“Goot, goot!  Some more Sharlie!” he yelled.  “Dance, dance.  Mein Gott, dot’s der greadest sight I effer haff see me.”

This was the strange and awful spectacle Mrs. Schmitz tumbled upon, returning from a week’s stay at Rattletrap.  Her screams brought the red-headed stable boy to the rescue.

Two minutes later, while Mrs. Schmitz was assuring one section of Rabbit township that her poor, miserable husband had sold his soul to hell, and was at that moment dancing fiendish dances with the devil himself in her kitchen, a red-headed youth, almost beside himself with horror, was stirring up the other section with the tale of Dutchy Schmitz howling mad in the hotel, while a great, hairy, hideous jim-jam capered on the floor before him.

Rabbit was stirred at last.  Professor Thunder was made unpleasantly aware of the fact when he discovered a crowd of patriots surrounding Schmitz’s, preparing to burn out the devils that possessed it, having peeped timidly at the windows; and assured themselves of the unearthly nature of Schmitz’s guest.

The Missing Link, with Schmitz on his arm, came rolling from the back door, roaring and brandishing a bottle.  The crowd broke and fled before them, and a minute later the bosom friends were rocking down the road together, singing insanely.

How to recapture Nickie was the showman’s real trouble now.  He knew that persuasion would be useless with Nickie in his present state, and resolved to try force.  He grappled with Nickie in the street, and Nickie, now feeling like a king in his own right, and valiantly asserting his majesty, resented this impudent interference, and fought with fine, royal spirit.  For a moment or two Dutchy failed to realise the situation, and then, roaring like a bull, and swinging a bottle of stone gin, he went at the Professor.

The bottle took Thunder in the back of the head.  It ought to have killed him, but it didn’t—­it merely stretched him on the road unconscious.  When he recovered he was on a couch in the hotel, with his head wrapped in a tablecloth, and day was breaking.  No body knew what had become of Dutchy and the Missing Link, and the Professor returned to the tent, with a soul seething bitterness.  He found Nickie in his cage, sleeping soundly, and alongside him on the straw lay the bulky form of Schmitz, the publican, in whose hand was still clutched a bottle of stone gin.  The Missing Link had returned hospitality for hospitality, and side by side like brothers dear the carousers slept.

CHAPTER XV.

Hobbs versus Mahdi.

It was shortly after noon, and the day was warm and still.  No one was stirring in Waddy.  Professor Thunder had given up the idea that his eloquence could conquer the general lassitude, and was snoring in the tent of the Egyptian Mystic.  Madame Marve was shopping in the township, and Matty Cann, the Living Skeleton, had come down from his throne and was curled up on a horse-rug.  Ammonia, the orang-outang, sprawled on the floor of his cage, and the other monkeys were chattering angrily.