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[Illustration: CHAMBERS’S JOURNAL

OF

POPULAR

LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART.

Fourth Series

CONDUCTED BY WILLIAM AND ROBERT CHAMBERS.

NO. 744.      SATURDAY, MARCH 30, 1878.      PRICE 1½_d._]




ASHORE IN THE STRAITS OF MALACCA.


The corvette _Lyre_, one of Her Majesty’s vessels, is to be imagined
as lying at anchor off the mouth of the river Langhat, in the Straits
of Malacca, a long heavy ground-swell rolling her lazily from side to
side, as though even the sea found the climate too trying for much
exertion. It is a glorious scene which lies before us: a white beech
curtained with brilliant foliage, above which rises Parcelar Hill, a
cone-shaped mountain, with its steep sides covered with dense jungle;
but on board, the pitiless sun is pouring down his cloudless rays,
making the pitch bubble out of the seams of the deck even through
the double awning which is spread overhead. It is one o’clock in the
afternoon, the dinner hour, and the officers, clad in white tunics and
helmets, are listlessly lounging in long chairs abaft the mizzen-mast;
while on the forecastle, blue-jackets and marines are in little groups
smoking, and some who find even that amusement too hot, are stretched
about the deck sleeping or reading. Suddenly there is a slight stir
among them, and the shrill whistle of a boatswain’s mate is heard,
followed by a hoarse bellow at the hatchway: ‘D’ye hear there? A
seining-party will leave the ship at four bells [two o’clock]. All you
as wish to go give your names to the master-at-arms. Away there, first
cutters and dingey boys! Lower your boats!’

While the crews thus named are preparing their boats for the
expedition, volunteers in plenty are sending in their names; for a
seining, or in other words a fishing-party, which involves a run on
shore and a sort of picnic on the beach, is always popular on board a
man-of-war. At this time too, we had been nearly a month at sea, and
our store of fresh meat in the wardroom having soon been exhausted,
we had been living on the ship’s provisions for a fortnight past;
and H.M.’s salt beef (generally though disrespectfully known as
‘salt horse’), never very popular at any time, had become extremely
distasteful to our palates, though our Chinese cooks had exhausted
their science and our patience in inventing new methods of cooking
the obnoxious article. I may mention here that the _Lyre_ formed part
of a squadron which had assembled in the Straits for the suppression
of piracy, for the inhabitants of the Malay states have an interesting
custom, handed down from remote ages, of making indiscriminate war on
each other. The British government, not taking the view that this was
a wise dispensation of Providence for getting rid of a useless race by
mutual extermination, instead of leaving them to settle their disputes
like the famous Kilkenny cats, resolved to put down this lawless state
of affairs with a strong hand; so some of the powers that be, arranged
a scheme for sweeping the rivers of the piratical craft which infested
them.

The plan was beautifully simple and efficacious in theory: part of the
squadron was to ascend a branch of the Salangore River, and drive all
the boats they should find there round to the Langhat River, where
the remainder, of which the captain of the _Lyre_ had command, was to
catch them. It ought to have been a success; but somehow or other the
ungrateful pirates declined to come out of their hiding-places and be
captured; and after spending a fortnight at anchor without making a
single haul, our only duty being to send a detachment occasionally to
relieve the guard at a stockade we had taken, we began to get tired of
the cruise and the invariable ‘salt horse,’ boiled, fried, or devilled,
that formed the ‘standing part’ of every meal; so that any proposal
to break the monotony of our daily grind, such as this seining-party
promised, was eagerly welcomed both by officers and men.

At two o’clock a heavily laden cutter left the ship, towing the dingey,
with the large seine-net which is supplied to every man of war, coiled
up in it. Some of the older hands have taken a spare shift of clothes,
for a great deal of rough dirty work may be expected, and a wise man
likes to be prepared for emergencies; but the majority have been
content with putting on the oldest suits they can find. As we have no
chart in the boat, we find some difficulty in approaching the shore,
as a long reef runs off it, on which the heavy cutter strikes again and
again as we pull up and down looking for a passage. ‘Jump out there,
half-a-dozen hands, and look for deep water,’ sings out the lieutenant
in command of the party; and directly a number of men are overboard,
glad to cool themselves from the blazing heat; and they wade and
splash about in all directions, till the sudden disappearance of one
man, amidst the laughter of the rest, announces that he has found the
channel rather suddenly; and pulling in his direction, the boat reaches
the shore without difficulty.

