perform them; suppose I should be called on for a
sample? Suppose I should be asked to name my
calamity? Yes, I had made a blunder; I ought to
have invented my calamity first. "What shall I do?
what can I say, to gain a little time?" I was in trouble
again; in the deepest kind of trouble:...
"There's a footstep! -- they're coming. If I had only
just a moment to think.... Good, I've got it.
I'm all right."

You see, it was the eclipse. It came into my mind
in the nick of time, how Columbus, or Cortez, or one
of those people, played an eclipse as a saving trump
once, on some savages, and I saw my chance. I could
play it myself, now, and it wouldn't be any plagiarism,