of the fo’c’sle. Our decks split up
lengthways. The mizzen-mast bounded out of its
place, and we heeled over. Then the other ship
blew a fog-horn. I remember thinking, as I took
water from the port bulwark, that this was rather ostentatious
after she had done all the mischief. After that,
I was a mile and a half under sea, trying to go to
sleep as hard as I could. Some one caught hold
of my hair, and waked me up. I was hanging to
what was left of one of our boats under the lee of
a large English ironclad. There were two men
with me; the three of us began to yell. A man
on the ship sings out, ‘Can you climb on board
if we throw you a rope?’ They weren’t
going to let down a fine new man-of-war’s boat
to pick up three half-drowned rats. We accepted
the invitation. We climbed—I, the
engineer, and the ship’s boy. About half
an hour later the fog cleared entirely; except for
the half of the boat away in the offing, there was
neither stick nor string on the sea to show that the
Hespa had been cut down.”
‘And what do you think of that now?’ said
the man from Saigon.
And he told a tale.
—Chronicles
of Gautama Buddha.
FAR from the haunts of Company Officers who insist
upon kit-inspections, far from keen-nosed Sergeants
who sniff the pipe stuffed into the bedding-roll,
two miles from the tumult of the barracks, lies the
Trap. It is an old dry well, shadowed by a twisted
pipal tree and fenced with high grass.
Here, in the years gone by, did Private Ortheris establish
his depot and menagerie for such possessions, dead
and living, as could not safely be introduced to the
barrack-room. Here were gathered Houdin pullets,
and fox-terriers of undoubted pedigree and more than
doubtful ownership, for Ortheris was an inveterate
poacher and pre-eminent among a regiment of neat-handed
dog-stealers.
Never again will the long lazy evenings return wherein
Ortheris, whistling softly, moved surgeon-wise among
the captives of his craft at the bottom of the well;
when Learoyd sat in the niche, giving sage counsel
on the management of ‘tykes,’ and Mulvaney,
from the crook of the overhanging pipal, waved
his enormous boots in benediction above our heads,
delighting us with tales of Love and War, and strange
experiences of cities and men.
Ortheris—landed at last in the ‘little
stuff bird-shop’ for which your soul longed;
Learoyd—back again in the smoky, stone-ribbed
North, amid the clang of the Bradford looms; Mulvaney—grizzled,
tender, and very wise Ulysses, sweltering on the earthwork
of a Central India line—judge if I have
forgotten old days in the Trap!