Not a promising place for a cast where we are landing—the mouth of a
deep rapid river, with steep banks of mud, behind which is a narrow
belt of sand and bushes and then a dense jungle; but the dingey—a
handy little boat—which has been sent to reconnoitre, returns with
a report of a shelving sandy beach a few hundred yards away, which
will just suit our purpose. So, telling off a few hands with axes
to cut down wood and light a fire—a very necessary precaution when
men are wet through—the remainder, after anchoring the cutter in the
river, march off to the spot where the dingey is paying out the seine
so as to inclose a large space of water. Long ropes are fastened to
each end of the net, one of which is already held on shore, and the
dingey soon brings in the other. Now comes the real hard work, as
the heavy net is slowly and laboriously hauled to land, the two ends
being gradually brought together by the direction of the experienced
fishermen in charge. As the centre part of the net approaches, the
excitement becomes great; and some of the men, regardless of sharks and
alligators, swim behind, splashing water to frighten back the fish who
are endeavouring to leap over the barrier which separates them from
freedom. Then, amidst the cheery notes of a fishing chorus, most of us
wading up to our waists in water, the purse or bulge of the net is run
high and dry on the sand, and we eagerly examine our spoil. A curious
collection they are, and many of them no use for cooking or any other
purpose that we can tell. There are crabs of all sizes and brilliant
colours, with claws out of all proportion to the size of their bodies,
which immediately make their presence felt by severely nipping the
bare legs and feet of the men nearest to them, of course much to the
amusement of the rest of the party.

Another peril to the unwary are the catfish, unpleasant creatures, that
have a playful knack of darting their poisonous spines into the flesh
of any one incautiously touching them, thereby causing excruciating
agony for some little time. Then come some little round fish, that have
a very peculiar habit of swelling themselves out when touched, until
they actually burst as it were with their own importance. I am not
naturalist enough to tell the name of this peculiar fish, but the men
used to call them ‘beadles.’ These and many others are thrown back into
the sea as unfit for food; but even after this wholesale rejection, we
have several buckets of good eatable fish, which are sent off to the
fire, which is now blazing brightly on the strip of sand at the mouth
of the river. A question now arises as to who shall be cook, and one of
the men is promptly chosen by the others, and placed in charge of the
fish. There is a joke about selecting this particular individual. Some
months previously, in the course of a chaffing-match with the wardroom
cook’s mate, he had made a retort so peculiarly cutting that the
enraged knight of the gridiron applied an _argumentum ad hominem_ in
the shape of a saucepan, which laid him on the deck with a broken head;
so whenever there was a question of cooking to be done after this, he
was invariably selected for the office, as the others said he must have
gone deeply into the subject.

We make cast after cast now, and fill all our spare buckets with fish,
getting rather tired ourselves with the exertion of hauling a heavy
net, up to our necks in water, till the night comes on apace, and we
edge off towards the fire, making a final cast in front of it, as the
glare attracts the fish in great numbers. We have become satiated with
sport by this time; so the net is coiled up in the dingey, and all
hands draw round the blazing fire; those that have taken the precaution
to bring dry clothes now donning them; and the others, who have been
less prudent, drying themselves in the grateful heat.

It is a strangely picturesque scene; the flickering blaze of the
fire lighting up the groups of men stretched on the sand in various
attitudes of negligent ease, their bare muscular limbs contrasting
in almost startling whiteness with their bearded faces, bronzed
almost black with exposure to the tropical sun. Some are drinking the
scalding hot tea, which is now passed round in pannikins; while others
are toasting fish, spitted on a stick for want of a more elaborate
apparatus, and served up on a biscuit; a few grains of powder from the
cartridges—which had been brought in case of an attack, supplying the
place of salt, which had of course been forgotten. Our hunger is too
great after our arduous exertions to notice any little defects in the
cooking, and a hearty meal is enjoyed by all. Soon a pleasant odour
of tobacco arises, as a circle is formed round a glorious fire, and a
measure of grog is handed round by a corporal to each man. This latter
luxury is supplied by the officers, who have in turn been indebted to
the men for the tea which they had hospitably pressed on them.

