*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 48729 ***

[Illustration: "WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS, SIR?"

(_See page 10._)]




                                  THE
                            STRAND MAGAZINE

                       _An Illustrated Monthly_


                               EDITED BY
                             GEORGE NEWNES

                              Vol. XVII.

                           _JANUARY TO JUNE_

                                London:
    GEORGE NEWNES, LTD., 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, & 12, SOUTHAMPTON STREET,
                       AND EXETER STREET, STRAND

                                 1899

                         THE STRAND MAGAZINE.

                   Vol. xvii. JANUARY, 1899. No. 97.




_Round the Fire._[1]

BY A. CONAN DOYLE.


VIII.--THE STORY OF THE JAPANNED BOX.

It _was_ a curious thing, said the private tutor; one of those
grotesque and whimsical incidents which occur to one as one goes
through life. I lost the best situation which I am ever likely to
have through it. But I am glad that I went to Thorpe Place, for I
gained--well, as I tell you the story you will learn what I gained.

[1] Copyright, 1899, by George Newnes, Limited.

I don't know whether you are familiar with that part of the Midlands
which is drained by the Avon. It is the most English part of England.
Shakespeare, the flower of the whole race, was born right in the middle
of it. It is a land of rolling pastures, rising in higher folds to the
westward, until they swell into the Malvern Hills. There are no towns,
but numerous villages, each with its grey Norman church. You have
left the brick of the southern and eastern counties behind you, and
everything is stone--stone for the walls, and lichened slabs of stone
for the roofs. It is all grim and solid and massive, as befits the
heart of a great nation.

It was in the middle of this country, not very far from Evesham, that
Sir John Bollamore lived in the old ancestral home of Thorpe Place,
and thither it was that I came to teach his two little sons. Sir John
was a widower--his wife had died three years before--and he had been
left with these two lads aged eight and ten, and one dear little girl
of seven. Miss Witherton, who is now my wife, was governess to this
little girl. I was tutor to the two boys. Could there be a more obvious
prelude to an engagement? She governs me now, and I tutor two little
boys of our own. But, there--I have already revealed what it was which
I gained in Thorpe Place!

It was a very, very old house, incredibly old--pre-Norman, some of,
it--and the Bollamores claimed to have lived in that situation since
long before the Conquest. It struck a chill to my heart when first
I came there, those enormously thick grey walls, the rude crumbling
stones, the smell as from a sick animal which exhaled from the rotting
plaster of the aged building. But the modern wing was bright and the
garden was well kept. No house could be dismal which had a pretty girl
inside it and such a show of roses in front.

Apart from a very complete staff of servants there were only four of
us in the household. These were Miss Witherton, who was at that time
four-and-twenty and as pretty--well, as pretty as Mrs. Colmore is
now--myself, Frank Colmore, aged thirty, Mrs. Stevens, the housekeeper,
a dry, silent woman, and Mr. Richards, a tall, military-looking man,
who acted as steward to the Bollamore estates. We four always had our
meals together, but Sir John had his usually alone in the library.
Sometimes he joined us at dinner, but on the whole we were just as glad
when he did not.

For he was a very formidable person. Imagine a man six foot three
inches in height, majestically built, with a high-nosed, aristocratic
face, brindled hair, shaggy eyebrows, a small, pointed Mephistophelian
beard, and lines upon his brow and round his eyes as deep as if
they had been carved with a penknife. He had grey eyes, weary,
hopeless-looking eyes, proud and yet pathetic, eyes which claimed your
pity and yet dared you to show it. His back was rounded with study,
but otherwise he was as fine a looking man of his age--five-and-fifty
perhaps--as any woman would wish to look upon.

[Illustration: SIR JOHN BOLLAMORE.]

But his presence was not a cheerful one. He was always courteous,
always refined, but singularly silent and retiring. I have never lived
so long with any man and known so little of him. If he were indoors
he spent his time either in his own small study in the Eastern Tower,
or in the library in the modern wing. So regular was his routine that
one could always say at any hour exactly where he would be. Twice in
the day he would visit his study, once after breakfast, and once about
ten at night. You might set your watch by the slam of the heavy door.
For the rest of the day he would be in his library--save that for an
hour or two in the afternoon he would take a walk or a ride, which was
solitary like the rest of his existence. He loved his children, and was
keenly interested in the progress of their studies, but they were a
little awed by the silent, shaggy-browed figure, and they avoided him
as much as they could. Indeed, we all did that.

It was some time before I came to know anything about the circumstances
of Sir John Bollamore's life, for Mrs. Stevens, the housekeeper, and
Mr. Richards, the land-steward, were too loyal to talk easily of
their employer's affairs. As to the governess, she knew no more than
I did, and our common interest was one of the causes which drew us
together. At last, however, an incident occurred which led to a closer
acquaintance with Mr. Richards and a fuller knowledge of the life of
the man whom I served.

The immediate cause of this was no less than the falling of Master
Percy, the youngest of my pupils, into the mill-race, with imminent
danger both to his life and to mine, since I had to risk myself in
order to save him. Dripping and exhausted--for I was far more spent
than the child--I was making for my room when Sir John, who had heard
the hubbub, opened the door of his little study and asked me what was
the matter. I told him of the accident, but assured him that his child
was in no danger, while he listened with a rugged, immobile face, which
expressed in its intense eyes and tightened lips all the emotion which
he tried to conceal.

"One moment! Step in here! Let me have the details!" said he, turning
back through the open door.

And so I found myself within that little sanctum, inside which, as I
afterwards learned, no other foot had for three years been set save
that of the old servant who cleaned it out. It was a round room,
conforming to the shape of the tower in which it was situated, with a
low ceiling, a single narrow, ivy-wreathed window, and the simplest
of furniture. An old carpet, a single chair, a deal table, and a
small shelf of books made up the whole contents. On the table stood a
full-length photograph of a woman--I took no particular notice of the
features, but I remember that a certain gracious gentleness was the
prevailing impression. Beside it were a large black japanned box and
one or two bundles of letters or papers fastened together with elastic
bands.

[Illustration: "OUR INTERVIEW WAS A SHORT ONE."]

Our interview was a short one, for Sir John Bollamore perceived that I
was soaked, and that I should change without delay. The incident led,
however, to an instructive talk with Richards, the agent, who had never
penetrated into the chamber which chance had opened to me. That very
afternoon he came to me, all curiosity, and walked up and down the
garden path with me, while my two charges played tennis upon the lawn
beside us.

"You hardly realize the exception which has been made in your favour,"
said he. "That room has been kept such a mystery, and Sir John's visits
to it have been so regular and consistent, that an almost superstitious
feeling has arisen about it in the household. I assure you that if
I were to repeat to you the tales which are flying about, tales of
mysterious visitors there, and of voices overheard by the servants, you
might suspect that Sir John had relapsed into his old ways."

"Why do you say relapsed?" I asked.

He looked at me in surprise.

"Is it possible," said he, "that Sir John Bollamore's previous history
is unknown to you?"

"Absolutely."

"You astound me. I thought that every man in England knew something of
his antecedents. I should not mention the matter if it were not that
you are now one of ourselves, and that the facts might come to your
ears in some harsher form if I were silent upon them. I always took
it for granted that you knew that you were in the service of 'Devil'
Bollamore."

"But why 'Devil'?" I asked.

"Ah, you are young and the world moves fast, but twenty years ago the
name of 'Devil' Bollamore was one of the best known in London. He was
the leader of the fastest set, bruiser, driver, gambler, drunkard--a
survival of the old type, and as bad as the worst of them."

I stared at him in amazement.

"What!" I cried, "that quiet, studious, sad-faced man?"

"The greatest rip and debauchee in England! All between ourselves,
Colmore. But you understand now what I mean when I say that a woman's
voice in his room might even now give rise to suspicions."

"But what can have changed him so?"

"Little Beryl Clare, when she took the risk of becoming his wife. That
was the turning point. He had got so far that his own fast set had
thrown him over. There is a world of difference, you know, between
a man who drinks and a drunkard. They all drink, but they taboo a
drunkard. He had become a slave to it--hopeless and helpless. Then she
stepped in, saw the possibilities of a fine man in the wreck, took
her chance in marrying him, though she might have had the pick of a
dozen, and, by devoting her life to it, brought him back to manhood and
decency. You have observed that no liquor is ever kept in the house.
There never has been any since her foot crossed its threshold. A drop
of it would be like blood to a tiger even now."

"Then her influence still holds him?"

"That is the wonder of it. When she died three years ago, we all
expected and feared that he would fall back into his old ways. She
feared it herself, and the thought gave a terror to death, for she was
like a guardian angel to that man, and lived only for the one purpose.
By the way, did you see a black japanned box in his room?"

"Yes."

"I fancy it contains her letters. If ever he has occasion to be away,
if only for a single night, he invariably takes his black japanned box
with him. Well, well, Colmore, perhaps I have told you rather more than
I should, but I shall expect you to reciprocate if anything of interest
should come to your knowledge." I could see that the worthy man was
consumed with curiosity and just a little piqued that I, the new-comer,
should have been the first to penetrate into the untrodden chamber. But
the fact raised me in his esteem, and from that time onwards I found
myself upon more confidential terms with him.

And now the silent and majestic figure of my employer became an object
of greater interest to me. I began to understand that strangely human
look in his eyes, those deep lines upon his careworn face. He was a
man who was fighting a ceaseless battle, holding at arm's length, from
morning till night, a horrible adversary, who was for ever trying to
close with him--an adversary which would destroy him body and soul
could it but fix its claws once more upon him. As I watched the grim,
round-backed figure pacing the corridor or walking in the garden,
this imminent danger seemed to take bodily shape, and I could almost
fancy that I saw this most loathsome and dangerous of all the fiends
crouching closely in his very shadow, like a half-cowed beast which
slinks beside its keeper, ready at any unguarded moment to spring at
his throat. And the dead woman, the woman who had spent her life in
warding off this danger, took shape also to my imagination, and I saw
her as a shadowy but beautiful presence which intervened for ever with
arms uplifted to screen the man whom she loved.

In some subtle way he divined the sympathy which I had for him, and
he showed in his own silent fashion that he appreciated it. He even
invited me once to share his afternoon walk, and although no word
passed between us on this occasion, it was a mark of confidence which
he had never shown to anyone before. He asked me also to index his
library (it was one of the best private libraries in England), and I
spent many hours in the evening in his presence, if not in his society,
he reading at his desk and I sitting in a recess by the window reducing
to order the chaos which existed among his books. In spite of these
closer relations I was never again asked to enter the chamber in the
turret.

And then came my revulsion of feeling. A single incident changed all
my sympathy to loathing, and made me realize that my employer still
remained all that he had ever been, with the additional vice of
hypocrisy. What happened was as follows.

One evening Miss Witherton had gone down to Broadway, the neighbouring
village, to sing at a concert for some charity, and I, according to
my promise, had walked over to escort her back. The drive sweeps
round under the eastern turret, and I observed as I passed that the
light was lit in the circular room. It was a summer evening, and the
window, which was a little higher than our heads, was open. We were,
as it happened, engrossed in our own conversation at the moment, and
we had paused upon the lawn which skirts the old turret, when suddenly
something broke in upon our talk and turned our thoughts away from our
own affairs.

It was a voice--the voice undoubtedly of a woman. It was low--so low
that it was only in that still night air that we could have heard it,
but, hushed as it was, there was no mistaking its feminine timbre. It
spoke hurriedly, gaspingly for a few sentences, and then was silent--a
piteous, breathless, imploring sort of voice. Miss Witherton and I
stood for an instant staring at each other. Then we walked quickly in
the direction of the hall-door.

"It came through the window," I said.

"We must not play the part of eaves-droppers," she answered. "We must
forget that we have ever heard it."

There was an absence of surprise in her manner which suggested a new
idea to me.

"You have heard it before," I cried.

"I could not help it. My own room is higher up on the same turret. It
has happened frequently."

"Who can the woman be?"

"I have no idea. I had rather not discuss it."

[Illustration: "IT WAS THE VOICE UNDOUBTEDLY OF A WOMAN."]

Her voice was enough to show me what she thought. But granting that
our employer led a double and dubious life, who could she be, this
mysterious woman who kept him company in the old tower? I knew from my
own inspection how bleak and bare a room it was. She certainly did not
live there. But in that case where did she come from? It could not be
any one of the household. They were all under the vigilant eyes of Mrs.
Stevens. The visitor must come from without. But how?

And then suddenly I remembered how ancient this building was, and how
probable that some mediæval passage existed in it. There is hardly
an old castle without one. The mysterious room was the basement of
the turret, so that if there were anything of the sort it would open
through the floor. There were numerous cottages in the immediate
vicinity. The other end of the secret passage might lie among some
tangle of bramble in the neighbouring copse. I said nothing to anyone,
but I felt that the secret of my employer lay within my power.

And the more convinced I was of this the more I marvelled at the manner
in which he concealed his true nature. Often as I watched his austere
figure, I asked myself if it were indeed possible that such a man
should be living this double life, and I tried to persuade myself that
my suspicions might after all prove to be ill-founded. But there was
the female voice, there was the secret nightly rendezvous in the turret
chamber--how could such facts admit of an innocent interpretation? I
conceived a horror of the man. I was filled with loathing at his deep,
consistent hypocrisy.

Only once during all those months did I ever see him without that sad
but impassive mask which he usually presented towards his fellow-man.
For an instant I caught a glimpse of those volcanic fires which he had
damped down so long. The occasion was an unworthy one, for the object
of his wrath was none other than the aged charwoman whom I have already
mentioned as being the one person who was allowed within his mysterious
chamber. I was passing the corridor which led to the turret--for my own
room lay in that direction--when I heard a sudden, startled scream,
and merged in it the husky, growling note of a man who is inarticulate
with passion. It was the snarl of a furious wild beast. Then I heard
his voice thrilling with anger. "You would dare!" he cried. "You
would dare to disobey my directions!" An instant later the charwoman
passed me, flying down the passage, white faced and tremulous, while
the terrible voice thundered behind her. "Go to Mrs. Stevens for your
money! Never set foot in Thorpe Place again!" Consumed with curiosity,
I could not help following the woman, and found her round the corner
leaning against the wall and palpitating like a frightened rabbit.

[Illustration: "NEVER SET FOOT IN THORPE PLACE AGAIN!"]

"What is the matter, Mrs. Brown?" I asked.

"It's master!" she gasped. "Oh 'ow 'e frightened me! If you 'ad seen
'is eyes, Mr. Colmore, sir. I thought 'e would 'ave been the death of
me."

"But what had you done?"

"Done, sir! Nothing. At least nothing to make so much of. Just laid my
'and on that black box of 'is--'adn't even opened it, when in 'e came
and you 'eard the way 'e went on. I've lost my place, and glad I am of
it, for I would never trust myself within reach of 'im again."

So it was the japanned box which was the cause of this outburst--the
box from which he would never permit himself to be separated. What was
the connection, or was there any connection between this and the secret
visits of the lady whose voice I had overheard? Sir John Bollamore's
wrath was enduring as well as fiery, for from that day Mrs. Brown, the
charwoman, vanished from our ken, and Thorpe Place knew her no more.

And now I wish to tell you the singular chance which solved all these
strange questions and put my employer's secret in my possession.
The story may leave you with some lingering doubt as to whether my
curiosity did not get the better of my honour, and whether I did not
condescend to play the spy. If you choose to think so I cannot help it,
but can only assure you that, improbable as it may appear, the matter
came about exactly as I describe it.

The first stage in this _dénouement_ was that the small room on the
turret became uninhabitable. This occurred through the fall of the
worm-eaten oaken beam which supported the ceiling. Rotten with age,
it snapped in the middle one morning, and brought down a quantity of
the plaster with it. Fortunately Sir John was not in the room at the
time. His precious box was rescued from amongst the _débris_ and
brought into the library, where, henceforward, it was locked within
his bureau. Sir John took no steps to repair the damage, and I never
had an opportunity of searching for that secret passage, the existence
of which I had surmised. As to the lady, I had thought that this would
have brought her visits to an end, had I not one evening heard Mr.
Richards asking Mrs. Stevens who the woman was whom he had overheard
talking to Sir John in the library. I could not catch her reply, but I
saw from her manner that it was not the first time that she had had to
answer or avoid the same question.

"You've heard the voice, Colmore?" said the agent.

I confessed that I had.

"And what do _you_ think of it?"

I shrugged my shoulders, and remarked that it was no business of mine.

"Come, come, you are just as curious as any of us. Is it a woman or
not?"

"It is certainly a woman."

"Which room did you hear it from?"

"From the turret-room, before the ceiling fell."

"But I heard it from the library only last night. I passed the door as
I was going to bed, and I heard something wailing and praying just as
plainly as I hear you. It may be a woman----"

"Why, what else _could_ it be?"

He looked at me hard.

"There are more things in heaven and earth," said he. "If it is a
woman, how does she get there?"

"I don't know."

"No, nor I. But if it is the other thing--but there, for a practical
business man at the end of the nineteenth century this is rather a
ridiculous line of conversation." He turned away, but I saw that he
felt even more than he had said. To all the old ghost stories of Thorpe
Place a new one was being added before our very eyes. It may by this
time have taken its permanent place, for though an explanation came to
me, it never reached the others.

And my explanation came in this way. I had suffered a sleepless
night from neuralgia, and about mid-day I had taken a heavy dose of
chlorodyne to alleviate the pain. At that time I was finishing the
indexing of Sir John Bollamore's library, and it was my custom to work
there from five till seven. On this particular day I struggled against
the double effect of my bad night and the narcotic. I have already
mentioned that there was a recess in the library, and in this it was
my habit to work. I settled down steadily to my task, but my weariness
overcame me and, falling back upon the settee, I dropped into a heavy
sleep.

[Illustration: "SIR JOHN BOLLAMORE WAS SITTING AT HIS STUDY TABLE."]

How long I slept I do not know, but it was quite dark when I awoke.
Confused by the chlorodyne which I had taken, I lay motionless in a
semi-conscious state. The great room with its high walls covered with
books loomed darkly all round me. A dim radiance from the moonlight
came through the farther window, and against this lighter background
I saw that Sir John Bollamore was sitting at his study table. His
well-set head and clearly cut profile were sharply outlined against
the glimmering square behind him. He bent as I watched him, and I heard
the sharp turning of a key and the rasping of metal upon metal. As
if in a dream I was vaguely conscious that this was the japanned box
which stood in front of him, and that he had drawn something out of it,
something squat and uncouth, which now lay before him upon the table. I
never realized--it never occurred to my bemuddled and torpid brain that
I was intruding upon his privacy, that he imagined himself to be alone
in the room. And then, just as it rushed upon my horrified perceptions,
and I had half risen to announce my presence, I heard a strange, crisp,
metallic clicking, and then the voice.

Yes, it was a woman's voice; there could not be a doubt of it. But a
voice so charged with entreaty and with yearning love, that it will
ring for ever in my ears. It came with a curious far-away tinkle, but
every word was clear, though faint--very faint, for they were the last
words of a dying woman.

"I am not really gone, John," said the thin, gasping voice. "I am here
at your very elbow, and shall be until we meet once more. I die happy
to think that morning and night you will hear my voice. Oh, John, be
strong, be strong, until we meet again."

I say that I had risen in order to announce my presence, but I could
not do so while the voice was sounding. I could only remain half lying,
half sitting, paralyzed, astounded, listening to those yearning distant
musical words. And he--he was so absorbed that even if I had spoken
he might not have heard me. But with the silence of the voice came my
half articulated apologies and explanations. He sprang across the room,
switched on the electric light, and in its white glare I saw him, his
eyes gleaming with anger, his face twisted with passion, as the hapless
charwoman may have seen him weeks before.

"Mr. Colmore!" he cried. "You here! What is the meaning of this, sir?"

With halting words I explained it all, my neuralgia, the narcotic, my
luckless sleep and singular awakening. As he listened the glow of anger
faded from his face, and the sad, impassive mask closed once more over
his features.

"My secret is yours, Mr. Colmore," said he. "I have only myself to
blame for relaxing my precautions. Half confidences are worse than no
confidences, and so you may know all since you know so much. The story
may go where you will when I have passed away, but until then I rely
upon your sense of honour that no human soul shall hear it from your
lips. I am proud still--God help me!--or, at least, I am proud enough
to resent that pity which this story would draw upon me. I have smiled
at envy, and disregarded hatred, but pity is more than I can tolerate.

"You have heard the source from which the voice comes--that voice which
has, as I understand, excited so much curiosity in my household. I am
aware of the rumours to which it has given rise. These speculations,
whether scandalous or superstitious, are such as I can disregard and
forgive. What I should never forgive would be a disloyal spying and
eavesdropping in order to satisfy an illicit curiosity. But of that,
Mr. Colmore, I acquit you.

"When I was a young man, sir, many years younger than you are now, I
was launched upon town without a friend or adviser, and with a purse
which brought only too many false friends and false advisers to my
side. I drank deeply of the wine of life--if there is a man living who
has drunk more deeply he is not a man whom I envy. My purse suffered,
my character suffered, my constitution suffered, stimulants became a
necessity to me, I was a creature from whom my memory recoils. And it
was at that time, the time of my blackest degradation, that God sent
into my life the gentlest, sweetest spirit that ever descended as a
ministering angel from above. She loved me, broken as I was, loved me,
and spent her life in making a man once more of that which had degraded
itself to the level of the beasts.

"But a fell disease struck her, and she withered away before my eyes.
In the hour of her agony it was never of herself, of her own sufferings
and her own death, that she thought. It was all of me. The one pang
which her fate brought to her was the fear that when her influence was
removed I should revert to that which I had been. It was in vain that
I made oath to her that no drop of wine would ever cross my lips. She
knew only too well the hold that the devil had upon me--she who had
striven so to loosen it--and it haunted her night and day the thought
that my soul might again be within his grip.

"It was from some friend's gossip of the sick room that she heard of
this invention--this phonograph--and with the quick insight of a loving
woman she saw how she might use it for her ends. She sent me to London
to procure the best which money could buy. When I returned she lay
actually in the throes of death. And with her last breath--the very
last that she breathed upon earth--she whispered this message into it,
a message to strengthen my resolves and to retain her influence upon my
actions. Into her ear I whispered that twice a day for ever afterwards
I should listen to her dear voice, and so, smiling at the success of
her plan, she passed gently away.

"So now you have my secret, Mr. Colmore, and you understand why this
japanned box and that which it contains is more to me than all my
ancestral home. I trust you, and I believe you to be worthy of my
trust. But after this the sight of you would be painful to me, and so
good-bye! You will find no cause to regret having left my service, but
you will understand that we must never meet again."

So this was the last time that I was ever destined to see Sir John
Bollamore, and I left him standing in his library, with his hand upon
the instrument which brought him that ever-recurring, intangible, and
yet intimate reminder from the woman whom he loved. You may have read
about his death in a carriage accident last Midsummer. I do not fancy
that it was a very unwelcome event to him.

[Illustration]




_Illustrated Interviews._


LXII.--MADAME MELBA. BY PERCY CROSS STANDING.

[Illustration: MADAME MELBA AS SHE FIRST APPEARED IN GRAND
OPERA.--GILDA IN "RIGOLETTO," BRUSSELS, OCTOBER 15, 1887.

_From a Photo. by J. Ganz, Brussels._]

To an observant student of the world's genius it is a reflection, not
without a peculiar interest of its own, that the Australian Continent
has so far produced but one woman-singer of the first rank. Of poets
whose genius is as undoubted as their place in the world's literature
is certain Australia has given us at least two, in Henry Kendall and
the gifted but ill-fated Adam Lindsay Gordon. To the drama this, the
"least contiguous" of the four continents, has contributed Haddon
Chambers--though the creator of "Captain Swift" and "The Idler" has
now dwelt among us so long as to be regarded as a fully naturalized
"Englander." The department of imaginative literature is already
represented by quite a little army from "down under," as the eminent
names of Mrs. Campbell Praed, "Tasma," Mr. Rolf Boldrewood, Miss Ada
Cambridge, Miss Ethel Turner, Mr. Guy Boothby, and the late Marcus
Clarke bear eloquent testimony; whilst the field of critical and
biographical writing finds a worthy representative in Mr. Patchett
Martin.

But Melba stands alone. Towering head and shoulders over every other
aspirant to the highest honours of grand opera, the retirement
of Madame Patti from the operatic field has left "the Australian
Nightingale" undisputed ruler of an empire probably the proudest in the
sum of this planet's most desirable possessions. Yet these are honours
becomingly and graciously worn by one who, scarcely a decade ago, was
little more than a name to the patrons and supporters of the opera.

As I sit in her _salon_ to-day, and chat with this queenly woman,
whose greatest charm assuredly lies in her consideration for others, I
wonder whether she ever recalls that little white-robed girl (herself)
who, in far-off Melbourne, in the dead of night, startled her parents
and brought them downstairs by her playing of Beethoven's "Moonlight
Sonata." It is a pretty story, with a prettier sequel. For the parents
of that little girl had not the heart to chide their offspring for her
"precocity" (that unmeaning word in which the beginnings of genius are
so often concealed), but rather did they coax her back to bed as they
marvelled over what they had heard. Surely they must, at that early
day, have had some faint glimmering of the future in store for the
coming _prima donna_!

[Illustration: MADAME MELBA BEFORE HER DÉBUT, 1887. _From a Photo. by
Chalot, Paris._]

"Perhaps they did--I do not know," says Madame Melba, dreamily. "But
one thing I know for certain--that their daughter did not cherish
any such aspirations for a long time to come. I went quietly on with
my education--no, not my musical education, that came later--until
my marriage, which took place at the early age of seventeen. Stop,
though! I was entirely forgetting to tell you the story of what I
call 'my first appearance on any stage.' It took place at the Town
Hall, Richmond, which is a suburb of Melbourne, and I was aged _six_
at the time! What did I sing? Let me see, now! Yes, I sang 'Shells of
the Ocean' first, followed by 'Comin' thro' the Rye.' It was a great
occasion, as you may imagine, and I am by no means certain that I am
not prouder of it than of anything I have done since."

On the question as to whence--if traceable at all--Madame Melba derives
her voice and natural musical gifts, she told me that her mother was an
accomplished musician. In addition to being a beautiful pianist, she
played also the organ and the harp. Thus it was that the future _prima
donna_ was reared so to speak in the lap of Music. Her mother was her
first teacher of the piano, and afterwards her studies were aided by
the exertions of her aunts Alice and Lizzie.

"Even as a child of three or four," she continued, "I was so
passionately devoted to music that I remember frequently crawling
under the piano and remaining quiet there for hours while listening
to my mother's playing. Yes, my mother sang also, though she had not
a particularly notable voice. But her sister, my 'Aunt Lizzie,' as
I called her, possessed a soprano voice of extraordinary beauty and
quality. To this day I can remember my aunt's absolute control of her
voice, and the beauty and ease of her execution even in the highest
_pianissimo_ passages. Indeed, I feel sure my Aunt Lizzie would have
enjoyed a brilliant career as a public singer, had she adopted it."

It should be mentioned that the _diva's_ father, Mr. David Mitchell,
is a squatter resident in the Colony of Victoria, and that his several
stations are far removed from important townships. The family now
reside at Colbin Abbin Estate; but in the days when Melba was a child
they lived at "Steel's Flat," another of her father's estates, where
she was born and brought up, with intermittent visits to Melbourne.

I was interested to find that the subject of this interview can also
trace the gift of music on the paternal side of the house. To this
day her father sings in the local choir, and his daughter told me she
well remembered his voice as a deep basso of beautiful _timbre_. He
has always been passionately fond of music, and is, in addition to his
vocal talent (to quote his daughter's own expression), "a fiddler of
no mean ability." Madame Melba speaks in the most affectionate terms
of both her parents. Her mother died while the great singer was in her
teens, but Melba cherishes many sweet recollections of her.

"She was a natural artist--not as regards music only, for one remembers
it in the general expression of her life. She was, among other things,
a charming painter on china, and the dessert-service still in use at
home was decorated by her brush.

"Did my father also foster my love of music? Yes, indeed he did, to
the utmost of his power. When I was quite a baby it was my great joy,
on Sunday afternoons, to sit on my father's knee at the harmonium.
He would blow the bellows with his feet, while singing a bass
accompaniment to the hymn which I would pick out on the key-board with
one finger."

Thus, finding that the Australian singer inherits the gift of song from
either side of her family, I inquired whether this passion for music
did not begin to take shape at a very tender age.

"In illustration that that was so," she answered, "I remember once our
family moving into 'winter quarters' at one of my father's outlying
stations. I was ten years old at the time, but I know I felt furious,
on arrival, to find that there was no piano in the house. My gentle
mother consoled me with the gift of _a concertina_, which I taught
myself to play during the three months that we remained there! In those
sequestered places, in the case of country houses very far removed from
a church or chapel, it is customary for a clergyman or lay preacher
to come along on Sundays and preach to the family, the servants, and
station hands--often quite a large congregation, particularly at
shearing-time.

"One Sunday--I was then, perhaps, thirteen years old--we were visited
by a worthy man, who chanced to be a particularly poor preacher. At
the conclusion of his very long and (as we children thought) somewhat
wearisome discourse, he suggested that we should sing a hymn. There
was a harmonium in the room, and my mother asked me to play a familiar
hymn. I accordingly seated myself, but, in revenge for having been
so bored, I played--to the horror of some and the secret delight of
others--a music-hall ditty which had succeeded in penetrating our
wilderness! It was called, 'You Should See Me Dance the Polka.' In the
sequel, I received the well-merited punishment of being sent to bed for
the remainder of the day.

"It must have been about the end of the same year that I had, what I
thought at the time, a very fearsome adventure indeed! It happened
at Melbourne. I was learning to play the organ, and I had permission
occasionally to practise on the great organ in the Scots Church. Late
one afternoon I ceased playing, and fell into a reverie. When, at
last, I proceeded to leave the church, I found, to my horror, I was
locked in! My playing having ceased for some time, the sexton had
concluded I was gone, and had locked up the church and left. You cannot
conceive the agony of mind I endured. The church was very dark, and the
pulpit and altar in their grey dust-cloths looked, to my frightened
imagination, like monstrous ghosts. What should I do?... At last the
sexton returned--by the merest chance he had forgotten something, which
he came back to fetch, and so I obtained my release."

About two years after her marriage, namely, at the age of nineteen,
Melba began concert singing. At first she sang as an amateur; but so
rapidly did she betray talents of an extraordinarily high order, that
she was strongly recommended to adopt the vocal art as a profession.
Upon this advice she acted, and came to England to study. The rest is
history.

It is, however, history of an exceedingly interesting character.
It will be seen that, in shaping her public career, Madame Melba
unconsciously moved in cycles of two years. Thus, she was married at
seventeen. At nineteen she commenced to sing publicly. At twenty-one
she came to Europe in order to study the art she had elected to follow.
At twenty-three occurred her _début_ on the operatic stage.

So far as operatic England is concerned, the distinction of introducing
Melba to the Covent Garden public belongs to the late Sir Augustus
Harris, who subsequently wrote a rather remarkable letter on the
subject of the Australian _débutante's_ quickly won popularity.
Madame Melba's initial appearance on the Covent Garden stage took
place in May, 1888, as the ill-fated heroine of Donizetti's "Lucia di
Lammermoor." Her success, both with the critics and with the public,
was so spontaneous and overwhelming, that her engagement for the next
(1889) London season was rendered inevitable. The new _prima donna's_
principal appearance of 1889 was in Gounod's "Roméo et Juliette," while
her performance in Verdi's "Rigoletto" exhibited how rapidly, to quote
Mr. Parker's "Opera Under Augustus Harris," "Madame Melba's popularity
was increasing in this country." In 1890 she created at Covent Garden
the character of _Ophelia_ in Dr. Ambroise Thomas's "Hamlet," which she
had the advantage of rehearsing with the composer himself.

[Illustration: MADAME MELBA IN "LAKMÉ," 1890. _From a Photo. by Dupont,
Brussels._]

In 1893 Melba went to America, to meet with a wholly unprecedented
success; but in '94 she was back at Covent Garden, to charm huge
audiences with her _Nedda_ in Leoncavallo's "Pagliacci" and her
_Marguerite_ in "Faust." Since then the cantatrice has appeared with
regularity during the London opera season. Two of her most interesting
appearances have been in "Carmen" three years ago, when that opera
was performed with the extraordinarily strong cast of Madame Calvé as
_Carmen_, Madame Melba as _Michaela_, and M. Alvarez as _Don José_;
and in "Les Huguenotś" in 1896, when Albani was the _Valentina_, and
Melba the _Margherita de Valois_. In that season, by the way, a gloom
was cast over English musical life by the deaths of Sir Joseph Barnby
and Sir Augustus Harris, the latter being a personal friend of Madame
Melba, and of whom she cherishes many pleasant recollections.

[Illustration: MADAME MELBA AS LUCIA DI LAMMERMOOR, 1891. _From a
Photo. by Nadar, Paris._]

But then, as I told the Australian _prima donna_, in her case "pleasant
recollections" must of necessity multiply themselves, by virtue of the
numbers of the world's great ones with whom her art and her remarkable
gifts have brought her in contact. And yet she remains so wholly and
entirely a "womanly woman," that I verily believe she values the esteem
and admiration of the lowliest peasant as highly as that of the great
ones of the earth.

In respect of the personal friendships to which I have just made
reference, the _diva_ has delightful remembrances of masters like the
veteran Verdi, Charles Gounod (with whom she had the privilege of
rehearsing his "Faust" and "Roméo et Juliette"), poor Goring Thomas,
the creator of "Esmeralda," Tosti, and Puccini. In the case of the
latter composer, she studied her part in his "La Bohème" (a new
assumption) with him in Southern Italy last summer; and, if all that
we hear be true, she is destined to win fresh laurels in the same
composer's newest work, "La Tosca," in which Puccini does for Sardou's
tragic story what Verdi has done for Shakespeare's "Othello."

Nellie Melba is a woman of rare enthusiasms. In conversation with me,
she could not say too much in praise of Madame Matilde Marchesi--the
only singing-teacher she has ever had--and whom she speaks of in terms
of warmest affection and sympathy.

I asked the _prima donna_ whether she has ever experienced the
excitement and danger of a theatre fire. "Yes, on two occasions," she
told me; "in San Francisco and in London. In both cases the danger was
happily averted. At Covent Garden the outbreak happened actually on
the stage during a performance of 'Faust,' and the curtain had to be
rung down. I chanced to be in the 'wings' at the time, and while they
were battling with the flames behind the curtain, I came in front and
begged the people to remain seated. Fortunately that most terrible of
calamities, a theatre panic, was averted. As soon as I found myself
behind the scenes once more I committed the weakness of fainting."

There have been, not unnaturally, some striking incidents connected
with Melba's enormous popularity at the Paris Opera House. There is
one of them, however, to which a pathetic interest attaches by reason
of the comparatively recent death of Madame Carnot, who figured in it
in very sympathetic fashion. The opera was "Lucia di Lammermoor"--one
of Melba's greatest, if not her very greatest assumption. It happened
that the tenor, Monsieur Cossira, arrived at the Opera House feeling
very unwell, but apparently recovering before the opera began he
decided to go on. Early in the first act, however, he almost completely
lost his voice! When it came to the duet with _Lucia_ in the first
act, it utterly failed him. The _prima donna_, full of sympathy for
his difficulty, for a time sang his music as well as her own; but
ultimately the curtain had to be rung down, and for a few moments it
appeared as though the performance could not proceed, since--surely
a thing unprecedented at the Paris Opera House--Monsieur Cossira was
not provided with an understudy! As luck would have it, though, among
the audience was M. Engel, who had sung the part with Melba, not long
before, in Brussels. Grasping the situation, he went behind the scenes
and proffered his services, which were gladly and gratefully accepted.
The performance proceeded, and for several nights thereafter M. Engel
sang the part.

"At the close of the evening," added Madame Melba, in telling me of the
incident, "Madame Carnot sent for me. It was during Monsieur Carnot's
reign at the Elysée, and so his wife was occupying the Presidential box
at the Opera. Being a woman of very quick perception, Madame Carnot had
observed my efforts at covering the confusion of my poor colleague. I
can never forget her kind words to me then, nor shall I readily forget
the sorrow I felt afterwards on hearing the news of President Carnot's
terrible end, and of her own death subsequently."

By the time this interview appears in print, Madame Melba will be
in the thick of her fifth visit to the United States. Her previous
operatic tours of the American Continent have been full of varied and
interesting experiences. One of the most characteristic "Melba stories"
that I know dates from her last tour but one. It was at St. Louis,
where, thanks to a late train, the _diva_ and her company arrived
only a very little time before the hour fixed for the commencement.
There was, in fact, only just time for the artists to make for their
respective dressing-rooms. But Melba, looking down from a coign of
vantage into the orchestra, observed, to her dismay and annoyance, that
her musicians were in morning dress. She promptly sent for the _chef
d'orchestre_. The poor man expostulated, remonstrated; they had but a
few minutes before come off the cars; there was no time, etc. But Melba
was firm. "If the gentlemen of my orchestra do not choose to appear in
evening dress, I shall refuse to go on the stage. I owe a duty to the
public as well as to myself."

