Charles Dickens, King of Coincidence: by Charles Dickens

Indefatigable was the adjective most singularly employed to describe Madame Puff, tailoress to Lord Whufflehink, former prior of Shrofordshire Abbey, who had rather entered into a quite pompous sum of inheritance, thereby dropping his priestly orders to retire to a magnanimous estate in Ghent, where he spent his golden days smoking his pipe, surrounded and engulfed constantly by a whirling cloud of brown and gray tobacco smoke, and tinkering with his rather eccentric yet absurdly large collection of globes, wherein he would stare, often for days on end, refusing all food and drink, attempting to locate some remote corner of Africa, and she, as his tailoress, given his wealthy ability to take on servants now, spent her days in a barren, yet not overly unwelcoming, barn to the direct west of the manor, and perched upon an inlet to a harbor which led immediately to the sea, and so she spent her time sewing and mending his tweeds and khakis. Wharfing and looming from morning to night, needling and stitching and poking and pricking and renting and mending and patching -- this was the lot of Madame Puff. Imagine then her bestartled shock when, at that very moment, her former schoolmaster, Master Pompadinky, entered the barn rather gruffly, muttering something to the effect that he had searched manor-wide for Lord Whufflehink, yet simply could not locate him.

"Why, Master Pompadinky! Can it be you? Why, sir, surely it were years since¡¦"

"Ah yes then Madame Puff, lovely really¡¦rather¡¦.I say, have you seen Lord Whu¡¦"

"Pompadinky old chap! The pleasure is mine!" bellowed Whufflehink. Pompadinky revolved his torso to spectate naught but a bellowing, tempestuous cloud of maroon and grey tobacco smoke with legs.

"Verily, what spectre doth beguile me then," inquired Pompadinky, "as I behold no human, but a cloudy ghost with legs? Nay, nay, stay thyself, thou demon!"

"My old mate, 'tis I! 'Tis I!" ejaculated Lord Whufflehink, clearing the smoke frantically with his left foot, his hands having been befilled with pipe tobacco and snuff. "Do stay thyself, old mate! Surely this is a most pleasant surprise!"

"Aha! 'Tis thou, Whufflehink," retorted Pompadinky cleverly. "Your ruse didst beguile me! Nevertheless, and nonetheless, I am come to this manor to see you, and to visit, and perhaps to have tea, and peradventure, a crumpet. Shall we relive the old days? And I must say that I was once schoolmaster to yon Madame Puff." Puff responded with a courtly nod, never ceasing her spinning and sewing.

"Splendid! Absolutely brilliant, then! Come, Pompadinky, and let us share a most outstanding ripe French cheese which has become itself into my acquisition and perhaps we can revisit Madame Puff all the later. Oh, behold! I do say, is that not our old schoolchum Horatio Chumley in my courtyard?" Puff, Pompadinky, and Whufflehink all revolved and observed none but their old friend Chumley, strolling about the yard, philosophizing to himself, and packing rather copious amounts of snuff into his nose, so that said nose was not much smaller than that of a rather portly Shetland pony. Chumley was stroking his nose in thought, and by the time that his hand had travelled from the bridge to the tip, his arm was quite fully extended, such being the length of the nose. And behind him stood none other than Martin Snippywhit, whom the reader shall kindly recall from Chapter Five. Snippywhit was the lodger who had recommend Krumppleruff the Barrister to Lord Whufflehink's case, as it dealt with the Chauncery's indictment of Gorgumly and Frimp, the two cotton merchants who had defrauded Yuquigummschnizt the German baboon trader. In fact, all of these men then entered the barn, much to the surprise of all involved.

Then, almost as if to remind the reader of their purpose in this story, entered various characters from chapters one through forty-seven, including Slapp the circus clown, who had sired the Richtoven twins; Smigginsworth the traveling insurance confidence man; Smigginsworth's illegitimate stepson, Squidly the chimney sweep; the drifter Barnes; Waldemar and Rumps, the barrister partners; Charles Whentworth the factory foreman; Higgins the wayward constable and his seargant Kensley; Gomez the street juggler; Snortsworth the soldier; Faulkner the retired soldier; Joseph the beggar; Lord Rosheshwanny the Indian noble; Bartlet the puppeteer; DeValcourt the carriage driver; Madame Julienne the Albanian counterspy; Hugo Bletcher, who had no visible means of support yet spent his entire days at the pub named the Sign of the Blind Giraffe; and finally Dumpy, the town drunk. All of these major and integral characters, which the kind reader shall do well to remember, entered the barn, not to mention about one thousand other minor characters, who shall be introduced later in this novel. Altogether, precisely one-thousand, four-hundred and fifty-three did coincidentally enter the barn simultaneously.

