“Would you see about the packing, Greeves?”
“If I may, sir, I would advise a more precipitous departure. Night is falling, and the creatures grow more restive in the hours of darkness.”
“Right ho, Greeves! All hands, abandon ship!” Then a thought occurred. “If we’ve lost Slithy, who will operate the rocket?”
“I closely observed Mr. Tove-Whippley’s activities on the outward voyage, sir,” Greeves said. “I believe the task is not one that would pose difficulties to an agile mind.”
“You think I’ll be able to manage a takeoff, Greeves?” I said.
“I was thinking rather, sir, that you would minister to Mr. Spotts-Binkle.”
“Ah, yes,” I said, regarding the proposed object of my tender care. “Baldie? Are you with us?”
But Baldie was present in name only. He had even stopped blinking. Greeves proposed that we each take an arm and walk him toward the rocket ship. I agreed, and we took up our stations and proceeded toward the door. But then Greeves bid us stop and went to the drinks cabinet, where he snaffled up a large bottle of something.
“Good thinking, Greeves,” I said. “I’m sure we’ll need a stiffener somewhere along the line.”
“Indeed, sir,” he said. “Now, sir, if I may advocate a certain rapidity of gait?”
“Advocate away, Greeves. I’m with you.” Then, as we went through the door onto the mossy lawn, I let out a short note of laughter.
“Sir?”
“I just thought, Greeves, well … what we’re doing with poor old Baldie.”
“The situation excites humor, sir?”
“Well,” I said, savoring the moment to come, “it’s a frog-march, isn’t it? I mean to say: frogs, newts; march, marsh. It works on many levels.”
“Indeed, sir. Most droll. Now, we are coming within range. If I may recommend that you concentrate your mind in a way that will resist the female’s siren call. A brick wall, perhaps. Or large earmuffs.”
“Oh, for beeswax, eh, Greeves?” I said.
“Oh, indeed, sir.”
But then his voice faded into the background cacophony that was rising all around us, the swamp dwellers letting the night know that they were all present and open for business. We struggled on, with Baldie doing a rather convincing impression of a sack of potatoes between us, angling our course away from the pond toward where the little bridge spanned the stream that trickled through the marsh. Beyond the stone arch, on the swamp’s only other elevation, I could see the dull sheen of Slithy’s rocket ship. Its hatch was open, with a bit of a ladder leading up to it.
As we neared the crossing, I felt a tickling between my ears. I’d been expecting another rendition of the slow and sultry number Shilistrata had been playing at our earlier tryst, but it seemed that, in the presence of other anglers, she had gone for a straightforward gaffing of the Gloster fish. The tickle grew quickly into an unbearable itch; I would have gladly torn off the top of my skull just for a chance to scratch it. Accompanying the maddening sensation was the certain knowledge that it would stop the moment I turned toward the pond.
“I say, Greeves,” I said, “I’ve got this awful—”
“Itch, sir?” he said, and I saw that his face was almost registering a strong expression, rather like one of Hesiod’s Titans acknowledging an earache.
“An itch to end all itches,” I said.
“Very apt, sir, inasmuch as giving in to it would soon bring about the end of existence.”
“I believe I’ll put it out of my mind, Greeves.”
“Do endeavor to do so, sir,” he said, “although I fear it is about to become more difficult.” He had only his chin to point with, like Achilles before the walls of Troy, and he used the appendage to indicate that Shilistrata had come out of the pond to take up a position at the near end of the bridge. She had spread her arms wide to bar our passage while narrowing her eyes to slits. She was also giving us an uninhibited view of those rows of glistening needles along her pale, pink gums.
“Sirening be dashed,” I said, the itch in my brain having suddenly ceased, “she’s going for brute force!”
“More than that, sir,” Greeves said. “Professor Gillattely believed that the creature’s bite is poisoned.”
“Um,” I said, “so simply booting her out of the way will invite peril?”
“Hence this, sir.” He raised his free arm, which contained the item he’d picked up from the drinks cabinet.
“Planning to render her squiffy?” I said.
“No, sir,” he said, advancing on the newtess, with Baldie and me perforce marching in his train. When we neared the hissing creature, Greeves let fly. It seemed that he had not brought along a flagon of Gillattely’s hooch, but the full soda bottle. He now depressed its lever and sprayed Shilistrata from her head to her nonexistent navel with a stream of clear, bubbly liquid.
One often sees soda bottles thus used in the cinema, where, along with the tossing of custard pies, they are a staple of Mr. Sennett’s comedies. On the newtess, however, the effect was more in a tragic vein: where the sparkling water touched her, her green skin turned first a pale yellow, then bleached to a leprous white. Her hiss became a yawp. She scrubbed at her front with her paws, and the contact made her paws exhibit the same color change.
She bent over, emitted a series of yips, and abandoned her bridge-blockading strategy in favor of a quick plunge back into the pond. Greeves and I, with Baldie still hung between us like an oddly shaped rug on a clothesline, tramped onto the bridge.
But at the far end we saw a new obstacle: another newtess, big enough to make Shilistrata look like the runt of the litter, had dredged herself up from the creek and was giving us the same dentist’s-eye-view of her pointed gnashers.
“Onward, sir, if you please,” Greeves recommended, and we thundered down the slope of the arch like a three-man version of the Scots Greys’ charge at Waterloo, a painting of which my aunt Dahlia had over her bed. Greeves gave the enemy a thorough dousing with soda water, with much the same effect as on the first occasion. In a moment, the way lay clear and we crossed to dry—well, dryish—land and struggled up the slope to where the rocket stood.
“That’s the spirit, Greeves,” I said.
“I regret, sir, that the curtain is not yet down,” he said, waving the bottle to indicate that a passel of newts were rising from the water to pursue us. “May I again counsel speed, sir?”
“No need,” said I, putting on the best I was capable of. Together, we slogged up to the top of the knoll and thrust Baldie bodily through the hatch.
“After you, sir,” Greeves said, as he turned to play Horatio at the bridge.
“Never you mind that,” I said, taking the soda bottle from him. “Go in and get the engine warmed up or whatever one does.”
A gape-mouthed newtess hove into view and I let her have a splash of soda large enough to have ruined a snifterful. Another one came right behind her, and I let fly again. The same color change and expression of horror came over both of them, and they beetled off to wherever they’d come from.
“Don’t care for it at all, do they, Greeves?” I called over my shoulder. I could hear clicks and flicks from behind me as he did things with the ship’s controls.
“Their skins are covered in an acidic slime,” he said as he continued to work. “The bicarbonate of soda neutralizes the acidity, causing them much the same discomfort as you and I would feel if someone poured acid on us.”
I gave another comer a faceful of fizz. “I say, Greeves,” I said, “we’re running low on soda.”
I heard a fresh series of switch-snappings, then I felt two strong hands under my arms. “Please forgive my manhandling you, sir,” he said as he hoisted me backward through the hatch and kicked the door closed. He led me to a sort of chaise longue fitted with straps and buckles and made me secure, then did the same for Baldie.