This inexorable mandate had its effect, and the musicians were soon
seen filing out of the orchestra, to return a few minutes later,
suitably clad in the evening garb of comparative civilization. Then the
curtain rose and the opera commenced--only a very little behind time.
The incident did not, however, pass unrecognised. The critics of the
Press had seen the musicians disappear and re-appear, and correctly
surmising the cause of their "quick change," the result was a series
of graceful little articles in the St. Louis papers complimenting the
popular favourite upon her sense of the fitness of things.

[Illustration: MADAME MELBA AS JULIETTE, 1892. _From a Photo. by
Dupont, Brussels._]

An incident without precedent on the concert stage marked the concert
which Melba gave at the Albert Hall, on November 2nd, to signalize her
departure for her present trans-Atlantic tour. Of the three principal
performers--_i.e._, Madame Melba herself, Miss Ada Crossley, the
contralto, and Mr. Johann Kruse, the solo violinist--all were not only
Australians, but Victorians by birth.

[Illustration: MADAME MELBA AS OPHÉLIE, 1895 _From a Photo. by
Reutlinger, Paris._]

[Illustration: MADAME MELBA, 1893. _From a Photo. by Renque et Cie,
Paris._]

Immediately after her few but brilliant appearances at Covent Garden
last season, Madame Melba rented a charmingly-situated house, called
"Fernley," near the river at Maidenhead. Here she entertained many
friends during the month of August. A very interesting "group"
photograph of three distinguished Australians--Melba, Mr. Haddon
Chambers, and Mr. Bertram MacKennal--taken at that time on the lawn at
Fernley, is shown at the top of this page. It will be interesting to
your readers that the last-named distinguished compatriot of Madame
Melba's is executing a bust of the _diva_, which she has decided to
present to the Public Library of Melbourne. A bust of the Melbourne
Melba, by the Melbourne MacKennal, is obviously an artistic event of
peculiar interest.

[Illustration: MADAME MELBA, MR. HADDON CHAMBERS, AND MR. BERTRAM
MACKENNAL. _From a Photo. by H. Gude, Maidenhead._]

By the way, the popular morning "daily" that unwittingly represented
Melba as an athletic kind of lady, skilled in the gentle art of
rowing, was sadly in error! Far and away the most interesting episode
of the stay at Fernley was a visit which the _prima donna_ and some
members of her house-party paid to the grave of the poet Gray in
Stoke Poges churchyard. Here, it will be remembered, Gray wrote his
beautiful "Elegy"; and here, too, Melba (who, I omitted to say, is an
accomplished organist, and often used to play that instrument in the
Scots Church at Melbourne) expressed a desire to try the organ in the
charming old church of Stoke Poges.

Thereby hangs this tale: The rector, on it being represented to him
that "Madame Melba would like to play the organ," courteously handed
over the necessary keys, and Melba gave great pleasure to her audience
of half-a-dozen friends by playing and singing for them a selection
of pieces, which included the Gounod "Ave Maria," and ended with
the National Anthem. Asked by one of the party how she had enjoyed
the impromptu sacred concert, the old lady who was in charge of the
church, and whose services had been requisitioned to blow the organ,
enthusiastically rejoined, "Oh, it were all beautiful, m'm, but 'God
Save the Queen' were best of all!"

Madame Melba is fortunate in having some one member of her family--a
brother or sister, generally speaking--to accompany her on her
travels. During her last American tour she had for companions both
a sister and a brother--Miss Dora and Mr. Ernest Mitchell--and she
still speaks of the regret with which she parted from them when they
were obliged to return to their Antipodean home about the end of the
last London season. She says she is not less fortunate in having a
man like Mr. Charles A. Ellis (originally the business manager of the
Boston Symphony Orchestra) to personally conduct her trans-Atlantic
tours. The present one will be very much extended, and will involve the
traversing of many thousands of miles by the _diva_ and her company.
The principal members of that company are Ternina, Zélie de Lussan, and
Gadski, Alvarez, Bonnard, Pandolfini, Kraus, and Bonderesque, and the
orchestra is controlled by Signor Seppilli and Mr. Walter Damrosch.
As for Melba's répertoire, it comprises not only two _rôles_ quite
new to her--"Martha" and "La Bohème"--but also "Lucia," "Hamlet,"
"Manon," "Les Huguenots," "La Traviata," "Rigoletto," "Faust," "Roméo
et Juliette," and "Il Barbière di Siviglia"--in the last-named of which
she scored such a shining success at Covent Garden last season. While
on the subject of America, I may mention that Madame Melba seriously
meditates refusing an offer for a season in South America, which I take
to be the most dazzling and tempting ever made to a _prima donna_. She
whimsically says that she thinks she would rather spend the greater
part of 1899 in Europe, although she looks forward with pleasure to a
visit to South America later on.

I am reminded of one more "Melba anecdote." Two or three years ago she
took a party of friends to see the interior of La Scala, the noble
opera-house where many of her triumphs have been won. Throwing open
the door of a dressing-room, their cicerone exclaimed, "This is where
the celebrated Melba used to dress!" The great singer's friends began
to laugh, but she, looking hard at the man, quietly asked him, "What!
don't you know me?" And then this son of Italy perceived that, _sans_
voice and _sans_ diamonds though she might be, she still was "Melba."

It is, I think, illustrative of Madame Melba's large humanity that the
simpler and more sympathetic the anecdote, the better is she pleased to
tell it. For example, "one touch of nature" is to her much more than
to tell of her many meetings with Royalty--of her brilliant career as
queen of opera--of her impressions of the many great ones of the world
into whose society she has been thrown. Of her _début_ in opera she
readily speaks, for must it not always rank as one of her pleasantest
memories? It occurred at the Brussels Opera House, and at the age of
twenty-two. Not at that time knowing French, Melba was permitted to
sing in Italian, while the other artists sang French--an unprecedented
concession to a _débutante_ on the part of the local opera authorities.
On that memorable evening, the next box to the one occupied by some
friends and relatives of Madame Melba contained a lady and gentleman.
At the close of the first act, the latter asked his companion as to
her opinion of the _débutante_, when the lady was heard to reply,
"_Débutante!_ Nonsense! I heard her in Madrid ten years ago. She was an
awful failure, and _she's forty if she's a day_!"

"Did you feel any resentment when you heard the story?" I asked.

"Not in the least," replied Madame Melba, laughing merrily, "albeit in
those early days I had not grown accustomed, as, alas! I have since,
to hearing strangely false reports about myself--reports sometimes
amazing, sometimes absurd, and sometimes, I fear, malicious. Besides, I
was in far too good a humour with the public success I had achieved to
feel angry; and if the story appears in your article, and the lady sees
it, I shall feel amply avenged."

Two incidents in connection with her first American tour were related
to me so feelingly by the _prima donna_, that I must do my best
to reproduce them. The first occurred in New York. Melba had been
practising her part at her hotel one afternoon. Just as she had
finished, and was coming out of her rooms, she encountered a strange
lady, whose rooms opened into the same corridor. The unknown approached
her, and said, "Madame, I think you would be touched to hear what my
little boy said just now. He is lying in bed getting over an illness;
and when you began to sing he lifted his tiny forefinger and whispered,
'Hist, mummy! Birdie!'"

[Illustration: MADAME MELBA (PRESENT DAY). _From a Photo. by
Reutlinger, Paris._]

The second incident referred to occurred one snowy night as the _diva_
was leaving the stage-door of the Opera House at Philadelphia. An old
lady, very neatly attired, but evidently not in affluent circumstances,
was waiting for her as she crossed the foot-way to her carriage. When
Madame Melba appeared the old lady remarked, "Madame, I have just
heard you sing, and I've waited here in the hope that you will let me
take your hand." Melba, deeply touched, impulsively kissed the old
lady on either cheek. This salutation won from its recipient these
simple words, which Melba says she will never forget, "God bless your
beautiful heart, my dear!"

My interesting visit to Madame Melba terminated with, on my
part, a very natural regret. I carried away with me an indelible
impression--the impression of a queenly woman, an incomparable
artist, bearing her unrivalled gifts and her regal position in the
world of music with a simplicity and a womanly modesty which, while
unable to enhance their value, add a singular grace and charm to
their possession. And I found it a pleasing reflection that I had
been accorded an audience of a queen who is delightfully unconscious
of her sovereignty, and who, even if robbed of the gifts which now
enchant the world, would still retain those qualities which enchant her
friends--her bright intelligence, her ever-ready sympathies, and her
true womanliness.

[Illustration:




His Home Coming

BY E. M. JAMESON.]


"Another present, Honor? I thought you had really received the last."

"So did I," replied Honor, sitting up in her low chair, and beginning
to untie the string that was round the small parcel. "People are very
kind; wonderfully kind."

Mrs. Latimer looked up quickly at the sound of the dejected voice.
She was a slight, sweet-looking woman, in widow's dress, whose face,
despite its never-varying sadness, bore traces of great beauty. The
present proved to be a very beautiful pendant of emeralds and diamonds.
Mrs. Latimer, having admired it as it lay on its satin bed, handed it
back to her daughter.

"So kind of your Uncle James," she said, as she did so, watching
meantime, with puzzled uneasiness, Honor's listless fingering of the
jewel-case.

"Very kind!" remarked the girl, tilting her chin somewhat
superciliously. "Am I not marrying a rich man? If Ronald had been poor,
how would Uncle James have treated me?"

"Honor, Honor," said her mother, a pained look crossing her face, "how
very unlike you to be so bitter."

Honor crossed over to where her mother sat and dropped down on the rug
beside her, and taking one of her mother's hands pressed it to her
cheek.

"He thinks it really, little mother, only you are too good to see it,
and know too that I love Ronald so dearly that I'd marry him if he
hadn't a second coat to put on. Uncle James, of all people!"--she threw
the case into the chair she had just vacated, her blue eyes shining and
hard--"Uncle James, who might have done so much, who might have saved
his nephew from destruction by holding out a helping hand. Poor Jim!"

Her clear voice broke for a moment, then she pointed to a table in the
corner that was covered with wedding presents.

"I'd give them all for one little note from Jim saying he was sorry and
was coming to us. Just imagine if he came home and sat with us here in
this very room! I cannot get him out of my thoughts to-night. Perhaps,
somewhere, he is thinking of us."

Mrs. Latimer sank back in her chair, the tears coursing down her face.

"I pray night and morning that he may come back to us, and it seems
as though God turned a deaf ear to all my pleadings. I dream of him,
Honor, so often, our handsome boy, as he was before he went astray, and
the awakening seems more than I can bear."

A pang shot through Honor's heart as she looked up into the fragile
face, and she regretted having been carried away to speak of the
prodigal.

"He will come back to us sooner or later," she said, hastily; "I am
certain of it. He is too fond of us to go far astray. The threats Uncle
James used terrified him."

"I am almost sorry we left the other house," Mrs. Latimer said,
presently. "Suppose he came and found strangers occupying our place?"

"He has only to ask in the neighbourhood to find us no farther than the
next road," said Honor. "Don't let that worry you. He will come home to
us some day."

She spoke with a cheerfulness she was far from experiencing; the
thought had often occurred to her that Jim, her only brother, must be
dead. Heedless and headstrong he might be, but he had always possessed
a warm heart, and would not have left them to anxiety for so long.
Twice her wedding had been postponed, but the prodigal still delayed,
and in a few days her marriage would be an accomplished fact.

Presently Mrs. Latimer said "good-night" and went to bed. After
lighting her candle and watching her up the staircase, Honor returned
to the room in which they had spent the evening. An unbearable
restlessness was upon her, and she could settle to nothing, though
there were notes to be written and a host of other things to be done.

She heard the servants troop up to bed, and then a silence fell upon
the house, only broken by the melancholy soughing of the wind among
the trees in the garden. The loneliness and silence told after a time,
and she rose to follow her mother's example, though sleep was the
farthest thing from her thoughts. She examined the window fastenings,
and picking up the case containing the pendant, placed it among the
presents on the table. The thought occurred to her that there ought to
be a place in which to lock up the valuables, but in her preoccupation
the fact troubled her little. Jim was the one absorbing thought,
ousting even Ronald from her mind. A mental picture of Jim, destitute
and starving, rose before her continually, embittering her life, and
she could look forward to nothing until she was at rest about him.

She looked in at her mother on the way to her own room, and found her
sleeping tranquilly. At the sight of the thin cheek on the pillow,
Honor's heart contracted painfully; her mother grew paler and more
fragile day by day, and the doctors had said that in the weak state of
her heart a sudden shock might prove fatal. A tear dropped on the thin
hand lying outside the counterpane, and Honor crept away to her own
room. When ready for bed she lay in the darkness, feeling every nerve
acutely on the alert.

The clock in the hall below ticked solemnly and struck the hour from
time to time, and Honor could hear the faint sound of the cuckoo. She
remembered the little bird as long as she could remember anything; from
babyhood it had been the delight of herself and Jim, with its perky,
impertinent manner, and the brisk way in which it bounced out and in
again. Hot tears blinded Honor's eyes and soaked into her pillow.

[Illustration: "SHE LOOKED INTO THE WIDE HALL BELOW."]

There came a faint sound from below, so faint as only to make the
stillness more noticeable. The wind moaned round the house, but
fitfully, as if a storm were gathering at a distance. Honor half sat
up in bed, straining her ear to listen. There was not a stir in the
house, yet she felt convinced that someone shared her vigil. Fearing
her mother might be ill, and yet not wishing to disturb her if she
slept, she drew herself noiselessly out of bed, and groped for her
dressing-gown without striking a light. On her way she looked into
the wide hall below. A faint glimmer illumined it, and her eyes soon
became accustomed to the dim light. Someone stood facing the clock.
Click! the doors flew open, and out sprang the cuckoo.

One, two, three. The doors closed again. There was a faint sound,
which might have been a box of matches falling on the tiled floor. It
was followed by a smothered exclamation. The figure stole away in the
direction of the morning-room, where she and her mother had lately been
sitting. Honor remained in the dark motionless, wondering what she
had better do. All the servants were women, and to awaken them meant
rousing her mother, and that she dare not do.

She gathered her dressing-gown closely round her and crept noiselessly
from stair to stair, quivering all over as they creaked under her bare
feet, but never pausing until she stood at the half-open door of the
morning-room and looked in. What she saw froze her into immovability. A
film swam before her eyes. It was Jim! The prodigal had returned, but
why in this way? What could it mean? She rubbed her eyes incredulously.
There was another man standing near the window, but it was upon Jim her
glance was fixed with reluctant, fascinated horror.

[Illustration: "THE LIGHT FELL FULL UPON HER."]

Jim leaned against the mantelpiece, his face was white and drawn, and
in his eyes was reproduced some of the incredulity of Honor's.

"I can't, I tell you," he spoke in a low voice, that yet came clearly
to the listener. "I promised, as it was to be the last time, but I
break my word--I must get out of this, I tell you. That clock! My God!
what I'd give not to feel such a scoundrel!"

"_Clock?_ What are you raving about?" said the other. "What's wrong
with the clock? They must strike, I suppose! Come on, let's get out of
this. What's given you such a scare? You might have seen a ghost."

"So I have, the place is full of them. I must go; the very air stifles
me." He stood upright and moved towards the door.

"Not a foot until you've done your share," replied the other,
advancing, and Honor could see his evil, dissipated face; "don't desert
an old chum."

"I wish to Heaven I had years ago, Hammersley. You've been my curse
ever since I've known you. Let's clear out."

Honor started at the name, that of an old school-fellow. She pushed the
door open farther, and the light fell full upon her, disclosing her
white face with its glittering aureole of hair, and the blue eyes wide
with pain.

Hammersley dropped the trinket he held with a little sharp tinkle, and
drew back into the shade shamefacedly. But Honor never noticed him, all
her glance was for Jim, who stood rigidly upright, staring at her as if
she were a visitant from the grave.

"Honor!" the words came with difficulty from his parched throat.
"_You!_ What does it mean?"

Honor advanced a step nearer.

"_Mean?_" She spoke in a clear, relentless voice, half mad with the
disgrace of it all. "Mean? It means that you have sunk so low as to
rob your mother and sister of a few valuables. It means that you have
broken into your mother's house like a common thief. No, no----" Her
voice vibrated with a sharp throb of pain--"even the lowest, the most
degraded, would think twice before robbing his own."

The light showed clearly all the misery of Jim's handsome, haggard
young face.

"I swear to you----" he began, but Honor went on speaking, her voice
low with concentrated scorn, and he drew back under the lash of her
glance.

"Why did you not die years ago? Only to-night we were talking of you,
praying that you might return, and _this_ is how God answers our
prayers!"

She pointed to the table, and Jim's head sank lower.

"Take them all if you want them, but go."

He moved blindly towards the door, and as he reached it, a footstep
sounded along the passage, and Mrs. Latimer appeared. Before Honor
could stir she had caught sight of Jim, and putting down the light she
carried, she made a little run forward, and put her arms round his neck.

"God bless you, my own boy. I knew you would come," she said, and fell
inertly with her cheek against his.

Above his mother's head, Jim's eyes met those of Honor, in anguished
appeal. As he stood holding his mother in his arms his punishment
seemed greater than he could bear.

A fresh fear took possession of Honor, and for a moment she dared not
ascertain the worst. Had not the doctors talked of a sudden shock?

"Bring her here," she said, indicating a couch close by; "she must
never know, poor, poor mother!"

In the bustle that ensued Hammersley made good his escape, unnoticed by
anyone. Honor applied restoratives, and after a long time Mrs. Latimer
came back to consciousness. Her glance sought for Jim; Honor motioned
him over.

"My own darling boy, why did you come back so late? How thin and white
you are! We must feed him well, must we not, Honor?"

[Illustration: "SHE PUT HER ARMS ROUND HIS NECK."]

She stroked his face as he bent over her, and under her loving trust
and entire unconsciousness of the true facts of the case Jim suddenly
broke down, and, like a penitent child, buried his face in a fold of
her dressing-gown. And she never knew the truth. But even Honor, who
knows, has perfect faith now in Jim.




_In Nature's Workshop._

BY GRANT ALLEN.


I.--SEXTONS AND SCAVENGERS.

In a certain sense, all animated nature is but a single vast
co-operative society. I am no foolish optimist: I will admit, indeed,
that the members of the society so composed often display to one
another the most unfriendly and unfraternal spirit. The hawks, for
instance, show a distinct want of true brotherly love towards the
larks or the tom-tits: and the mice and lizards find the owls and the
cats by no means clubbable. The co-operative society is hardly what
one could call a happy family. Still, in spite of the fact insisted
upon by the poet that "Nature is one with rapine--a harm no preacher
can heal," it is none the less true that a certain rough balance, an
accommodation or adjustment of part to part, occurs in every department
of animal and vegetable life. When we come to think, it could hardly
be otherwise. Things can only exist if they contain in themselves
the conditions necessary to existence. An unadapted animal or plant
perishes instantly. Spiders could not live in an island which contained
no flies; kingfishers necessarily presuppose fish; and silkworms imply
the presence of mulberry leaves. You cannot have vultures wild in a
country where there are no dead animals lying about loose: nor can you
keep bees except where there are honey-bearing flowers. Dutch clover
depends for its very existence upon a few insects which fertilize it
and set its seeds. The draining of the fens killed out a dozen species
of English plants and animals; the inclosure of the prairies deprived
the buffaloes of their chance of pasture. In this sense, all nature
hangs together as it were; each species fills some place in the great
mosaic which cannot be altered without considerable disturbance of
adjacent pieces. Destroy the rabbits in a given area, and you have
nothing left for the weasels to feed upon.

Sometimes, too, apparently unimportant or unnoticed creatures perform
in the aggregate some valuable work for the rest of the plant and
animal community, which little suspects its real indebtedness to them.
Darwin showed long ago that the humble and despised earthworm was
really answerable for the greater part of that rich layer of vegetable
mould or soil which covers the bare rocks; it deposits the material in
which all our plants root and from which they derive a large element
of their sustenance. Kill out the earthworms over the whole of our
earth, and you would reduce a vast proportion of it to the condition of
a desert. For the worms pull down green leaves into their neat little
burrows; and the refuse of these leaves, continually renewed from
season to season by the industrious small workmen, forms by far the
greater share of that dark layer of vegetable mould which is the chief
source of the fertility in plains and lowlands. Sandy upland spots,
where worms are few, form little or no soil, and will only support a
poor moorland growth of gorse and heather. You must have plenty of
worms if you want to grow corn or turnips.

But there are other unconsidered creatures besides these, creatures
which perform for us functions almost as useful and important as those
of the earthworms; and I propose to devote a few pages here to one
such group, the sanitary commissioners of the insect world, as I will
venture to call them--the vast body of minor sextons and six-legged
scavengers. Has it ever struck you that as you walk abroad through
the rich green meadows and pastures of England, you almost never come
across a dead and decaying animal? I do not mean large animals like
horses and donkeys: those do sometimes occur unburied, giving us bold
and unpleasant advertisement of their near presence. But just consider
that the fields through which you stroll are a perfect warren of moles
and shrews and field-mice and water-voles and frogs and lizards and
rabbits and weasels, to say nothing of smaller fry; and then think how
seldom on your morning rounds in the country you come across a single
dead bird or rat or adder, a departed toad, or a late lamented leveret.
The ground about you teems with life: but where are its cemeteries?
Squirrels and dormice are dying in every copse: but what becomes of
their bodies? Who ever saw a dead bat? Who knows the tomb of the
deceased hedgehogs?

Of course a great many of the smaller animals die a violent death, and
find their living grave in the maw of their devourers--one must admit
that explanation as covering a very large number of cases. Thirty
field-mice have been disinterred from the stomach of a single buzzard
when it was shot in the act of digesting after a good dinner; and owls
and snakes are answerable for the fate of no small proportion of our
minuter wild animals. In other countries, too, vultures and jackals
devour most of the carrion as it lies; while even in England we have
a few dead-meat-eaters, such as the carrion-crow, the rat, and the
shrike. But for the most part our rural English public scavengers are
smaller and less conspicuous creatures. Foremost among them in number
and utility we may reckon the various kinds of burying beetle.

If you _do_ find the body of a mouse or shrew lying unburied in
England, it occurs almost always on a path or high-road. Now this fact
is in itself significant; for the high-road is practically a man-made
desert, so hardened and steam-rollered, so pounded and wheel-ridden,
that no plant can grow on it; so exposed that small animals will only
scurry across it for dear life in fear and trembling; and so difficult
to dig into that no burrowing creature can hope to worm his toilsome
way through it. Hence the animals that die on the road are almost
never buried; while those that die in the field or copse are either
eaten at once by larger beasts, or else decently interred within a few
hours by the sexton beetles and other established scavengers. Indeed,
a common superstition exists among country folk that one of the small
long-nosed, insect-eating animals known as shrews cannot so much as
cross a road without being killed instantly. A human track is supposed
to be fatal to them. The superstition has arisen in this way: shrews
die of cold and hunger in great numbers at the approach of winter.
A certain proportion of them perish thus in the open fields; these,
however, are immediately buried by the proper authorities, the sexton
beetles. But a few happen to die as they are crossing a road or path;
these lie where they fell, because the sextons cannot there pierce the
hard ground, and seldom even dare venture on the road to carry them off
to softer spots for burial. The rustic sees dead shrews in the road,
and none on the open ground: so he hastily concludes in his easy-going
way that to cross a human path is sudden death to shrews, who are
always supposed for other reasons to be witch-like and uncanny animals.
If the road leads to a church, a fatal stroke is specially certain: for
the shrews, like all witch-creatures, hate Christianity.

I need hardly say, however, that the burying beetles do not perform
their strange funereal office out of pure benevolence, without hope of
reward. Like human sextons and undertakers, they adopt their lugubrious
calling for the sake of gain: they expect to be paid for their sanitary
services. The payment is taken in two forms: one, immediate, as food
for themselves: the other, deferred, as board and lodging for their
children.

[Illustration: 1.--GROUPS OF MISCELLANEOUS SEXTON BEETLES, DISCOVERING
A DEAD FIELD-MOUSE.]

Our illustration No. 1 introduces us to a typical miscellaneous group
of these insect scavengers, occupied in appropriating a very fine and
desirable carcass on which they have just lighted. A field-mouse,
vanquished by fate in the struggle for existence, has lately "turned up
his toes" in the most literal sense, and lies unburied, like Archytas,
on the loose sand of a bare patch in a meadow. All carrion-eating
creatures are remarkable for their powerful sense of smell: and the
sexton beetles, like the vultures and condors, are no exception to
the rule. They sniff their prey from afar: for where the carcass is,
there shall the carrion beetles be gathered together. All are eager to
take their share of the feast, and still more to lay their eggs in the
dead body. Some of them may crawl up from the immediate neighbourhood;
others, summoned from afar, come flying on their gauze-like wings from
considerable distances. They are, as a rule, nocturnal creatures, and
they come out on their burying expeditions by night alone.

The insect just alighting from his flight, in the upper part of the
illustration, is _the_ burying beetle _par excellence_ among our
British kinds; he rejoices (we are always supposed to rejoice foolishly
in our personal designations) in the dignified title of _Necrophorus
vespillo_. In stature he measures about an inch long, and he is a
handsome beast, with two bright orange bands on his hard wing-covers.
The illustration shows these wing-covers raised, as is the habit of
beetles when they fly, while the thin but powerful wings beneath
them are expanded as true pinions. When the insect alights, he folds
the wings up carefully and replaces them under the hard protective
wing-covers: he is then securely armour-plated from head to foot, and
need fear no foe, save birds which swallow him whole--a very tough
morsel--and hedgehogs which crunch him in their strong jaws before
eating him. However, he is well prepared for all such enemies, for he
can exude when attacked a very nasty fluid with a disgusting smell:
and this mode of defence, which resembles that of the skunk and the
polecat, usually protects him from obtrusive inquirers. He must be
handled with caution, as the perfume he diffuses spoils woollen clothes
and clings to the fingers after two or three washings.

[Illustration: 2.--THE SEXTONS AT WORK: BURYING THE BODY.]

As a rule, when a carcass appears, a pair of burying beetles of the
same species--a husband and wife--fly up to the scene of operations
together and take possession of the prey; though in the illustration
Mr. Enock has represented several kinds engaged at once in staking
out claims, which indeed happens often enough in nature. But if you
count the number on any one dead bird or animal, you will almost
always find they are even in number--in other words, so many pairs,
male and female. No. 2 shows us the next act in the funeral drama. The
male beetles, after satisfying their own immediate hunger, proceed to
bury the carcass in a very curious and laborious manner. You would
wonder how so small a creature could produce so great a result: the
fact is, the beetles attain their end by continuous under-cutting. The
female hides herself in the body: the male buries her alive and the
dead creature with her. He first drags the mouse, frog, or bird to a
suitable spot where the soil is soft enough to admit of excavation;
and sometimes three or four males have to combine for this purpose.
They then proceed to dig with their heads, which are tools specialized
for the purpose, and provided with strong and powerful muscles. The
antennæ have also assumed for this object a short club-shaped type,
very suitable for a navvy's mattock. The little engineers begin by
excavating a furrow all round the body, and then a second inside that
again, throwing the earth out of each into the previous one: and so
on till the carcass begins to sink into the hollow. They then dig and
tunnel beneath it, carrying out loads of earth, one after another, till
bit by bit the carcass collapses into the hole, first in front, then
behind, and has reached a level considerably below the surface. Then
they throw in the earth they have excavated, and cover up the body with
the females inside it; after which, I regret to say, they proceed
to hold a very cannibalistic funeral service above it. The funeral
service consists in eating as much of the body as they desire for their
own purposes: when they have satisfied their appetite, they begin to
think of the interests of posterity. The mother beetle proceeds to lay
her tale of eggs in the decently-buried body, for every animal knows
by instinct the precise place in which to deposit its young and the
precise food which happens to suit them.

After the eggs are laid, the two parent beetles crawl out of the hole
and cover it carefully up so as to conceal the hiding-place. So far
as they themselves are concerned, their only object in all this is
to procure food for themselves and their infant young. But the wider
effects of such scavenger insects go very far. For we now know that
there is no disinfectant so good as the top layer of the soil, which is
not really mere dead earth (as most people imagine), but a mingled mass
of ramifying life--a little foundation of clay and sand intermixed with
endless minute organisms, both animal and vegetable--fungi, bacteria,
mites, weevils, and all sorts of petty creatures, which eat up and
destroy harmlessly all dead matter subjected to their influence. The
earth is thus a most admirable deodorizer and purifier: and burial in
its top layers, the body being freely exposed to the rapid action of
the devouring microbes, is a most sanitary mode of disposing of refuse.
Thus the part that is played in the East by vultures and jackals,
or by the wild dogs of Constantinople, is far more effectually and
unobtrusively played in our fields and meadows by the many kinds of
burying beetles and other insect scavengers. If we remember how great a
nuisance a single dead rat becomes in a house, we can faintly picture
to ourselves the debt we owe to these excellent and unnoticed little
sanitary commissioners. Without them, our fields would not smell so
fresh, nor would our flowers bloom so bright; for we must remember that
by burying the dead beasts they are not only preventing disease but
also manuring the pastures in the best possible fashion. The bones of
small animals decay rapidly and make excellent material for the growth
of vegetation. The beetles as a rule hunt by night only, and find their
prey, as vultures do, by the sense of smell. When they first find it,
the male hovers above it like an eagle, circling round and round, so
as to point it out to his mate; the female flies straight to it, and
buries herself without delay in the rich banquet.

But what becomes at last of the buried bodies? No. 3 will show you.
The female beetle lays in each body about as many eggs as she thinks
it will support. In a very short time the eggs hatch out, and the
grubs begin to devour the abundant feast provided for them. The two
grubs to the right in the illustration are the young of our friend the
orange-banded burying beetle: the one to the left is a larva of an
allied form known by the poetical name of Silpha. They set to work at
once on the remains of the mouse, and thoroughly strip the bones of
every fibre of flesh. As soon as the skeleton is bare, they consider
it time to leave off feeding, and pass on to the second stage of their
existence--the pupa, or mummy-case.

[Illustration: 3.--THE GRUBS UNDERGROUND; FEEDING UPON THE BODY.]

As larvæ, the young burying beetles look like worms, and have six
short legs. No. 4 shows them in the intermediate stage, when they
have retired into a clay cell, or cocoon, and are undergoing their
transformation into the perfect insect. We are here supposed to have
removed the soil on one side so as to give a view into the concreted
earthen chambers where the pupæ are changing into full-grown beetles.
You can see the much longer legs of the adult insect beginning to
develop, while the head assumes slowly its later form. The grubs remain
in the cocoon through the winter, and emerge in spring as winged
beetles, when they fly away with their brilliant wing-cases raised, in
search of congenial mates and more dead field-mice. The best places
to look for all these beetles are the "keeper's trees," on which
game-keepers hang up the jays and weasels they shoot, to encourage the
others. If you tap one such dead weasel you will generally find it is
simply swarming with insect life.

[Illustration: 4.--NO MORE LEFT! THE GRUBS IN THEIR COCOONS TURNING
INTO BEETLES.]

Yet, strange to say, even the insect undertakers themselves are not
without their ideas of beauty and their musical perceptions. The orange
bands of our commonest English kind have been developed as attractions
for their admiring mates; and the male beetles have also a musical
instrument of their own in the shape of a peculiar rasp-like ring on
the body, which they can rub against the wing-cases, and so produce a
much-appreciated chirping. Such instrumental music is always employed,
like the song of birds, as a charm to heighten the attractiveness of
the suitor: and male burying beetles may be heard on the evenings of
sunny days competing with one another in musical contests. Indeed,
it often happens that animals which seem to us disgusting or unclean
display among themselves much æsthetic taste, and are gifted with more
sense of beauty or love of music than many other forms where our human
eyes would be more inclined to look for the presence of these higher
endowments.

I may add that if the beetles left the bodies in which they laid their
eggs to lie above ground, the bodies would dry up, and the eggs would
run much greater risks. By burying the dead animal, they provide their
young with food and shelter together, and so display considerable
intelligence.

Another very distinct group of insects which act as scavengers in a
different way in hotter climates than ours are the famous scarabs or
sacred beetles, worshipped almost like gods by the ancient Egyptians.
English people know the scarabs best, I think, in the neighbourhood of
Naples, or on the Lido at Venice--that great bank of sand and shingle
which separates the lagoons from the open Adriatic. When wearied with
sight-seeing at St. Mark's and the Doge's Palace, we have, most of us,
taken the little steamer that runs across to the baths on the Lido, and
spent a pleasant hour or two in picking up shells and dried sea-horses
on the firm belt of beach that stretches away to Malamocco. A little
inland, the beach gives way to dry sand-hills, blown about by the wind,
and over-grown by patches of blue-green marram-grass and other sandy
seaside weeds. If you lie down on one of these sand-hills, choosing a
spot not quite so dirty as its neighbours, you will soon be amused by
seeing a curious little comedy going on perpetually around you in every
direction. A number of odd-looking beetles, with long hind legs and
very quaint heads, are occupied with ceaseless industry in rolling a
lot of dark, round balls almost as big as themselves along the slopes
of the sand-hills. In many places, the whole ground is alive with the
tugging and pushing little beasts: indeed, when you come to look close
you will find that every half acre of sand on the Venetian shore or
the lower edge of the Egyptian desert is a perfect city of these busy
wee creatures. Earth is honeycombed with their holes, towards which
innumerable beetles are continually rolling their mysterious balls at
every possible angle.

Now, what are the balls composed of? There comes the oddest part of
the whole odd proceeding. The plain truth of it is that the sacred
beetles are assistant scavengers--imperfect Southern and Oriental
substitutes for a main drainage system. The balls consist of dung,
dirt, and refuse, and the beetles collect them on the open, dry them
hard in the sun, roll them to the mouths of their burrows, and then
live on them till the ball has all been eaten. It is the funniest thing
in the world to watch them. They tumble about in the loose sand and
stumble over little eminences in the most comical fashion. No. 5 shows
a pair of scarabs engaged in this habitual and quaint amusement. They
have each collected a round mass of manure, and rolled and dried it
nicely into shape; they are now engaged in trundling their booty off at
their leisure to a place of safety. But they are obliged to push the
balls backward with their long hind legs: and as this precludes the
possibility of the scarab seeing where it is going, each beetle pauses
every now and again and turns round, like a man sculling in a boat
alone, to look what is ahead of him. Sometimes in doing so he loses his
ball, a misfortune which has just happened to the beetle on the right
in No. 5. The precious pellet goes bounding off down hill as fast as
gravitation will take it. In this case, the disappointed little workman
faces round and darts after it at full speed, going forward now instead
of backward, and trying to head the ball as it rolls down the uncertain
slope of the sand-hills. If he succeeds, he puts himself in front of
the ball as it falls, catches it with his hind legs, and begins once
more laboriously to push it backward up hill again, towards the mouth
of his hole. But as the pellets roll quickly, and the beetles are by no
means rapid runners, he seldom succeeds in recovering his own property,
unless the ball happens to catch for a moment on some projecting little
hillock of sand, or be checked on its downward course by a weed, a
stick, or a dead shell or starfish.

[Illustration: 5.--SACRED SCARABS ROLLING THEIR FOOD-BALLS BACKWARD
(THE INSECT TO THE RIGHT HAS LOST HIS DINNER).]

On the other hand, the scarabs, I fear I must admit, are terrible
thieves; and if one scarab has lost his own ball, and sees some
companion's pellet come rolling down hill towards him, he will often
give up the pursuit of his lost property, and quietly and barefacedly
appropriate his neighbour's. I have seen great fights take place at
times over a disputed ball; though sometimes the combatants agree
amicably to roll it along in common, and probably share it when they
have reached their hole. Sometimes, again, three or four will unite to
roll a ball: and then, when one loses it, the others combine to hold it
up or catch it. I have spent hours together both in Egypt and on the
Mediterranean or the Adriatic in watching the queer antics of these
comic little commissioners of drainage: and I never tire of observing
their odd and unexpected combinations of interest. I have sometimes
known the real owner abandon a ball in despair, from the unevenness of
the ground, and then seen a couple of outsiders come up and succeed in
doing what the true owner had been unable to accomplish.

In No. 6 you see two such scarabs whose toil has at last been crowned
by success, and who are delivering their balls with joy into the holes
in the sand which form their residences. As far as I can make out,
a pair of beetles, male and female, seem usually to share a hole in
common, and to roll balls of food to it either alone or in concert.
I cannot say I have ever seen much co-operation except between such
partners. Once a ball is secured and safely landed--for here, as
elsewhere, there's many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip--the happy
couple proceed to eat it up, and apparently do not emerge again from
their burrow till the supply is exhausted. Patient naturalists say
that one ball has been known to last a scarab as long as a fortnight,
but this I do not vouch for of personal knowledge. When more food is
wanted, the couple emerge once more on the open sand and begin to
collect fresh dung and refuse, which they roll into a new food-ball and
then dry and harden.