‘Now, my lads, for a song,’ says the officer in command; and after some
little demur as to who shall commence, a man strikes up an old sea-song
describing the wreck of the _Ramilies_, near Plymouth, a number of
verses with a chorus to each:

    With close-reefed tops’ls neatly spread,
    She sought for to weather the old Rame Head.

A fine effect is produced as the chorus is taken up by thirty deep
voices, many of the men, with a sailor’s natural aptitude for music,
singing the second and bass; and the unusual volume of sound drowns
for a moment the deafening noises of the beasts and insects that are
holding their usual nocturnal concert in the neighbouring jungle.

‘Well done the starboard watch!’ says a man when the song is concluded.
‘Now the port.’ And soon another song begins:

        ’Twas in Cawsand Bay lying,
        With the Blue-Peter flying,
    And all hands aboard for the anchor to weigh,
        There came a young lady,
        As fair as a May-day,
    And modestly hailing, this damsel did say—

I forget the exact words that the lady made use of, though the quaint
phraseology much amused me at the time, but I remember that she wanted
her true love, a seaman on board; but the captain declined her request,
although

        He said with emotion,
        ‘What son of the ocean
    But would his assistance to Ellen afford.’

In the climax, however, the lady unexpectedly turned the tables in her
favour, for

    Out of her pocket she hauls his discharge!

Chorus—

    For out of her pocket she hauls his discharge!

Song followed song after this, the crackling of the roaring fire and
the ceaseless din of the jungle forming an obligato accompaniment,
which somehow seemed appropriate to the occasion, till a gun from the
distant ship warned us that our time was up. Hereupon the officer in
charge sent a couple of hands to haul in the cutter, which had been
left at anchor in the river. Easier said than done, however, seeing
that after a prolonged absence they returned, looking somewhat alarmed,
and reported that they could not find the boat anywhere. This caused
rather a commotion among the party, which a whisper of ‘Pirates’ did
not diminish; so a rush was made for the rifles; and thus armed we
marched to the beach; but not a sign of the boat could be found. There
was just a chance that she had broken adrift; so the dingey was quickly
manned and shoved off in search; but almost directly a loud shout
announced that the cutter had been found full of water and apparently
sinking. A number of men swam off to her at once; but the steep banks
prevented our hauling her up; and we had just time, by dint of hard
work, to remove her sails, oars, &c., when she sank, leaving us to our
resources on the sand.

Our position looked unpleasant enough now, thus cast away in a
piratical district; and besides, the gathering clouds to windward,
of inky blackness, foretold to our experienced eyes that one of the
violent squalls of wind and rain called Sumatras, which are of daily
occurrence at this season, would soon be upon us. Seamen, however, are
the handiest of mortals; and in a surprisingly short space of time a
tent was rigged from the boats’ sails and spars, under which we all
huddled from the storm, which was now in full strength. How the rain
did come down! As if the very flood-gates of heaven were open! And how
the furious wind shook our frail tent till we expected every moment to
have it down about our ears. The situation was becoming every moment
the more trying, as with sails soaked through, we were subjected to
the full brunt of the awful drench. In spite of the trenches that we
had dug in the sand with our oars to serve as water-ways, we were soon
lying in a pool of water.

Strange to say, however, this was found rather a relief from the cold
breeze, and many men proceeded to deepen their beds so as to immerse
the whole body in water. Of the two elements the water was found to be
the warmer! All the mosquitoes within hail had of course made their
rendezvous in our tent; and even worse than they, the abominable
sand-flies commenced their assaults with such zeal that nothing was to
be heard but slaps and anathemas, bestowed with great impartiality.
Strange to say, many men actually slept calmly through all the din; but
most of us kept awake, singing and smoking; and so the wretched night
passed away till the last touch was given to our misery by seeing the
fire put out by an unusually heavy squall and rain. To supplement even
the last touch, a cruel stop was put to our smoking, as our matches had
become soaked and useless. Our pipe was literally put out; and as the
last drop of grog had been served out, we had to content ourselves with
singing and yarning till the first faint streaks of dawn appeared and
the rain ceased.

