It was a mighty
narrow escape!"

"I should say so," said the Twins. "But Mtulu must have been awful
stupid not to see what it was."

"Didn't he see through it when he saw you put the army in your
pocket?" asked Diavolo.

"No," said the Baron, "that frightened him worse than ever, for you
see he reasoned this way. If I could carry an army in my pocket-book,
what was to prevent my carrying Mtulu himself and all his tribe off in
the same way! He thought I was a marvellous man to be able to do
that."

"Well, we guess he was right," said the Twins, as they climbed down
from the Baron's lap to find an atlas and search the map of Africa for
Lake Majolica. This they failed to find and the Baron's explanation is
unknown to me, for when the Imps returned, the warrior had departed.

VIII

AN ADVENTURE IN THE DESERT

"The editor has a sort of notion, Mr. Munchausen," said Ananias, as he
settled down in the big arm-chair before the fire in the Baron's
library, "that he'd like to have a story about a giraffe. Public taste
has a necky quality about it of late."

"What do you say to that, Sapphira?" asked the Baron, politely turning
to Mrs. Ananias, who had called with her husband. "Are you interested
in giraffes?"

"I like lions better," said Sapphira. "They roar louder and bite more
fiercely."

"Well, suppose we compromise," said the Baron, "and have a story about
a poodle dog. Poodle dogs sometimes look like lions, and as a rule
they are as gentle as giraffes."

"I know a better scheme than that," put in Ananias. "Tell us a story
about a lion and a giraffe, and if you feel disposed throw in a few
poodles for good measure. I'm writing on space this year."

"That's so," said Sapphira, wearily. "I could say it was a story about
a lion and Ananias could call it a giraffe story, and we'd each be
right."

"Very well," said the Baron, "it shall be a story of each, only I must
have a cigar before I begin. Cigars help me to think, and the
adventure I had in the Desert of Sahara with a lion, a giraffe, and a
slippery elm tree was so long ago that I shall have to do a great deal
of thinking in order to recall it."

So the Baron went for a cigar, while Ananias and Sapphira winked
enviously at each other and lamented their lost glory. In a minute the
Baron returned with the weed, and after lighting it, began his story.

"I was about twenty years old when this thing happened to me," said
he. "I had gone to Africa to