[Illustration: 6.--PRIMITIVE GOLF--END OF A ROUND: THE SCARABS HOLING
THEIR BALLS.]

Till very lately, it was universally believed that the female scarab
laid an egg in some of the balls, and that the young grubs hatched
within such food-stocks and began at once to devour them. This belief
has recently been contradicted with great emphasis by a good French
observer, who opened many balls and found no eggs; but I cannot accept
his conclusion. I opened numbers of balls myself near Venice this
year, and saw in several one or two eggs, while in one case (unearthed
from a hole) I discovered a half-grown larva. I venture therefore in
this matter to believe my own eyes as against those of even the most
celebrated and authoritative entomologists.

In Egypt, it has been universally believed from all antiquity--and
I think quite rightly--that after the scarab has laid an egg in the
ball, the parents unite in rolling it to a place of safety, above the
level of the annual inundation due to the rise of the Nile. At any
rate, scarabs abound in Egypt. At a very early date, it would seem, the
curious action of these beetles attracted the attention of the ancient
Egyptians, whose worship of animals was one of the most marked features
in their monstrous religion. Hence grew a strange and widespread
superstition. A race which deified the hawk, the cat, the ibis, and
the jackal was not likely to overlook the marvellous proceedings of
the pious and dutiful scarab. So the very early Egyptians, we may
conjecture, began by thinking there must be something divine in the
nature of an insect which worked so ceaselessly on behalf of its young,
and rolled such big round balls behind it up such relatively large
hillocks. Watching a little closer, as time went on, the Egyptian
discovered, no doubt, that sacred beetles did not proceed directly from
sacred beetles, like lambs from ewes, but grew, as it were, out of
the dirt and corruption of the mysterious pellets. A modern observer
would, of course, at once suspect that the scarab laid an egg inside
the ball, and would promptly proceed to pull one open and look for
it. But that cold scientific method was not likely to commend itself
to the mystic and deeply religious Egyptian mind. The priests by the
Nile jumped rather to the conclusion that the scarab collected dirt
in order to make a future scarab out of clay, and that from this dirt
the young beetle grew, self-existent, self-developed, self-created.
Considering the absence of scientific knowledge and comparative groups
of scientific facts at the time, such a conclusion was by no means
unnatural.

Once started on so strange a set of ideas, the Egyptians proceeded
to evolve a worship of the scarab which grew ever and developed, as
they thought the scarab itself did, practically out of nothing. The
immortality of the soul and the resurrection of the body were the
central ideas of Egyptian religion; the thinkers of Thebes and Memphis
instantly perceived a fanciful analogy between the scarab rising
from its bed of dirt and the mummy reviving when the expected day of
resurrection should at last arrive. As a consequence of this analogy,
the scarab was made sacred: it was reverenced during its life and
often preserved after its death, like the mummied cats and hawks and
sacred Apis bulls which formed such special objects of veneration to
the devout of Egypt. All sorts of mystic relations were also discovered
before long in the scarab: its "toes" were counted as thirty, and
held to symbolize the days of the month: it was said to be male only,
without a female, and so to typify the creative power and the paternal
or masculine principle in nature. Sun-worship, as we know, formed a
large part of the later (though not of the most primitive) Egyptian
religion: and the ball rolled by the scarab was therefore supposed to
personify Ra, the great sun-god. In one way or another, the sanctity
and the mystic implications of the scarab grew and grew, age after age,
until at last scarab-worship became one of the chief practical elements
in the religion of Egypt. There was a scarab-headed god, and scarab
hieroglyphs appear on the face of all the monuments.

It is as a charm or amulet, however, that the ancient Egyptian
imitation scarab is best known. From a very early period in the history
of the Nile valley it became usual for luck's sake to bury some of
these sacred beetles with the mummy, perhaps alive (in which case most
of them would no doubt creep out again) and perhaps also dead. A few
real scarabs have thus been found here and there in tombs. But for
the most part, just as the Egyptians buried little porcelain images
to accompany the mummy, so they buried porcelain or stone scarabs;
and these were rather closely imitated from the living insect, but
made still more sacred by being enamelled or engraved with the holy
name of some king or god. Scarabs of this kind, inscribed with sacred
words, and regarded as talismans, form some of the commonest objects
disinterred in all the Egyptian excavations: one of them, from a
specimen in the British Museum, is illustrated in No. 7. Comparison
with the live beetles in the other engravings will show how well the
Egyptians copied nature in this instance.

[Illustration: 7.--AN EGYPTIAN SACRED SCARAB, IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM.]

These beautiful and often costly Egyptian scarabs have been made the
subject of very exhaustive study by various writers, more particularly
by Mr. Loftie and Mr. Flinders Petrie. The Egyptians did not coin
money, so that scarabs bearing the names of kings came to have somewhat
the same importance for Egyptian history as coins have for the history
of later civilized nations. Mr. Loftie traces the origin of the
inscribed scarabs to a very early epoch in the Egyptian annals. "From
the earliest times until the end of the native monarchy," he says,
"certain usages continued unchanged. Among them was the inscription
of names and texts on scarabs. The beetle which rolls before it"--he
ought rather to have said behind it--"a ball of mud in which its
egg is concealed was, at some period so remote that we cannot even
approximately date it, seized upon as the embodiment of the idea of
futurity.... The scarab, burying his egg, became the symbol of the
resurrection, of the happy time to come, of a re-creation of all
things; and with every corpse scarabs were buried, and scarabs were
sewed upon the shroud, and strung into a network to cover the body,
and suspended round the neck, and clasped in the dead hands. As many
as three thousand scarabs have been found in one tomb, and the number
in existence in museums and private collections is past count." Some
of these imitation beetles are of blue pottery, enamelled outside;
but others are of lapis lazuli, jade, carnelian, and many other
precious stones. Sacred in themselves by their very form, that of
the revered insect god, they are rendered still more sacred by their
mystic inscriptions, which consist of appropriate religious phrases in
hieroglyphic writing.

From Egypt, the belief in the luck and value of engraved scarabs as
charms or amulets passed on to the Greeks, and also to the Etruscans.
Many Greek scarabs have been found; and in the old Etruscan tombs such
lucky beasts are comparatively common. They are mostly made more or
less in imitation of the Egyptian originals. Oddly enough, even the
early Christians themselves did not at once get over the belief in the
sanctity and talismanic character of the sacred beetle, for the Rev.
W. J. Loftie has pointed out examples of late scarabs engraved with
undoubted Christian symbols--not only crosses but even crucifixes. In
our own days, a slight revival of the antique superstition has once
more taken place, and some ladies of my acquaintance wear specimens
of the old sacred beetles as charms in brooches or suspended on their
watch-chains.

Though such numbers of true ancient scarabs have been unearthed in
Egypt, still the supply of the genuine article does not quite keep pace
with the increasing demands of the modern tourist: and there is now a
flourishing manufactory of sham antiques at Luxor, where hundreds of
false scarabs with nice imitation hieroglyphic inscriptions are neatly
turned out for the market every season.

About sixty different kinds of live scarabs are known to inhabit the
Mediterranean district in Europe, Asia, or Africa: and four of these
kinds can be easily distinguished as being individually represented in
the old Egyptian gems. We have no true scarab of this class living in
Britain: but there are other scavenger beetles which take their place,
the best known being the common dorbeetle. One of the same family,
but with a quaintly horned head, exists in vast numbers on the Surrey
hills where I have pitched my tent. The English dung-beetle burrows in
the soft sandstone, and throws up neat little heaps of clean sand at
the mouth of its hole, like miniature molehills. Still, our English
scavenger beetles--known to science as Geotrupes--are not nearly so
clever or so interesting as the southern type, for the female in our
sort merely grubs a straight tunnel in the ground, and lays her egg
in a loose mass of dung, which she drags to the bottom in a shapeless
condition. This beetle utters a plaintive buzzing cry when it is
chasing its mate--a soft of "last appeal" which seems calculated to
soften the heart of the hardest lady beetle. It is as cunning in its
way as most others of its race, for if you catch it in your hand, it at
once draws in its legs to its side and "shams dead." All the English
and foreign scavenger beetles perform a useful task by following up
animals and clearing away their refuse; indeed, a special kind of
beetle lays itself out as scavenger for each species of large animal,
one kind being attached to the cow, one to the donkey, one to the
camel, and so on through a long list of patrons and satellites.

You will thus see that in this wider sense all creation moved together
like a vast joint-stock co-operative society, each kind working
consciously for its own good alone, but each also in a certain deeper
and unconscious way contributing to the general well-being of all, by
its exercise of some special function. Nevertheless, the function is
always performed by each plant or animal itself for its own purposes;
it only incidentally serves to benefit the others. Thus the burying
beetles and the scavenger beetles work first of all and ostensibly
for their own food and the food of their offspring: it is merely as
an incidental result, undesigned by themselves, that they assist in
purifying the air and the soil for all other species. Or, to put it
still more simply, while these industrious little creatures are working
individually for their own ends, they are also in the wider scheme of
nature working unconsciously and almost unwillingly in the service of
others. Nature bribes each kind, as it were, by some personal advantage
to perform good work for the benefit of the totality.

The good work performed by the scavengers may be thus summed up. If
dead bodies and the refuse of food were left about everywhere freely on
the open, germs of disease and putrefaction would fly about much more
commonly than even at present. But a large number of scavenger animals,
scavenger birds, and scavenger insects--hyenas, vultures, burying
beetles, and so forth--act as public servants to prevent this calamity.
Again, the earth needs the bodies and the refuse as fertilizers: and
many of the scavengers carry down such materials into the first layer
of the soil, where they become of enormous use in promoting the freer
growth of vegetation. Thus, long before men learnt to bury their dead
or to manure their fields, nature had invented both these processes,
and registered them, so to speak, in the instincts and habits of a
special class of insect sextons and sanitary inspectors. It is always
so in life. There is hardly a human trade or a human activity which
does not find its counterpart somewhere in animal or vegetable life:
and it will be my object, in future numbers of these papers, to set
before you in other directions some such natural anticipations or
foreshadowings of man's inventions.

[Illustration:




Weepin' Willie

By Albert Trapmann]


I.

Private William Fox was swaggering down the road to Shorncliffe Camp;
that is to say, he was trying to swagger as much as his 5ft. 2in. of
stature would allow. For the prettiest girl in Folkestone was holding
on affectionately to his left arm, and in his right hand he displayed
to full advantage his new silver-topped cane, the result of several
weeks' savings.

"Little Willie," as his comrades of the 210th line called him, was the
most "special" of "special enlistments." He had enlisted at a time
when a war scare was running riot throughout the country, and the
inspector-surgeon had passed him, saying that he was sure to grow to
standard height as he was only just eighteen, although it was evident
to anyone who glanced at the set look of his shoulders that he would
never be a hair's-breadth taller than he was. It was certainly rather
trying to his three-month-old martial dignity to have the street
urchins asking him as he strutted through the town whether "his ma
knew he was out"--but that was nothing to the jeers of the men of his
company, and Little Willie had not found the life of a soldier of the
Queen as alluring as the recruiting sergeant had painted it.

But on this particular summer afternoon he had forgotten all that, for
was not Nellie, his own little Nellie, tripping along by his side?--and
he never thought of his grievances when she smiled those sunny smiles
of hers. He had known her for years; as children they had made mud-pies
in the gutter together, and when he was a little older he used to spend
the pence he got for holding horses and running errands in sweets for
Nellie; and now that they were grown up, and that she was in service
and he was wearing a red coat, they "walked out" together, and talked
of getting married.

"When I get my stripes, Nell, we'll get spliced, thet's what we'll do."

Nell nodded her assent.

"'Ow long'll thet be, Will?"

"Not so very long, neither," he said, his boyish face lighting up with
the ambition of a future field-marshal--"a year or two, maybe, maybe
less--they're a-wanting good, steady men loike me."

Here a loud voice behind them put an end to further confidences. "Ullo,
little 'un, where are yer a-going, so 'aughty-like? Yer won't as much
as look at a pal!"

The two stopped and looked round as Big Bob finished his sentence,
Willie with disgust written on every feature, Nellie with unqualified
admiration in her brown eyes. Big Bob was accustomed to that sort of
thing from the girls he condescended to talk to; he was certainly a
very handsome man--fair, curly hair, a fierce moustache, and light-blue
eyes that looked down protectingly on womankind in general. So without
further ado he ranged up on the other side of Nellie with a "Pleased to
meet yer, miss."

For the rest of that walk poor Little Willie was decidedly "out of it."
He had to dodge lamp-posts and walk on the curb, so that his six-foot
rival should not be forced into the hedge on the other side; however,
there was one consolatory thought in his mind, namely, that if Nellie
managed to impress Big Bob favourably--as he had little doubt she
would--the latter perhaps would give up making Willie's barrack-room
life a burden to him.

Nellie _did_ make a good impression on Big Bob; but, alas, for poor
little Willie, it was not a one-sided affair. Next time the two lovers
went for a stroll, Nell was distinctly patronizing.

"Why don't yer grow, Will? Yer ain't as tall as me by a inch, and yer
does look small in a red coat!"

This was an awful blow; up till now, Nellie had been the only one
person who told him he looked well in his uniform, and now that she
should turn on him like this!

"Garn!" he answered, "where's the use in bein' a lamp-post?"

"But Big Bob--I mean Mr. Jones--'e ain't no lamp-post. 'E's a good
sight broader in the shoulders than ever you'll be. Why, 'e'd make two
of yer, 'e would!"

"Well, 'e don't draw no double pay, no 'ow, and don't yer forget it,
neither!"

After half an hour's walk these amenities produced a decided coolness,
and when Big Bob strolled up and offered them the pleasure of his
company, it was a great relief to both. But Little Willie felt very
miserable indeed when he thought over the day's events, as he lay on
his hard barrack bed that night and courted sleep in vain.

"I'll make it up with her on Sunday," he kept on saying to himself by
way of consolation. But when Sunday came round again, after a long,
weary week of bullying, Nellie was absent from the rendezvous, and he
wandered disconsolately all over Folkestone in the hope of meeting
her. He did meet her--but hanging proudly on the stalwart arm of Bob
Jones! Poor Willie did not even reply to her "Good afternoon," but went
straight back to his cheerless barrack-room and spent the remainder of
the day in putting a vicious polish on his captain's sword and buttons,
by way of relieving his feelings.

Captain Archie Trevor was Little Willie's hero--he worshipped him at a
distance, and proved his devotion by the care he took of that officer's
effects. Captain Trevor's boots were the admiration of the parade,
and even the colonel wondered how they always looked so bright and
spotless. Willie was an ideal soldier's servant, and was quite happy
if he won an occasional word of approbation from his hero; for Willie
had never forgotten how, during his first march-out with the battalion,
when he was staggering along under his heavy rifle, with blistered feet
and aching legs, wondering how long it would be before his knees gave
way altogether, his stalwart captain had come up and cheered him with
a few words, and had carried his rifle for him all the rest of the
long, weary day. "I'd give a month's pay, thet I would, to shake 'ands
with the captain," he had afterwards said to a comrade, in a burst of
confidence; and so it came about that there was never such an ideal
soldier's servant as Little Willie.

That evening A Company had a "smoker" in one of the disused huts of
Shorncliffe Camp. The hut was packed with unbelted warriors, who joined
noisily in the choruses of the popular songs, and passed round buckets
of beer to wet their throats between whiles. Little groups of men
were sitting smoking all over the room, some on biscuit-tins, some on
benches and tables, all chatting and laughing amongst themselves, and
occasionally shouting spicy and personal remarks to the performers, who
used a table as a stage, and were not loth to pause in the middle of a
song and accept a drink from a proffered mug or pail.

One occupant of the room, however, took little interest in the
proceedings. Willie had perched himself in a corner, where he sat
unnoticed; why he had come at all he did not know. Perhaps it was that
anything was preferable to the deserted barrack-room in his present
state of mind. There he sat on an upturned pail, with an untouched mug
of beer beside him, giving no heed to what went on around, dismally
busy with his own thoughts.

"What-ho, Willie," cried Big Bob, as he espied him for the first time.
"What yer so quiet about?"

Willie gave an imperceptible shudder as the bully shouldered his way
through the intervening groups. "'Ere, boys, Little Willie's goin' to
give us a cormic song!"

A roar of applause greeted this announcement, and several of Willie's
particular tormentors closed up around him.

"I carn't sing to-night," protested the victim, feebly.

"More yer can any other time!"

Another round of applause followed this sally.

"Ain't yer going to offer us a tip at yer mug?" Big Bob said, as he
caught up the tankard from the floor.

"In course, if yer ain't wet enough already," answered Willie.

"Mates," said the offended one, pointing dramatically at the youth on
the bucket--"Mates, the nipper's 'inted as 'ow I'm squiffy! Then take
yer bloomin' tipple; Oi'll 'ave none of it!" and he poured the whole
contents of the pot over the luckless young soldier.

Willie rose with an angry flush, but someone from behind caught him by
the ankle and sent him rolling to the floor.

[Illustration: "WEEPIN' WILLIE, TAKE THET."]

"So-o-o, yer wants to fight, does yer?" cried Big Bob, as he jerked the
lad to his feet again. "What proice thet, Sandow!" and he administered
a terrific box on the ear to the half-dazed Willie. It was by no means
the first time that Willie had "gone through the mill," but he was
getting rather sick of the process, and resolved to show fight.

"Yer bloomin' set of bullies!" he blurted out. But just then a leg from
the encircling crowd neatly tripped up our young gallant and deposited
him on the floor again. Once more he struggled to his feet, but as he
looked round the circle of grinning faces, all many inches above him,
and as he thought of his own dear little Nellie "walking out" with the
fellow who was making his life unbearable, he felt a lump rise in his
throat; his fists unclenched, and in another second he had sunk down on
the upturned bucket, sobbing as if his heart would break, and his hot
tears mingled with the beer that was trickling from his hair.

"Law lumme, he's acshally _weepin'_!"

A roar of derision and disgust rose from the astonished soldiers. Then
every man solemnly fetched his drink, and poured it over the prostrate
lad. "'Weepin' Willie,' take thet," was the formula, as each man upset
the contents of his can.

At that moment the door opened, and those who stood nearest it drew
themselves up to "attention" as Captain Trevor, who had heard the noise
as he was passing by, strode into the room.

"What's this?" he said, addressing the crestfallen gang of tormentors.
"Off you all go to your barrack-rooms at once, and don't let this ever
happen again in A Company."

They were only too glad to get off so easily, and in less than a minute
Captain Trevor and Private Fox were alone.

"What does this mean, Fox? Why, surely, man, you've not been _crying_!"

"Please, sir, I couldn't 'elp it, I did feel so wretched like."

"You've left school now, remember that--we don't have men who _cry_ in
the army. Get back to your room at once, and don't let me ever see you
in this state again. I am disappointed in you, Fox."

Poor Willie, sick at heart and sore in limb, crept back to his
barrack-room, where he was greeted with jeers and hoots, but, mindful
of Captain Trevor's warning, his comrades abstained from stronger
measures that night.

The months that followed made his life a perfect pandemonium. All his
room-mates taxed their ingenuity to the utmost in order to devise new
tortures and humiliations for "Weepin' Willie."

His bed was always soaking wet, his kit and accoutrements hidden away.
They painted his buttons, they whitewashed his boots, they borrowed his
blankets. When a man could not sleep, he whiled away the hours of the
night by throwing the heaviest missiles he could lay his hands on at
the luckless youth. On wet afternoons Willie was "crucified" for the
public amusement, a process which consisted in tying up the patient's
wrists just above the door, so that whenever it was opened he got a
severe jerking. And yet through it all he never showed fight and never
complained, but bore blows and jibes alike with stolid indifference.
Although Captain Trevor never alluded to that awful night, Willie
instinctively felt that his hero despised him, and that hurt him more
than all the ill-usage of his room-mates. Nellie he had not seen since,
but she had scribbled him a line in pencil.

"MR. 'WEEPIN' WILLIE,'--You're a disgrace to the army. I hope never to
see you again till you've got given up crying.--NELLIE LINDON."

[Illustration: "SHE APPLIED A CORNER TO HER EYES."]

This masterpiece of sarcasm Willie kept in the lining of his tunic, and
it made him mad every time he thought of it. And so the weary weeks
passed by until the trooping season came, and then, much to the delight
of all the men, A Company was ordered out to the North-West frontier
to join the first battalion as a draft to make good the ravages caused
by sickness and the enemy. As the train steamed out of the station,
Willie saw Nelly Lindon waving her handkerchief to Big Bob, and as his
carriage moved slowly past, she applied a corner to her eyes as if
wiping away an imaginary tear, but there was a mischievous smile on her
lips.


II.

"Them's the beggars we've got to smash; look at 'em a-wasting of their
ammunition, as if hevery round on it wasn't stolen from the Govermint."

"That'll make some of the boys perspirite, I'm thinking," Sergeant
Thomson replied, as his eyes followed the direction of Big Bob's finger.

Half a mile or so from where the company was halted to refresh itself
after its tedious semi-circular march in the early dawn, a long sloping
hill, covered with stunted growth and unsteady boulders, rose gradually
up to the sky-line; some little way below the summit, a ledge of rock
ran parallel with the top, and it was at this ledge that Captain Trevor
directed his field-glasses.

"I'll send the men up to that ledge in skirmishing order," he said to
one of his lieutenants. "They'll be protected from the enemy's fire
once they get there, then we can re-form and do the rest with a rush;
I don't suppose it's more than a hundred and fifty yards to the summit
from there. What do you think, Mason?"

"I shouldn't think so; anyway I hope not, as we've got to do it, and
the general will be coming along on the far side in another couple
of hours. By Jove, Trevor, we'd better hurry up," he added, as he
looked at his watch. "We must clear those fellows off the summit by
six o'clock, and it's nearly half-past four now. How many of them are
there, do you think?"

"Only a couple of hundred, I suppose, but if we don't clear them
out of that they could play the very devil with the brigade; it's a
sheer drop of 200ft. into the road from where they are, and they'd be
rolling those great boulders on to the fellows' heads. Company, fall
in. 'Tention! You will advance in skirmishing order up to that ledge
of rock. Section commanders to keep their men well in hand and to make
the best use of every bit of cover. Now, remember, no target-shooting
at those niggers on the sky-line! What I want you to do is to get to
that ledge as quickly and with as little loss as possible. The men will
widen out as far as they can, so as to offer no mark for the enemy's
sharp-shooters. Section commanders, tell off your men!"

Five minutes later the company was straggling along over the broken
ground in one long line, with wide gaps between the men, who were left
more or less each to take care of himself and choose his own way.

"Blow me if we ain't a-going to 'ave a treat now!" Big Bob shouted to
Little Willie, who was staggering along under the weight of his rifle
half-a-dozen yards to Bob's left, as a bullet went whistling in between
them. As the big man spoke his foot caught in a trailing creeper, and
he measured his length on the ground, his rifle going off as he fell.

Immediately a young recruit on the right, hearing the report, and
longing to have a shot at the enemy, brought his rifle up to the
"ready," took careful aim, and fired. Nothing is so contagious as
contagion. In five minutes the whole line were taking pot-shots at the
black figures on the sky-line. In vain did the captain and his two
lieutenants curse and threaten the men nearest them; in vain did the
non-commissioned officers urge their men forward--it was impossible to
do anything. The men were all over the place, some of them a hundred or
more yards apart, some lying down behind boulders taking aim, others
running forward a few paces, and then discharging their rifles from the
cover afforded by bushes or rocks. As they gradually worked their way
upwards, the tribesmen's good shooting began to take effect. First one
man dropped, then another; then one of the lieutenants threw up his
hands and fell forward, shot through the heart in the act of kicking a
man who was having a little private nigger-shooting competition with
his corporal. As the men saw their comrades fall they got more and more
chary of exposing their own persons, preferring to lie low and waste
ammunition on the sky-line.

Pitter-patter went the bullets on the stone-strewn hill-side, and the
soldiers crawled a little closer up to their sheltering rocks and
bent their heads down a few inches lower. There was not a man there
whom you could have called a coward with impunity. Had they been all
together--in line or column--they would have gone up the hill like a
herd of buffaloes, with wild cheers and gleaming bayonets, and never
given a thought to the dead and wounded. But, scattered as they were
over the whole hill-side, with only now and then a comrade's white
sun-helmet coming in sight, it was too much to expect of any man with
a loaded magazine and clear view of the enemy that he should go on up,
alone for all he knew, with the bullets singing around him.

In vain had Captain Trevor called the men nearest him a pack of
white-livered curs; in vain had he referred to their parents and
antecedents in terms that would have shocked and astonished his
eminently respectable aunt, the Dowager-Countess of Trevordine. At
last he gave it up in despair. "Lie there, you infernal idiots, and
blaze your ammunition away. I'll be cursed if _I_ stand and score for
you!" And, fuming with impotent rage, he returned his sword to its
scabbard with a vicious click, placed his hands in his pockets, and
continued the ascent alone.

"Just as if 'e was goin' on a Halpclimbin' hexpedition," as one of the
men remarked.

"'E'll git a bloomin' 'ole knocked in his carcuse afore 'e's gone fur,"
Big Bob yelled to the man nearest him, as he refilled his magazine and
settled his elbows preparatory to wasting more cartridges.

[Illustration: "ONE OF THE LIEUTENANTS THREW UP HIS HANDS AND FELL
FORWARD."]

How Captain Trevor ever reached the sheltering ridge which was to
have been the rendezvous remains a mystery; but reach it he did
without a scratch. One man alone was there to welcome him: "Weepin'
Willie" furtively drew his sleeve across his mouth to try and disguise
the fact that he was munching a commissariat biscuit, and stood at
attention as his officer came up. It was Willie's first experience of
active service, and he did not know if it was etiquette to be seen
breakfasting while under fire.

"That you, Fox? D---- it, man, give me your hand! You're the only man
fit to be a soldier in the whole company."

Willie blushed up to his ears with delight. At last he had retrieved
himself in his hero's estimation. Almost reverently, he took the
captain's outstretched palm.

"Thank ye, sir," he said. "Oi've been wishin' for this ever since ye
carried my rifle that day!"

"That's all right, my man. Let's have a look at your rifle." He looked
down the polished barrel. "You don't mean to tell me you haven't fired
a shot yet?"

"Beggin' your pardon, sir, thin I did misunderstand yer. I thought
as 'ow I 'adn't 'eard aright when I saw all the other blokes--I mean
fellers, sir--a-blazin' away. But as I ain't much of a shot I thought
I'd be on the safe soide, and I certingly did think as 'ow you'd told
us not to shoot."

"I'll get you to repeat that in front of the whole company, Fox, if
I can ever get them out of this cursed mess; it would be a lesson to
them."

Five minutes passed, and still not another man had reached the
rendezvous. Away down beneath them, some two, some three, and some four
hundred yards away, the little white helmets could be seen from time to
time as the skirmishers altered their positions.

[Illustration: "THAT YOU, FOX? GIVE ME YOUR HAND."]

"I'm going to see what the enemy are up to," Captain Trevor said, as he
clambered up the seven-foot ledge of rock that was sheltering the two
men. "Perhaps those beggars down there will see me then and come up!"

"Weepin' Willie" followed in the wake of his officer, and there the two
stood in full view of their own men, and a splendid mark for the enemy.
Once Willie almost ducked as a bullet "ventilated" his helmet, and the
next moment Captain Trevor staggered, and would have fallen had not the
private caught him in his arms.

Carefully, and exerting all his strength, for Trevor was a big man,
Willie lifted him over his shoulder, and began slowly to descend from
the ridge; but, as he gave a last look round, he saw the tribesmen
on the summit suddenly leap to their feet, and, brandishing their
murderous knives, begin to rush down the incline. In an instant, Willie
was up on the ledge again, and with the full force of his lungs--and
his lungs were the only big thing about him--he shouted to his comrades
below: "Run, yer blazing beggars, run! They're on yer!" And then, with
all the speed his feeble legs would allow, he clambered off the ridge
and began to stagger down the hill, the captain's long legs trailing on
the ground behind, scraping against the loose stones and starting them
rolling. On the little man stumbled, his knees giving under his heavy
burden, his breath coming in short sobs, and his heart beating like a
steam-hammer. What if he failed to save his hero!

Suddenly he became aware of a big man in "khaki" towering above him.
"Here, lad, give 'im to me!" and a pair of strong arms lifted the
captain easily, as Willie recognised Big Bob's voice. A cheer went up
from below as Lieutenant Mason and a dozen men with gleaming bayonets
came dashing up the slope. The tribesmen, who were just coming over
the ridge above, saw the little band, saw the fierce, determined look
on their faces, the blood-for-blood battle-lust in their eyes. "Illah
Allah," shouted the chief, "these are no coward-women after all!" and
discharging his rifle haphazard, scrambled down the ledge the way he
had come. In less time than it takes to tell, the dusky warriors were
laboriously following their chief to the summit again, closely pursued
by the Englishmen, while all along the slope white helmets and bright
steel flashed in the rising sunlight, as one after another the men
leaped to their feet and rushed upwards. In five minutes the struggle
was over, and just as the dusty, blood-stained men were opening their
haversacks to snatch a hurried breakfast, a troop of the Guides
cavalry, the advance guard of the brigade, came clattering along the
mountain road two hundred feet beneath them.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was a proud day for A Company when all the Fingal Valley Brigade
were paraded in hollow square to see private Fox receive the Victoria
Cross, and no man cheered louder than Big Bob.

"'Weepin' Willie' yer is, and 'Weepin' Willie' yer'll remain," he
afterwards said to the hero of the day, as all his comrades gathered
round to shake his hand. "I'd weep the 'ole bloomin' day if I thought
it'd make me behave as well as yer did under fire, 'ang me tight if I
wouldn't!"

"Aye! And if yer hasks my opination, 'e was weepin' cos 'is messmates
was such a bloomin' lot of coward, low-'earted skunks! And so we
are--compared with 'im, leastwise--ain't we, mateys?"

"Yes, yes. Rayther!" was shouted on all sides.

[Illustration: "ON THE LITTLE MAN STUMBLED."]

Then someone got on a commissariat biscuit-box: "Three cheers for
'Weepin' Willie,' our little nipper, the bravest man in all the
bloomin' brigade!" And the galvanized iron roof fairly rattled an
accompaniment to the lusty lungs of A Company.

The day after the 1st Battalion of Her Majesty's 210th Line--late of
the Fingal Valley Field Force--was landed at Plymouth, Nellie Lindon
received a registered envelope which contained many things. One was a
dirty scrap of paper with a few words in pencil on it, that had been
carried all through a campaign concealed in the lining of a private's
tunic. Then there was a plain gun-metal Maltese cross with the words
"For Valour" graven thereon; and, lastly, a line or two from Big Bob:
"Take my advice, Nell," he wrote, "and have the nipper."

And Nell did.




_Animal Friendship._

BY ALBERT H. BROADWELL.


Many of the instances of animal sagacity with which we have been
familiar from our youth have had but slender foundation of fact, upon
which is erected a terribly airy superstructure of fiction. In Mr.
Shepherd's "Animal Actualities," and in the present article, however,
the anecdotes about our lower friends are authentic--vouched for, in
fact, by their various owners--while the photographs from life are
indisputable evidence of their truth.

The dog, as is to be expected, from his occupying a position which
places him under constant observation, forms the subject of more
stories than any other animal; yet it is not known how far his
intelligence extends. Some enthusiasts aver that instances are on
record where a member of the canine race has committed suicide through
grief; but this certainly requires verification. Let us listen to Mr.
G. C. Grove, however, who tells the story of "The Inseparables." He
says:--

"I cannot refrain from telling the following story, which is vouched
for by my most intimate friend. On paying a visit to his uncle, who
is a farmer in Scotland, he noticed a handsome young collie and a
goose with a broken wing, constantly about together; indeed, they
were well-nigh inseparable. On inquiry he elicited the fact that,
when a puppy, the dog had flown at a gosling and had broken its wing;
ever since, it was noticed that the dog was not only cognizant of the
mischief he had done, but became so repentant, that from that time
forward he had taken that one bird under his special protection, though
his feeling towards geese in general remained unchanged; and now,
wherever the dog goes, there follows the goose, and _vice versâ_. It
is a pretty instance of contrition, and may be recommended as a useful
example."

[Illustration: "THE INSEPARABLES."]

One would have thought from stories that have come from Australia that
dogs and kangaroos were inveterate enemies. In our illustration we
seem, however, to have a direct refutation of such an erroneous belief.
We have here five dogs and a kangaroo, the Australian placidly munching
some carrot-heads. There has been no posing about this picture: the
subjects settled themselves together in the most natural fashion.

[Illustration: KANGAROO AND DOGS.

_From a Photo. by A. J. Johnson._]

The dog has not only proved himself to be man's best friend, but he
seems to show a great deal of affection for other animals with which
he may happen to come in contact, either as occasional friends or more
often as constant companions. We have here, for instance, a number
of photos. showing the marvellous way in which animals fraternize
as though they belonged to one family. Professor Lorenzo, of 5,
Crowndale Road, N.W., has a most extraordinary collection of animals
of all kinds. It includes dogs, cats, tame rabbits and wild rabbits,
kangaroos, bantams, pigeons, cockatoos and parrots, and other pets.
Among these we find a friendship which is of many years' standing. A
spaniel and bantam are not often seen together, yet we have them here
in thorough good-fellowship. The dog is a lovable creature, and the
bantam knows it.

[Illustration: SPANIEL AND BANTAM.

_From a Photo. by A. J. Johnson._]

That very bantam, by the way, is the most cheeky fellow in creation.
He does not believe in roosting in orthodox fashion; but chooses, in
preference, some soft, velvety surface whereupon he can settle at ease
and remain as long as he pleases. As shown in the next picture, a cat
is another friend of his. Puss is almost crushed by the weight of
this most unblushing intruder, yet she does not move, lest she should
interfere with his comfort.

Cats and rabbits next come under notice. It may be interesting to quote
a pretty story told by Miss Hamond, of Cheltenham. She says: "The
following incident occurred under my own eyes during my residence in
Spain. The province of Jaen, in sunny Andalusia, is rich in minerals,
and the quaint old country town of Linares may be called the centre
of the lead-mining district, where a goodly number of Englishmen have
settled down with their wives and families and household gods, to make
the best of life under conditions very different from those to which
they were born.

"The children--as children do all the world over--used to keep a
good many pets of different kinds, and in one household which I
often visited--that of Mr. Romer, manager to one of the mining
companies--their name was legion. One afternoon when I came in to tea
there was a great commotion in the yard; obviously something important
had happened. I knew at once that it must be a new kind of pet which
somebody had given them.

[Illustration: BANTAM AND CATS.

_From a Photo. by A. J. Johnson_]

"'One of the miners has brought us some infant rabbits,' said Conchita,
the second girl, hardly able to speak from ill-suppressed excitement.
'They are such babies, they can't feed themselves; do advise us. They
will die if they are not fed soon.' A piece of rag dipped in milk
seemed the only way out of the difficulty; the infants took to it at
once. Indeed, they soon began to nibble at the milk in the saucer.
This problem was evidently solved, but the weather was very cold, and
they had doubtless been accustomed to a warm fur cloak about them. So
Conchita said, 'Might she take them to bed with her?'

[Illustration: CATS AND RABBITS.

_From a Photo. by A. J. Johnson._]

"'Take them in to Molly, and see if he will adopt them,' I suggested,
not intending to be taken at my word; but Conchita thought it an
excellent idea, and acted upon it at once. We all followed her. (I
must explain here that Molly was an immense tom-cat, fat and amiable;
he lived in the schoolroom in a wadded basket, which just fitted him
comfortably.) 'He will eat them up at once, of course,' remarked one of
the bystanders, 'and perhaps it is just as well that he should.' But
he didn't. That excellent cat allowed the mites to be stuffed into his
lap; they at once nestled down and Molly went off to sleep again. Some
of us looked in later in the evening to see what had happened. That
excellent cat was sitting up washing the rabbits! It was the funniest
thing in the world: he evidently remembered his own nursery days, and
was doing his duty according to his lights by his strange charges.
When he came to the long ears he paused, evidently mildly surprised at
the innovation, but those rabbits had a thorough licking before they
finally retired to rest. This sort of thing went on for a fortnight,
the rabbits feeding out of Molly's saucer of bread and milk with him
regularly, though it soon had to be changed for a soup-plate, and a
bigger bed had to be provided. At the end of the fortnight the rabbits
began to take so much exercise that it was difficult to keep them in
one room, and there were so many ferocious cats in the neighbourhood
that Conchita decided that the rabbits must be provided with a hutch
of their own, and so the pretty little comedy came to an end. It never
seemed to have occurred to the amiable Molly that they were good to
eat. We used to bring friends--scoffers and unbelievers, who went
out converted--to that schoolroom, and if Molly, the conscientious
foster-father, were sleepy and indisposed to show off, we used to put a
little butter on the infants' backs. This never failed to wake him up
and induce him to perform their toilet with much energy."