What miserable, bedraggled creatures we were when the morning sun
broke bright and cloudless on the beach, our dripping clothes stained
with mud and sand, and our faces so swollen with bites that it was
with difficulty we could recognise each other! However it did not do
to stand and shiver—that is an absurdity which Jack has never been
guilty of—so one party set to work trying to light a fire with the
help of a cartridge (a futile endeavour, everything being so soaked);
while others endeavoured to launch the cutter, which was lying high
and dry on the mud, a large hole in her bottom explaining the hitherto
unaccountable mystery of her sinking. Our ingenuity was fully taxed in
our attempts to again wed the somewhat unwieldy craft to the water;
but Jack’s resources seem never to fail him, as with many an ingenious
artifice we at length succeed in patching the leak and floating the
cutter.

We were hungry enough by this time to eat anything; but it was no use
piping to breakfast, for we had no food; and even had we caught some
more fish, they were no use without a fire, and all attempts to create
even a spark had been in vain. So we sauntered about the beach or tried
to penetrate the jungle; in the latter case getting well bitten for our
pains by the red ants, till our eyes were gladdened by the sight of two
boats pulling in our direction from the ship. This was lucky, for we
had just decided on risking the passage in the cutter. It was a long
time before the boats could reach us, for they too had a difficulty
in finding the channel; but at last they pulled into the river and
landed with some provisions. Oh, how enjoyable was that glass of rum!
How precious the matches wherewith to rekindle the beloved baccy! Even
the raw pork was pleasant enough to our hungry stomachs. But after
we had lit our pipes, we forgot all our troubles, and expressed our
willingness to remain another night and have some more fun. It was
not to be, however. Our relief brought us orders to return aboard
immediately; and in another hour we found ourselves alongside the ship,
receiving the congratulations and chaff of our shipmates, and after all
none the worse for our seining-party.




HELENA, LADY HARROGATE.


CHAPTER XVII.—AT OLD PLUGGER’S.

London boarding-houses being regulated by no statute law, and as little
liable to the supervision of the police and the interference of the
Right Honourable the Secretary of State for the Home Department as are
other free commercial concerns, are very much harder to classify than
are London hotels, inns, and public-houses. Their very exterior, which
is decorated by no gaudy signs or gold-lettered inscriptions relative
to viands, neat wines or cordials, might cause them to be mistaken for
schools, workshops, or private dwellings. Even when a brass plate on
the door bears the name of Bloss or Grewer or Pawkins—people who keep
boarding-houses do appear, for some inscrutable reason, to parade the
oddest patronymics—nobody not enlightened enough to know who Pawkins,
Bloss, or Grewer may be, would gather much information from the laconic
announcement. In all London there was not, taking one place with
another, a much queerer boarding-house than one which stood on the
Southwark or Surrey side of the Thames, and so nearly opposite to the
Tower that the gaunt turrets of the grim old fortress were always (save
in a fog of peculiar density) visible from its upper windows. This
boarding-house, at the corner of what was called Dampier’s Row, was
very solidly built, chiefly as it would seem, of the massive timbers
of ships dissected in the breakers’ yards close by; and with its
bow-windows and bulging outline, seemed to stand hard by the water’s
edge, like some sturdy collier craft that had accidentally got stranded
and was trying to accustom itself to life ashore. This particular
boarding-house, the green door of which bore no distinguishing mark,
was known in the neighbourhood and far along the river below bridge, as
‘Old Plugger’s.’

Whether there was a Plugger still in existence or not, it may be
surmised that the original and veteran possessor of that name had
enjoyed a widespread connection among mariners, for most of the present
inmates of the house were seafaring persons. Most, but not all. And of
the nautical boarders at Plugger’s none were common seamen. The title
of ‘Captain’ was in as constant requisition within its weather-bleached
porch, overgrown with scarlet-runners, as it could possibly be at a
military club farther west. Two-thirds of the swarthy, restless-eyed
customers claimed to have a right to that honorary prefix, or at
the least to have been ‘officers’ of one branch or another of the
mercantile marine. The remainder, apparently attracted to the spot by
the smell of the tar and paint from the neighbouring wharfs, or by
the sight of the forest of masts that rose up between them and the
Middlesex shore, or by congenial company, had much to say as to gulches
and placers and auriferous river-bars, and gold-dust which, after
months of toil and hunger, had been fooled away in a week’s mad revel;
and colossal fortunes that could infallibly be realised by any one who
had a pitiful thousand pounds at command, and would be guided by sound
advice as to its investment.

