Bunyip Bluegum and said in a low voice,'It's a Magic Puddin'.'
'No whispering,' shouted the Puddin' angrily. 'Speak up. Don't strain aPuddin's ears at the meal table.'
'No harm intended, Albert,' said Sam, 'I was merely remarking how wellthe crops are looking. Call him Albert when addressing him,' he added toBunyip Bluegum. 'It soothes him.'
'I am delighted to make your acquaintance, Albert,' said Bunyip.
'No soft soap from total strangers,' said the Puddin', rudely.
'Don't take no notice of him, mate,' said Bill. 'That's only his roughand ready way. What this Puddin' requires is politeness and constanteatin'.'
They had a delightful meal, eating as much as possible, for wheneverthey stopped eating the Puddin' sang out--
'Eat away, chew away, munch and bolt and guzzle, Never leave the table till you're full up to the muzzle.'
But at length they had to stop, in spite of these encouraging remarks,and, as they refused to eat any more, the Puddin' got out of his basin,remarking--'If you won't eat any more here's giving you a run for thesake of exercise', and he set off so swiftly on a pair of extremely thinlegs that Bill had to run like an antelope to catch him up.
'My word,' said Bill, when the Puddin' was brought back. 'You have to beas smart as paint to keep this Puddin' in order. He's that artful,lawyers couldn't manage him. Put your hat on, Albert, like a littlegentleman,' he added, placing the basin on his head. He took thePuddin's hand, Sam took the other, and they all set off along the road.A peculiar thing about the Puddin' was that, though they had all had agreat many slices off him, there was no sign of the place whence theslices had been cut.
'That's where the Magic comes in,' explained Bill. 'The more you eatsthe more you gets. Cut-an'-come-again is his name, an' cut, an' comeagain, is his nature. Me an' Sam has been eatin' away at this Puddin'for years, and there's not a mark on him. Perhaps,' he added, 'you wouldlike to hear how we came to own this remarkable Puddin'.'
'Nothing would please me more,' said Bunyip Bluegum.
'In that case,' said Bill, 'let her go for a song.'
'Ho, the cook of the _Saucy Sausage_, Was a feller called Curry and Rice, A son of a gun as fat as a tun With a face as round as a hot-cross bun, Or a barrel, to be precise.
'One winter's morn we rounds the Horn, A-rollin' homeward bound. We strikes on the ice, goes down in a trice, And all on board but Curry and Rice And me an' Sam is drowned.
'For Sam an' me an' the cook, yer see, We climbs on a lump of ice, And there in the sleet we suffered a treat For several months from frozen feet, With nothin' at all but ice to eat, And ice does not suffice.
'And Sam and me we couldn't agree With the cook at any price. We was both as thin as a piece of tin While that there cook was busting his skin On nothin' to eat but ice.
'Says Sam to me, "It's a mystery More deep than words can utter; Whatever we do, here's me an' you, Us both as thin as Irish stoo, While he's as fat as butter."
'But late one night we wakes in fright To see by a pale blue flare, That cook has got in a phantom pot A big plum-duff an' a rump-steak hot, And the guzzlin' wizard is eatin' the lot, On top of the iceberg bare.'
'There's a verse left out here,' said Bill, stopping the song, 'owin' tothe difficulty of explainin' exactly what happened, when me and Samdiscovered the deceitful nature of that cook. The next verse is asfollows--
'Now Sam an' me can never agree What happened to Curry and Rice. The whole affair is shrouded in doubt, For the night was dark and the flare went out, And all we heard was a startled shout, Though I think meself, in the subsequent rout, That us bein' thin, an' him bein' stout, In the middle of pushin' an' shovin' about, He--MUST HAVE FELL OFF THE ICE.'
'That won't do, you know,' began the Puddin', but Sam said hurriedly,'It was very dark, and there's no sayin' at this date what happened.'