[Illustration: CAT AND DUCKLINGS.]

One of our Australian friends, who prefers his name not to be
published, but whose statements we have very good reasons to believe
to be absolutely true, sends us the extraordinary photo. given below.
"Away out in New Zealand," our kindly correspondent was able to take
this curious picture. He tells the following story in connection with
it: "Everyone knows how deficient in sense of maternal responsibility
are mother ducks, and some ducklings of mine, appearing neglected,
were put into a small box, with flannel, to add to their comfort. As
one of our cats happened to be present, and inspected them with some
interest, my wife said to her, 'Here are some kittens for you, Minna.'
Without more ado Minna jumped into the box, and there and then adopted
them as her very own. When they fell out of the box, she very tenderly
picked them up in her mouth and replaced them. When they pecked at
her after the manner of their kind, she very gently reproached them
with her paw, and seemed to try and tell them in her own language that
she had never seen well-behaved kittens behave in that way before.
Altogether they became a very happy family." Our correspondent says
nothing of their ultimate fate, but we would imagine that when the
ducklings first took to the water, the foster-mother's grief must have
been extremely touching. "On another occasion, however," adds the owner
of the ducklings, "I was standing, one evening, watching my Aylesburys
waddling home to supper and bed after 'a happy day at the seaside,'
when I noticed a little black-and-white duckling evidently not theirs,
which to my surprise was with them. It stopped and looked at me as
the others passed, and seemed to ask, 'What are you going to do with
me?' I picked it up and called the old cat. Putting the duckling in
a box, I said, 'There is another kitten for you, Minna.' Without a
moment's hesitation she once more undertook her strange maternal duty,
and took charge of the mite for some days, till she thought the little
one old enough to face a hard and cruel world by itself. The duckling,
which was called Kitty after its foster-mother, used to follow her
about the garden and up and down the veranda stairs. At last, however,
some boys--for there are cruel and thoughtless boys even in New
Zealand--killed it with a stone."

[Illustration: CAUGHT IN THE ACT. _From a Copyright Stereo Photo, by
Underwood & Underwood._]

Of foster-mothers we have indeed some extraordinary instances. They
show the truthful confidence with which little suckling animals will
approach, and regard as their mother, beasts of quite a different
species. We have here two instances of suckling pigs. In the one case
we have an amusing picture, showing how the little porker was caught
in the act, not only by the camera, but by the jolly farmer in the
background. Stealing milk from a cow, whose yield in consequence fell
noticeably short, was an injudicious thing to do, but it would not have
mattered much had piggie not been caught. The second photo., which
exemplifies a peculiar coincidence, was sent in by Mr. J. A. Hern, of
Wayne, Nebraska, U.S.A. It is a striking confirmation of the preceding
incident, with the difference that, instead of one thief only, we have
three, and already well satisfied they look.

[Illustration: WHY JERSEY LILY GAVE NO MILK.]

Another peculiar pair hail from the States. They live in Walsenburg,
Colorado, the photo being sent in by Mr. Thomas Bunker, of that town.
The mother ass in this case is a most interesting animal. Her ordinary
occupation is that of wood-carrier, as may be gathered from the load
on her patient back; but besides having to suckle her own offspring,
standing so gloomy, sad-eyed, and reproachful on the right, she also
has to nurse the exuberant little lamb seen in the very act of robbing
the little donkey foal of its natural right. The three animals belong
to an old Mexican, and the lamb was reared entirely on the milk of the
mother ass.

[Illustration: AN INFRINGEMENT OF FILIAL RIGHTS. _From a Photo. by
Thomas Bunker, Walsenburg, Colorado._]

The pretty terrier shown in the next illustration was once the happy
mother of an even happier family. Unfortunately, the puppies all died
soon after birth, leaving the mother broken-hearted. For a long while
the dog was inconsolable. It refused its food, moped, and grew thin.
One day, however, a tiny, motherless kitten was given to it. The gift
turned out to be the dog's salvation; it took the greatest care of the
little creature, and woe betide the unfortunate stranger who ventured
too near her precious charge. These pets belong to Miss J. Dresser,
of Bexley Heath, Kent, and we are indebted to her kindness for this
interesting photograph.

[Illustration: A DESPAIRING MOTHER'S SALVATION.

_From a Photo. by A.R. Dresser._]

Mr. Edward T. Williams, of Tedworth Square, Chelsea, owns a dove and
a dog. There is nothing very fresh in this item of news; but wait
a moment: that dog will carry the dove on his head for more than a
quarter of a mile! They are the staunchest of friends, and as soon as
the door of the cage is opened, out hurries the dove. It searches for
the dog, if the latter should not already happen to be waiting for his
rider in the immediate neighbourhood, and the dog seems to consider it
as an absolute duty to carry his friend about in this comical fashion.

[Illustration: DOG AND DOVE.]

Amongst other quaint and extraordinary friendships between animals of
diverse species, one of the most interesting is that so frequently
struck up between cats and horses. Pussie loves to make a fragrant,
hay-scented stable her daily lounge and to nestle against the warm
coat of the horse, who often takes his night's repose lying in his
stall with the favoured Grimalkin snugly sleeping between his iron-shod
hoofs. It was in Brook Mews, N., that the animal in question was
"snapped" amidst the eager and excited observations of the many
bystanders, who quickly thronged to see the fun.

[Illustration: HORSE AND CAT.

_From a Photo. by J. Marks._]

The ladies who have risen to such an elevated position in life are
mother and daughter. The sedate matron is fully alive to the importance
of the occasion, and has adopted an easy, graceful pose; while the
youngster, frisky and somewhat shy, was with difficulty persuaded to
settle comfortably down. Mother cat is an animal of very self-contained
and amiable disposition. She has contracted a fast friendship with two
white rabbits belonging to the coachman's little boy. They live in a
hutch in the stables, and are often allowed a little liberty for a
frolic with puss, who chases them in and out of an empty stall.

From Covington, U.S.A., comes another remarkable instance. Mr. E. E.
Cone, of that town, has a hen that displays a remarkably perverted
maternal instinct. One of the neighbours has a cat with four small
kittens. The cat would be faithful to her offspring were she not
prevented by the following circumstance. This particular hen had
been sitting for some time when she suddenly conceived the idea that
the care of the kittens was more to her liking. She, therefore,
promptly drove the mother cat away and took possession of the kits.
No hen-mother ever watched over her brood with greater care than has
this one over her mewing, squirming litter of kittens. The kittens
offer no objection, and, with the exception of the old cat, who looks
on at a safe distance, all is serene in this anomalous family. In our
photograph the hen is shown endeavouring to cover the four kittens with
her wings, but it does not seem a very easy task.

[Illustration: HEN AND KITTENS.

_From a Photo. by W.J. Cone, Covington, Ill._]

Extraordinary as this instance may seem, we have in a way a parallel
to it. We see a cat taking under her charge some newly-born chicks in
much the same way as the mother-hen did with the kittens. Mr. C. K.
Eaton, of Melbourne House, Montpelier, Bristol, very kindly sends us
the photograph.

It appears that, through some inexplicable reason of her own, the
mother of the chicks deserted them almost immediately after being
hatched, and consequently, there being no other means of rearing them,
they were for some time kept in the kitchen, where, after a few days,
they became fast friends with puss, who proved a splendid substitute
for the mother hen. She seldom left them, and when they were able to
get about she, for a long time, followed them about the garden. The
sight, needless to add, was an extremely pathetic one.

[Illustration: CAT AND CHICKS. _From a Photo. by W. Perkins, Wickwar._]

Miss Powell, of the Grove, Bishopton, Ripon, very kindly sends us the
annexed amusing little photo, of a guinea-pig with a tame rat on its
back. Now, who would ever have thought of such a peculiar freak of
friendship? The pig is one of a pair, which Miss Powell has trained
in harness. Brutus drags fair Venus about the room in a miniature
coach. They are now being taught to sit in loving companionship at a
tea-table. The rat is a tame one, and is an adept at various clever
feats, in the imitation of which the guinea-pigs are nowhere.

[Illustration: GUINEA-PIG AND RAT.]

And now for the strangest instance in our collection. This astonishing
photograph of a collie suckling a brood of young foxes was taken by Mr.
Brown at a farm near Lanark. The little rascals were found in a den not
a hundred miles from the farm. The farmer, with due solicitude, secured
the little family, and took it to his own fire-side. But what could a
respectable farmer do with a brood of young foxes? Now, it happened
that only a day or two before this remarkable find, a fine collie owned
by the farmer had become the happy mother of a family of her own. The
little collies were speedily disposed of, and the young brood of foxes
given to the mother and left to her kind solicitude. Wonderful to
relate, the dog took very kindly to them, and actually suckled them for
five or six weeks.

[Illustration: COLLIE AND FOXES.

_From a Photo. by A. Brown & Co., Lanark._]




_Miss Cayley's Adventures._

BY GRANT ALLEN.


XI.--THE ADVENTURE OF THE ORIENTAL ATTENDANT.

I did not sleep that night. Next morning, I rose very early from a
restless bed with a dry, hot mouth and a general feeling that the solid
earth had failed beneath me.

Still no news from Harold! It was cruel, I thought. My faith almost
flagged. He was a man and should be brave. How could he run away and
hide himself at such a time? Even if I set my own anxiety aside, just
think to what serious misapprehension it laid him open!

I sent out for the morning papers. They were full of Harold. Rumours,
rumours, rumours! Mr. Tillington had deliberately chosen to put himself
in the wrong by disappearing mysteriously at the last moment. He had
only himself to blame if the worst interpretation were put upon his
action. But the police were on his track; Scotland Yard had "a clue":
it was confidently expected an arrest would be made before evening
at latest. As to details, authorities differed. The officials of the
Great Western Railway at Paddington were convinced that Mr. Tillington
had started, alone and undisguised, by the night express for Exeter.
The South-Eastern inspectors at Charing Cross, on the other hand, were
equally certain that he had slipped away with a false beard, in company
with "his accomplice," Higginson, by the 8.15 p.m. to Paris. Everybody
took it for granted, however, that he had left London.

Conjecture played with various ultimate destinations--Spain, Morocco,
Sicily, the Argentine. In Italy, said the _Chronicle_, he might lurk
for a while--he spoke Italian fluently, and could manage to put up at
tiny _osterie_ in out-of-the-way places seldom visited by Englishmen.
He might try Albania, said the _Morning Post_, airing its exclusive
"society" information: he had often hunted there, and might in turn be
hunted. He would probably attempt to slink away to some remote spot in
the Carpathians or the Balkans, said the _Daily News_, quite proud of
its geography. Still, wherever he went, leaden-footed justice in this
age, said the _Times_, must surely overtake him. The day of universal
extradition had dawned; we had no more Alsatias: even the Argentine
itself gives up its rogues--at last; not an asylum for crime remains
in Europe, not a refuge in Asia, Africa, America, Australia, or the
Pacific Islands.

I noted with a shudder of horror that all the papers alike took his
guilt as certain. In spite of a few decent pretences at not prejudging
an untried cause, they treated him already as the detected criminal,
the fugitive from justice. I sat in my little sitting-room at the hotel
in Jermyn Street, a limp rag, looking idly out of the window with
swimming eyes, and waiting for Lady Georgina. It was early, too early,
but--oh, why didn't she come! Unless _somebody_ soon sympathized with
me, my heart would break under this load of loneliness!

Presently, as I looked out on the sloppy morning street, I was vaguely
aware through the mist that floated before my dry eyes (for tears were
denied me) of a very grand carriage driving up to the doorway--the
porch with the four wooden Ionic pillars. I took no heed of it. I was
too heart-sick for observation. My life was wrecked, and Harold's with
it. Yet, dimly through the mist, I became conscious after a while that
the carriage was that of an Indian prince; I could see the black faces,
the white turbans, the gold brocades of the attendants in the dickey.
Then it came home to me with a pang that this was the Maharajah.

It was kindly meant; yet after all that had been insinuated in court
the day before, I was by no means over-pleased that his dusky Highness
should come to call upon me. Walls have eyes and ears. Reporters were
hanging about all over London, eager to distinguish themselves by
successful eavesdropping. They would note, with brisk innuendoes after
their kind, how "the Maharajah of Moozuffernuggar called early in the
day on Miss Lois Cayley, with whom he remained for at least half an
hour in close consultation." I had half a mind to send down a message
that I could not see him. My face still burned with the undeserved
shame of the cross-eyed Q.C.'s unspeakable suggestions.

Before I could make my mind up, however, I saw to my surprise that
the Maharajah did not propose to come in himself. He leaned back in
his place with his lordly Eastern air, and waited, looking down on
the gapers in the street, while one of the two gorgeous attendants
in the dickey descended obsequiously to receive his orders. The man
was dressed as usual in rich Oriental stuffs, and wore his full white
turban swathed in folds round his head. I could not see his features.
He bent forward respectfully with Oriental suppleness to take his
Highness's orders. Then, receiving a card and bowing low, he entered
the porch with the wooden Ionic pillars, and disappeared within, while
the Maharajah folded his hands and seemed to resign himself to a
temporary Nirvana.

A minute later, a knock sounded on my door. "Come in!" I said, faintly;
and the messenger entered.

[Illustration: "THE MESSENGER ENTERED."]

I turned and faced him. The blood rushed to my cheek. "Harold!" I
cried, darting forward. My joy overcame me. He folded me in his arms.
I allowed him, unreproved. For the first time he kissed me. I did not
shrink from it.

Then I stood away a little and gazed at him. Even at that crucial
moment of doubt and fear, I could not help noticing how admirably
he made up as a handsome young Rajput. Three years earlier,
at Schlangenbad, I remembered he had struck me as strangely
Oriental-looking: he had the features of a high-born Indian gentleman,
without the complexion. His large, poetical eyes, his regular, oval
face, his even teeth, his mouth and moustache, all vaguely recalled the
highest type of the Eastern temperament. Now, he had blackened his face
and hands with some permanent stain--Indian ink, I learned later--and
the resemblance to a Rajput chief was positively startling. In his gold
brocade and ample white turban, no passer-by, I felt sure, would ever
have dreamt of doubting him.

"Then you knew me at once?" he said, holding my face between his hands.
"That's bad, darling! I flattered myself I had transformed my face into
the complete Indian."

"Love has sharp eyes," I answered. "It can see through brick walls. But
the disguise is perfect. No one else would detect you."

"Love is blind, I thought."

"Not where it ought to see. There, it pierces everything. I knew you
instantly, Harold. But all London, I am sure, would pass you by,
unknown. You are absolute Orient."

"That's well; for all London is looking for me," he answered, bitterly.
"The streets bristle with detectives. Southminster's knaveries have won
the day. So I have tried this disguise. Otherwise, I should have been
arrested the moment the jury brought in their verdict."

"And why were you not?" I asked, drawing back. "Oh, Harold, I trust
you; but why did you disappear and make all the world believe you
admitted yourself guilty?"

He opened his arms. "Can't you guess?" he cried, holding them out to me.

I nestled in them once more; but I answered through my tears--I had
found tears now--"No, Harold; it baffles me."

"You remember what you promised me?" he murmured, leaning over me and
clasping me. "If ever I were poor, friendless, hunted--you would marry
me. Now the opportunity has come when we can both prove ourselves.
To-day, except you and dear Georgey, I haven't a friend in the world.
Everyone else has turned against me. Southminster holds the field. I am
a suspected forger; in a very few days I shall doubtless be a convicted
felon. Unjustly, as you know; yet still--we must face it--a convicted
felon. So I have come to claim you. I have come to ask you now, in this
moment of despair, will you keep your promise?"

I lifted my face to his. He bent over it trembling. I whispered the
words in his ear. "Yes, Harold, I will keep it. I have always loved
you. And now I will marry you."

"I knew you would!" he cried, and pressed me to his bosom.

We sat for some minutes, holding each other's hands, and saying
nothing; we were too full of thought for words. Then suddenly, Harold
roused himself. "We must make haste, darling," he cried. "We are
keeping Partab outside, and every minute is precious, every minute's
delay dangerous. We ought to go down at once. Partab's carriage is
waiting at the door for us."

"Go down?" I exclaimed, clinging to him. "How? Why? I don't understand.
What is your programme?"

"Ah, I forgot I hadn't explained to you! Listen here, dearest--quick;
I can waste no words over it. I said just now I had no friends in the
world but you and Georgey. That's not true, for dear old Partab has
stuck to me nobly. When all my English friends fell away, the Rajput
was true to me. He arranged all this; it was his own idea; he foresaw
what was coming. He urged me yesterday, just before the verdict (when
he saw my acquaintances beginning to look askance), to slip quietly
out of court, and make my way by unobtrusive roads to his house in
Curzon Street. There, he darkened my face like his, and converted me to
Hinduism. I don't suppose the disguise will serve me for more than a
day or two; but it will last long enough for us to get safely away to
Scotland."

"Scotland?" I murmured. "Then you mean to try a Scotch marriage?"

"It is the only thing possible. We must be married to-day, and in
England, of course, we cannot do it. We would have to be called in
church, or else to procure a license, either of which would involve
disclosure of my identity. Besides, even the license would keep us
waiting about for a day or two. In Scotland, on the other hand, we can
be married at once. Partab's carriage is below, to take you to Euston.
He is staunch as steel, dear fellow. Do you consent to go with me?"

My faculty for promptly making up such mind as I possess stood me
once more in good stead. "Implicitly," I answered. "Dear Harold, this
calamity has its happy side--for without it, much as I love you, I
could never have brought myself to marry you!"

"One moment," he cried. "Before you go, recollect, this step is
irrevocable. You will marry a man who may be torn from you this
evening, and from whom fourteen years of prison may separate you."

"I know it," I cried, through my tears. "But--I shall be showing my
confidence in you, my love for you."

He kissed me once more, fervently. "This makes amends for all," he
cried. "Lois, to have won such a woman as you, I would go through it
all a thousand times over. It was for this, and for this alone, that I
hid myself last night. I wanted to give you the chance of showing me
how much, how truly you loved me."

"And after we are married?" I asked, trembling.

"I shall give myself up at once to the police in Edinburgh."

I clung to him wistfully. My heart half urged me to urge him to escape.
But I knew that was wrong. "Give yourself up, then," I said, sobbing.
"It is a brave man's place. You must stand your trial: and, come what
will, I will strive to bear it with you."

"I knew you would," he cried. "I was not mistaken in you."

We embraced again, just once. It was little enough after those years of
waiting.

"Now, come!" he cried. "Let us go."

I drew back. "Not with you, dearest," I whispered. "Not in the
Maharajah's carriage. You must start by yourself. I will follow you at
once, to Euston, in a hansom."

He saw I was right. It would avoid suspicion, and it would prevent more
scandal. He withdrew without a word. "We meet," I said, "at ten, at
Euston."

I did not even wait to wash the tears from my eyes. All red as they
were, I put on my hat and my little brown travelling jacket. I don't
think I so much as glanced once at the glass. The seconds were
precious. I saw the Maharajah drive away, with Harold in the dickey,
arms crossed, imperturbable, Orientally silent. He looked the very
counterpart of the Rajput by his side. Then I descended the stairs and
walked out boldly. As I passed through the hall, the servants and the
visitors stared at me and whispered. They spoke with nods and liftings
of the eyebrows. I was aware that that morning I had achieved notoriety.

At Piccadilly Circus, I jumped of a sudden into a passing hansom.
"Euston!" I cried, as I mounted the step. "Drive quick! I have no time
to spare." And, as the man drove off, I saw, by a convulsive dart of
someone across the road, that I had given the slip to a disappointed
reporter.

At the station I took a first-class ticket for Edinburgh. On the
platform, the Maharajah and his attendants were waiting. He lifted his
hat to me, though otherwise he took no overt notice. But I saw his keen
eyes follow me down the train. Harold, in his Oriental dress, pretended
not to observe me. One or two porters, and a few curious travellers,
cast inquiring eyes on the Eastern prince, and made remarks about him
to one another. "That's the chap as was up yesterday in the Ashurst
will kise!" said one lounger to his neighbour. But nobody seemed to
look at Harold; his subordinate position secured him from curiosity.
The Maharajah had always two Eastern servants, gorgeously dressed, in
attendance; he had been a well-known figure in London society, and at
Lord's and the Oval, for two or three seasons.

"Bloomin' fine cricketer!" one porter observed to his mate as he passed.

"Yuss; not so dusty for a nigger," the other man replied. "Fust-rite
bowler; but, Lord, he can't 'old a candle to good old Ranji."

As for myself, nobody seemed to recognise me. I set this fact down to
the fortunate circumstance that the evening papers had published rough
wood-cuts which professed to be my portrait, and which naturally led
the public to look out for a brazen-faced, raw-boned, hard-featured
termagant.

I took my seat in a ladies' compartment by myself. As the train was
about to start, Harold strolled up as if casually for a moment. "You
think it better so?" he queried, without moving his lips or seeming to
look at me.

"Decidedly," I answered. "Go back to Partab. Don't come near me again
till we get to Edinburgh. It is dangerous still. The police may at
any moment hear we have started and stop us half-way; and now that we
have once committed ourselves to this plan, it would be fatal to be
interrupted before we have got married."

"You are right," he cried; "Lois, you are always right, somehow."

I wished I could think so myself; but 'twas with serious misgivings
that I felt the train roll out of the station.

Oh, that long journey north, alone, in a ladies' compartment--with
the feeling that Harold was so near, yet so unapproachable: it was an
endless agony. _He_ had the Maharajah, who loved and admired him, to
keep him from brooding; but I, left alone, and confined with my own
fears, conjured up before my eyes every possible misfortune that Heaven
could send us. I saw clearly now that if we failed in our purpose this
journey would be taken by everyone for a flight, and would deepen the
suspicion under which we both laboured. It would make me still more
obviously a conspirator with Harold.

Whatever happened, we must strain every nerve to reach Scotland in
safety, and then to get married, in order that Harold might immediately
surrender himself.

At York, I noticed with a thrill of terror that a man in plain
clothes, with the obtrusively unobtrusive air of a detective, looked
carefully though casually into every carriage. I felt sure he was
a spy, because of his marked outer jauntiness of demeanour, which
hardly masked an underlying hang-dog expression of scrutiny. When he
reached my place, he took a long, careless stare at me--a seemingly
careless stare, which was yet brim-full of the keenest observation.
Then he paced slowly along the line of carriages, with a glance at
each, till he arrived just opposite the Maharajah's compartment. There
he stared hard once more. The Maharajah descended; so did Harold and
the Hindu attendant, who was dressed just like him. The man I took for
a detective indulged in a frank, long gaze at the unconscious Indian
prince, but cast only a hasty eye on the two apparent followers. That
touch of revelation relieved my mind a little. I felt convinced the
police were watching the Maharajah and myself, as suspicious persons
connected with the case; but they had not yet guessed that Harold had
disguised himself as one of the two invariable Rajput servants.

[Illustration: "HE TOOK A LONG, CARELESS STARE AT ME."]

We steamed on northward. At Newcastle, the same detective strolled,
with his hands in his pockets, along the train once more, and puffed
a cigar with the nonchalant air of a sporting gentleman. But I was
certain now, from the studious unconcern he was anxious to exhibit,
that he must be a spy upon us. He overdid his mood of careless
observation. It was too obvious an assumption. Precisely the same thing
happened again when we pulled up at Berwick. I knew now that we were
watched. It would be impossible for us to get married at Edinburgh if
we were thus closely pursued. There was but one chance open; we must
leave the train abruptly at the first Scotch stopping station.

The detective knew we were booked through for Edinburgh. So much I
could tell, because I saw him make inquiries of the ticket examiner at
York, and again at Berwick, and because the ticket-examiner thereupon
entered a mental note of the fact as he punched my ticket each time:
"Oh, Edinburgh, miss? All right"; and then stared at me suspiciously.
I could tell he had heard of the Ashurst will case. He also lingered
long about the Maharajah's compartment, and then went back to confer
with the detective. Thus, putting two and two together, as a woman
will, I came to the conclusion that the spy did not expect us to leave
the train before we reached Edinburgh. That told in our favour. Most
men trust much to just such vague expectations. They form a theory,
and then neglect the adverse chances. You can only get the better of a
skilled detective by taking him thus, psychologically and humanly.

By this time, I confess, I felt almost like a criminal. Never in my
life had danger loomed so near--not even when we returned with the
Arabs from the oasis. For then we feared for our lives alone; now, we
feared for our honour.

I drew a card from my case before we left Berwick station, and
scribbled a few hasty words on it in German. "We are watched. A
detective! If we run through to Edinburgh, we shall doubtless be
arrested or at least impeded. This train will stop at Dunbar for one
minute. Just before it leaves again, get out as quietly as you can--at
the last moment. I will also get out and join you. Let Partab go on; it
will excite less attention. The scheme I suggest is the only safe plan.
If you agree, as soon as we have well started from Berwick, shake your
handkerchief unobtrusively out of your carriage window."

[Illustration: "I BECKONED A PORTER."]

I beckoned a porter noiselessly without one word. The detective was
now strolling along the fore-part of the train, with his back turned
towards me, peering as he went into all the windows. I gave the porter
a shilling. "Take this to a black gentleman in the next carriage but
one," I said, in a confidential whisper. The porter touched his hat,
nodded, smiled, and took it.

Would Harold see the necessity for acting on my advice?--I wondered. I
gazed out along the train as soon as we had got well clear of Berwick.
A minute--two minutes--three minutes passed; and still no handkerchief.
I began to despair. He was debating, no doubt. If he refused, all was
lost, and we were disgraced for ever.

At last, after long waiting, as I stared still along the whizzing
line, with the smoke in my eyes, and the dust half blinding me, I saw,
to my intense relief, a handkerchief flutter. It fluttered once, not
markedly, then a black hand withdrew it. Only just in time, for even
as it disappeared, the detective's head thrust itself out of a farther
window. He was not looking for anything in particular, as far as I
could tell--just observing the signals. But it gave me a strange thrill
to think even now we were so nearly defeated.

My next trouble was--would the train draw up at Dunbar? The 10
a.m. from Euston is not set down to stop there in Bradshaw, for no
passengers are booked to or from the station by the day express; but
I remembered from of old when I lived at Edinburgh, that it used
always to wait about a minute for some engine-driver's purpose. This
doubt filled me with fresh fear; did it draw up there still?--they
have accelerated the service so much of late years, and abolished so
many old accustomed stoppages. I counted the familiar stations with
my breath held back. They seemed so much farther apart than usual.
Reston--Grant's House--Cockburnspath--Innerwick.

The next was Dunbar. If we rolled past _that_, then all was lost. We
could never get married. I trembled and hugged myself.

The engine screamed. Did that mean she was running through? Oh, how I
wished I had learned the interpretation of the signals!

Then gradually, gently, we began to slow. Were we slowing to pass the
station only? No; with a jolt she drew up. My heart gave a bound as I
read the word "Dunbar" on the station notice-board.

I rose and waited, with my fingers on the door. Happily it had one of
those new-fashioned slip-latches which open from inside. No need to
betray myself prematurely to the detective by a hand displayed on the
outer handle. I glanced out at him cautiously. His head was thrust
through his window, and his sloping shoulders revealed the spy, but
he was looking the other way--observing the signals, doubtless, to
discover why we stopped at a place not mentioned in Bradshaw.

Harold's face just showed from another window close by. Too soon or too
late might either of them be fatal. He glanced inquiry at me. I nodded
back, "Now!" The train gave its first jerk, a faint backward jerk,
indicative of the nascent intention of starting. As it braced itself
to go on, I jumped out; so did Harold. We faced one another on the
platform without a word. "Stand away there!" the station-master cried,
in an angry voice, and waved his white flag. The detective, still
absorbed on the signals, never once looked back. One second later,
we were safe at Dunbar, and he was speeding away by the express for
Edinburgh!

It gave us a breathing space of about an hour.

For half a minute I could not speak. My heart was in my mouth. I hardly
even dared to look at Harold. Then the station-master stalked up to us
with a threatening manner. "You can't get out here," he said, crustily,
in a gruff Scotch voice. "This train is not timed to set down before
Edinburgh."

[Illustration: "'YOU CAN'T GET OUT HERE,' HE SAID, CRUSTILY."]

"We _have_ got out," I answered, taking it upon me to speak for my
fellow-culprit, the Hindu--as he was to all seeming. "The logic of
facts is with us. We were booked through to Edinburgh, but we wanted
to stop at Dunbar; and as the train happened to pull up, we thought we
needn't waste time by going on all that way and then coming back again."

"Ye should have changed at Berwick," the station-master said, still
gruffly, "and come on by the slow train." I could see his careful
Scotch soul was vexed (incidentally) at our extravagance in paying the
extra fare to Edinburgh and back again.

In spite of agitation, I managed to summon up one of my sweetest
smiles--a smile that ere now had melted the hearts of rickshaw coolies
and of French _douaniers_. He thawed before it visibly. "Time was
important to us," I said--oh, he guessed not how important; "and
besides, you know, it is so good for the company!"

"That's true," he answered, mollified. He could not tilt against
the interests of the North British shareholders. "But how about yer
luggage? It'll have gone on to Edinburgh, I'm thinking."

"We _have_ no luggage," I answered, boldly.

He stared at us both, puckered his brow a moment, and then burst out
laughing. "Oh, ay, I see," he answered, with a comic air of amusement.
"Well, well, it's none of _my_ business, no doubt, and I will not
interfere with ye; though why a lady like you----" He glanced curiously
at Harold.

I saw he had guessed right, and thought it best to throw myself
unreservedly on his mercy. Time was indeed important. I glanced at the
station clock. It was not very far from the stroke of six, and we must
manage to get married before the detective could miss us at Edinburgh,
where he was due at 6.30.

So I smiled once more, that heart-softening smile. "We have each our
own fancies," I said, blushing--and, indeed (such is the pride of race
among women), I felt myself blush in earnest at the bare idea that I
was marrying a black man, in spite of our good Maharajah's kindness.
"He is a gentleman, and a man of education and culture." I thought that
recommendation ought to tell with a Scotchman. "We are in sore straits
now, but our case is a just one. Can you tell me who in this place is
most likely to sympathize--most likely to marry us?"

He looked at me--and surrendered at discretion. "I should think
anybody would marry ye who saw yer pretty face and heard yer sweet
voice," he answered. "But, perhaps, ye'd better present yerself to
Mr. Schoolcraft, the U.P. minister at Little Kirkton. He was ay
soft-hearted."

"How far from here?" I asked.

"About two miles," he answered.

"Can we get a trap?"

"Oh, ay, there's machines always waiting at the station."

[Illustration: "WE TOLD OUR TALE."]

We interviewed a "machine," and drove out to Little Kirkton. There,
we told our tale in the fewest words possible to the obliging and
good-natured U.P. minister. He looked, as the station-master had said,
"soft-hearted"; but he dashed our hopes to the ground at once by
telling us candidly that unless we had had our residence in Scotland
for twenty-one days immediately preceding the marriage, it would not be
legal. "If you were Scotch," he added, "I could go through the ceremony
at once, of course; and then you could apply to the sheriff to-night
for leave to register the marriage in proper form afterward: but as
one of you is English, and the other I judge"--he smiled and glanced
towards Harold--"an Indian-born subject of Her Majesty, it would be
impossible for me to do it: the ceremony would be invalid, under Lord
Brougham's Act, without previous residence."

This was a terrible blow. I looked away appealingly. "Harold," I cried
in despair, "do you think we could manage to hide ourselves safely
anywhere in Scotland for twenty-one days?"

His face fell. "How could I escape notice? All the world is hunting for
me. And then, the scandal! No matter where you stopped--however far
from me--no, Lois, darling, I could never expose you to it."

The minister glanced from one to the other of us, puzzled. "Harold?"
he said, turning over the word on his tongue. "Harold? That doesn't
sound like an Indian name, does it? And----" he hesitated, "you speak
wonderful English!"

I saw the safest plan was to make a clean breast of it. He looked the
sort of man one could trust on an emergency. "You have heard of the
Ashurst will case?" I said, blurting it out suddenly.

"I have seen something about it in the newspapers; yes. But it did not
interest me: I have not followed it."

I told him the whole truth; the case against us--the facts as we knew
them. Then I added, slowly, "This is Mr. Harold Tillington, whom they
accuse of forgery. Does he look like a forger? I want to marry him
before he is tried. It is the only way by which I can prove my implicit
trust in him. As soon as we are married, he will give himself up at
once to the police--if you wish it, before your eyes. But married we
must be. _Can't_ you manage it somehow?"

My pleading voice touched him. "Harold Tillington?" he murmured. "I
know of his forebears. Lady Guinevere Tillington's son, is it not? Then
you must be Younger of Gledcliffe." For Scotland is a village: everyone
in it seems to have heard of every other.

"What does he mean?" I asked. "Younger of Gledcliffe?" I remembered
now that the phrase had occurred in Mr. Ashurst's will, though I never
understood it.

"A Scotch fashion," Harold answered. "The heir to a laird is called
Younger of so-and-so. My father has a small estate of that name in
Dumfriesshire; a _very_ small estate: I was born and brought up there."

"Then you are a Scotchman?" the minister asked.

"I have never counted myself so," Harold answered, frankly: "except by
remote descent. We are trebly of the female line at Gledcliffe; still,
I am no doubt more or less Scotch by domicile."

"Younger of Gledcliffe! Oh, yes, that ought certainly to be quite
sufficient for our purpose. But then--the lady?"

"She is unmitigatedly English," Harold admitted, in a gloomy voice.

"Not quite," I answered. "I lived four years in Edinburgh. And I spent
my holidays there while I was at Girton. I keep my boxes still at my
old rooms in Maitland Street."

"Oh, that will do," the minister answered, quite relieved; for it
was clear that our anxiety and the touch of romance in our tale had
enlisted him in our favour. "Indeed, now I come to think of it, it
suffices for the Act if one only of the parties is domiciled in
Scotland. Still, I can do nothing save marry you now by religious
service in the presence of my servants--which constitutes what we call
an ecclesiastical marriage--it becomes legal if afterwards registered;
and then you must apply to the sheriff for a warrant to register it.
But I will do what I can; later on, if you like, you can be remarried
by the rites of your own Church in England."

"Are you quite sure our Scotch domicile is good enough in law?" Harold
asked, still doubtful.

"I can turn it up, if you wish. I have a legal hand-book. Before Lord
Brougham's Act, no formalities were necessary. But the Act was passed
to prevent Gretna Green marriages. The usual phrase is that such a
marriage does not hold good unless one or other of the parties either
has had his or her usual residence in Scotland, or else has lived there
for twenty-one days immediately preceding the date of the marriage. If
you like, I will wait to consult the authorities."

"No, thank you," I cried. "There is no time to lose. Marry us first,
and look it up afterwards. 'One or other' will do, it seems. Mr.
Tillington is Scotch enough, I am sure; we will rest our claim upon
that. Even if the marriage turns out invalid, we only remain where we
were. This is a preliminary ceremony to prove good faith, and to bind
us to one another. We can satisfy the law, if need be, when we return
to England."

The minister called in his wife and servants, and explained to them
briefly. He exhorted us and prayed. We gave our solemn consent in legal
form before five witnesses. Then he pronounced us duly married. In a
quarter of an hour more, we had made declaration to that effect before
the sheriff, and were formally affirmed to be man and wife before the
law of Great Britain. I asked if it would hold in England as well.

"You couldn't be firmer married," the sheriff said, with decision, "by
the Archbishop of Canterbury in Westminster Abbey."

Harold turned to the minister. "Will you send for the police?" he said,
calmly. "I wish to inform them that I am the man for whom they are
looking in the Ashurst will case."

Our own cabman went to fetch them. It was a terrible moment. But
Harold sat in the sheriffs study and waited, as if nothing unusual were
happening. He talked freely but quietly. Never in my life had I felt so
proud of him.

At last the police came, much inflated with the dignity of so great a
capture, and took down our statement. "Do you give yourself in charge
on a confession of forgery?" the superintendent asked, as Harold ended.

"Certainly not," Harold answered. "I have not committed forgery. But
I do not wish to skulk or hide myself. I understand a warrant is out
against me in London. I have come to Scotland, hurriedly, for the sake
of getting married, not to escape apprehension. I am here, openly,
under my own name. I tell you the facts; 'tis for you to decide: if you
choose, you can arrest me."

The superintendent conferred for some time in another room with the
sheriff. Then he returned to the study. "Very well, sir," he said, in a
respectful tone, "I arrest you."

So that was the beginning of our married life. More than ever, I felt
sure I could trust in Harold.

The police decided, after hearing by telegram from London, that we
must go up at once by the night express, which they stopped for the
purpose. They were forced to divide us. I took the sleeping car; Harold
travelled with two constables in an ordinary carriage. Strange to say,
notwithstanding all this, so great was our relief from the tension of
our flight, that we both slept soundly.