"My goodness, this is quite a coincidence," puffed Lord Whufflehink between wheezing clouds of tobacco smoke.

"Quite," retorted Pompadinky.

"Rather," replied Madame Puff.

All 1,453 persons, having all coincidentally, and with no forethought, entered Lord Whufflehink's barn simultaneously, did manage to wedge themselves so tightly together, being bound chest-to-chest, and arm-to-arm, that a rather uncomfortable, incomportable, and quite societally improper silence did befall the chamber, so that even the most prodigiously polite and savoir faire among them did not quite know what to say, or how to breech the silence.

Finally, after a silent, uncomfortable pause of three hours, Lord Whufflehink, considering himself the master of the manor and therefore the charge of this quite unpleasant situation, did manage to cackle, "Well, this is a bit uncomfortable, I do say."

"Quite."

"Rather."

"Indubitably."

"Well said."

"Brilliant."

"Goodness."

Everyone at once coming to the strained realization that not a single person could in any wise move a muscle, several of the more fatalistic among them resigned themselves to living out their lives in this barn. The more industrious among them began to envision vast, complex mechanical devices, with gears, handles, and oiled, leather straps, which would excavate them from their compact predicament. The more practical among them envisioned a throng of constables and officials simply removing a wall of the barn, while the more insane among them thought of giant vultures carrying the roof to another place, so that they could exit vertically.

Suddenly, quite without warning, an old, gnarled, rotted tree fell outside, producing such a stupendous noise that every occupant of the barn simultaneously gasped, each thereby filling his lungs with oxygen, thus expanding the lungs so that such a great pressure was created one upon the other, that every occupant's heart burst, producing instantaneous death. Yet, they were packed so tightly that every corpse remained standing quite erect!

Then, the reverberations of the great noise produced by the toppling of the tree caused the old barn to shudder, which in turn shook the very tenuous earth beneath her, causing a small peninsula, scarcely larger than the barn and immediately under it, to break away from the mainland, so that the barn floated out into the harbor, directly towards the sea. This barn of standing corpses floated out upon the currents, so that it eventually did reach the open sea, and began a coarse westward, directly toward Bornea. Having passed several desolate islands, devoid of all life save the birds and the wild boars, bouncing upon the blue foam, and encircled by flying seagulls, the barn gradually approached a small, inhabited island, upon which dwelled a fiersome tribe of natives, Malysian people, who were renowned in the local islands as being the most ruthless warriors, and having the most beautiful women.

Two of their scouts, Boto and Toto, had noticed the barn approaching from over the horizon, not knowing what this strange boat could be, imagining it to be a giant war canoe from their enemies, who lived on the next island. Yet as the barn drew closer, Boto and Toto could make out the figures of hundreds of people, all standing erect, as if ready for war. Filled with a great terror, and never having seen such pale faces, corrupted teeth, and large, bulbous noses, they ran directly to their warrior chief and warned him. Dozens of warriors, including the chief himself, hurried to the shore, and, having gazed upon the floating, corpse-filled barn, decided that such a great enemy warship, filled with warriors, standing straight and ready to fight -- the natives of course not noticing their dead state -- all agreed at once that they never could overcome such a fearsome enemy, and so decided to surrender and spare their island. While the barn was still a great distance afar, the natives lit peace fires, the smoke being manipulated in such a way as to indicate terms of peace. Yet, the barn approached all the more. In the native tongue, the chief spoke to his people: "My people, it is evident that a most fierce and strong enemy is approaching our shores quickly. They have rejected our surrender and offer of peace. Thus, lest we all die by the sword, we have no choice but to go to the next island -- you know the one, the small island to the south on which no people live. We must quickly abandon our island and resettle on that island."

And so, gathering only their most valuable possessions in haste, the entire tribe huddled into their giant war canoes and paddled from the rear of the island to the next island. The barn, not yet having reached the shore, floated upon a strong current which carried it back to sea, and began floating towards the next island. And so, in this manner, did the barn manage to conquer seventeen small island nations, as well as a port city of Madagascar, which the British shortly thereafter colonized.