ng logs
from rolling out into my room and setting fire to the rug the Khan of
Tartary gave me for saving his life from a herd of Antipodes he and I
were hunting in the Himalaya Mountains."

"I don't see what you needed dogs to do that for," said the reporter.
"A fender would have done just as well, or a pair of andirons," he
added.

"That's what these dogs were," said the Baron. "They were fire dogs
and fire dogs are andirons."

Ananias pressed his lips tightly together, and into his eyes came a
troubled look. It was evident that, revolting as the idea was to him,
he thought the Baron was trying to deceive him. Noting his
displeasure, the Baron inwardly resolving to be careful how he handled
the truth, hastened on with his story.

"But dogs were never my favourite animals," he said. "With my pets I
am quite as I am with other things. I like to have pets that are
entirely different from the pets of other people, and that is why in
my day I have made companions of such animals as the sangaree, and the
camomile, and the--ah--the two-horned piccolo. I've had tame bees
even--in fact my bees used to be the wonder of Siam, in which country
I was stationed for three years, having been commissioned by a British
company to make a study of its climate with a view to finding out if
it would pay the company to go into the ice business there. Siam is,
as you have probably heard, a very warm country, and as ice is a very
rare thing in warm countries these English people thought they might
make a vast fortune by sending tug-boats up to the Arctic Ocean, and
with them capture and tow icebergs to Siam, where they might be cut up
and sold to the people at tremendous profit. The scheme was certainly
a good one, and I found many of the wealthy Siamese quite willing to
subscribe for a hundred pounds of ice a week at ten dollars a pound,
but it never came to anything because we had no means of preserving
the icebergs after we got them into the Gulf of Siam. The water was so
hot that they melted before we could cut them up, and we nearly got
ourselves into very serious trouble with the coast people for that
same reason. An iceberg, as you know, is a huge affair, and when a
dozen or two of them had melted in the Gulf they added so to the
quantity of water there that fifty miles of the coast line were
completely flooded, and thousands of valuable fish, able to live in
warm water only, were so chilled that they got pneumonia, and died.
You