Next morning we arrived in London, Harold guarded. The police had
arranged that the case should come up at Bow Street that afternoon. It
was not an ideal honeymoon, and yet, I was somehow happy.

At Euston, they took him away from me. And still, I hardly cried.
All the way up in the train, whenever I was awake, an idea had been
haunting me--a possible clue to this trickery of Lord Southminster's.
Petty details cropped up and fell into their places. I began to unravel
it all now. I had an inkling of a plan to set Harold right again.

The will we had proved----but I must not anticipate.

When we parted, Harold kissed me on the forehead, and murmured rather
sadly, "Now I suppose it's all up. Lois, I must go. These rogues have
been too much for us."

"Not a bit of it," I answered, new hope growing stronger and stronger
within me. "I see a way out. I have found a clue. I believe, dear
Harold, the right will still be vindicated."

[Illustration: "I HAVE FOUND A CLUE."]

And red-eyed as I was, I jumped into a hansom, and called to the cabman
to drive at once to Lady Georgina's.




_Unique Log-Marks._

BY ALFRED I. BURKHOLDER.


Logs belonging to various individuals and firms in the lumber industry
of the North Western United States are identified and separated in a
striking fashion. To illustrate this it will be necessary to outline
briefly the routine of work connected with the great lumbering industry
of the regions mentioned. Logging camps are established in the heart
of a forest. Where no railroads have been extended to the vicinity of
the camps, roads are cut to the nearest river, which is the highway
by which the logs are taken in the spring to saw-mills, where they
are manufactured into shingles, lath, boards, timbers, and planks.
Therefore, proximity to a river is necessarily taken into consideration
when a camp is located.

[Illustration]

After the trees are sawed down by men engaged especially for this duty,
they are sawed into log lengths and hauled, perhaps several miles, to
the bank of the river. Some of the camps contain as many as 300 or 400
men, and this force is kept busy during the entire winter cutting down
trees, sawing them into logs, and hauling them to the river. Here they
are placed in huge piles, and it is at this time that the log-mark of
the owner is placed upon them by an individual known as the "scaler,"
whose duty it also is to measure the diameter of each log and keep a
record of it.

In this article we show a few of these curious log-marks--odd artistic
inventions of the untrained minds of the lumber-camps. There is no
attempt at uniformity in ideas. Anything that has the least bit of
distinctiveness about it is sufficient for the purpose, which explains
the presence of pound-marks, tea-pots, frogs, babies, yokes, division
signs, and wheel-barrows in the illustrations for this article.

[Illustration]

The instrument with which the "scaler" places the mark upon a log is
in the shape of a sledge-hammer, the back of the hammer portion having
upon it a device similar to the log-mark of the man by whom he is
employed and to whom the logs belong. The log-mark itself is raised to
a height of about 1½in. or 2in. above the surrounding surface of steel,
and when the sawed end of a log is struck with it, the mark of the
owner is punched into the end of the log to a depth which prevents its
obliteration, unless the whole end of the log is sawed off and removed.
Crude designs, differing from the regular log-mark, are sometimes cut
into the bark of the log to assist in more readily identifying the
owner. Copies of log-marks and cattle-brands are, as provided by law,
placed on a file in the office of the county recorder of deeds in the
county in which the cattle owner or lumberman operates.

For greater convenience the ice in the river is thickly covered with
the logs as spring approaches. When the break-up of ice in the river
occurs, and the stream is swollen by the melting of snow and the
early spring rains, what is called the log "drive" commences. In some
portions of the lumbering regions the disappearance of the forests has
left the saw-mills further and further from the product without which
they cannot operate, and the logs have to be floated great distances.
Thus, a "drive" of 100 or 200 miles is nothing unusual, and on the
Mississippi river logs are frequently taken as much as 300 miles.

On one river perhaps a dozen or more lumbering firms, having no
connection with each other, are operating, and when spring comes all
their logs are rolled into the stream, to soon become so mixed up that
the novice naturally becomes of the opinion that their separation is an
impossibility. The work during a log "drive" is the hardest and most
dangerous connected with the lumbering industry.

The men are required to be up long before daylight, so that they may
eat their breakfasts and walk to the river, perhaps several miles
distant, arriving there at daylight to begin the work of the day.
Refreshments are taken to them twice during the day, at about ten
o'clock in the forenoon, and again at two o'clock in the afternoon.
They work until it becomes dark, when they walk back to their camps
to procure their suppers and much-needed rest. The log drivers are
required to keep the logs floating in the streams. In rainy or cold
weather, such as is frequently experienced in the lumbering regions,
their work is very arduous and debilitating. It is of the utmost
importance that the work of floating the logs out be pushed while there
is sufficient water in the streams, many of which become nothing more
than creeks later in the season, when dry weather sets in.

[Illustration]

The force of the current behind the huge mass of logs may force
hundreds of logs to a lodgment on the bank when curves in the stream
are reached, and then the men are compelled to work, perhaps waist
deep, in the water in order to clear the stranded logs and once more
get them afloat. The foremost logs are especially looked after and kept
on the move, for should they become lodged the obstruction thus formed
would speedily cause a log "jam," the thing particularly to be dreaded
by the drivers.

[Illustration]

Notwithstanding the extreme care and precautions, jams occasionally
occur. Then the logs are piled high in the air, the weight of the mass
sinking the logs to the bottom of the river, and extending from bank
to bank of the stream, forming an almost solid wedge, which constantly
becomes larger and more compact. It is nothing unusual for the logs to
be piled to a height of 100ft. or 150ft., and extending for several
miles up the river.

[Illustration]

A jam in the St. Croix river, in Wisconsin and Minnesota, in the spring
of 1892, was about six miles in length. Another one that formed in the
Chippewa river, in the former State, in 1886, extended ten miles. This
river was also the scene, twenty years ago, of perhaps the greatest log
jam in history. It extended for a distance of twenty-five miles, and
was estimated to contain over 150,000,000ft. of lumber.

It sometimes requires several days' hard labour to "break" a jam. Not
infrequently a single log may be the cause of the whole difficulty, and
the removal of this "key" log is naturally a dangerous duty. It may
be lodged so tightly by the great mass of logs wedged against it by
the swift current of the river, that its removal is accomplished only
after chopping it in two with an axe. The man who does this takes his
life in his hands, for the removal of the "key" log almost instantly
releases the towering mass of logs behind it and the greatest agility
is required by the daring man to reach a place of safety ere the
released mass goes churning onward, forced to almost lightning speed by
the irresistible power behind it.

[Illustration]

The log drivers wear heavy boots, from the soles of which project
sharpened steel or iron spikes, placed thickly. With these, it in
time becomes an easy matter for the men to run about on the floating
and twisting logs with as much confidence as that exhibited by the
dweller in a city when striding along a pavement. Accidents, however,
occasionally happen, and some of the men are precipitated into the
water. Where an experienced hand loses his balance and falls into the
water he immediately becomes an object of ridicule, and is severely
bantered by his comrades. The involuntary bath of a new hand is taken
as a matter of course, and occasions no particular comment.

The men become surprisingly expert at log "riding," as it is termed.
A remarkable instance of this expertness was witnessed by a writer
while visiting the lumber region on the Ottawa and tributary rivers, in
Canada. He was sitting in his tent one evening on the west bank of the
River des Quinze, near the head of Lake Temiscamingue, when he heard a
young Frenchman on the opposite side of stream call for a boat to come
over him across. At the time, a great many logs were floating down the
river, the current carrying them close to the shore a short distance
above the point where the young Frenchman stood, and then sweeping
them diagonally across the stream close to the shore nearly in front of
the tent of the observer.

[Illustration]

No boat answering his hail, the Frenchman walked up the shore to where
the logs were pressing it most closely, and, watching his opportunity,
jumped upon one. With his hands in his pockets he unconcernedly
waited for his improvised ferry to take him to the opposite shore. In
midstream the logs were carried through a rapid. Here the log upon
which the young man was standing began to revolve rapidly in the swift
current, but he speedily checked the dangerous movement by forcing it
to revolve in the opposite direction.

During the strange journey across the river, which at that point was
fully 200yds. wide, he never for a moment lost his balance, and all the
time was whistling cheerily, apparently wholly oblivious of the danger.
When the log upon which he stood was swept across the river and close
to the opposite shore, he calmly leaped to the bank. He could not swim,
which, strange to relate, is the case with fully one-half of the men
engaged in the dangerous work of log driving.

[Illustration]

I am told by a gentleman familiar with the scenes and incidents
connected with log driving, that he has frequently seen the drivers
cross rivers which were comparatively free of logs, by standing upon
a log and with their feet making it revolve quite swiftly, and thus
gradually propelling it across the stream. Perhaps it was by observing
this operation that the inventor conceived the idea of a roller boat,
with which experiments have been made on the Atlantic.

When the logs have reached their destination the utility of the
log-marks is apparent. When the great mass of logs have been floated to
the vicinity of the saw-mills which will manufacture them into lumber,
they are brought to a standstill, and preparations are made to separate
the logs belonging to different owners. Long "booms" are constructed up
and down the river a short distance below the head of the drive of logs.

[Illustration]

Logs placed end to end, and securely fastened together, form the
"booms." The upper end is chained to piers or other immovable objects,
which are stout enough to hold the string of logs forming the booms. A
river is divided off into a sufficient number of "booms" to provide a
separate boom for each firm or individual having logs in the "drive." A
strong rope is then stretched across the river a short distance above
the ends of the booms. This swings only a few feet above the river, and
is for the convenience of the men who separate the logs and float them
into the proper boom.

The space between the shore and the first boom is exclusively for
logs belonging to a certain firm or individual; the space between the
first and second booms for those of another, and so on. As the logs
are floated down from the stationary "drive" above, which, perhaps,
fills the river from bank to bank, and extends up the stream as far as
the eye can reach, the men whose duty it is to separate the logs catch
them as fast as they are floated down to them, hastily glance at the
log-mark, mount the log, and, with the aid of the rope stretched from
bank to bank, pull themselves and the log to a point directly above the
boom of the owner of the log, and then release it, and permit it to be
carried by the current into the proper boom.

With the aid of pike-poles and other appliances, each man can take
care of a number of logs at one time, thus simplifying and expediting
the work of separating the logs. As many men as can work without being
in each other's way are stationed immediately above the booms, and
separate the logs with astonishing accuracy and rapidity.

The log-marks, as in the case of cattle-brands, reduce the theft of
logs to the minimum, as the tell-tale mark, if overlooked and not
removed, is a silent though convincing witness against anyone who
steals it and in whose possession it is found.

[Illustration:




A WEDDING TOUR IN A BALLOON

BY M. DINORBEN GRIFFITH AND MADAME CAMILLE FLAMMARION.]


Once or twice one has come across a story of some adventurous couple
(usually in America) who have been married in a captive balloon. The
incident is reproduced from time to time, the newspapers printing it
almost always placing on some other newspaper the responsibility of the
statement. The story may originally have taken its birth in a diseased
craving of some undistinguished couple for notoriety, or, as is more
likely, in a lack of striking headlines for some very enterprising
American paper. But in any case, we are concerned here with no such
matter, but with an actual wedding trip, undertaken and carried through
by a very distinguished couple, in a perfectly free balloon; and this
with no idea of notoriety-hunting.

The name of M. Camille Flammarion, the distinguished French astronomer,
is very nearly as familiar in this country as in France, and some of
his most important works are made popular by means of translations. He
is distinguished by an imagination very rare in men of science, and his
theories of the inhabitation of the stars are of a very striking and
beautiful character; while many other of his astronomical speculations
are similarly bold and original.

M. Flammarion's interest in ballooning began more than thirty years
ago, and since that time he has been a most enthusiastic aeronaut;
making very numerous ascents and recording large numbers of extremely
important scientific observations. His book, "Voyages en Ballon,"
contains many interesting accounts of his ascents, and has been
translated by Mr. James Glaisher, the English meteorologist and
aeronaut. It is of the wedding trip performed in a balloon by Monsieur
and Madame Flammarion that we are to speak.

Madame Flammarion is herself a most enthusiastic balloon-traveller.
Indeed, she has often said that nothing but the practical impossibility
of the feat prevents her living altogether in a balloon. And she
takes much delight in recounting the story of her wedding trip,
which was her first balloon ascent, and of a humorous incident which
characterized it. We shall give Madame Flammarion's account as nearly
as her own words can be rendered in English. The story was told us
in the beautiful garden of the Château Juvisy, the magnificent house
which is now M. Flammarion's home and observatory, but which has been
the resting-place of French Kings in their journeys between Paris and
Fontainebleau, from Henri Quatre to Louis Philippe. Parenthetically
we may say that Madame Flammarion is herself a distinguished person,
and Vice-President of the League of Ladies on behalf of International
Disarmament. This is her story as she tells it:--

I had always wished to make a balloon ascent. The stories and
descriptions I had read had touched my enthusiasm, and already, before
I had entered a balloon, I was, at heart, an enthusiastic aeronaut. To
hang in space above, looking down upon the rolling world below, and all
the little people in it, was for years the height of all my ambitions.
Nevertheless, I never expected to make an ascent in circumstances so
novel and charming as those which actually accompanied my first balloon
experience.

Just before our marriage, in discussing with my future husband the
form which our wedding journey should take, I begged him to choose the
most magnificent and poetical route possible--an ideal route, never
before made use of in the like circumstances. M. Flammarion understood
my meaning at once. Indeed, the same thought had occurred to himself,
though I first gave it expression.

From this moment Flammarion was busily engaged with the aeronaut,
M. Jules Godard, in making preparations for the aerial journey. But
preparations for the wedding itself also claimed attention, and it was
in some part in consequence of Flammarion's desires in this matter that
an odd incident made memorable the first part of our journey.

[Illustration: M. FLAMMARION (AT THE TIME OF THE WEDDING). _From a
Photo. by Alexander Martin, Paris._]

First we were married in legal form--in a manner corresponding to
marriage before a registrar in England. Flammarion wished this to be
the only ceremony, and desired no Church rite; in this being consistent
with his great astronomical philosophy, which I expect to be the
religion of the future. But in the end he waived his determination,
to please our mothers--and, I must confess, to please me also. But
he made the condition that there should be no confession, such as is
usually made part of the Roman Catholic ceremony. The good Abbé P----,
who was to officiate, expended all his eloquence to shake Flammarion's
determination in this respect, but his eloquence and his pains went for
nothing. It was useless to insist, Flammarion assured him, and he found
it so.

"But, my dear friend," pleaded the excellent Abbé, "if not a
confession, then at least something: merely a conversation."

"No! Never! Not even that!" was Flammarion's final answer.

"Then," persisted the Abbé, "you will at any rate grant me one personal
favour--nothing connected with the ceremony. Say, now, will you grant
me that favour?"

"Most certainly," Flammarion replied, rather incautiously. "Granted
before asked. What is it?"

"That I may ascend with you in the balloon."

"Abbé--you are a shrewd man. It shall be as you wish, of course. In
fact, the balloon will carry four, and as we ourselves, with the
aeronaut, M. Godard, make only three, there is a vacancy. You shall
fill it, Monsieur l'Abbé--it is promised."

Unfortunately, the outcome of this promise was very deep offence to a
very worthy man--so deep, that the Abbé was almost estranged from my
husband, as you shall hear.

Every detail of the events of our wedding-day is as clearly defined
in my memory as if it were but a recollection of yesterday. It was
a brilliant day, and all the town seemed as gay and as happy as we.
Still, there was one little matter of regret--our balloon trip must be
postponed for a little while, for M. Jules Godard had had an apoplectic
fit three days before, and was not yet recovered. This the Abbé did not
know.

The service, which was short, had finished, and we were in our
carriage--indeed, Flammarion was in the act of closing the door--when a
vigorous hand seized the bridegroom's and a joyous voice cried, "And I
also?"

It was the Abbé. In the confusion of our happiness we had quite
forgotten that he was to accompany us to the breakfast--to which, as a
matter of fact, he had been the first person invited.

The Abbé entered the carriage with no more ceremony, installed himself
comfortably, and carefully deposited a travelling bag on the seat
before him.

[Illustration: MADAME FLAMMARION (AT THE TIME OF THE WEDDING). _From a
Photo. by Dagron, Paris._]

"Hey! hey!" quoth the Abbé", laughing merrily and rubbing his hands
together. "Here we are, my friends! Well! We set out this evening in
our balloon, don't we? Eh? I have prepared--O yes, I have prepared!
I shall send messages to all my friends. I have filled this bag with
little papers, on each of which I have written: 'From the altitude of
the heavens I salute you. Abbé P----.' These we will throw out from the
balloon!"

"But, my dear Abbé," said Flammarion, a little taken aback; "we haven't
told you. We're not going now!"

The Abbé grew almost livid. "Come!" he stammered. "What--what's this?
Is it a joke? Anyhow, it isn't a good one!"

"I assure you, my dear Abbé, it is no joke, but the simple truth. We
_can't_ go, for Godard the aeronaut is ill. Three days ago he had an
apoplectic fit--indeed, he very nearly died. What should we have done
if the fit had occurred in the balloon? He is better now, but not well
enough to make the ascent."

The poor Abbé was thunderstruck. "And I was so counting on the
journey!" he said. "I've been telling everybody I know! People have
even been sending me provisions for the voyage. Truly, I don't know
where we should have put them; but that's beside the question--they
came. And now we are not to go! I shall be the laughing-stock of all my
acquaintance! It's too bad--too bad!"

All through the breakfast the Abbé remained melancholy, notwithstanding
the merry occasion, and the fact that Madame Godard, who was present,
assured him that her husband was quite unable to make an ascent in his
weakly condition. Till at last, in parting from him, Flammarion cheered
him by the assurance that he _should_ go up in a balloon after all,
for, in fact, the project was only deferred. And so the Abbé departed
hopefully. But who can count on the future? Fate disposed things
differently, and poor Abbé P----'s misfortune endured to the end of the
matter.

At last the time arrived, a week after the wedding-day. On the eve of
the day fixed for the ascent my brother-in-law--Ernest Flammarion, the
publisher--came to see us. He also wished to ascend with us; was most
eager, in fact. It must be remembered that, at the time I speak of,
balloon ascents were much less common than they have since become, and
one had very few opportunities of an experience in the air. In the end,
my husband promised his brother that he should come, if only the Abbé
should be prevented, or should from any cause forego his claim. Ernest
quite understood the situation, and waited with much anxiety, but with
little hope. "It's not of much use," he said. "The Abbé won't give up
his place. I'm afraid the thing's settled!"

The few hours intervening before the time fixed for the start were
hours of anxious watching. The weather was perfect, but we were
constantly on thorns lest some change should manifest itself.

But what of the Abbé? When the start was determined upon--on the
morning of the day when Ernest Flammarion called on us--my husband
hurried out to inform the Abbé, but found that he was away from home,
at La Varenne Saint-Hilaire, which he always made his summer residence.
Still, the Abbé's servant assured Flammarion that he would be back,
doubtless in the evening. So a note was written and left on the Abbé's
desk, thus:--

"We set out to-morrow at close of day in a balloon; do not miss this
celestial appointment, but meet us at about five o'clock at the
gas-works of La Villette.--FLAMMARION."

The eventful day (it was the 28th of August, 1874) dawned brilliantly,
and the day fulfilled the promise of the dawn--a delightfully
equable temperature, a gentle breeze, and a bright sky. And at
five we assembled at the gas-works--our aeronaut and his wife, my
brother-in-law, Ernest Flammarion, and ourselves, with a number of
friends to see us off.

It is necessary to allow plenty of time for preparations in view of a
balloon ascent, because of the innumerable details to be attended to,
any one of which may delay the start for an unexpected length of time.
One may allow an hour as ample, and then, at the end of three hours,
find the balloon still unready. No such delay occurred in this case,
though Godard and his assistants were hard at work for some time, while
we talked with our friends.

The balloon, which rolled and swung before us, had been specially made
for us, and it was of 2,000 mètres cubic capacity. Its material was
the best China silk, and it had a magnificent dark golden tint, most
beautiful as it rose, semi-transparent in the sunshine.

In vain we awaited the Abbé. We wondered whether anything could have
prevented his receiving the note, or whether he might be ill. It would
soon be impossible to wait longer. The balloon trembled, and the great
globe rose, little by little, from the ground. Soon it was a truly
beautiful object, immense in its rotundity and majestic as it rose
above us, vibrating with the powerful breath that soon was to lift us
up into the unknown.

Everything was prepared, and still there was no sign of Abbé P----.

"Plainly the Abbé is not coming," said Godard. "We can wait no longer.
We must start at once if we are to see Paris at sunset!"

"Then we will go," said my husband. And scarce had he turned to speak
to his brother when the latter was in the car beside the aeronaut.
Indeed, he scarce seemed certain of his good fortune till he was well
in the air.

Now it was my turn. The car was a little way from the ground, so my
husband carried me. I was trembling with excitement and impatience. In
another minute, when all four were in their places, Godard cried, "Let
go, all!" and our friends about the car fell back quickly.

For me, I confess, it was a serious moment. I could not resist
speculations as to where we were going, into what tempestuous whirlwind
we might be carried, what lightning-cloud might rend and burn our
balloon, now so gallant and so beautiful.

We rose, at first, softly and slowly. For a long time we could hear the
voices below us, "_Au revoir!_ A good voyage and a quick return!" But
with our release from the earth we were no longer the same: we seemed
to leave all earthly interests behind us. Our bodily weight we seemed
to lose, and our brains also grew buoyant. We were held entirely by
admiration of the wonders about us.

[Illustration: "AU REVOIR!"]

Nothing so magnificent had I ever imagined. The charming landscapes of
the earth were small things indeed in comparison with the colossal, the
marvellous prospect that was before our eyes. When at last we found our
voices our exclamations seemed ridiculously inadequate to the occasion.

"Heavens! How beautiful it is, how beautiful!" But we could not find
adequate words for it.

My husband said, "The earth descends below us." And the words well
expressed the sensation conveyed. The earth seemed to sink away from us
in a wonderful, indeed, in a terrible, manner. Everything was wonderful
and weird. Indeed, the whole of such a journey seems a strange and
fantastic dream, luxurious to the senses and impressively superb. Its
beauty cannot be told, cannot be written. It must be seen and felt.

The sun was sinking in the west. For a while the daylight seemed even
more intense as it was about to vanish. Then the sun disappeared; it
had set. But we rose and rose, and presently we saw the red wonder
again. In simple fact, here was the sun _rising again_ for us alone,
and in the west! But the sight lasted a very short time, and once more
the great luminary sank from sight. We had seen the sun set twice in
one evening!

My delight was inexpressible; to sit here beside my newly-made husband
here in the sky, travelling I knew not where. Our movement was
altogether imperceptible--we would seem to be entirely still; there
was no such current of air even as would cause a quiver in the flame
of a candle. At this time our height was about 300 or 400 mètres, and
we gazed over the edge of the car at the towns, the railway lines, the
fields, and the woods--all Liliputian toys, and things to smile at.

We passed over the Buttes-Chaumont, at Vincennes. I turned my head to
ask a question of Godard, and was terrified to perceive that he had
in his mouth a large pipe! I touched my husband's arm, and pointed. He
looked, and with a cry he instantly snatched the pipe away. "Do you
want to blow us all up?" he exclaimed.

But Godard merely laughed. "Ha! ha!" he cried, "you don't perceive.
There is no light to it! It is a mere habit. I can't do without my
pipe, and I keep it in my mouth and imagine I am smoking. Come, let me
have it!"

The incident amused us much, and for almost the whole of the remainder
of the journey the pipe remained between Godard's lips, while he, to
all appearance, smoked with perfect satisfaction.

And now we came by the mouth of the Marne. Suddenly there was a burst
of laughter among us; it came from my husband. At first he could not
answer our questions; then he pointed below, to a place where we could
perceive something moving. "Listen!" he said.

[Illustration: "'DO YOU WANT TO BLOW US ALL UP?' HE EXCLAIMED."]

We listened eagerly, and heard cries of despair in the quiet evening
air, far below. "Flammarion! Flammarion! Hé! Flammarion! Come down!
Come down here!"

There was great excitement in the little place below. From the garden
of a little house several persons were making signs to us.

"This is the place," exclaimed Flammarion; "this is the place,
clearly. There is a fatality in this! My friends, we are exactly and
perpendicularly above the estate of the Abbé P----, at La Varenne
Saint-Hilaire! Do you hear? He calls us!"

And indeed it was the fact, the simple fact. What cruel tricks chance
will play!

"Come down! Come down, Flammarion!" And then the voices of those below
died away, for we had gone from their sight. It is probable that if we
_had_ attempted to descend just there we should all have experienced a
good bath in the Marne--a dangerous river in these parts.

Godard threw out ballast, and we rose higher still. "What will the
Abbé think?" I said. "He will never pardon us for this heart-breaking
disappointment!" And, indeed, to finish with the poor Abbé, I may say
here that he would never believe the truth of what had happened, nor
under what conditions Ernest Flammarion had been allowed to take his
place. He maintained that we had arranged the whole thing beforehand;
and for more than a year we saw nothing of him, notwithstanding our
friendly attentions and most cordial appeals.

Now the moon shone with such intensity that the country stood as
clearly defined as in full daylight, and the time was half-past
nine. Here we were at the height of 1,900 mètres, and we seemed to
be entering into another world. Here all Nature was in dead silence,
superb and terrible; we were in the clouds. My husband has described
the scene better than I am able. We were in the starry skies, having
at our feet clouds that seemed vast mountains of snow--an impressive,
unearthly landscape--white alps, glaciers, valleys, ridges, precipices.
An unknown Nature revealed herself, creating, as in a dream, the most
dazzling and fantastic panoramas. Stupendous combats between the clouds
arose and rolled; the air-currents followed one another, hurled and
flung themselves in mighty commotion, shaking and breaking, in dead
silence, the monstrous masses. We felt, we saw in action, the powerful,
incessant, prodigious forces of the atmosphere, while the earth slept
below.

It was a scene beyond all words. Presently a monstrous elephant
formed itself before our eyes. We entered into the very midst of it,
and were blinded by the cold and damp vapour--a singular and awful
cloud, whence we emerged but to plunge again into others more awful
still; now a furious sea, now a group of hideous phantoms, now long,
luminous tracts, glittering like streams of silver in the ghostly white
light. "This is not so pleasant," my brother-in-law murmured. "Why not
descend?"

The billows of cloud piled together, terribly agitated. Above us, below
us and about us, all was stirred to fury. My agitation was great; for
of all these circumstances the silence, the absolute silence, was the
most terrible. Amid all the shocks of the cloud-masses, amid all the
rages of the hideous gigantic phantoms, of those fearful forces that
might at any moment crush us in a clap of thunder, not a sound, even
of the faintest, was heard. The balloon glided through the enervating,
cloud-filled heavens steadily and proudly, and soon we were free of the
mists, and sailing serenely under the deep blue sky in the pale light
of the moon.

[Illustration: "A SINGULAR AND AWFUL CLOUD."]

"I like this better," said Ernest, and we agreed with him.

We gazed at the white plain of rolling clouds below us. What was
that--the little ball that ran so quickly along the furrowed white
spaces? The little ball edged with an aureole of tender colours?

"That?" answered Godard. "That is we ourselves--the balloon, or rather
its shadow. What do you think of its rate of travelling, Madame
Flammarion--you who imagine that we are not moving at all?"

Truly, it was our own shadow, swiftly skimming the clouds below, a
curious and charming sight.

And now we saw the first signs of dawn. The balloon sank and sank, and
soon we were skimming above meadows scented with a thousand perfumes.
To us it seemed that we must touch the trees every moment, so nearly
did we approach the earth. But, as a matter of fact, we were still a
hundred mètres from the ground. Again it was a delightful experience,
thus to skim above the earth in the silent, starry morning, without a
breath of air that we could feel. The plains, the hills, the rivulets
passed before us as in a dream. It was communion with Nature indeed.

"Now," said Godard, suddenly, "we are ascending, and quickly." And,
indeed, as he spoke we shot upwards, and in a moment were again among
the clouds. In the distance we observed a peculiar light. Was it a
lighthouse? No, we were far from the sea. Reassured on this point,
we are soon uneasy in regard to another, for presently we saw that
lightning-flashes were traversing the clouds. "It is a storm," Godard
observed, "and it will be a bad one."

"Then we will throw out ballast and avoid it," said my husband.

It was done, and instantly we ascended to the height of 3,000 mètres.
Now we saw that the deep blue of the sky was paling, and day broke. Far
above us Sirius glittered, and in a few moments more our altitude was
4,000 mètres, the highest of the trip. At this height I breathed less
freely; and everything liquid in the car--even the wine--was frozen.
We shivered under our furs, and there was a humming in my ears. In
spite of these drawbacks I was as enthusiastic as ever, and I assured
my husband, who expressed some solicitude for me, that I had never
been better, and that I would be very glad to live in a balloon! And
as for descending, who could think of it, with such a spectacle before
us? Behind us was the moon and the darkness; below, afar, a storm of
lightning and thunder; and before us, most wonderful of all, the rising
of the sun, filling the empyrean with his rays and flinging a mantle of
purple and gold over all, clouds and balloon alike. The mysterious and
weird beauties of the night gave place to the brilliant metamorphosis
of day.

[Illustration: M. FLAMMARION (PRESENT DAY). _From a Photo. by Professor
Stebbing, Paris._]

And now, alas! we returned to earth. In twenty minutes, after a swift
though tranquil descent from the height of 4,000 mètres, we were again
among our fellow-mortals, in the neighbourhood of Spa. Our trip had
lasted nearly thirteen hours.

The population of the district had never seen a balloon so near, and
our arrival roused the countryside. The people came running from every
direction, yelling and gesticulating, and scarcely had the car touched
earth when it was surrounded so closely by a crowd of peasants that
it was impossible for Godard to make proper arrangements for landing.
By dint of frightful grimaces and abuse, he induced them to draw back
sufficiently to enable him to make fast, and then my companions were
obliged to protect me: for the women, and even some of the men, came to
touch me--my hair, my hands, my face, and my clothes--to make sure that
I was really alive!

[Illustration: MADAME FLAMMARION (PRESENT DAY). _From a Photo. by
Professor Stebbing, Paris._]

Ernest Flammarion alighted first. "I am very happy," he said, "to have
been up in a balloon, but I don't think I shall go again."

As for my husband, his persistent passion for ballooning is well known;
and as for myself, I have made two more aerial voyages with him, and I
would be glad to make a thousand.

One gets, of course, very little of common luxuries in a balloon.
There is just a car of basket-work, and a wooden plank for a seat. The
knees must serve for a table, and the head rests on the edge of the
car when one sits and rests. The bench will hold only two at a time,
and even the two find it a tight fit. Of course, it is impossible to
cook in a balloon, for anything in the nature of fire would produce
an instant blow-up, and a scattering of the whole expedition to the
four winds. The food one takes consists of cold meat, bread, fruit,
eggs, and perhaps salad--prepared beforehand. M. Flammarion carried his
instruments as usual--his barometers, telescopes, thermometers, and the
rest--on his wedding trip, and made scientific observations and notes
from first to last.




_A Peep into "Punch."_

BY J. HOLT SCHOOLING.

[_The Proprietors of "Punch" have given special permission to reproduce
the accompanying illustrations. This is the first occasion when a
periodical has been enabled to present a selection from Mr. Punch's
famous pages._]


PART I.--1841 TO 1849.

Mr. Punch has, perhaps, never given a better proof of ability to gauge
the public mind of this country than that contained in the following
lines, quoted from the issue dated November 5, 1898:

                            A WARNING WORD.

                    [_From Mr. Punch's "Vagrant."_]

    Dear Punch,--I am not one to bellow
      Nor am I much on bloodshed bent;
    I'm not a tearing Jingo fellow,
      All fuss, and froth, and discontent.

[_Here follow some verses relating to political affairs, and then come
the lines printed below. J. H. S._]

    We have another, sterner matter--
      The Frenchman posted on the Nile.

    Not his to reason? True! I like him,
      His skill to act, his pluck to dare.
    I'd sooner cheer him, far, than strike him--
      But why did others send him there?
    In truth, they did not mean to please us;
      They must have realised with joy
    That MARCHAND on the Nile must tease us,
      And sent him merely to annoy.

    So be it then: we know what's what now,
      And what the Frenchmen would be at.
    Though Major MARCHAND's on the spot now,
      He's got to pack and go--that's flat.
    We're tired of gracefully conceding,
      Tired, too, of jibe and jeer and flout;
    Our answer may show lack of breeding,
      But there it is--a plain "Get out."

    If one should, thinking I am weak, Sir,
      Smite me on one cheek black and blue,
    I'm told to turn the other cheek, Sir,
      But not _both_ cheeks and forehead too.
    Year in, year out, they've tried to spite us,
      We've borne it with a sorry grin;
    And now--well, if they _want_ to fight us,
      Coat's off, and let the fun begin!

_Punch_ published these lines just before Lord Salisbury announced at
the Mansion House dinner, given in honour of Lord Kitchener on November
4, that France had come round to our view of the Fashoda question, and
_Punch's_ neat verses just quoted give an excellently succinct and
pithy expression to the feeling of the average peace-loving Briton, who
has become quite weary of being diplomatically played with by France in
our colonial affairs, and who was, and is, quite ready to "take off his
coat."

[Illustration: 1.--THE FIRST PAGE OF THE ORIGINAL PROSPECTUS OF
"PUNCH," IN THE HANDWRITING OF MARK LEMON. 1841.]

The preceding illustration of Mr. Punch's terse and true expression of
public opinion is the most recent that can now be given, but as one
looks through the pages of the 113 Volumes of _Punch_, which bring this
famous periodical to the end of the year 1897, one notices many other
examples of Mr. Punch's acute discernment and pithy expression of the
public mind, which have been stepping-stones of fame to him during his
long life of nearly sixty years, quite apart from the weekly dish of
good things offered by Mr. Punch to his public.

[Illustration: "THINGS MAY TAKE ANOTHER TURN."

2.--THE FIRST PICTURE IN "PUNCH." 1841.]

Thanks to the kindness of Messrs. Bradbury and Agnew, the proprietors
of _Punch_, I am able to give to the general public some of the
pleasure that comes from the possession of a complete set of _Punch_.
In reading one's _Punch_ the pleasure is much enhanced by Mr. M. H.
Spielmann's most admirable book, "The History of Punch" [_Cassell
and Company, Limited, 1895_], for Mr. Spielmann is probably the best
living authority on this subject, and his researches, which extended
over four years, enable the ordinary _Punch_-lover to find many
points of great interest [specially in the early Volumes] which,
without Mr. Spielmann's book, might be passed over without notice.
Some of the _Punch_ engravings now shown have been found by the aid
of Mr. Spielmann's book, which is a thoroughly reliable and quite
indispensable Text-Book on _Punch_, while, on other points, I have been
privileged to consult Mr. W. Lawrence Bradbury and Mr. Philip L. Agnew
as well as Mr. Spielmann himself.

[Illustration: CANDIDATES UNDER DIFFERENT PHASES.

CANVASSING. THE DEPUTATON.

THE SUCCESSFUL CANDIDATE. THE HUSTINGS. THE PUBLIC
DINNER.

3.--THE FIRST OF MR. PUNCH'S CARTOONS. 1841.]

When the Queen came to the throne there was no _Punch_. He was
conceived in circumstances of much mystery, for many have claimed the
honour of his paternity. The historian of _Punch_ has devoted a long
chapter to this matter of _Punch's_ paternity, and has judicially
weighed the evidence for or against each claimant. Mr. Spielmann
writes:--

    Yet although it was not ... Henry Mayhew who was the actual
    initiator of _Punch_, it was unquestionably he to whom the whole
    credit belongs of having developed Landell's specific idea of a
    "Charivari," and of its conception in the form it took. Though not
    the absolute author of its existence, he was certainly the author
    of its literary and artistic being, and to that degree, as he was
    wont to claim, he was its _founder_.

[Illustration: PUNCH'S PENCILLINGS.----Nº IV.

4.--THE FIRST PICTURE BY JOHN LEECH. 1841.]

Thus, the opinion of the best authority is that Henry Mayhew and
Ebenezer Landells were the real founders of _Punch_.

Early in 1841, after several discussions between the members of the
first staff of _Punch_, the original prospectus was drawn up by Mark
Lemon. The first page of this three-page foolscap document is shown in
reduced facsimile in illustration No. 1 of this article. An excellent
facsimile, on the original blue foolscap paper, is bound up in a little
anonymous pamphlet published in the year 1870, "Mr. Punch: His Origin
and Career": but Mr. Bradbury told me that many of the statements
about _Punch_ in this pamphlet are erroneous, although the document
is an exact copy of the original in Mr. Bradbury's possession, which
happens just now to be packed away in a warehouse, and so cannot be
photographed.

[Illustration: THE LEGEND OF JAWBRAHIM-HERAUDEE.