It was not a cheap boarding-house, according to the tariff of such
establishments, this one of Old Plugger’s. Rivals and humbler imitators
held it in respect, for it was a thriving concern. Its rooms seldom
stood empty for long, and its frequenters somehow found the wherewithal
to pay their score. It was not a noisy place; by no means comparable
to the riotous dens about Tiger Bay and elsewhere, or to the sailors’
publics at Wapping or Rotherhithe; but now and then there was a din
from within it, a shouting of hoarse voices, a trampling of heavy feet,
a crashing of woodwork or of glass, and then silence. And if just then
a patrol of the police happened to be passing down the main street, and
some one said that the disturbance was at Old Plugger’s, the sergeant
would shake his head as meaningly as Lord Burleigh in the _Critic_. But
nobody seemed to care to inquire too curiously into the nature of the
altercation in what was euphemistically known, among the trades-folk of
the vicinity, as the captains’ boarding-house.

It was, as has been said with reference to contemporary events at
Carbery, sultry August weather, and if it was hot even on the spurs
of breezy Dartmoor, assuredly it was hotter in the east of London.
The strong sun brought out with great effect the combined perfumes of
pitch and paint, of gas refuse and train-oil, of tide-mud and fried
flat-fish, of old tarpaulins, rotten timber, and animal and vegetable
refuse, never so pungent as beside the Thames. Society, gasping for
air of purer quality than that town-made article which during the
season and the parliamentary session it had respired perforce, had left
London. But the captains who patronised Plugger’s bore the loss of
Society with philosophical equanimity, and were content to incur, by
stopping where they were, a reputation for being wholly unfashionable.

A controversy might have been waged with reference to Old Plugger’s as
to which was the back and which the front of that hospitable mansion.
The main-door certainly opened on the street, or rather row, named
in honour of Dampier, and by the position of a main-door that of a
house-front is commonly to be determined. But then Plugger’s turned
all its smiles, all its attractions towards the river. The best rooms
were on that side, with their bow-windows and lumbering balconies; and
there was even a narrow strip of garden, where snails ran riot among
the neglected cabbages and tall sunflowers, and where the half of an
old boat, set on end and festooned with sweet-pea and the inevitable
scarlet-runner, did duty for an arbour, perilously near to the wash and
ripple of the flood-tide.

In the broad wooden balcony that projected from the low first-floor
of Plugger’s and in part overhung this delectable garden, were some
six or seven men in their shirt sleeves mostly, for coolness’ sake,
but otherwise not ill clad. Through the open bow-windows of the
long room of which the balcony was an appendage, glimpses might be
caught of some ten or twelve other customers, very similar in garb
and bearing to those outside. It was early as yet, and breakfast—as
betokened by the empty cups, empty bottles, and confusion of knives
and forks and dirty plates—was already over. Some of the company
were smoking a solemn morning pipe of the yard-long ‘churchwarden’
variety, affected by sea-going persons when on shore; two seated at a
round-table were engaged in a game at cards; and one copper-visaged
and gray-haired captain, with a glass of steaming rum-and-water at
his elbow, sat on the flat top of the wooden balustrade itself, and
alternately swept the waters with the aid of a gleaming brass-bound
telescope, or glanced critically at the cards and the players. In all
this there was nothing to distinguish Plugger’s from many another
long-shore boarding-house, wherein mates and skippers take their
spell of rest, as it were, between the hardships of the last voyage
and those of the next; and those who have seen much of men of this
class are aware how much of sterling worth is apt to underlie the
harmless peculiarities traditional to the calling. But a physiognomist
who should have, himself unseen, accompanied some Asmodeus bent on
taking a bird’s-eye view of the company, could scarcely have failed
to draw his own deductions from the countenances thus beheld. There
were faces there in plenty which would have seemed in keeping with
their surroundings had they been seen above the bulwarks of a long,
black-hulled schooner, rakish as to her masts, and clean and sharp as
to her run and cut-water, beating to windward off the Isle of Pines,
or within sight of the mountain mass of Cuba. There were others,
newly shaven, that would have harmonised well with a shaggy beard and
tattered cabbage-palm hat, surmounting the red shirt and pistol-studded
belt of the Australian bushranger. And again, others which might be
conceived to have been tanned to their mahogany hue by the reflection
of the sun from the tawny surface of some African river, where,
behind the mangrove swamp, might be seen the cane-thatched top of
the barracoon, where the cargo of ‘live ebony’ lay shackled. A very
dangerous set of scamps, unless their looks belied them, were the bulk
of Plugger’s patrons, and the more dangerous perhaps because they were
not reckless—because they knew how to abstain from the overdose of
liquor that sets the brain afloat and loosens the tongue.

