Ta-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa revved the Rolls-Royce gas turbine bypass turbofan aero-engine as Sir Walter Mitty prepared for takeoff ... The comely cockpit stewardess, a certain Babette De Sheer, plied her sumptuous way to Sir Walter's seated, muscled side and offered him a tall, cold one: a frosty Lalique of milk, shaken, not stirred ...
"Walter ... Walter! What are you doing? You've just spilled your tumbler of milk all over my new linen tablecloth!"
"De Sheer, De Sheer," muttered a dazed Walter, one foot still in the Vickers VC10 cockpit, the other wrapped around a Carolina Cottage Prairie dining chair in his mother's over-upholstered dining room.
"What ever is that you're burbling, Walter?" demanded Mother Mitty, not exactly your garden-variety shrew though her maiden name, ironically enough, was Harridan.
"De Sheer, er, uh ... Dis here is some mess I've created, Mother - so sorry!" Walter declared, by now fully disentangled from the allure and heavy parfum of Babette.
"I really want you to see Dr. Bothlewaite, Walter. I'm going to call him right now. Don't you go wandering off, do you understand?"
"Yes, Mother," Walter demurred, looking out the large bay window at his wild blue yonder.
Sir Walter had single-handedly taken out an entire contingent of the French West African rebel guerillan force, much to the relief and, this writer daresays, astonishment of the true French Foreign Legion. Back to the barracks, the radiant Brigadier General was hoisted onto the shoulders of soldiers jubilant at their hero's exploits; the canteen cooks, alerted to the soon re-entry of the swarming smarmy army, hastily fried up a mess of especial pain roti aux oeufs a la francaise for the famished warriors.
"Thank you, my fellow comrades," Sir Walter intoned, "but it's to you that I raise this pitcher of syrup in hearty salute ..."
"Walter!" Mother Mitty shrilled. "How was the French Toast? Did you clean up after yourself? Is that syrup on your chin??
"Walter, dear, I'm having you return the watering can to Framistanyl Mercantile. The spout holes are much too small and I haven't the entire afternoon to wile away watering my ageratum. Please hook up the new rubber garden hose to the rear bib and water my bed for me. There's a good lad," Mother Mitty carried on as Walter stared vacantly into his tiresome mother's eyes.
On the other hand - the one not engaged with the careful unwinding of the rather stiffish 50 feet of rubber tubing - Walter saw his true reflection all too clearly in the bay window, dressed for the Kalahari safari for which the lordly Earl Smedley Snaithe-Witherswright had professionally engaged him. Pith helmet surely set at a jaunty angle atop the handsome and square-jawed head, a rakish Sir Walter led the desert-bound expedition into the Maw of Hell.
"I say, Wally, quite a little junket we've set out upon, eh?" quipped the Earl.
"Mastacembelus vanderwaali, I must confess, has always been a favourite of mine and little Doxie." Pausing momentarily, as if in a deep and impenetrable thought process, all the while knitting up a considerable mass of eyebrows, the consternated Sir Smeds then demanded, with no little perplexed curiosity, "How do you mean, 'if we're clever'?"
"The masta," Wally put in, "is an elusive little devil, intent against any and all capture forthwith by man or beast. It is a little known fact that ..."
Before the expert anguilliformist/herpetologist could spew further dusty data on Class Osteichthyes, Dusilla Mambarta, trusted guide and scout to the party, interjected with barely disguised rapture, arms excitedly flailing about,
"Bwana, mon petit homme important, Popa falling waters we find her! Come, follow!"
Wasting no time and, surely with no further ado or adon't, the expedition ploughed a massive furrow forward, the two aristocrats in the vanguard.
Fully wound down the precipitous escarpment, both the savage and the cosmopolitan mottled crew arrived at the vale of La Grande Popa. There, in the capacious catch-basin of the thundering cascade, shone like the Jewels of the Blessed Madonna the venerable, the sacred occelated MASTA.
Of course, given the uber superstitious character of those indigenous to the Kalahari Alluvial Delta, the natives fell of one accord to their collective knee, heads bowed in the deepest and most pious reverence to the spiny incarnation of their slimy deity. Though nominal and straitlaced Anglicans, the Sir and the Earl, nevertheless, could not help but let fly a single half-choked sob betwixt themselves.
The simple, besotted jungle folk refused to proceed further, daring not to tread upon sacred ground. Not to be deterred by such sodden malarkey, Sir Walter - solo - walked resolutely toward the hallowed waters. Once upon the basin and its roiling, sparkling vapors, Sir Walter removed his regimental trappings, rolled up and fastened his right blouse sleeve, and, with nary a wince, plunged his hand into the maelstrom.
In a mere moment he pulled out his submerged limb, and there - amid the screams and wails of the pagan laity - writhed most ferociously the revered booty ... slashing ... thrashing ... wriggling to set itself free....
"Walter Mitty!!! What have you done to my bed!!!???" bellowed an enraged Mrs. Mitty, as she gasped in horror as her seemingly entranced son, Walter, was fighting an out-of-control rubber hose under high pressure, water pummeling her silken bed comforter through an open bedroom window.
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