    There once lived a king in Armenia, whose name was Poof-Allee-Shaw;
    he was called by his people, and the rest of the world who
    happened to hear of him, Zubberdust, or, the Poet, founding
    his greatest glory, like Bulwer-Khan, Moncktoon-Milnes-Sahib,
    Rogers-Sam-Bahawder, and other lords of the English Court, not so
    much on his possessions, his ancient race, or his personal beauty
    (all which, 'tis known, these Frank emirs possess), as upon his
    talent for poetry, which was in truth amazing.

    He was not, like other sovereigns, proud of his prowess in arms,
    fond of invading hostile countries, or, at any rate, of reviewing
    his troops when no hostile country was at hand, but loved Letters
    all his life long. It was said, that, at fourteen, he had copied
    the Shah-Nameh ninety-nine times, and, at the early age of
    twelve, could repeat the Koran backwards. Thus he gained the most
    prodigious power of memory; and it is related of him, that a Frank
    merchant once coming to his Court, with a poem by Bulwer-Khan
    called the Siamee-Geminee (or, Twins of Siam), His Majesty,
    Poof-Allee, without understanding a word of the language in which
    that incomparable epic was written, nevertheless learned it off,
    and by the mere force of memory, could repeat every single word of
    it.

    Now, all great men have their weakness; and King Poof-Allee, I am
    sorry to say, had his. He wished to pass for a poet, and not having
    a spark of originality in his composition, nor able to string two
    verses together, would, with the utmost gravity, repeat you a
    sonnet of Hafiz or Saadee, which the simpering courtiers applauded
    as if it were his own.

5.--THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE FIRST LITERARY CONTRIBUTION BY THACKERAY,
WHO ALSO DREW THIS INITIAL SKETCH, 1842.]

It is interesting to see in No. 1 that the name _Punch_ was substituted
for the struck-out title, "The Fun ----." It has been suggested that
the title thus cut short in favour of the single word _Punch_ was to
have been "The Funny Dogs with Comic Tales," and the prospectus ends
with the words, "Funny dogs with comic tales." The price was written
"Twopence," although the price of _Punch_ has always been Threepence.

[Illustration: THE LETTER OF INTRODUCTION.

6.--THE FIRST PICTURE OF THE QUEEN IN "PUNCH." 1841.]

As regards the sudden change of title to _Punch_--a change made, as we
see from the facsimile, while Mark Lemon was in the very act of writing
the title--Mr. Spielmann has recorded that there are as many versions
as to the origin of _Punch's_ name as of the origin of the periodical
itself.

    Hodder declares that it was Mayhew's sudden inspiration. Last
    asserted that when "somebody" at the _Edinburgh Castle_ meeting
    spoke of the paper, like a good mixture of punch, being nothing
    without Lemon, Mayhew caught at the idea and cried, "A capital
    idea! We'll call it _Punch_!"

There have been many other claimants to the distinction of having
thought of the title "Punch," which is certainly an infinitely better
title than "Funny Dogs with Comic Tales" and much better than "The
Funny Dogs," which I suggest may have been the title Mark Lemon began
to write, judging from the place on the paper (see No. 1), where he
began with the words, "The Fun ----"; for if he had intended to write
the longer title, "The Funny Dogs with Comic Tales," he must have
run the last part of this long title too far to the right of his
paper to be consistent with the symmetrical position given to his
other headings, etc., on the sheet of foolscap: a practised writer
unconsciously allows enough space for the symmetrical setting out of
his headlines, etc., and that Mark Lemon was a specially practised
writer is very clearly shown by inspection of this interesting
facsimile.

[Illustration: THE PRINCE OF WALES.--HIS FUTURE TIMES.

A private letter from Hanover states that, precisely at twelve minutes
to eleven in the morning on the ninth of the present November, his
majesty King ERNEST was suddenly attacked by a violent fit of blue
devils. All the court doctors were immediately summoned, and as
immediately dismissed, by His Majesty, who sent for the Wizard of the
North (recently appointed royal astrologer), to divine the mysterious
cause of this so sudden melancholy. In a trice the mystery was
solved--Queen Victoria "was happily delivered of a Prince!" His Majesty
was immediately assisted to his chamber--put to bed--the curtains
drawn--all the royal household ordered to wear list slippers--the one
knocker to the palace was carefully tied up--and (on the departure of
our courier) half a load of straw was already deposited beneath the
window of the royal chamber. The sentinels on duty were prohibited from
even sneezing, under pain of death, and all things in and about the
palace, to use a brand new simile, were silent as the grave!

"Whilst there was only the Princess Royal there were many hopes.
There was hope from severe teething--hope from measles--hope from
hooping-cough--but with the addition of a Prince of Wales, the hopes
of Hanover are below par." But we pause. We will no further invade the
sanctity of the sorrows of a king; merely observing, that what makes
his Majesty very savage, makes hundreds of thousands of Englishmen
mighty glad. There are now two cradles between the Crown of England and
the White Horse of Hanover.

We have a Prince of Wales! Whilst, however, England is throwing up its
million caps in rapture at the advent, let it not be forgotten to whom
we owe the royal baby. In the clamorousness of our joy the fact would
have escaped us, had we not received a letter from Colonel SIBTHORP,
who assures us that we owe a Prince of Wales entirely to the present
cabinet; had the Whigs remained in office, the infant would inevitably
have been a girl.

7.--THE FIRST MENTION OF THE PRINCE OF WALES. 1841.]

The first number of _Punch_ came out on the 17th July, 1841, at 13,
Wellington Street, Strand. There was a good demand for it, two editions
of five thousand copies each being sold in two days. This demand was
caused by advertising in various ways, including the distribution of
100,000 copies of a printed prospectus that was nearly identical with
the draft whose first page has been shown here.

[Illustration: DRAWING FOR THE MILLION.

                            TO MR. "PUNCH."

Onourd Sur,--This cums hopin youl xcuse the liberty I take in addresin
yu, which ime shure you wont think anythink ov, wen I tell yu my objec,
which is to make nown a very valubel speeches of hedukashun threw the
medium of your valubel collums. I mean drawring bin klasses: i ave bin
studdiing hunder Mistr Gander, and wot I rite for his to send yu a
speciment of my drawring after receivin six lessons. Yu are at liberty
to make any huse ov this that yu please, am yure obedent servant to
command,

                                                       1 OF THE MILLION.

P.S.--i wouldn't mind 'a guiney a week' to make a few more drawrings
ov the same karacter as wot I ave sent; or i dont mind havin a go at
politix hif yu wood make it wurth mi wile.

8.--A SUPPOSITITIOUS OFFER TO "PUNCH." 1842.]

From the first Volume of _Punch_ I have chosen the five pictures here
numbered 2, 3, 4, 6, and 7. No. 2 is the first picture in _Punch_, a
distinction that gives importance to this little sketch [the same size
as the original] of a broken-down man at work on the tread-mill. By
the first picture, I mean the first that was printed on the numbered
pages of _Punch_--this is on page 2 of Vol. I.--for the _Introduction_
contained three wood-cuts, and there was the outside wrapper--of which
I shall speak later. But this little cut in No. 2 is really the first
of Mr. Punch's famous gallery of black-and-white art. It was drawn by
William Newman, and this is one of his so-called "blackies"--little
_silhouettes_ that were paid for at the rate of eighteen shillings per
dozen.

No. 3 is the first of Mr. Punch's long series of cartoons. This was
done by A. S. Henning, and it makes a much nicer picture in its present
reduced size than in its original large size, where the work is too
coarse in texture. In the forties, there were no ingenious photographic
processes for reproducing an artist's work to any scale; the work had
to be cut on the wood-block and shown the same size as the original
drawing. Hence, in a weekly paper such as _Punch_, there was often not
much time to spend on the wood-engraving, and so many of the drawings,
especially the early ones, are wanting in finish.

[Illustration: THE FIRST TOOTH.

9.--THE FIRST PICTURE OF THE PRINCE OF WALES. 1843.]

Picture No. 4 is the first by famous John Leech--Mr. Punch's first
great artist--and in addition to the signature "John Leech" at the
bottom of the block, there is in the middle of the design the curious
sign-manual, a leech in a bottle, which John Leech often used to mark
his work. This first design by Leech was in the fourth number of
_Punch_, August 7, 1841, and its title "Foreign Affairs" has reference
to the groups of foreign refugees who at that time were specially
numerous in Soho and Leicester Square--places that even nowadays
are characterized by the presence of numerous and not too desirable
foreigners.

[Illustration: THE WHISTLING OYSTER, as it appeared whilst executing
the charming air of--"Come to these yellow sands."

10.--A FANCIFUL DISCOVERY BY "PUNCH." 1843.]

The facsimile in No. 5 is from the commencement of Thackeray's first
literary contribution to _Punch_, and the sketch which forms the
initial letter T is also by Thackeray. Mr. Spielmann says this sketch
is "undoubtedly" by Thackeray; the full contribution is on page 254 of
Volume II.

The cartoon shown in No. 6 contains the first picture of Queen Victoria
in _Punch_, and it represents Sir Robert Peel sent for by the Queen
to form an Administration in place of the beaten Ministry of Lord
Melbourne. This was in the autumn of 1841. The words, The Letter of
Introduction, at the bottom of the cartoon, are the title of "a MS.
drama, called the 'Court of Victoria,'" on page 90 of Volume I. of
_Punch_, which commences:--

                        SCENE IN WINDSOR CASTLE.

[_Her Majesty discovered sitting thoughtfully at an escritoire._]

                     _Enter_ the Lord Chamberlain.

    LORD CHAMBERLAIN: May it please your Majesty, a letter from the
    Duke of Wellington.

    THE QUEEN (_opens the letter_): Oh! a person for the vacant place
    of Premier--show the bearer in, my lord. [_Exit Lord Chamberlain._]

    THE QUEEN (_muses_): Sir Robert Peel--I have heard that name
    before, as connected with my family. If I remember rightly he
    held the situation of adviser to the Crown in the reign of Uncle
    William, and was discharged for exacting a large discount on all
    the State receipts; yet Wellington is very much interested in his
    favour. Etc., etc., etc.

[Illustration: THE MODERN SISYPHUS

"Sisyphus is said to be doomed for ever to roll to the top of a great
mountain a stone, which continually falls down again."

SISYPHUS SIR R. P--L. THE STONE D. O'C----L. THE FURIES LORD J. R----L,
S----L, &c.

11.--RICHARD DOYLE'S FIRST CARTOON. 1844.]

In facsimile No. 7 we see the first mention in _Punch_ of the Prince
of Wales. It is the first part of a full-page article on page 222
of Volume I., which records the birth of the Prince on November 9,
1841, and which also refers to the disappointment caused to the King
of Hanover by the birth of the Queen's second child. _Punch_ writes:
"There are now two cradles between the Crown of England and the White
Horse of Hanover." How many British Royal "cradles" are there now
between the two things named by _Punch_?

[Illustration: THE QUARREL.

MASTER WELLINGTON. You're too good a judge to hit me, you are!

MASTER JOINVILLE. Am I?

MASTER WELLINGTON. Yes, you are.

MASTER JOINVILLE. Oh, am I!

MASTER WELLINGTON. Yes, you are.

MASTER JOINVILLE. Ha!

MASTER WELLINGTON. Ha!

                             [MORAL.--_And they don't fight after all._]

12.--A SUPPOSITITIOUS CONVERSATION BETWEEN THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON AND
THE PRINCE DE JOINVILLE (OF THE FRENCH NAVY). 1844.]

This comical sketch in No. 8 was, I suspect, suggested to Mr. Punch by
one of the many offers of unsolicited "outside" contributions which
have always been severely discouraged. Mr. Punch prefers to rely upon
his own staff, although he is always on the alert for fresh talent,
and amongst the clever men who have thus been invited to contribute
to _Punch_ are Mr. H. W. Lucy ("Toby, M.P."), Mr. R. C. Lehmann (who
wrote "The Adventures of Picklock Holes"), Mr. Bernard Partridge (the
brilliant successor to Mr. du Maurier), and Mr. Phil May.

We see in No. 9 the first _Punch_ picture of the Prince of Wales. This
cartoon was drawn by Kenny Meadows. The Queen is standing at the left
of the infant Prince, and points to the first tooth, the doctor blows
a toy-trumpet and offers some soldiers, while the lady who kneels is
offering a baby's coral with a _Punch's_ head as its chief attraction.

[Illustration: ROYAL SPORT.

It will be in the recollection of our readers that a handsome rod
(which turns out to be really a fishing-rod after all), was a little
while ago presented to the Prince of WALES. His Royal Highness has
lately had some capital sport with this rod, having succeeded in
capturing several of his Mamma's gold fish, one of which was as big as
a dace and weighed six ounces. It was very nearly pulling the Prince in.

13.--ANOTHER PICTURE OF THE PRINCE OF WALES. 1844.]

No. 10 is a very clever sketch of "The Whistling Oyster." A full
account of this supposititious discovery is given on page 142-3 of
Volume V. of _Punch_, in the year 1843, and this curiosity was stated
to be "in the possession of Mr. Pearkes of Vinegard Yard, opposite the
gallery door of Drury Lane Theatre."

The cartoon in No. 11 is the first by another of Mr. Punch's great
guns--the famous Richard Doyle. This appeared on March 16, 1844; and
"The Modern Sisyphus" is Sir Robert Peel, then Premier, seen in the
task of rolling up the great stone [Daniel O'Connell, the Irish orator,
who was then agitating for the repeal of the union between Ireland
and Great Britain], while Lord John Russell and others represent "The
Furies" who are watching Peel's unavailing exertions. The sign-manual
at the right of this cartoon--a dicky-bird perched on a D--was often
used by Richard Doyle, and may be seen on the present wrapper of
_Punch_. Although No. 11 is the first cartoon contributed by Doyle,
it is not the first work he did for _Punch_, for Doyle commenced his
association with the paper by drawing comic borders for the Christmas
number of 1842.

[Illustration: INNOCENCE.

GENTLEMAN.--Seed a little dog, ma'rm? no ma'rm. This here's the honly
dog I've seed to-day, and he don't answer to the name of _Fido_.

14.--A PICTURE OF INNOCENCE. 1845.]

John Leech's cartoon, in No. 12, was published September 14, 1844;
the Prince de Joinville was in command of the French Navy, and there
was some foolish talk in the French papers about an invasion of
England. The expression of the Duke of Wellington's face in this
cartoon is simply perfect, as he stands with his hands in his pockets
calmly looking at the threatening Joinville, and quietly says to
the Frenchman, "You're too good a judge to hit me, you are!" One is
irresistibly reminded by this clever cartoon of a quite recent affair
with our French neighbour, in which the relative positions were not
unlike those here shown, and to which the climax was [at any rate, up
to date, November, 1898] the same as in Leech's cartoon--_And they
don't fight after all!_

[Illustration: A RAILWAY MAP OF ENGLAND.

We are not among those who like going on with the March of Intellect
at the old jog-trot pace, for we rather prefer running on before to
loitering by the side, and we have consequently taken a few strides
in advance with Geography, by furnishing a Map of England, as it will
be in another year or two. Our country will, of course, never be in
chains, for there would be such a general bubbling up of heart's blood,
and such a bounding of British bosoms, as would effectually prevent
that; but though England will never be in chains, she will pretty soon
be in irons, as a glance at the numerous new Railway prospectuses
will testify. It is boasted that the spread of Railways will shorten
the time and labour of travelling; but we shall soon be unable to go
anywhere without crossing the line.--which once used to be considered
a very formidable undertaking. We can only say that we ought to be
going on very smoothly, considering that our country is being regularly
ironed from one end of it to the other.

15.--MR. PUNCH POKES FUN AT THE RAILWAY MANIA OF 1845.]

No. 13 is from page 157 of Volume VII., October 5, 1844. It represents
the Prince of Wales, then not quite three years old, "capturing several
of his Mamma's gold fish, one of which was as big as a dace, and
weighed six ounces. It was very nearly pulling the Prince in."

In the "Innocence" picture, No. 14, observe that the little dog
_Fido_, which is being sought by the lady, is just visible in the left
coat-pocket of the Bill-Sikes-looking rough.

[Illustration: A NICE YOUNG MAN FOR A SMALL PARTY.

    Young BEN he was a nice young man,
      An author by his trade;
    He fell in love with Polly-Ties
      And was an M.P. made.

    He was a Radical one day,
      But met a Tory crew;
    His Polly-Ties he cast away
      And then turned Tory too.

    Now BEN had tried for many a place
      When Tories o'en were out:
    But in two years the turning Whigs
      Were turn'd to the right-about.

    But when he called on ROBERT PEEL,
      His talents to employ,
    His answer was, "Young Englander,
      For me you're not the boy."

    Oh, ROBERT PEEL! Oh, ROBERT PEEL!
      How could you serve me so!
    I've met with Whig rebuffs before,
      But not a Tory blow.

    Then rising up in Parliament,
      He made a fierce to do
    With PEEL, who merely winked his eye,
      BEN wink'd like winking too.

    And then he tried the game again,
      But couldn't, though he tried;
    His party turn'd away from him,
      Nor with him would divide.

    Young England died when in its birth;
      In forty-five it fell;
    The papers told the public, but
      None for it toll'd the bell.

16.--AN EARLY PICTURE OF LORD BEACONSFIELD, AS BENJAMIN DISRAELI, 1845.]

The Railway Map of England, No. 15, is one of Mr. Punch's prophecies
that has become fact. It is in the issue of October 11, 1845, and
refers to the precipitate influx of new lines just then taking place.
To us, nowadays, there is nothing remarkable in this Railway Map, which
might be mistaken for a genuine railway map of England and Wales; but
in 1845, when this map was made by Mr. Punch, he no doubt intended it
as a piece of satire.

[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF THE RAILWAY PANIC.

17.--AT THE END OF 1845.]

[Illustration: ANGLERS HEAR STRANGE THINGS.

_Piscator._ "Are there any Barbel about here, Gov'nor?"

_Host._ "Any Barbel about here!!--I should rayther think there was a
few. Here's the picur o' wun my little boy ketched just hopposit."

18.--ONE OF MR. PUNCH'S FISHING TALES. 1845.]

[Illustration: _Boy._ "MR. PESTLE'S OUT OF TOWN, MEM. CAN I GIVE YOU
ANY ADWICE?"

19.--THE DOCTOR'S ASSISTANT. 1846.]

[Illustration: THE LAST NEW RAILWAY SCHEME.

Our modern projectors having exhausted the old world of railways above
ground, have invented a new world of a subterranean kind, in which they
propose to construct lines "under the present wide, leading streets of
London" This is a magnificent notion for relieving the over-crowded
thoroughfares, and at the same time relieving any particularly
over-crowded pocket from its oppressive burden. The prospectus states
that the thing "can be accomplished without any serious engineering
difficulties." The difficulties, instead of being serious, will, we
suppose, be merely laughable. If any great dilemma should arise, it
will of course be overcome by a little jocularity.

We understand that a survey has already been made, and that many of
the inhabitants along the line have expressed their readiness to place
their coal-cellars at the disposal of the company. It is believed that
much expense may be saved by taking advantage of areas, kitchens, and
coal-holes already made, through which the trains may run without much
inconvenience to the owners, by making a judicious arrangement of the
time-table. It will certainly be awkward if a family should be waiting
for a scuttle of coals, and should not be able to get it until after
the train had gone by; but a little domestic foresight, seconded by
railway punctuality, will obviate all annoyances of this kind.

As the contemplated railway must in several places by carried through
the sides and centre of a street, it will be necessary to arrange with
the gas and water companies, so that they may all co-operate in this
great national work. If the atmospheric principle should be adopted,
arrangements could perhaps be entered into to obtain the use of the
principal main belonging to the water-works as a continuous valve;
for if we are to judge by the arrangements on the Croydon line, this
continuous valve is a tremendous pipe, which merely lies in the middle
of the line without being used.

The Sewers, by the way, would, with a little enlargement answer all the
purposes of the projectors of this scheme. It is true they are half
full of water; but this would not prevent the carriages from being
propelled, and the wheels might be sufficiently high to keep the bodies
of the carriages and the feet of the passengers out of the wet.

Considering the frequent stoppages of the existing thoroughfares, the
scheme really seems to deserve encouragement. "Nothing is wanted" says
the prospectus, "for this grand undertaking, but public support." If
the people will only come down with their money, we should not wonder
at seeing the company get as far as half-a-dozen advertisements in the
daily papers, and a brass plate in the City. Those who are disposed
to sink a little capital cannot do better than bury it under the
Metropolis in the manner proposed.

We perceive that no amount of deposit is named, and nothing is said of
the number or nominal value of the shares. The Secretary is announced
to be in attendance to receive deposits from eleven to two: though,
whether he gets any is, in our opinion, ten to one.

            A PROPHETIC VIEW OF THE SUBTERRANEAN RAILWAYS.

20.--MR. PUNCH SCOFFS AT THE UNDERGROUND RAILWAY SCHEME. 1846.]

No. 16 introduces us to a very early _Punch_-picture of Benjamin
Disraeli [June, 1845]; not the first, which was, Mr. Philip Agnew
tells me, in the year 1844, but this is the more interesting picture
of the two. Mr. Punch was sometimes very severe in his treatment of
Disraeli, and this sketch with the accompanying verses is a good
example of _Punch's_ early satire. As regards Mr. Punch's politics,
it is interesting to quote the following words from "The History of
_Punch_":--

    "The Table" [_i.e._, the weekly _Punch_ dinner-table at which
    the cartoons, etc., are discussed.--J. H. S.] has always shown
    an amalgam of Conservative and Liberal instincts and leanings,
    although the former have never been those of the "predominant
    partner." The constant effort of the Staff is to be fair and
    patriotic, and to subordinate their personal views to the general
    good. For, whatever the public may think, neither Editor nor Staff
    is bound by any consideration to any party or any person, but hold
    themselves free to satirise or to approve "all round."

When No. 16 was published, Disraeli was the leader of the "Young
England" party, having some years previously been converted from a
Radical into a Tory: hence the allusions contained in the lines below
this sketch.

[Illustration: THE RISING GENERATION.

_Juvenile._ "I TELL YOU WHAT IT IS, GOVERNOR, THE SOONER WE COME TO
SOME UNDERSTANDING, THE BETTER. YOU CAN'T EXPECT A YOUNG FELLER TO BE
ALWAYS AT HOME; AND IF YOU DON'T LIKE THE WAY I GO ON, WHY I MUST HATE
CHAMBERS, AND SO MUCH A-WEEK!"

21.--ONE OF LEECH'S SKETCHES. 1847.]

[Illustration: HORRID TRAGEDY IN PRIVATE LIFE!

22.--A JOKE DRAWN BY THACKERAY, THE POINT OF WHICH HAS NEVER BEEN
DISCOVERED. 1847.]

In a later part of this article Mr. Punch's treatment of Disraeli's
great rival Gladstone will be illustrated.

[Illustration: DOMESTIC BLISS.

_Wife of your Bussum._ "OH! I DON'T WANT TO INTERRUPT YOU, DEAR. I ONLY
WANT SOME MONEY FOR BABY'S SOCKS--AND TO KNOW WHETHER YOU WILL HAVE THE
MUTTON COLD OR HASHED."

23.--A PICTURE OF DOMESTIC BLISS. 1847.]

[Illustration: MR. JOHN BULL AFTER AN ATTACK OF INCOME-TAX.

24.--A SKETCH BY DOYLE. 1848.]

The vivid "Portrait of the Railway Panic," by Doyle, No. 17,
was published November 8, 1845, and refers to the depression
in railway-dividends then being caused by over-competition in
railway-promotion; No. 20 also refers to the railway-schemes of that
time, and is Mr. Punch's ironical notice [dated September 26, 1846]
of "The Last New Railway Scheme," _i.e._, the proposal for making
an Underground Railway, which, as we here read, was scoffed at by
_Punch_--"The Secretary is announced to be in attendance to receive
deposits from eleven to two; though, whether he gets any is, in our
opinion, ten to one." But immediately below these words Mr. Punch
gives a sectional diagram of the Underground Railway as he conceived
it, and it is not a bad shot at "A prophetic view of the subterranean
railways." As a matter of fact, the works for the now familiar
Metropolitan (Underground) Railway were commenced in 1860; fourteen
years after this ironical prophecy by _Punch_.

[Illustration:
                       AUTHORS' MISERIES. No VI.

_Old Gentleman._ _Miss Wiggets._ _Two Authors._

_Old Gentleman._ "I AM SORRY TO SEE YOU OCCUPIED, MY DEAR MISS WIGGETS,
WITH THAT TRIVIAL PAPER 'PUNCH.' A RAILWAY IS NOT A PLACE, IN MY
OPINION, FOR JOKES. I NEVER JOKE--NEVER."

_Miss W._ "SO I SHOULD THINK, SIR."

_Old Gentleman._ "AND BESIDES, ARE YOU AWARE WHO ARE THE CONDUCTORS OF
THAT PAPER, AND THAT THEY ARE CHARTISTS, DEISTS, ATHEISTS, ANARCHISTS,
AND SOCIALISTS, TO A MAN? I HAVE IT FROM THE BEST AUTHORITY, THAT THEY
MEET TOGETHER ONCE A WEEK IN A TAVERN IN SAINT GILES'S, WHERE THEY
CONCOCT THEIR INFAMOUS PRINT. THE CHIEF PART OF THEIR INCOME IS DERIVED
FROM THREATENING LETTERS WHICH THEY SEND TO THE NOBILITY AND GENTRY.
THE PRINCIPAL WRITER IS A RETURNED CONVICT. TWO HAVE BEEN TRIED AT THE
OLD BAILEY; AND THEIR ARTIST--AS FOR THEIR ARTIST...."

_Guard._ "SWIN-DUN! STA-TION!"

                                                   _Exeunt two Authors._

25.--DRAWN BY THACKERAY, AND CONTAINING AT THE LEFT PORTRAITS OF
THACKERAY AND OF DOUGLAS JERROLD. 1848.]

No. 18 is one of John Leech's jokes on fishermen's tales, and No. 19
is another joke probably based on fact. The amusing picture, No. 21,
illustrating "The Rising Generation," is also by John Leech.

No. 22 is a curiosity. It was drawn by Thackeray and published on page
59 of Volume XII., February 6, 1847. From that day to this more than
fifty years, no one has discovered the point of this joke by Thackeray.
"The History of _Punch_" records that on the appearance of this sketch
the "Man in the Moon" offered "a reward of £500 and a free pardon" to
anyone who would publish an explanation. The reward was never claimed.

What _does_ this sketch mean? Is the shorter female a servant caught
in the act of trying on her mistress's best cap? But if so, why is the
"scene" placed in a room that seems to be a library and not a bedroom?
And is the object on, or near, the front of the taller woman's dress,
the falling cap of the servant? But if so, how does the servant's cap
come to be falling as the figures are placed--there is no sign on the
part of the servant [?] that she has just dropped the cap [?] from her
left hand? This is truly a puzzle and will probably never be solved,
although when one remembers that this was drawn by Thackeray, and
passed, as one may suppose, by Mark Lemon, the Editor of _Punch_ in the
year 1847, both men of keen wit, it is scarcely possible to think that
this joke does not contain any point.

A sketch of "Domestic Bliss" is shown in No. 23, and No. 24 is
a picture by Richard Doyle of "Mr. John Bull after an attack of
Income-Tax." This was published in the spring of 1848, and must I
think have been the outcome of a then-recent smart from an ordinary
income-tax payment by Mr. Punch, for on turning up the income-tax
records I find that the rate was not unusually high in the year 1848,
the tax being 7d. in the £ for the years 1846 to 1852.

[Illustration: _Affectionate Husband._ "COME, POLLY--IF I _AM_ A LITTLE
IRRITABLE, IT'S OVER IN A MINUTE!!"

26.--MORE DOMESTIC BLISS. 1848.]

No. 25 was drawn by Thackeray, in 1848 and the "Two Authors" at the
left are portraits of Thackeray, who is reading the _Sunday Times_,
and of Douglas Jerrold, who is leaning against the padded division
of the railway compartment, while both authors are listening to the
denunciations of themselves and of their fellow-Punchites which are
being poured out by the reverend gentleman at the other end of the
compartment.

[Illustration: "NOW THEN, CHARITY, HOVER WITH YOU, OR HELSE LET ME
COME."

27.--A STREET-ARAB OF 1849.]

Glancing at Nos. 26 and 27, we come to No. 28, which is one of Richard
Doyle's very funny serial sketches, entitled "Manners and Customs of
ye Englyshe." This is one of the funniest, although, where all are so
good, it is difficult to single out any one of this remarkably clever
series. Every bit of this sketch, No. 28, is worth looking at; the
climbing positions of the deer-stalkers are most comical, and look at
the two gillies holding back the dogs, and at the stag who is surveying
the approaching attack. This was published September 22, 1849.

[Illustration: MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF YE ENGLYSHE IN 1849 Nº 28

DEERE STALKYNGE IN YE HYGHLANDES

28.--BY RICHARD DOYLE. 1849.]

When No. 29 was published there were only eleven (half-yearly) volumes
of _Punch_ available for use by the patient who is here seen consulting
Dr. Punch. There are now available one hundred and fifteen of these
volumes, and actual experience of Dr. Punch's advice to his patient
enables me to thoroughly indorse the soundness of the advice given by
the wise and genial old doctor of Fleet Street.

[Illustration: THE BEST ADVICE; OR, THE MODERN ABERNETHY.

  _John Bull._ "SUCH A TIGHTNESS IN MY CHEST."

  _Mr. Punch._ "TIGHTNESS IN YOUR CHEST. OH! POOH, POOH! READ MY BOOK!"

29.--A PIECE OF GOOD ADVICE BY DR. PUNCH. 1847.]

(_To be continued._)

[Illustration:




THE SPIDER of GUYANA

FROM THE FRENCH OF ERCKMANN-CHATRIAN.]


The mineral waters of Spinbronn, in Hundsruck, a few leagues from
Pirmesans, formerly enjoyed an excellent reputation, for Spinbronn was
the rendezvous of all the gouty and rheumatic members of the German
aristocracy. The wild nature of the surrounding country did not deter
the visitors, for they were lodged in charming villas at the foot of
the mountain. They bathed in the cascade which fell in large sheets
of foam from the summit of the rocks, and drank two or three pints of
the water every day. Dr. Daniel Haselnoss, who prescribed for the sick
and those who thought they were, received his patients in a large wig,
brown coat, and ruffles, and was rapidly making his fortune.

To-day, however, Spinbronn is no longer a favourite watering-place.
The fashionable visitors have disappeared; Dr. Haselnoss has given up
his practice; and the town is only inhabited by a few poor, miserable
woodcutters. All this is the result of a succession of strange and
unprecedented catastrophes, which Councillor Bremen, of Pirmesans,
recounted to me the other evening.

"You know, Mr. Fritz," he said, "that the source of the Spinbronn flows
from a sort of cavern about 5ft. high, and from 10ft. to 15ft. across;
the water, which has a temperature of 67deg. centigrade, is salt. The
front of the cavern is half hidden by moss, ivy, and low shrubs, and
it is impossible to find out the depth of it, because of the thermal
exhalations which prevent any entrance.

"In spite of that, it had been remarked for a century that the birds
of the locality, hawks, thrushes, and turtle-doves, were engulphed in
full flight, and no one knew of what mysterious influence it was the
result. During the season of 1801, for some unexplained reason, the
source became more abundant, and the visitors one evening, taking their
constitutional promenade on the lawns at the foot of the rocks, saw a
human skeleton descend from the cascade.

"You can imagine the general alarm, Mr. Fritz. It was naturally
supposed that a murder had been committed at Spinbronn some years
before, and that the victim had been thrown into the source. But the
skeleton, which was blanched as white as snow, only weighed twelve
pounds; and Dr. Haselnoss concluded that, in all probability, it had
been in the sand more than three centuries to have arrived at that
state of desiccation.

"Plausible as his reasoning was, it did not prevent many visitors
leaving that same day, horrified to have drunk the waters. The really
gouty and rheumatic ones, however, stayed on, and consoled themselves
with the doctor's version. But the following days the cavern disgorged
all that it contained of detritus; and a veritable ossuary descended
the mountain--skeletons of animals of all sorts, quadrupeds, birds,
reptiles. In fact, all the most horrible things that could be imagined.

"Then Haselnoss wrote and published a pamphlet to prove that all these
bones were relics of the antediluvian world, that they were fossil
skeletons, accumulated there in a sort of funnel during the universal
Deluge, that is to say, four thousand years before Christ; and,
consequently, could only be regarded as stones, and not as anything
repulsive.

"But his work had barely reassured the gouty ones, when one fine
morning the corpse of a fox, and then of a hawk, with all its plumage,
fell from the cascade. Impossible to maintain that these had existed
before the Deluge, and the exodus became general.

"'How horrible!' cried the ladies. 'That is where the so-called virtue
of mineral waters springs from. Better die of rheumatism than continue
such a remedy.'

"At the end of a week the only visitor left was a stout Englishman,
Commodore Sir Thomas Hawerbrook, who lived on a grand scale, as most
Englishmen do. He was tall and very stout, and of a florid complexion.
His hands were literally knotted with gout, and he would have drunk
no matter what if he thought it would cure him. He laughed loudly
at the desertion of the sufferers, installed himself in the best of
the villas, and announced his intention of spending the winter at
Spinbronn."

[Illustration: "AGATHA."]

Here Councillor Bremen leisurely took a large pinch of snuff to refresh
his memory, and with the tips of his fingers shook off the tiny
particles which fell on his delicate lace jabot. Then he went on:--

"Five or six years before the revolution of 1789, a young doctor of
Pirmesans, called Christian Weber, went to St. Domingo to seek his
fortune. He had been very successful, and was about to retire, when the
revolt of the negroes occurred. Happily he escaped the massacre, and
was able to save part of his fortune. He travelled for a time in South
America, and about the period of which I speak, returned to Pirmesans,
and bought the house and what remained of the practice of Dr. Haselnoss.

"Dr. Christian Weber brought with him an old negress called Agatha; a
very ugly old woman, with a flat nose, and enormous lips. She always
enveloped her head in a sort of turban of the most startling colours;
and wore rings in her ears which reached to her shoulders. Altogether
she was such a singular-looking creature, that the mountaineers came
from miles around just to look at her.

"The doctor himself was a tall, thin man, invariably dressed in a
blue swallow-tailed coat and leather breeches. He talked very little,
his laugh was dry and nervous, and his habits most eccentric. During
his wanderings he had collected a number of insects of almost every
species, and seemed to be much more interested in them than in his
patients. In his daily rambles among the mountains he often found
butterflies to add to his collection, and these he brought home pinned
to the lining of his hat.

"Dr. Weber, Mr. Fritz, was my cousin and my guardian, and directly he
returned to Germany he took me from school, and settled me with him
at Spinbronn. Agatha was a great friend of mine, though at first she
frightened me, but she was a good creature, knew how to make the most
delicious sweets, and could sing the most charming songs.

"Sir Thomas and Dr. Weber were on friendly terms, and spent long hours
together talking of subjects beyond my comprehension--of transmission
of fluids, and mysterious things which they had observed in their
travels. Another mystery to me was the singular influence which the
doctor appeared to have over the negress, for though she was generally
particularly lively, ready to be amused at the slightest thing, yet she
trembled like a leaf if she encountered her master's eyes fixed upon
her.

"I have told you that birds, and even large animals, were engulphed
in the cavern. After the disappearance of the visitors, some of the
old inhabitants remembered that about fifty years before a young girl,
Loisa Muller, who lived with her grandmother in a cottage near the
source, had suddenly disappeared. She had gone out one morning to
gather herbs, and was never seen or heard of again, but her apron had
been found a few days later near the mouth of the cavern. From that
it was evident to all that the skeleton about which Dr. Haselnoss had
written so eloquently was that of the poor girl, who had, no doubt,
been drawn into the cavern by the mysterious influence which almost
daily acted upon more feeble creatures. What that influence was nobody
could tell. The superstitious mountaineers believed that the devil
inhabited the cavern, and terror spread throughout the district.

"One afternoon, in the month of July, my cousin was occupied in
classifying his insects and re-arranging them in their cases. He had
found some curious ones the night before, at which he was highly
delighted. I was helping by making a needle red-hot in the flame of a
candle.

"Sir Thomas, lying back in a chair near the window and smoking a big
cigar, was regarding us with a dreamy air. The commodore was very fond
of me. He often took me driving with him, and used to like to hear me
chatter in English. When the doctor had labelled all his butterflies,
he opened the box of larger insects.

"'I caught a magnificent horn-beetle yesterday,' he said, 'the _lucanus
cervus_ of the Hartz oaks. It is a rare kind.'

"As he spoke I gave him the hot needle, which he passed through the
insect preparatory to fixing it on the cork. Sir Thomas, who had taken
no notice till then, rose and came to the table on which the case of
specimens stood. He looked at the spider of Guyana, and an expression
of horror passed over his rubicund features.