'Yes there is,' said the Puddin', 'for I had my eye on the whole affair,and it's my belief that if he hadn't been so round you'd have neverrolled him off the iceberg, for you was both singin' out "Yo heave Ho"for half an hour, an' him trying to hold on to Bill's beard.'
'In the haste of the moment,' said Bill, 'he may have got a bit of ashove, for the ice bein' slippy, and us bein' justly enraged, and himbein' as round as a barrel, he may, as I said, have been too fat to savehimself from rollin' off the iceberg. The point, however, is immaterialto our story, which concerns this Puddin'; and this Puddin',' said Billpatting him on the basin, 'was the very Puddin' that Curry and Riceinvented on the iceberg.'
'He must have been a very clever cook,' said Bunyip.
'He was, poor feller, he was,' said Bill, greatly affected. 'For plumduff or Irish stoo there wasn't his equal in the land. But enough ofthese sad subjects. Pausin' only to explain that me an' Sam got off theiceberg on a homeward bound chicken coop, landed on Tierra del Fuego,walked to Valparaiso, and so got home, I will proceed to enliven theoccasion with "The Ballad of the Bo'sun's Bride".'
And without more ado, Bill, who had one of those beef-and-thundervoices, roared out--
'Ho, aboard the _Salt Junk Sarah_ We was rollin' homeward bound, When the bo'sun's bride fell over the side And very near got drowned. Rollin' home, rollin' home, Rollin' home across the foam, She had to swim to save her glim And catch us rollin' home.'
It was a very long song, so the rest of it is left out here, but therewas a great deal of rolling and roaring in it, and they all joined inthe chorus. They were all singing away at the top of their pipe, as Billcalled it, when round a bend in the road they came on two low-lookingpersons hiding behind a tree. One was a Possum, with one of those sharp,snooting, snouting sort of faces, and the other was a bulbous,boozy-looking Wombat in an old long-tailed coat, and a hat that markedhim down as a man you couldn't trust in the fowlyard. They were busysharpening up a carving knife on a portable grind-stone, but the momentthey caught sight of the travellers the Possum whipped the knife behindhim and the Wombat put his hat over the grindstone.
Bill Barnacle flew into a passion at these signs of treachery.
'I see you there,' he shouted.
'You can't see all of us,' shouted the Possum, and the Wombat added,''Cause why, some of us is behind the tree.'
Bill led the others aside, in order to hold a consultation.
'What on earth's to be done?' he said.
'We shall have to fight them, as usual,' said Sam.
'Why do you have to fight them?' asked Bunyip Bluegum.
'Because they're after our Puddin',' said Bill.
'They're after our Puddin',' explained Sam, 'because they'reprofessional puddin'-thieves.'
'And as we're perfessional Puddin'-owners,' said Bill, 'we have to fightthem on principle. The fighting,' he added, 'is a mere flea-bite, as thesayin' goes. The trouble is, what's to be done with the Puddin'?'
'While you do the fighting,' said Bunyip bravely, 'I shall mind thePuddin'.'
'The trouble is,' said Bill, 'that this is a very secret, craftyPuddin', an' if you wasn't up to his game he'd be askin' you to look ata spider an' then run away while your back is turned.'
'That's right,' said the Puddin', gloomily. 'Take a Puddin's characteraway. Don't mind his feelings.'
'We don't mind your feelin's, Albert,' said Bill. 'What we minds is yourtreacherous 'abits.' But Bunyip Bluegum said, 'Why not turn himupside-down and sit on him?'
'What a brutal suggestion,' said the Puddin'; but no notice was taken ofhis objections, and as soon as he was turned safely upside-down, Billand Sam ran straight at the puddin'-thieves and commenced sparring up atthem with the greatest activity.
'Put 'em up, ye puddin'-snatchers,' shouted Bill. 'Don't keep ussparrin' up here all day. Come out an' take your gruel while you've gotthe chance.'
The Possum wished to turn the matter off by saying, 'I see the price ofeggs has gone up