure of the Hyperborean Hawk, Yanosh could be heard laboriously counting his take, and then commenting on it, as follows: “They call this alms? Blood of a vixen! May they catch the cholera! Alms, they call this? May an aurochs gore them!" The curses of Yanosh were famous, and known to be as vivid as they were archaic.
At first sight of him, the bull plunged into a wooded declivity and was lost for the rest of the morning. “Plunged" is perhaps too swift a word. It lumbered. About midafternoon he was able to obtain brief and broken glimpses with his binoculars. About mid-morning of the second day, it came slowly up and out of the declivity, and began to graze. And by the third morning it came up to him, very, very shyly, and accepted a lump of salt.
It was a bull, and an old bull, a very old bull indeed; and it was huge, even though its head with the huge and vast-spread horns seldom raised up even to shoulder-level. And it smelled, Lord God how it smelled!
When the old Warden shambled
over, a little before noon, it merely acknowledged him with a glance and a flick of the tail. "I take the liberty, High-born Sir and Noble Doctor, of bringing you some lunch, same as yesterday,” said the old Warden. “Since you was so good as to accept of it yesterday and the day before. Today being your last day," he said, with respectful and sympathetic firmness. “Three days being the term stated in your honorable pass."
“Yes, yes,” said Eszterhazy. “Thank you very much indeed. No need to worry. I’ll leave at sundown. I fully appreciate the privilege." The great and ancient beast nuzzled his hand, and was rewarded with some thinly- shaven slices of apple.
“That’s a old beast, sir," said the Warden. “It’s most thirty year old. There was a half-a-dozen when first I come here, but, somehow, they others all died off. Don’t know if there is another anywhere, I don't.”
“There isn’t,” said Eszterhazy. He never took his eyes off it.
The old man breathed noisily for a few minutes. Then he nodded. “The only other visitor ever allowed," he said, “was the King of Illyria. Didn’t stay long, on finding our Sovereign Lord the King-Emperor wasn’t going to let him shoot at it; fancy! —Ah— now it’s come to me. What it’s called. ‘Old Methusaleh,’ of course, that’s only our name Tor it. The kind of animal it is, he said, is a aurochs.
Eszterhazy never took his eyes from it. “Yes," he said, after a moment; “I know.”