"'There,' he said, 'is the most hideous work of the Creator. I tremble
only to look at it.'

"And, sure enough, a sudden pallor spread over his face.

"'Bah!' said my guardian, 'all that is childish nonsense. You heard
your nurse scream at a spider, you were frightened, and the impression
has remained. But if you regard the creature with a strong microscope,
you would be astonished at the delicacy of its organs, at their
admirable arrangement, and even at their beauty.'

"'It disgusts me,' said the commodore, brusquely. 'Pouff!'

"And he walked away.

"'I don't know why,' he continued, 'but a spider always freezes my
blood."

"Dr. Weber burst out laughing, but I felt the same as Sir Thomas, and
sympathized with him.

"'Yes, cousin, take away that horrid creature,' I cried. 'It is
frightful, and spoils all the others.'

"'Little stupid,' said he, while his eyes flashed, 'nobody compels you
to look at them. If you are not pleased you can go.'

"Evidently he was angry, and Sir Thomas, who was standing by the window
regarding the mountains, turned suddenly round, and took me by the hand.

"'Your guardian loves his spiders, Frantz,' he said, kindly. 'We prefer
the trees and the grass. Come with me for a drive.'

"'Yes, go,' returned the doctor, 'and be back to dinner at six.' Then,
raising his voice, 'No offence, Sir Thomas,' he said.

"Sir Thomas turned and laughed, and we went out to the carriage.

"The commodore decided to drive himself, and sent back his servant. He
placed me on the seat beside him, and we started for Rothalps. While
the carriage slowly mounted the sandy hill, I was quiet and sad. Sir
Thomas, too, was grave, but my silence seemed to strike him.

"'You don't like the spiders, Frantz; neither do I. But, thank Heaven!
there are no dangerous ones in this country. The spider which your
cousin has in his box is found in the swampy forests of Guyana, which
is always full of hot vapours and burning exhalations, for it needs a
high temperature to support its existence. Its immense web, or rather
its net, would surround an ordinary thicket, and birds are caught in
it, the same as flies in our spiders' webs. But do not think any more
about it; let us drink a glass of Burgundy.'

"As he spoke he lifted the cover of the seat, and, taking out a flask
of wine, poured me out a full leathern goblet.

"I felt better when I had drunk it, and we continued our way. The
carriage was drawn by a little Ardennes pony, which climbed the steep
incline as lightly and actively as a goat. The air was full of the
murmur of myriads of insects. At our right was the forest of Rothalps.
At our left was the cascade of Spinbronn; and the higher we mounted,
the bluer became the silver sheets of water foaming in the distance,
and the more musical the sound as the water passed over the rocks.

"Both Sir Thomas and I were captivated by the spectacle, and, lost
in a reverie, allowed the pony to go on as he would. Soon we were
within a hundred paces of the cavern of Spinbronn. The shrubs around
the entrance were remarkably green. The water, as it flowed from the
cavern, passed over the top of the rock, which was slightly hollowed,
and there formed a small lake, from which it again burst forth and
descended into the valley below. This lake was shallow, the bottom of
it composed of sand and black pebbles, and, although covered with a
slight vapour, the water was clear and limpid as crystal.

"The pony stopped to breathe. Sir Thomas got out and walked about for a
few seconds.

"'How calm it is,' he said.

"Then, after a minute's silence, he continued: 'Frantz, if you were not
here, I should have a bathe in that lake.'

"'Well, why not?' I answered. 'I will take a walk the while. There are
numbers of strawberries to be found a little way up that mountain. I
can go and get some, and be back in an hour.'

"'Capital idea, Frantz. Dr. Weber pretends that I drink too much
Burgundy; we must counteract that with mineral water. This little lake
looks inviting.'

"Then he fastened the pony to the trunk of a tree, and waved his hand
in adieu. Sitting down on the moss, he commenced to take off his boots,
and, as I walked away, he called after me:--

"'In an hour, Frantz.'

"They were his last words.

"An hour after I returned. The pony, the carriage, and Sir Thomas's
clothes were all that I could see. The sun was going down and the
shadows were lengthening. Not a sound of bird or of insect, and a
silence as of death filled the solitude. This silence frightened me.
I climbed on to the rock above the cavern, and looked right and left.
There was nobody to be seen. I called; no one responded. The sound of
my voice repeated by the echoes filled me with terror. Night was coming
on. All of a sudden I remembered the disappearance of Loisa Muller, and
I hurried down to the front of the cavern. There I stopped in affright,
and glancing towards the entrance, I saw two red, motionless points.

[Illustration: "I SAW TWO RED, MOTIONLESS POINTS."]

"A second later I distinguished some dark moving object farther back in
the cavern, farther perhaps than human eye had ever before penetrated;
for fear had sharpened my sight, and given all my senses an acuteness
of perception which I had never before experienced.

"During the next minute I distinctly heard the chirp, chirp of a
grasshopper, and the bark of a dog in the distant village. Then my
heart, which had been frozen with terror, commenced to beat furiously,
and I heard nothing more. With a wild cry I fled, leaving pony and
carriage.

"In less than twenty minutes, bounding over rocks and shrubs, I reached
my cousin's door.

"'Run, run,' I cried, in a choking tone, as I burst into the room where
Dr. Weber and some invited friends were waiting for us. 'Run, run; Sir
Thomas is dead; Sir Thomas is in the cavern,' and I fell fainting on
the floor.

"All the village turned out to search for the commodore. At ten o'clock
they returned, bringing back Sir Thomas's clothes, the pony, and
carriage. They had found nothing, seen nothing, and it was impossible
to go ten paces into the cavern.

"During their absence Agatha and I remained in the chimney-corner, I
still trembling with fear, she, with wide open eyes, going from time to
time to the window, from which we could see the torches passing to and
fro on the mountain, and hear the searchers shout to one another in the
still night air.

"At her master's approach Agatha began to tremble. The doctor entered
brusquely, pale, with set lips. He was followed by about twenty
woodcutters, shaking out the last remnants of their nearly extinguished
torches.

"He had barely entered before, with flashing eyes, he glanced round the
room, as if in search of something. His eyes fell on the negress, and
without a word being exchanged between them the poor woman began to cry.

"'No, no, I will not,' she shrieked.

"'But I will,' returned the doctor, in a hard tone.

"The negress shook from head to foot, as though seized by some
invisible power. The doctor pointed to a seat, and she sat down as
rigid as a corpse.

"The woodcutters, good, simple people, full of pious sentiments,
crossed themselves, and I, who had never yet heard of the hypnotic
force, began to tremble, thinking Agatha was dead.

"Dr. Weber approached the negress, and passed his hands over her
forehead.

"'Are you ready?' he said.

"'Yes, sir.'

"'Sir Thomas Hawerbrook.'

"At these words she shivered again.

"'Do you see him?'

"'Yes, yes,' she answered, in a gasping voice, 'I see him.'

"'Where is he?'

"'Up there, in the depths of the cavern--dead!'

"'Dead!' said the doctor; 'how?'

"'The spider! oh, the spider!'

"'Calm yourself,' said the doctor, who was very pale. 'Tell us clearly.'

"'The spider holds him by the throat--in the depths of the
cavern--under the rock--enveloped in its web--Ah!'

"Dr. Weber glanced round on the people, who, bending forward, with eyes
starting out of their heads, listened in horror.

"Then he continued: 'You see him?'

"'I see him.'

"'And the spider. Is it a big one?'

"'O Master, never, never, have I seen such a big one. Neither on the
banks of the Mocaris, nor in the swamps of Konanama. It is as large as
my body.'

"There was a long silence. Everybody waited with livid face and hair
on end. Only the doctor kept calm. Passing his hand two or three
times over the woman's forehead, he recommenced his questions. Agatha
described how Sir Thomas's death happened.

"'He was bathing in the lake of the source. The spider saw his bare
back from behind. It had been fasting for a long time, and was hungry.
Then it saw Sir Thomas's arm on the water. All of a sudden it rushed
out, put its claws round the commodore's neck. He cried out, "Mon Dieu,
Mon Dieu." The spider stung him and went back, and Sir Thomas fell into
the water and died. Then the spider returned, spun its web round him,
and swam slowly, gently back to the extremity of the cavern; drawing
Sir Thomas after it by the thread attached to its own body.'

"I was still sitting in the chimney corner, overwhelmed with fright.
The doctor turned to me.

"'Is it true, Frantz, that the commodore was going to bathe?'

"'Yes, cousin.'

"'At what time?'

"'At four o'clock.'

"'At four o'clock? It was very hot then, was it not?'

"'Yes; oh, yes.'

"'That's it. The monster was not afraid to come out then.'

"He spoke a few unintelligible words, and turned to the peasants.

"'My friends,' he cried, 'that is where the mass of _débris_ and those
skeletons come from. It is the spider which has frightened away your
visitors, and ruined you all. It is there hidden in its web, entrapping
its prey into the depths of the cavern. Who can say the number of its
victims?'

[Illustration: "IT RUSHED OUT AND PUT ITS CLAWS AROUND THE COMMODORE'S
NECK."]

"He rushed impetuously from the house, and all the woodcutters hurried
after him.

"'Bring fagots, bring fagots!' he cried.

"Ten minutes later two immense carts, laden with fagots, slowly mounted
the hill; a long file of woodcutters followed, with hatchets on their
shoulders. My guardian and I walked in front, holding the horses by the
bridle; while the moon lent a vague, melancholy light to the funereal
procession.

"At the entrance of the cavern the _cortége_ stopped. The torches were
lighted and the crowd advanced. The limpid water flowed over the sand,
reflecting the blue light of the resinous torches, the rays of which
illuminated the tops of the dark, overhanging pines on the rocks above
us.

"'It is here you must unload,' said the doctor. 'We must block up the
entrance of the cavern.'

"It was not without a feeling of dread that they commenced to execute
his order. The fagots fell from the tops of the carts, and the men
piled them up before the opening, placing some stakes against them to
prevent their being carried away by the water. Towards midnight the
opening was literally closed by the fagots. The hissing water below
them flowed right and left over the moss, but those on the top were
perfectly dry.

"Then Dr. Weber took a lighted torch, and himself set fire to the pile.
The flames spread from twig to twig, and rose towards the sky, preceded
by dense clouds of smoke. It was a wild, strange sight, and the woods
lighted by the crackling flames had a weird effect. Thick volumes of
smoke proceeded from the cavern, while the men standing round, gloomy
and motionless, waited with their eyes fixed on the opening. As for me,
though I trembled from head to foot, I could not withdraw my gaze.

[Illustration: "ONE OF THE MEN THREW HIS HATCHET."]

"We waited quite a quarter of an hour, and Dr. Weber began to be
impatient, when a black object, with long, crooked claws, suddenly
appeared in the shadow, and then threw itself forward towards the
opening. One of the men, fearing that it would leap over the fire,
threw his hatchet, and aimed at the creature so well that, for an
instant, the blood which flowed from its wound half-quenched the fire,
but soon the flame revived, and the horrible insect was consumed.

"Evidently driven by the heat, the spider had taken refuge in its den.
Then, suffocated by the smoke, it had returned to the charge, and
rushed into the middle of the flames. The body of the horrible creature
was as large as a man's, reddish violet in colour, and most repulsive
in appearance.

"That, Mr. Fritz, is the strange event which destroyed the reputation
of Spinbronn. I can swear to the exactitude of my story, but it
would be impossible for me to give you an explanation. Nevertheless,
admitting that the high temperature of certain thermal springs
furnishes the same conditions of existence as the burning climate
of Africa and South America, it is not unreasonable to suppose that
insects, subject to its influence, can attain an enormous development.

"Whatever may have been the cause, my guardian decided that it would
be useless to attempt to resuscitate the waters of Spinbronn; so he
sold his house, and returned to America with his negress and his
collection."




_The Training Ship "Exmouth."_

BY DR. CH. H. LEIBBRAND.

_Illustrated from Photographs taken under his direction by A. and G.
Taylor, Photographers to the Queen._


Reader, have you been to Grays, the station next to historical
Purfleet, on the London and Tilbury line to Southend? If not, let me
tell you that it is not a large place, nor a nice place either. Still,
this struggling township on the Thames is worth visiting. Almost
within the shadow of its tiny red brick houses lies one of the finest
institutions in England for the making of sailors, and soldiers, and
citizens--for the making of men.

[Illustration: THE "EXMOUTH."]

Proceeding a short distance along the main street towards the river the
traveller will be brought face to face with this civilizing centre. He
will see a huge, bold, sturdy vessel riding proudly upon the ebbing and
flowing tide, moored about a hundred yards off the shore. This splendid
three-decker, of 3,106 tons displacement and with a measurement of
220ft. by 59ft., is London's training ship _Exmouth_.

The vessel's ninety-one portholes still proclaim its original
character--that of a man-of-war; even though her armament consists
now of but two truck and two field pieces, instead of the ninety-one
guns which should be mounted there. Its complement of 600 lads, its
Captain-Superintendent, and staff of officers still more eloquently
testify to its intimate connection with the defences of the
country--with the Navy and the Army, with the development of patriotism
and citizenship. For, from this training ship have gone forth about
5,700 youths, well equipped for the struggle of existence, and not
less well trained to battle with winds and waves and the treachery of
oceans deep. Indeed, of these 5,700 no fewer than 2,106 went to swell
the ranks of the Royal Navy; 446 shipped as ordinary seamen; 1,385 as
deck and cabin boys; 150 as apprentices, and 300 as assistant cooks
and stewards. And again, within the same period, 900 have joined the
Army as band boys; whilst hundreds, once more, embarked with average
fair success upon other occupations, taking to handicrafts, trades,
and industries for which they received their first moral and sound
practical training on board this veteran three-decker.

A large part of the striking prosperity which has attended
the _Exmouth_ is undoubtedly due to the most competent
Captain-Superintendent in Staff-Commander W. S. Bourchier. Entering the
Navy in 1840, as a navigating midshipman on board the _Impregnable_,
this officer had, previous to his appointment to the _Goliath_ in
1870, passed through a school of excellent training. After successive
services as navigating sub-lieutenant, first in the Mediterranean,
on board the _Polyphemus_; then on the south-east coast of America,
on the brigantine _Griffon_, he had (upon being promoted navigating
lieutenant) held the command of the _Myrtle_, steamer-tender to the
flagship, for close on twelve years. And this varied and instructive
career Captain Bourchier had been able to complete by a further service
as navigating lieutenant to the then Captain, now Admiral, Sir Anthony
Hoskins, on board the _Zebra_, engaged upon a lengthy cruise along the
coast of Africa. With so thoroughly trained and experienced an officer
in command the experiment could, therefore, hardly fail to prosper.

[Illustration: CAPTAIN BOURCHIER, HIS DAUGHTER, AND GRAND-DAUGHTER.]

So successful, indeed, has been the training and other educational work
carried on on board this splendid three-decker that the last report of
Admiral Bosanquet, than whom as Inspecting Captain-General of Naval
Training Ships there can hardly be a better authority, may be taken as
typical. In this report he says:--

    The training ship _Exmouth_ for boys is in most excellent order.
    The drills and instructions are exceedingly well taught, and the
    comfort and well-being of the lads is sedulously attended to.
    Captain Bourchier's arrangements are admirable and conscientiously
    carried out by a very able staff of officers. It is a _model
    training ship_.

[Illustration: THE FIRE DRILL.]

[Illustration: AT GYMNASTICS.]

And a model training ship the _Exmouth_ truly is; the brief history
of which, who knows? may be a not unimportant factor in the making of
British history. To appreciate this paradox, reader, you must see this
tiny, yet withal so manly, crew as it was a short time ago my good
fortune to see them when I visited the vessel, piloted by that genial
assistant clerk to the Metropolitan Asylums Board, Mr. John Mallett.
The notice informing the Captain-Superintendent of our intended visit,
I afterwards learned, had reached him but a few minutes previous to
our arrival. Yet the moment we appeared on the landing-stage, the
wind carried to us five notes of an assembly call. This was the only
distinct sign of life on board. But scarcely had it passed by when, as
if by magic, the cutters and whalers, the gigs and pinnaces, and the
launches of the _Exmouth_ were manned and afloat; when on the main and
upper decks, and on the bowsprit, and up the fore, main, and mizzen
masts swarmed Lilliputians to their posts, every tiny man ready to "do
his duty." Though, to be sure, it is not an easy duty these sailor boys
have to perform, for the routine and discipline on board the _Exmouth_
is as that on board a man-of-war, tempered only by a consideration of
the youth of the crew and by the maxim that "kindness leads farther
than harshness."

[Illustration: RIFLE DRILL.]

[Illustration: FENCING DRILL.]

[Illustration: FIELD-GUN DRILL.]

From the early morning, when the bugle calls for the speedy slinging
up of their hammocks on the orlop deck, till late in the evening,
when the general retreat is sounded and the hammock's are once more
unslung, the various boat-crews and classes are kept going. Yet not as
fancy's whim suggests; maxims evolved from sound experience inspire the
educational system on board. For instance, cleanliness is said to be
next to godliness. The two, again, are known to be most conducive to
discipline. At the same time, the strictest observance of these three
precepts is recognised to be absolutely essential to the well-being
of a large floating establishment. In conformity with these truisms,
thorough ablutions and thoughtful religious practices, such as morning
and evening prayers, at which both officers and crew attend, are,
therefore, as prominent features of the training on the _Exmouth_
as is the excellent discipline maintained on board the vessel. The
ablutions, however, are particularly worthy of mention; the process
is so original. There is a huge, broad tank-bath in the lavatory; not
much smaller than a usual-sized swimming bath. Thither the lads proceed
in marching order, though, of course, without any baggage, however
slight; and promptly start to give themselves a wholesome shampoo
with carbolic soap. Being thus lathered they plunge head foremost
into the tank. Diving straight through its full width, with wonderful
agility they then bound over its anything but low side, landing--at
attention--before the officer on watch, ready for inspection as to
their outward cleanliness.

[Illustration: DISMOUNTING FIELD-GUNS.]

[Illustration: LOCATING THE TRUCK-GUNS.]

[Illustration: FIRING THE TRUCK-GUN]

This agility, this precision in the action and decision in the conduct
of the boy-sailors and marines, is noticeable at whatever occupation
they may be. Such perfection is to a great extent due to the lads'
instruction in gymnastics and athletics. As the several illustrations
show, in these they pass through a most comprehensive and systematic
course. They are trained in whatever may tend towards the development
of their muscles. So efficiently are the boys taught, that those whom
I have seen at my visit go through most difficult exercises on the
horizontal and parallel bars and on the spring-board, I would safely
have compete with the best model sections or Masterriegen of Germany's
leading gymnastic societies. Yet the Fatherland is the home and, as it
were, the academy of systematic physical culture! Highly satisfactory,
too, if not truly astonishing, is the perfect manner in which the
Lilliputians on board the _Exmouth_ take to their musketry, bayonet,
and cutlass drill. Reader, you need but look at the illustrating
snap-shots to feel that, when grown up or even before, these lads
will prove men and warriors bold and true should occasion arise.
Indeed, as it is, when witnessing the earnestness and skill with which
each command of the drill-masters is executed, you soon fancy to be
face to face with a company of marines--veterans in the exercise of
arms--although, in fact, they are a company of mere boys, rescued from
the streets and recruited from the workhouses. And as veterans in arms
they behave at gun drill. At mounting or dismounting field-pieces,
at charging or discharging the truck-guns, they are equally smart.
How well the crews are trained, both in the use of rifle, cutlass,
and cannon, and in their more extensive and complicated application
to military tactics, is demonstrated by the photos, illustrating a
sham-fight between a party of sailors and an imaginary enemy. It can be
seen at a glance that the proceedings are looked upon by the boys as
something more than an amusing intermezzo in their daily routine; with
them it is a serious lesson to be learned seriously.

[Illustration: SHAM-FIGHT]

[Illustration: AMBULANCE DRILL.]

However, the champions of disarmament and the advocates of peace must
not assume that the training ship's youthful crew is reared up only in
the spirit of militarism, and instructed only in the manifold defensive
and offensive uses of the weapons of war. The picture showing the boy
sailors and marines engaged upon Samaritan work, carried out with a
promptitude and circumspection of which a master in surgery need not be
ashamed, would already disprove their assumption. Yet, they may feel
further assured that these principles of assisting the suffering are
not confined in their educational operation to the mere bandaging and
nursing of the wounded. These are inculcated into the mind and heart
of the lads by many other methods, and applicable to many and far
different situations.

For, hand in hand with their military training, the wards of the
Metropolitan Asylums Board receive the benefit of moral training and a
sound elementary education under the able direction of Mr. W. Hollamby,
the head schoolmaster on board the vessel. This education, in spite
of a rather small staff, considering the hundreds of pupils, is not
only equal to that provided at any Metropolitan Board School, but it
aspires, justifiably, because successfully--even beyond--at a higher,
more comprehensive, more thorough-going instruction, excellent though
teaching in London's Board Schools frequently is.

[Illustration: BRIGANTINE "STEADFAST."]

Nor is the industrial side forgotten in the system of training on the
_Exmouth_. Tailoring, carpentering, painting, sail and net-making,
and so on, are part of the trades the boys have to learn and to prove
efficient at. Indeed, most of the extensive and often difficult repairs
constantly necessary to the three-decker, to her many boats, and to the
boys' own outfits, are done by the latter, and done by these youngsters
remarkably well, as, reader, you will see for yourself, if your
good fortunes ever ship you to the _Exmouth_. I say advisedly "good
fortunes," because there is a healthiness, a breeziness about the ship,
about its captain, officers, and numerous crew which truly smacks of
the free, wholesome, bracing sea, and which cannot fail to act upon the
visitor from the town as an excellent nerve-tonic.

[Illustration: MUSICAL DRILL.]

This healthiness, this breeziness, as it were, this sea-atmosphere is,
however, easily accounted for by the very nature, by the very purpose
of the vessel. Is not the aim of the education, of the training, on
board the _Exmouth_ above all to produce sailors of the type of those
who have made England what she is to-day--the Queen and the beneficent
Ruler Of the Oceans and the foremost colonizing and civilizing Power
on earth? Naturally, to achieve this aim the tasks which devolve alike
upon instructors and instructed are manifold and heavy. How many
thousand and one details have to be taught--and learned? How many
thousand and one minute elements are necessary to the making of genuine
seamen of these boys? As kindly paymaster, Mr. A. Thompson, puts it in
his "_Exmouth_ Song":--

    They are to be bothered with splice and knot,
    With heads and hitches and I don't know what;
    So many, they can't tell t'other from which;
    Nor a double Matthew Walker from a plain clove hitch.

[Illustration: AT MESS.]

But it quickly comes all right; the instructors and the lads' hearts
are in their work. Thus:--

    They very soon pass a torn-i-key (tourniquet)
    As well as any Captain in the Queen's Navee.

Sometimes, to be sure; a more practical lesson, which brings the matter
truly home, is wanted. As for instance when:--

    They go for a pull, and whilst afloat,
    Catch a crab that knocks them down in the boat.

Yet here, too, all things work towards a good end. Therefore:--

    To them that crab a lesson will be,
    To make them smart sailors in the Queen's Navee.

And that these Liliputian men on board the _Exmouth_ become smart
sailors is vouchsafed not only by Captain-Superintendent Bourchier,
and his capable chief officer, Mr. Wellman; not only by the brigantine
_Steadfast_, the three-decker's sailing tender, and, as our
illustration shows, a bold, handsome yacht, of 100 tons burden, with
roomy decks and comfortable quarters for fifty lads; but it is also
vouchsafed by her weather-beaten commander, Mr. Thomas Hall, than whom
there is scarcely a more confidence-inspiring, able salt. Indeed, our
Navy owes much to this brigantine. Apart from the nautical training
she affords to the _Exmouth_ boys, it is she who, by means of her
constant cruises to southern and western ports, brings her complement
of excellently taught youths to the direct notice of the captains of
our men-of-war. How much they appreciate the budding sailors thus
brought before them is shown by the fact that on each return from such
a cruise the crew of the brigantine is considerably reduced. But not
in consequence of desertions. No, the men-of-war men like the lads,
and the lads like the men-of-war men. So it comes to pass that the
sailor-boys of London's Training Ship _Exmouth_ become blue-jackets
of the Nation and her Queen. And once embarked upon this career we
may safely leave them, although, reader, I would fain tell you yet of
the large and exceptionally skilled band on board the three-decker
which supplies our Navy and, particularly, our Army with so many
able musicians every year. I would fain tell you of the Infirmary
and its devoted matron, and of the Shipping Home at Limehouse, kept
in connection with the training ship for the purpose of providing to
the _Exmouth_ lads berths on board merchantmen, and of affording them
some safe anchorage when momentarily without a vessel through no fault
of their own. I would fain enlist your co-operation in agitating for
the increase of training ships such as the one I have endeavoured to
describe to you, inasmuch as in these, I hold, lies the strength of our
future Navy and supremacy of the seas. But space does not permit me.
May I be at least consoled by the hope that I have roused your interest
in, and kindled your sympathy for, the _Exmouth_ and her officers and
crew.

[Illustration: LEAVING THE SHIP.]

[Illustration:




False Colours

BY W. W. JACOBS.]


Of course, there is a deal of bullying done at sea at times, said the
night watchman, thoughtfully. The men call it bullying an' the officers
call it discipline, but it's the same thing under another name. Still,
it's fair in a way. It gets passed on from one to another. Everybody
aboard a'most has got somebody to bully, except, perhaps, the smallest
boy; he 'as the worst of it, unless he can manage to get the ship's cat
by itself occasionally.

I don't think sailor-men mind being bullied. I never 'eard of it's
putting one off 'is feed yet, and that's the main thing, arter all's
said and done.

Fust officers are often worse than skippers. In the fust place, they
know they ain't skippers, an' that alone is enough to put 'em in a bad
temper, especially if they've 'ad their certifikit a good many years
and can't get a vacancy.

I remember, a good many years ago now, I was lying at Calcutta one time
in the _Peewit_, as fine a barque as you'd wish to see, an' we 'ad a
fust mate there as was a disgrace to 'is sects. A nasty, bullying,
violent man, who used to call the hands names as they didn't know the
meanings of and what was no use looking in the dictionary for.

There was one chap aboard, Bill Cousins, as he used to make a partikler
mark of. Bill 'ad the misfortin to 'ave red 'air, and the way the mate
used to throw that in 'is face was disgraceful. Fortunately for us all,
the skipper was a very decent sort of man, so that the mate was only at
'is worst when he wasn't by.

We was sitting in the fo'c's'le at ten one arternoon, when Bill Cousins
came down, an' we see at once 'e'd 'ad a turn with the mate. He sat
all by hisself for some time simmering, an' then he broke out. "One o'
these days I'll swing for 'im; mark my words."

"Don't be a fool, Bill," ses Joe Smith.

"If I could on'y mark 'im," says Bill, catching his breath. "Just mark
'im fair an' square. If I could on'y 'ave 'im alone for ten minutes,
with nobody standing by to see fair play. But, o' course, if I 'it 'im
it's mutiny."

"You couldn't do it if it wasn't, Bill," ses Joe Smith again.

"He walks about the town as though the place belongs to 'im," said Ted
Hill. "Most of us is satisfied to shove the niggers out o' the way,
but he ups fist an' 'its 'em if they comes within a yard of 'im."

"Why don't they 'it 'im back?" ses Bill. "I would if I was them."

Joe Smith grunted. "Well, why don't you?" he asked.

"'Cos I ain't a nigger," ses Bill.

"Well, but you might be," ses Joe, very soft. "Black your face an'
'ands an' legs, and dress up in them cotton things, and go ashore and
get in 'is way."

"If you will, I will, Bill," ses a chap called Bob Pullin.

Well, they talked it over and over, and at last Joe, who seemed to take
a great interest in it, went ashore and got the duds for 'em. They was
a tight fit for Bill, Hindu's not being as wide as they might be, but
Joe said if 'e didn't bend about he'd be all right, and Pullin, who was
a smaller man, said his was fust class.

After they were dressed, the next question was wot to use to colour
them with; coal was too scratchy, an' ink Bill didn't like. Then Ted
Hill burnt a cork and started on Bill's nose with it afore it was cool,
an' Bill didn't like that.

"Look 'ere," ses the carpenter, "nothin' seems to please you,
Bill--it's my opinion you're backing out of it."

"You're a liar," ses Bill.

"Well, I've got some stuff in a can as might be boiled-down Hindu for
all you could tell to the difference," ses the carpenter; "and if
you'll keep that ugly mouth of your's shut, I'll paint you myself."

Well, Bill was a bit flattered, the carpenter being a very superior
sort of a man, and quite an artist in 'is way, an' Bill sat down an'
let 'im do 'im with some stuff out of a can that made 'im look like
a Hindu what 'ad been polished. Then Bob Pullin was done too, an'
when they'd got their turbins on, the change in their appearance was
wonderful.

"Feels a bit stiff," ses Bill, working 'is mouth.

"That'll wear off," ses the carpenter; "it wouldn't be you if you
didn't 'ave a grumble, Bill."

"And mind and don't spare 'im. Bill," ses Joe. "There's two of you, an'
if you only do wot's expected of you, the mate ought to 'ave a easy
time abed this v'y'ge."

"Let the mate start fust," ses Ted Hill. "He's sure to start on you if
you only get in 'is way. Lord, I'd like to see his face when you start
on 'im!"

Well, the two of 'em went ashore after dark with the best wishes o' all
on board, an' the rest of us sat down in the fo'c's'le spekerlating
as to what sort o' time the mate was goin' to 'ave. He went ashore
all right, because Ted Hill see 'im go, an' he noticed with partikler
pleasure as 'ow he was dressed very careful.

It must ha' been near eleven o'clock. I was sitting with Smith on
the port side o' the galley, when we heard a 'ubbub approaching the
ship. It was the mate just coming aboard. He was without 'is 'at; 'is
neck-tie was twisted round 'is ear, and 'is shirt and 'is collar was
all torn to shreds. The second and third officers ran up to him to
see what was the matter, and while he was telling them, up comes the
skipper.

"You don't mean to tell me, Mr. Fingall," ses the skipper, in surprise,
"that you've been knocked about like that by them mild and meek Hindus?"

"Hindus, sir?" roared the mate. "Cert'n'y not, sir. I've been assaulted
like this by five German sailor-men. And I licked 'em all."

"I'm glad to hear that," ses the skipper; and the second and third pats
the mate on the back, just like you pat a dog you don't know.

"Big fellows they was," ses he, "an' they give me some trouble. Look at
my eye!"

The second officer struck a match and looked at it, and it cert'n'y was
a beauty.

"I hope you reported this at the police-station?" ses the skipper.

"No, sir," ses the mate, holding up 'is 'ed. "I don't want no p'lice
to protect me. Five's a large number, but I drove 'em off, and I don't
think they'll meddle with any British fust officers again."

"You'd better turn in," ses the second, leading him off by the arm.

The mate limped off with him, and as soon as the coast was clear we put
our 'eds together and tried to make out how it was that Bill Cousins
and Bob 'ad changed themselves into five German sailor-men.

"It's the mate's pride," ses the carpenter. "He didn't like being
knocked about by Hindus."

We thought it was that, but we had to wait nearly another hour afore
the two came aboard, to make sure. There was a difference in the way
they came aboard, too, from that of the mate. _They_ didn't make no
noise, and the fust thing we knew of their coming aboard was seeing
a bare, black foot waving feebly at the top of the fo'c's'le ladder
feelin' for the step.

That was Bob. He came down without a word, and then we see 'e was
holding another black foot and guiding it to where it should go. That
was Bill, an' of all the 'orrid, limp-looking blacks that you ever see,
Bill was the worst when he got below. He just sat on a locker all of
a heap and held 'is 'ed, which was swollen up, in 'is hands. Bob went
and sat beside 'im, and there they sat, for all the world like two
wax-figgers instead o' human beings.

"Well, you done it, Bill?" ses Joe, after waiting a long time for them
to speak. "Tell us all about it!"

"Nothin' to tell," ses Bill, very surly. "We knocked 'im about."

"And he knocked us about," ses Bob, with a groan. "I'm sore all over,
and as for my feet----"

"Wot's the matter with them?" ses Joe.

"Trod on," ses Bob, very short. "If my bare feet was trod on once they
was a dozen times. I've never 'ad such a doing in all my life. He
fought like a devil. I thought he'd ha' murdered Bill."

"I wish 'e 'ad," ses Bill, with a groan; "my face is bruised and cut
about cruel. I can't bear to touch it."

[Illustration: "IT CERT'N'Y WAS A BEAUTY."]

"Do you mean to say the two of you couldn't settle 'im?" ses Joe,
staring.

"I mean to say we got a hiding," ses Bill. "We got close to him fust
start off and got our feet trod on. Arter that it was like fighting a
windmill, with sledge-hammers for sails."

He gave a groan and turned over in his bunk, and when we asked him some
more about it, swore at us. They both seemed quite done up, and at last
dropped off to sleep just as they was, without even stopping to wash
the black off or to undress themselves.

I was awoke rather early in the morning by the sounds of somebody
talking to themselves, and a little splashing of water. It seemed to
go on a long while, and at last I leaned out of my bunk and see Bill
bending over a bucket and washing himself and using bad language.

"Wot's the matter, Bill?" ses Joe, yawning and sitting up in bed.

"My skin's that tender, I can hardly touch it," ses Bill, bending down
and rinsing 'is face. "Is it all orf?"

"Orf?" ses Joe; "no, o' course it ain't. Why don't you use some soap?"

"Soap," answers Bill, mad-like; "why, I've used more soap than I've
used for six months in the ordinary way."

"That's no good," ses Joe; "give yourself a good wash."

Bill put down the soap then very careful, and went over to 'im and told
him all the dreadful things he'd do to him when he got strong ag'in,
and then Bob Pullin got out of his bunk an' 'ad a try on _his_ face.
Him an' Bill kept washing, and then taking each other to the light and
trying to believe it was coming off until they got sick of it, and then
Bill 'e up with his foot and capsized the bucket, and walked up and
down the fo'c's'le raving.

"Well, the carpenter put it on," ses a voice, "make 'im take it orf."

You wouldn't believe the job we 'ad to wake that man up. He wasn't
fairly woke till he was hauled out of 'is bunk an' set down opposite
them two pore black fellers an' told to make 'em white again.

"I don't believe as there's anything will touch it," he ses, at last.
"I forgot all about that."

"Do you mean to say," bawls Bill, "that we've got to be black all the
rest of our life?"

"Certrily not," ses the carpenter, indignantly, "it'll wear off in
time; shaving every morning'll 'elp it, I should say."

"I'll get my razor now," ses Bill, in a awful voice; "don't let 'im go,
Bob. I'll 'ack 'is head orf."

He actually went off an' got his razor, but o' course, we jumped out o'
our bunks and got between 'em and told him plainly that it was not to
be, and then we set 'em down and tried everything we could think of,
from butter and linseed oil to cold tea-leaves used as a poultice, and
all it did was to make 'em shinier an' shinier.

"It's no good, I tell you," ses the carpenter, "it's the most lasting
black I know. If I told you how much that stuff is a can, you wouldn't
believe me."

"Well, you're in it," ses Bill, his voice all of a tremble; "you done
it so as we could knock the mate about. Whatever's done to us'll be
done to you too."

"I don't think turps 'll touch it," ses the carpenter, getting up, "but
we'll 'ave a try."

[Illustration: "HE BURIED HIS FACE IN IT."]

He went and fetched the can and poured some out on a bit o' rag and
told Bill to dab his face with it. Bill give a dab, and the next moment
he rushed over with a scream and buried his head in a shirt what
Simmons was wearing at the time and began to wipe his face with it.
Then he left the flustered Simmons an' shoved another chap away from
the bucket and buried his face in it and kicked and carried on like a
madman. Then 'e jumped into his bunk again and buried 'is face in the
clothes and rocked hisself and moaned as if he was dying.

"Don't you use it, Bob," he ses, at last.

"'Tain't likely," ses Bob. "It's a good thing you tried it fust, Bill."

"'Ave they tried holy-stone?" ses a voice from a bunk.

"No, they ain't," ses Bob, snappishly, "and, what's more, they ain't
goin' to."

Both o' their tempers was so bad that we let the subject drop while we
was at breakfast. The orkard persition of affairs could no longer be
disregarded. Fust one chap threw out a 'int and then another, gradually
getting a little stronger and stronger, until Bill turned round in a
uncomfortable way and requested of us to leave off talking with our
mouths full and speak up like Englishmen wot we meant.

"You see, it's this way, Bill," ses Joe, soft-like. "As soon as the
mate sees you there'll be trouble for all of us."

[Illustration: "THE TWO MEN WAS SCROUGED UP IN A CORNER."]

"For all of us," repeats Bill, nodding.

"Whereas," ses Joe, looking round for support, "if we gets up a little
collection for you and you should find it convenient to desart."

"'Ear 'ear," ses a lot o' voices. "Bravo, Joe."

"Oh, desart is it?" ses Bill; "an' where are we goin' to desart to?"

"Well, that we leave to you," ses Joe; "there's many a ship
short-'anded as would be glad to pick up sich a couple of prime
sailor-men as you an' Bob."

"Ah, an' wot about our black faces?" ses Bill, still in the same
sneering, ungrateful sort o' voice.

"That can be got over," ses Joe.

"'Ow?" ses Bill and Bob together.

"Ship as nigger-cooks," ses Joe, slapping his knee and looking round
triumphant.

It's no good trying to do some people a kindness. Joe was perfectly
sincere, and nobody could say but wot it wasn't a good idea, but o'
course Mr. Bill Cousins must consider hisself insulted, and I can only
suppose that the trouble he'd gone through 'ad affected his brain.
Likewise Bob Pullins.

Anyway, that's the only excuse I can make for 'em. To cut a long story
short, nobody 'ad any more breakfast, and no time to do anything until
them two men was scrouged up in a corner an' 'eld there unable to move.

"I'd never 'ave done 'em," ses the carpenter, arter it was all over,
"if I'd known they was goin' to carry on like this. They wanted to be
done."

"The mate'll half murder 'em," ses Ted Hill.

"He'll 'ave 'em sent to gaol, that's wot he'll do," ses Smith. "It's a
serious matter to go ashore and commit assault and battery on the mate."

"You're all in it," ses the voice o' Bill from the floor. "I'm going
to make a clean breast of it. Joe Smith put us up to it, the carpenter
blacked us, and the others encouraged us."

"Joe got the clothes for us," ses Bob. "I know the place he got 'em
from, too."

The ingratitude o' these two men was sich that at first we decided
to have no more to do with them, but better feelings prevailed, and
we held a sort o' meeting to consider what was best to be done. An'
everything that was suggested one o' them two voices from the floor
found fault with and wouldn't 'ave, and at last we 'ad to go up on
deck, with nothing decided upon, except to swear 'ard and fast as we
knew nothing about it.

"The only advice we can give you," ses Joe, looking back at 'em, "is to
stay down 'ere as long as you can."

A'most the fust person we see on deck was the mate, an' a pretty sight
he was. He'd got a bandage round 'is left eye, and a black ring round
the other. His nose was swelled and his lip cut, but the other officers
were making sich a fuss over 'im, that I think he rather gloried in it
than otherwise.

"Where's them other two 'ands?" he ses by-and-by, glaring out of 'is
black eye.

"Down below, sir, I b'lieve," ses the carpenter, all of a tremble.

"Go an' send 'em up," ses the mate to Smith.

"Yessir," ses Joe, without moving.

"Well, go on then," roars the mate.

"They ain't over and above well, sir, this morning," ses Joe.

"Send 'em up, confound you," ses the mate, limping towards 'im.

Well, Joe give 'is shoulder a 'elpless sort o' shrug and walked forward
and bawled down the fo'c's'le.

"They're coming, sir," he ses, walking back to the mate just as the
skipper came out of 'is cabin.

We all went on with our work as 'ard as we knew 'ow. The skipper was
talking to the mate about 'is injuries, and saying unkind things about
Germans, when he give a sort of a shout and staggered back staring. We
just looked round, and there was them two blackamoors coming slowly
towards us.

[Illustration: "'GOOD HEAVENS, MR. FINGALL,' SES THE OLD MAN. 'WHAT'S
THIS?'"]

I never see sich a look on any man's face as I saw on the mate's then.
Three times 'e opened 'is mouth to speak, and shut it ag'in without
saying anything. The veins on 'is forehead swelled up tremendous and
'is cheeks was all blown out purple.

"That's Bill Cousins' hair," ses the skipper to himself. "It's Bill
Cousins' hair. It's Bill Cus----"

Bob walked up to him, with Bill lagging a little way behind, and then
he stops just in front of 'im and fetches up a sort o' little smile.

"Don't you make those faces at me, sir," roars the skipper. "What do
you mean by it? What have you been doing to yourselves?"

"Nothin', sir," ses Bill, 'umbly; "it was done to us."

The carpenter, who was just going to cooper up a cask which 'ad started
a bit, shook like a leaf, and give Bill a look that would ha' melted a
stone.

"Who did it?" ses the skipper.

"We've been the wictims of a cruel outrage, sir," ses Bill, doing all
'e could to avoid the mate's eye, which wouldn't be avoided.

"So I should think," ses the skipper. "You've been knocked about, too."

"Yessir," ses Bill, very respectful; "me and Bob was ashore last
night, sir, just for a quiet look round, when we was set on to by five
furriners."

"_What?_" ses the skipper; and I won't repeat what the mate said.

"We fought 'em as long as we could, sir," ses Bill, "then we was both
knocked senseless, and when we came to ourselves we was messed up like
this 'ere."

"What sort o' men were they?" asked the skipper, getting excited.

"Sailor-men, sir," ses Bob, putting in his spoke. "Dutchies or Germans,
or something o' that sort."

"Was there one tall man, with a fair beard," ses the skipper, getting
more and more excited.

"Yessir," ses Bill, in a surprised sort o' voice.

"Same gang," ses the skipper. "Same gang as knocked Mr. Fingall about,
you may depend upon it. Mr. Fingall, it's a mercy for you you didn't
get your face blacked too."

I thought the mate would ha' burst. I can't understand how any man
could swell as he swelled without bursting.

"I don't believe a word of it," he ses, at last.

"Why not?" ses the skipper, sharply.

"Well, I don't," ses the mate, his voice trembling with passion. "I
'ave my reasons."

"I s'pose you don't think these two poor fellows went and blacked
themselves for fun, do you?" ses the skipper.

The mate couldn't answer.

"And then went and knocked themselves about for more fun?" says the
skipper, very sarcastic.

The mate didn't answer. He looked round helpless like, and see the
third officer swopping glances with the second, and all the men looking
sly and amused, and I think if ever a man saw 'e was done 'e did at
that moment.

He turned away and went below, and the skipper arter reading us all
a little lecture on getting into fights without reason, sent the two
chaps below ag'in and told 'em to turn in and rest. He was so good to
'em all the way 'ome, and took sich a interest in seeing 'em change
from black to brown and from light brown to spotted lemon, that the
mate daren't do nothing to them, but gave us their share of what he
owed them as well as an extra dose of our own.




_Animal Actualities._

NOTE.--_Under this title we intend printing a series of perfectly
authentic anecdotes of animal life, illustrated by Mr. J. A. Shepherd,
an artist long a favorite of_ THE STRAND MAGAZINE. _We shall be glad to
receive similar anecdotes, fully authenticated by names of witnesses,
for use in future numbers. While the stories themselves will be matters
of fact, it must be understood that the artist will treat the subject
with freedom and fancy, more with a view to an amusing commentary than
to a mere representation of the occurrence_.

[Illustration:


VIII.

The Disappearing Chickens.]

This incident took place in the spring of 1897, at French's Farm,
Netherfield, near Battle, Sussex. This farm lies in the midst of the
chicken-raising district, and it was at the time in the occupation of
Mr. W. A. Williams. Mr. Williams, among his other farm operations,
reared thousands of chickens, which the travelling higglers would
collect and fatten for the market. Most of these chickens were hatched
in an incubator and reared by aid of a foster-mother--which latter, by
the way, is not a motherly old hen, as some might suppose, but a sort
of box lined with flannel. Sometimes it is merely an old coop.

[Illustration: MOTHERLESS AND INQUISITIVE.]

The farm was surrounded by woods, and at first many chicks were lost
by raids of foxes. To check the foxes, Mr. Williams washed the coops
well with carbolic acid, and let his dogs loose at night. This was
effectual. Mr. Williams's tailless sheepdog "Satan" and a spaniel
bitch had many a moonlight fox hunt together. Satan, by the way, was a
peculiar dog, very quiet, but a game fighter when roused.

[Illustration: ONLY THREE LEFT.]

[Illustration: BEYOND THE WIT OF MAN OR DOG.]

For a time the chickens prospered, and then, one morning, Mr. Williams
found but three left out of some twenty-five fresh-hatched the day
before. It was very odd. Mr. Williams couldn't understand it, and
his dog Satan seemed equally puzzled. The chicks had been turned out
in excellent health the day before, twenty-five inquisitive, little,
fuzzy activities, all agog to examine the world. Now there were but
three, and not a scrap or a fragment of fluff left to suggest what had
happened.

[Illustration: "WHAT! NO RATS?"]

[Illustration: "THE DOG? NONSENSE; LOOK AT HIM!"]

The thing occurred again and again, and the mystery was dense as ever.
It couldn't be foxes, because they almost always kill a few for the
sake of killing, and leave them lying about. Was it rats? No, there
were no rats, said the rat-catcher who was called in. But still the
disappearances went on, and morning after morning fifteen or twenty of
yesterday's chicks were not to be found; and the door of their coop was
opened, or knocked down. If it were a human thief, why did he leave
any at all? And besides, a man entering the yard at night would have
been pounced on by the dogs at once. At last, in desperation, a friend
suggested that perhaps the sheepdog knew something of it. But that was
altogether unlikely--one had only to glance at him to see it. He was
always a kindly guardian--almost a parent to the motherless chicks. He
was chained up just outside the farm-house door all day, with a brood
of happy chicks ever in his kennel and his food-pan, and, indeed,
hopping all over him fearlessly, and nothing they could do ruffled
his placid temper or changed his benevolent aspect. So the mystery
continued, and was deep as ever.

[Illustration: LISTENING.]

Till one morning it happened to be necessary for Mr. Williams to rise
just after dawn, and as he did so he looked out of his bedroom window.
There stood Satan, the sheepdog, listening intently at the house door.
As he listened and his master watched, there presently came along a
batch of young chicks. Plainly the door of their coop had been opened
again, and they had been let out. And then Mr. Williams gasped. For
straightway the dog turned and calmly began snapping up the chicks,
bolting them whole, as Mr. Williams expresses it, "like oysters."
He had thus disposed of eight or nine in rapid succession, when Mr.
Williams made a noise at the window, and the dog instantly fled.

[Illustration: GULP! THE MYSTERY SOLVED.]

That day Mr. Williams took particular care to move the chickens near
him as he lay by his kennel, and to watch. But, no--the cunning rascal
would take no notice of them at all. They ran and tumbled all about
him, but he let them run. He was a hypocrite, consummate and proved,
and he left the farm that evening.

[Illustration:




THE COTTON-WOOL PRINCESS.]

A STORY FOR CHILDREN

FROM THE ITALIAN OF LUIGI CAPUANA.


A thousand years ago there lived a King and a Queen. They had only one
daughter, who was dearer to them than all the world. Now, when the King
of France sent to their Court to request the hand of the Princess,
neither father nor mother would part from their beloved daughter, and
they said to the Ambassador: "She is still too young!"

But as the girl became every day more beautiful, the next year the
King of Spain's Ambassador appeared to request the girl's hand for his
Sovereign. And again the parents answered: "She is still too young!"

Both the Kings were very angry at this refusal, and resolved to revenge
themselves on the poor Princess.

As they were not able themselves to carry out their wicked resolve,
they summoned a Magician and said to him: "You must devise for us some
charm to be used against the Princess--and the worse it is the greater
shall be your reward!"

With the words, "In one month your wish shall be fulfilled!" the
Magician departed.

Before the four weeks were over, he appeared again in the castle of the
King of Spain.

"Your Majesty, here is the charm!" he cried. "Give her this ring as a
present, and when she has worn it on her finger for four-and-twenty
hours, you shall see the effect!"

Now the two Kings consulted together as to how they should get the ring
to the Princess. For they were no longer friendly with her parents, who
would, consequently, become suspicious of any present sent by them.
What was to be done?

"I have it! I have it!" the King of Spain cried, suddenly.

Then he disguised himself as a goldsmith, set out on a journey, and
took up his position just opposite the palace where the Princess lived.
The Queen noticed him from her window, and as she happened at that time
to be wanting to buy some jewellery she sent for him. After she had
bought from the stranger various bracelets, chains, and earrings, she
said to her daughter:--

"And you will not choose anything among all these fine things for
yourself, little daughter?"

Then the Princess answered, "I see nothing especially beautiful among
them."

Then the disguised King took the ring out of its case, which he had up
to the present kept hidden, made it sparkle in the sun, and said: "Your
Majesty, here is still a very rare jewel; this ring has not its equal
in the world for beauty. And it does not please you?"

"Oh, how splendid! Oh, how beautifully it sparkles and gleams!" cried
the Princess, entranced. "How much does it cost?"

"The ring has no price; I shall be contented with whatever you give me
for it."

Then a great sum of money was paid to him, and he went his way. The
Princess put the ring on her finger, and could not turn her eyes away
from it, so charmed was she with its brilliancy. But four-and-twenty
hours had not passed--it was just evening--when the poor girl uttered a
terrible cry of anguish.

"Oh, dear! oh, dear!" sounded through the whole palace.

The King, the Queen, and all the ladies of the Court ran, white with
terror, and with candles in their hands, to see what had happened.

"Take away your candles! Take them away! Take them away!" cried the
Princess, beside herself with despair. "Do you not see that I have
turned into cotton-wool?"

And her body had, indeed, suddenly changed into cotton-wool. The King
and Queen were inconsolable at this terrible misfortune, and they at
once summoned the wisest men of the kingdom to consult with them as to
what was to be done in this extremity.

"Your Majesties," the councillors concluded, after long deliberation,
"have it proclaimed in all countries that whoever restores your
daughter may wed her."

And then messengers with drums and trumpets went round the whole
kingdom and far beyond it, and proclaimed:--

"He who restores the Princess to health may become the King's
son-in-law."

[Illustration: "THE PROCLAMATION."]

About this time there lived in a small town the son of a shoemaker.
There was great want in his father's house, and one day, when not even
a crust of bread remained, and both would have had to die of hunger,
the son said, "Father, give me your blessing; I will go out into the
world to seek my fortune."

"May Heaven be gracious to you, my son!" said the father, and the youth
took his staff and set out on his journey.

He had already left the fields of his native district far behind him
when he met a band of rough boys, who were making a fearful uproar and
throwing stones at a toad to kill it.

"What harm has the poor animal done you? Is it not as much God's
creature as you are? Let it live!" he exclaimed, indignantly. But when
he saw that the hard-hearted fellows paid no attention to his words
and did not desist from their intention, he rushed angrily at them and
gave one a sound box on the ears, and another a mighty punch in his
ribs. The boys scattered in a tumult, and the toad quickly used the
opportunity to slip into a hole in the wall.

Then the youth went farther and farther on his way. Suddenly the sound
of trumpets and the roll of drums came to his ear. And listen! Is not
some proclamation being made? He listened attentively and distinctly
heard the words: "He who restores the Princess to health may become the
King's son-in-law!"

"What is the matter with her?" he asked a passer-by.

"Don't you know? She has turned into cotton-wool."

He thanked his informant and continued his travels. Now, by the time
night had sunk upon the earth, he had come to a great desert, and he
determined to lay himself down to sleep. But how terrified he was when,
on turning his head to look once again at the way he had come, he saw a
tall, beautiful woman standing at his side.

He was about to spring quickly away when she said, "Do not be afraid of
me. I am a Fairy, and have come to thank you."

"To thank me? And what for?" the youth asked, in confusion.

"You saved my life! My fate ordains that I shall be a toad by day and a
fairy by night. Now, I am at your service."

"Good Fairy," then said the youth, "I have just heard of a Princess
who has turned into cotton-wool, and whoever heals her may become her
husband. Teach me how to restore her to health. That is my most ardent
wish!"

Then the Fairy said, "Take this sword in your hand and walk straight
on until you come to a dense forest, full of snakes and wild animals.
However, you must not be afraid of them, but must bravely continue your
journey until you stand in front of the Magician's palace. As soon as
you have reached it, knock three times at the great gate...." And she
described to him fully what he was to do.

"If you ever need my help, come to this place at this same hour, and
you will find me here!" and giving him her white hand in farewell, she
disappeared before the youth could open his mouth to thank her.

Without pausing to consider, the cobbler's son set out and went
straight on, according to his instructions. He had already gone a
good way when his path led him into a dark forest, into the midst of
wild animals. That was awful! They filled the air with fearful roars,
gnashed their teeth bloodthirstily, and hungrily opened their jaws.
Though the poor youth's heart thumped, he went straight on, making as
if he did not notice them. At last he reached the Magician's palace,
and knocked three times at the great gate.

[Illustration: "THE MAGICIAN, IN A GREAT FURY, RUSHED OUT."]

Then a voice came from the interior of the castle: "Woe to you, rash
stranger, who have the boldness to come to me! What is your wish?"

"If you really are the Magician, come out and fight with me!" cried the
youth.

The Magician, in a great fury at this audacity, rushed out, armed to
the teeth, to accept the challenge. But as soon as he saw the sword in
the youth's hand, he broke out into pitiable lamentation, and, sinking
trembling on to his knees, cried:--

"Oh, woe to me, unfortunate creature that I am! At least spare my life!"

Then the youth said: "If you will release the Princess from the spell
your life shall be spared."

Then the Magician took a ring out of his pocket and said: "Take this
ring and put it on the little finger of her left hand and she shall be
well again."

Not a little rejoiced at the success of his journey, the youth hastened
to the King and asked, just to satisfy himself of the truth of what
he had been told: "Your Majesty, is it true that he who restores the
Princess to health will be your son-in-law?"

[Illustration: "THE POOR PRINCESS BURST INTO FLAME."]

"It is verily true!" the anxious King assured him.

"Well then, I am ready to accomplish the task!"

Then the poor Princess was brought in, and all the ladies of the Court,
as well as the servants, stood round her to witness the miracle.

But no sooner had she put the ring on her little finger than she
burst into bright flame and stood there, uttering heartrending cries.
Everything was plunged into confusion, and the horrified youth seized
the opportunity of escaping from the scene of the disaster as fast as
his legs would carry him. His one wish was to get to the Fairy, and he
did not stop running until he had come to the place where he had seen
her the first time.

"Fairy, where are you?" he cried, all in a tremble.

"I am at your service," was the answer.

Then he told the Fairy of the misfortune which had happened to him.

"You have allowed yourself to be deceived! Take this dagger and go
again to the Magician. See that he does not fool you this time!"

Then she gave him all sorts of good advice for his dangerous journey
and bestowed on him her blessing. Arrived at the great gate of the
palace, he knocked three times. Then the Magician cried, as before:
"Woe to you, bold stranger! What is your wish?"

"If you are really the Magician, you are to fight with me!"

The Magician, armed to his teeth, came rushing out, in a rage. But when
he saw the dagger he sank trembling on his knees, and begged piteously:
"Oh, spare my life."

"Good-for-nothing Magician!" the youth cried, angrily; "you have
deceived me! Now I will keep you in chains until the Princess is freed
from the spell!"

Then he put him in chains, stuck the dagger into the earth, and
fastened the chain to it so that the Magician could not move.

"You are mightier than I! Now I realize it!" cried the enchained
Magician, gnashing his teeth. "Take the goldsmith's ring from the
Princess's finger, and she will be released from the spell."

Not until the youth had learnt that the Princess had escaped with only
a few burns on her hands, owing to the promptness of the bystanders in
extinguishing the flames, did he summon up enough courage to appear
before the King again.

"Your Majesty, I implore your pardon!" he said. "The treacherous
Magician, not I, was the cause of the disaster. Now I have completely
overcome him, and my remedy will succeed. I have only to draw the
goldsmith's ring from your daughter's finger and she will be all right
again."

And so it happened. As soon as the ring was taken off, the Princess at
once changed back to what she had been before. But who would believe it
to be possible? Her tongue, eyes, and ears were missing; they had been
consumed by the flames! The youth's perplexity at this new disaster was
indescribable. Again he applied to his guardian Fairy for help.

"You have let him make a fool of you a second time!" she said, again
giving him advice, to help him towards the fulfilment of his wish of
becoming the King's son-in-law.

When he came to the Magician he shouted at him: "You miserable
deceiver! Now my patience is at an end! But eye for eye, tongue for
tongue, ear for ear!"

With these words he seized the Magician to strangle him.

But the latter cried, in the utmost peril of death: "Have mercy! Have
mercy! Let me live! Go to my sisters, who live a little farther back
than this."

Then he gave him the necessary directions so that he might find the way
there without delay, and also the magic word which he had to pronounce
at the gate. After some hours he came to the gate of a palace, which
was in every respect like that of the Magician. He knocked, and in
answer to the question, "Who are you, and what do you want here?" he
answered, "I want the little gold horn."

"I perceive that my brother has sent you to me. What does he want of
me?"

"He wants a little piece of red cloth; he has torn a hole in his cloak."

"Here's a piece, and now get you gone from here!" a woman in the palace
cried angrily, at the same time throwing into his opened hands a little
piece of red cloth, which she had cut in the shape of a tongue.

He journeyed on for several hours, and at last came to the foot of a
high mountain. On a spur of rock was a castle, which looked exactly
like that of the Magician. Then he knocked at the great gate, and a
voice came from the interior, saying, "Who are you, and what is your
desire?"

"I want the little gold hand."

"That's all right. I perceive that my brother has sent you. What does
he want from me?"

"He wants two lentil-grains for soup."

"What rubbish! Here, take them and make yourself scarce!"

Then the owner of the castle threw him two little lentil-grains,
wrapped in a piece of paper, and noisily closed the window.

At last he came to a wide plain, in the middle of which a castle
exactly like the Magician's was built. When he knocked he was asked
what he wanted, and answered: "I want the little gold foot."

[Illustration: "THE OWNER OF THE CASTLE THREW HIM TWO LITTLE
LENTIL-GRAINS."]

"Ah! my brother has sent you to me! And what does he wish from me?"

"He wishes you to send him two snails for his supper."

"Here they are, but now leave me in peace!" a woman called out,
ungraciously, from the window, at the same time throwing him the two
snails he desired.

Now the youth returned with the things he had collected to the
Magician, and said: "Here I bring you what you wished for."

Then the Magician gave him all the necessary instructions as to the use
of the three things. But when the youth turned his back to go away, the
captive cried, imploringly, "And you are going to leave me lying here?"

"It would be no more than you deserve. However, I will release you. But
woe betide you if you have deceived me again."

After the youth had released the Magician from his chains, he hurried
away to appear before the Princess.

Opening her mouth, he put in it the little piece of red stuff which he
had brought with him, and she at once had a tongue.

But the first words which came from her mouth were: "Miserable cobbler!
Out of my sight! Begone!"

The poor youth was motionless with painful amazement, and said to
himself: "This is once more the work of the faithless Magician."

But he would not let this bitter ingratitude prevent him from
completing the good work. Then, taking the two little lentil-grains, he
put them into the blind pupils of the girl's eyes, and at once she was
able to see as before. But no sooner had she turned her eyes upon him
than she covered her face with her hands and cried, scornfully, "Oh,
how ugly mankind is! How horribly ugly!"

The poor youth's courage nearly vanished, and again he said to himself,
"The worthless Magician has done this for me!"

But he would not allow himself to be put out. Taking the empty
snail-shells from his pocket, he put them very skilfully where the
girl's ears had once been, and behold! the Princess had back again her
sweet little ears.

Then the youth turned to the King and said, "Your Majesty, now I am
your son-in-law!"

But when the Princess heard these words she began to weep like a spoilt
child, sobbing, "He called me a witch! He said I was an old witch!"

That was too much ingratitude for the poor youth. Without saying a
word, he hurriedly left the castle, to seek out his Fairy.

"Fairy, where are you?" he cried, still trembling with anger and
vexation.

"I am at your service."

Then he told her how shamefully he had been treated by the Princess,
who was now restored to health.

The Fairy said, laughing: "You probably forgot to take the Magician's
other ring from her little finger?"

"Oh, dear! I did not think of that in my confusion," exclaimed the
youth, seizing his head between his two hands in mingled terror and
shame.

"Now hasten and repair the mistake!" advised the Fairy.

Sooner than he had thought possible, he was standing in front of the
Princess and drew the evil ring from her little finger. Then a lovely
smile spread over her beautiful features, and she thanked him so
sweetly and kindly that he became red with embarrassment.

Then the King said, solemnly: "This is your husband."

And the youth and the Princess embraced one another in the sight of
all, and a few days afterwards the wedding was celebrated.




_A Funeral at Sea._

BY J. H. BARKER.


Life on board one of the large liners which run from Southampton or
London to the Cape is almost ideal. After the first week of the trip,
calm seas and glorious sunshine are experienced, and on board we are
free from the rush of business life, and can laze away our time to
our heart's content. No letters to be looked through, no clients or
customers to interview, and no morning paper to read. If that is not a
holiday, what is?

For certain reasons, the first part of the voyage is not so enjoyable
to some as to others, for the Bay of Biscay has a very bad name, and
although it may be a bugbear whose growl is often worse than its bite,
nevertheless, it sometimes acts up to its reputation. However, when
Madeira is past, all thoughts of _mal de mer_ are put aside, everyone
begins to take a fresh interest in the trip, and things in general
begin to "brighten up." Deck chairs are placed in the shady parts of
the deck, and we recline in comfort and talk scandal (for scandal is
talked even on board), read novels and smoke.

Soon after "The Canaries" are left behind, however, a committee is
formed, and a programme of sports and entertainments drawn up, to
enliven the remaining fortnight of the voyage. There are cricket for
the more energetic, bull-board, quoits, sports, concerts, dances
(including a fancy dress ball), etc., in which everyone takes part, and
a good time is provided for one and all.

But life at sea, as on land, is not all sunshine and happiness, and I
shall ever remember a certain lovely hot morning in December, when we
were still nine or ten days' sail from Cape Town, and those of us who
cared for the luxury were having beef-tea and biscuits in the saloon,
when the captain's clerk came in, and said: "There's to be a funeral
this afternoon at four o'clock."

I can never forget the change that came over the company. It seemed as
though a thunderbolt had fallen. A few minutes before we had all been
talking of the various amusements which were to take place during the
day, and no thought, except of pleasure, had entered our minds.

"Who is dead?" we asked, and were told that a steerage passenger had
died of consumption.

There were no games that day: it seemed as though the life on board had
completely changed.

[Illustration: BRINGING THE BODY ON DECK.

_From a Photograph._]

At four o'clock nearly all the passengers came on deck to attend the
funeral. The ceremony was to take place in the "after-well" of the
vessel, the lower deck being kept for the officers and men who were
to take part in the service. The "gangway" was taken down, everything
prepared, the engines slowed down, and the body was borne out on to the
deck by the "bosun" and three of his men, and placed near the side of
the vessel.

[Illustration: DURING THE BURIAL SERVICE.

_From a Photograph._]

At sea the body is sewn up in a canvas sack, which is heavily weighted
at the foot, and this is laid on a "coaming" (a part of one of the
hatches), which takes the place of a bier. The whole is covered with a
Union Jack, which is fastened to the four corners of the "coaming," so
that when the time comes to commit the body to the deep the one end of
the "coaming" is raised and the body slips off into the water, leaving
the flag in its place.

The captain and first officer read the burial service between them, the
other officers and men joining in the responses.

Never have I heard the service read more impressively than it was that
December day, and during parts of the reading there were few dry eyes
to be seen amongst the passengers. The beautiful words are impressive
at any time, but at sea their beauty is magnified a hundredfold.

A few minutes after the service had commenced, at a signal from the
first officer, the engines were stopped altogether, and then there was
absolute stillness and silence, broken only by the voice of the captain
and the ripple of the water as the ship still moved along her way.

"We, therefore, commit her body to the deep...." and at these words the
men who had stood by the "coaming" on which the body rested raised it
gently up, there was a dull splash, and the body sank to rise no more,
until the great day when the deep shall give up her dead.

Everything was done in the most reverent spirit, and when at the
close of the service the engines were again put full steam ahead, the
"gangway" closed up, and the ordinary routine of ship-life resumed, I
could not help thinking that there is something very grand in having
the profound sea for a tomb. God seemed nearer in that solitude than in
the crowded city.

[Illustration: ALLOWING THE BODY TO SLIDE INTO THE SEA.

_From a Photograph._]

As I was going down to my cabin a little later I met one of the
officers, who said, "Not been taking the funeral, have you?"

"Yes," I replied.

"Well, it's your own look-out, and you have to take the risk yourself."

A little farther down I came across one of the engineers, and he asked
me the same question. I told him I had taken a few snap-shots, and he
said, "You have? I wouldn't have done it for anything you could have
given me."

"Why not?" I asked.

"Don't you know that to photograph a funeral on board ship is about the
most unlucky thing you could do? Anyhow, it's your own risk, so it does
not matter to me. Still, I would not take such a risk myself."

Not being superstitious, no harm accrued from my daring.

[Illustration: SHOWING THE FLAG LEFT BEHIND, AFTER THE BODY HAS GONE.

_From a Photograph._]

Gradually we got back again to our usual life on board, and to our
games and frivolities; and by a few, perhaps, the solemn act of burying
the dead had been forgotten ere we gained our first view of the
beautiful Table Bay, with the picturesque town and grand Table Mountain
in the background, but on some of us, I feel sure, it will have a
lasting influence.

[Illustration: AT THE CLOSE OF THE SERVICE.

_From a Photograph._]




_Curiosities._[2]

[_We shall be glad to receive Contributions to this section, and to pay
for such as are accepted._]


A SAGACIOUS HORSE.

[Illustration]

The accompanying photo. depicts an incident which, says the sender, Mr.
Herbert S. Sellars, of 25, Hertslet Road, Seven Sisters Road, Holloway,
N., may be witnessed any afternoon at Torton, near Gosport, Hants.
"Tom," the subject of the photo., is the property of a dairyman well
known in that district. Whilst going the rounds, certain lady customers
have been in the habit of giving the horse bread. Preceding his master,
and arriving at the houses of these good friends, he draws his float up
on to the pavement, and then knocks at the door by raising the knocker
with his mouth, and then letting it drop again. This he continues to do
till the door is opened, when he receives his well-earned reward.

[2] Copyright, 1899, by George Newnes, Limited.


A GOOD JUMP.

[Illustration]

Here we have a group of merry-faced schoolgirls indulging in a jump
arm-in-arm together, and the snap-shot gives us a very vivid idea of
the almost incredible positions assumed by the limbs and body under
such circumstances. The four girls on the left apparently led off,
and seem to be quite complacently perched in mid-air, but the trio on
the right are decidedly unsteady in their alignment, whilst the young
maid on the extreme flank is quite distressed in her uncertainty. The
photograph was taken at the château of the Marquise San Carlos, near
Paris, by Miss Lilian Noble, of Slissinghurst Grange, Cranbrook.


FRUIT AND BLOSSOM TOGETHER.

[Illustration: _From a Photo. by R. W. Fisk, Rickmansworth._]

The photograph here reproduced shows a very unique freak of Nature.
It represents an apple tree that was growing on October 12th last in
Mr. Blake's garden, the Metropolitan Station-master at Rickmansworth
(Herts), and its point of interest lies in the fact that although the
tree is still in full blossom there are several ripe apples upon it
at the same time. There were several dozen other similar trees of the
same age in the garden, but this is the only one that bore blossom and
fruit at the same time. The photograph was sent in by Mr. R. W. Fisk,
of Rickmansworth.


A GORDON RELIC.

[Illustration]

With the Soudan reconquered and Khartoum itself fast reassuming that
civilizing influence amongst the tribes of the Upper Nile that General
Gordon sacrificed so much to accomplish, added interest has been taken
in Gordon relics of late. The accompanying photograph represents a book
that was printed for the General in Khartoum, and was highly treasured
by him on account of it being the first book ever printed there. The
relic is now in the safe keeping of the British Museum, where it is
open to public inspection. The text, by the way, is in Arabic.


WHAT WHEAT CAN DO.

[Illustration]

Amongst the curiosities of THE STRAND a few months ago we gave an
illustration of a section of a board taken from a wheat trough, worn
by wheat passing over it. Here is a photograph, sent in by Mr. Byron
Harman, of the Tacoma Grain Company, Washington, showing a steel-plate,
4ft. square and ½in. thick, taken from a large elevator at Tacoma, that
has actually had holes worn through it by wheat continually falling on
it from a height of 4ft.


A REMARKABLE ACHIEVEMENT.

[Illustration]

It is well known that experiments with paper and a pair of scissors
are often productive of the most wonderful results, but the design
reproduced in the accompanying photograph is perhaps one of the most
remarkable obtained under such conditions, and it has the additional
novelty of having been cut out by an old lady of feeble sight. The
original paper design was sent to us by Mr. M. A. Holmes, of 3, Alma
Road, Canonbury, and the reproduction presented in these pages is from
a photograph of it taken by us.


AN INGENIOUS EXTINGUISHER

[Illustration]

Mr. D. H. W. Broad, of 18, Beatrice Road, Stroud Green, N., the sender
of this photograph, writes that it represents a curious piece of old
ironwork which has recently come into his possession. It slips, he
says, on to a candle, the spike in the middle going into the wax at any
place you like to adjust it. The object is apparently to automatically
extinguish the candle, should the sleeper leave it alight on retiring.
When the wax is burnt away the spike is released, thus bringing down
the extinguisher. The candle in the photo. is standing in an old brass
tinder-box.


WHAT IS IT?

[Illustration]

This little snap-shot requires quite an amount of scrutiny to
decipher. It has been sent in by Mr. Andrew E. Pearson, of 8, Cobden
Road, Newington, Edinburgh, who took it on the Gareloch, at Shandon,
in August last. It represents a sailing yacht travelling from left
to right, and throwing shadows so remarkably well defined that if
the picture be turned upside down it appears almost the same. When
turned end on--as it now stands--it might be mistaken for a bat or a
butterfly, or even a moth. Being reversed again, curiously enough it
still retains the same likeness.


GIGANTIC BEETROOTS.

[Illustration]

This photograph, sent in by Mr. H. Clifford, of 236, 52nd Street,
Brooklyn, New York, shows how they grow beetroots in California. The
largest of the two roots displayed is over 5ft. in height, as may be
estimated by comparison with the young lady standing alongside it, and
it is estimated that it will tip the beam at over 200lb. Beetroots of
this size are naturally not quite so tender as the smaller kind one
is accustomed to receive at table; in fact, in order to slice them it
might be necessary to use an axe or a circular saw. Mr. Boker, who
grew these, says that there need be no fear of any denudation of our
forests, as he can raise a good-sized one underground in the course of
a season.


A HUMAN VIOLIN.

[Illustration: _From a Photo. by Hellis & Sons._]

That music hath charms may undoubtedly be true, but it is difficult to
understand how one could enjoy the harmony, however dulcet it might be,
evolved from such an instrument as is shown in the above photograph. It
consists of the major portion of a human skull, over which is stretched
a sheet of sheep's skin for sounding-board; portion of the leg-bone
as key-board, with bits of the small bones of the arms for keys. This
curiosity belongs to Mr. A. I. J. Harwood, of 87, Park Street, Camden
Town, N.W., and was sent to him as a native product from Durban, South
Africa, on July 5th last, by Mr. C. Wilson.


A SURPRISING EFFECT.

[Illustration]

Certainly a very unlooked-for effect is to be found in the photograph
of the lady's face here reproduced, which has been sent in by Mr.
Edward Duxfield, of Eton House, Basford, Stoke-on-Trent. On holding
the picture upside down another face may be distinctly traced, whose
presence is purely the result of certain combined shaded effects. The
mouth is the same in both faces. The photo, was taken in the garden
about mid-day.


A NOVELTY IN CAMERAS.

[Illustration]

The interest attached to the next photograph we reproduce does not lie
in the subject illustrated, but in the fact that it was taken by a very
primitive sort of camera, made out of an old cigar-box, with a pill-box
pierced at one end by a pin prick instead of a lens, the lid of the
pill-box being retained as the cap. At the back of the camera was an
arrangement for the reception of the plate, and the whole was enveloped
in cloth. This novel apparatus was made by the thirteen-year-old son of
Mrs. C. L. Taylor, of 40, Nichols Street, West Bromwich, who forwarded
it for our inspection.


A TRAIN IN PERSPECTIVE.

[Illustration]

A very curious study in perspective is afforded by our next photograph,
which was taken by Mr. E. Ford, of Bridge Place, Bexley, Kent, whilst
leaning out of a railway carriage window in the rear part of a train.
A curve was being rounded just at the moment the snap-shot was taken,
and in the distance the locomotives may be seen just about to pass
over one of the newly built granite bridges in Cornwall. Owing to the
hilly nature of the country, all the main line trains are drawn by two
engines. Mr. Ford says that they were travelling at the rate of about
thirty miles when he took the photograph.





    Transcriber's Notes:


    P. 3 added missing footnote anchor.

    Silently corrected simple spelling, grammar, and typographical
    errors.

    Retained anachronistic and non-standard spellings as printed.

    Enclosed italics markup in _underscores_.





End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Strand Magazine No. 97 (January,
1899), by Various

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 48729 ***