‘Let me tell yew, mister, yew’d be riddled, yew would, like any
catamount treed, ef yew played thet sorter game in Georgia, whar I war
raised, yew would,’ suddenly exclaimed one of the card-players, whose
nasal drawl would of itself have revealed his nationality. ‘Thet’s
three times I’ve seen yew try to pass the king.’

‘Don’t cry afore you ’re hurt,’ retorted his adversary, whose air and
tone were those of a sailor, and whose muscular wrists, emerging from
shirt-cuffs linked by heavy sleeve-buttons of silver, were ornamented
by mermaids and anchors and true-lovers’ knots in blue tattooing
of the true salt-water pattern. ‘Guess this child wasn’t born last
week, shipmate! Haven’t I sported the pasteboard at New York with
Dead Rabbits; at New Orleans with Plug-uglies; and in California with
fellows that stuck the points of their bowies in the table afore they
set to a hand at poker! You’re a nice hand to tax a man with cheating,
you, with two court cards up your sleeve now!’

The American, who was spare and lightly built, compared with the
opposite player, scowled as he thrust his bony right hand into an
inner pocket of the loose coat which he alone of all the occupants of
the balcony wore. It may have been for the concealment of the cards
alluded to; it may have been to get a grasp of some hidden weapon. The
latter was the supposition that the most commended itself to the other
gamester.

‘Shew your hand, Sam Barks!’ he said roughly, grasping a Dutch bottle,
probably containing Schiedam, which stood in company with two glasses
on the table, ‘or I’——

‘Belay there, you brace of babies!’ interrupted the copper-visaged
captain, thrusting his flashing telescope and his metallic face betwixt
the disputants. ‘Dog don’t eat dog, my mates! I always was agin play
between friends.—Sam, my lad, you won’t make much out of Captain
Hold.—Dick, my Trojan, you’ll not find the American quite as green as
spinach. Draw your stakes, my heroes, and let’s shake hands and have
a drink all round, for the renewal of friendship!’ And this singular
specimen of a peacemaker flourished his glass, swallowed its contents,
and rattled the teaspoon against its sides until this substitute for a
bell attracted the notice of a watchful attendant, wearing a striped
cotton jacket, such as cabin-boys in hot latitudes affect.

‘Three grogs, steward, and a goodish squeeze of lemon in mine, d’ye
hear?’ called out he of the copper countenance; and the dark-skinned
mulatto lad who was called ‘steward,’ as factotums in _The Traveller’s
Rest_ were called Deputy, nodded his woolly head, and was not long in
bringing the desired refreshment. The kettle must have been kept always
boiling, even on hot August mornings, at Plugger’s, so ready was the
supply of steaming spirits and water.

‘Ah! my boys,’ said the venerable founder of the feast, as he took a
second sip at the potent liquor, ‘here’s a blue blazing day for ye—puts
me in mind, and you too mayhap, of a morning in the doldrums, where
sun is sun, and the very sea seems to simmer like a can of hot broth.
I’d like to smell blue water again, I would. I’d an offer, Monday,
to command a decentish brig, West Ingies and Demerary way; regular
molasses wagon; but old as I am, I’d rather have another bout in the
South Seas. Black-birding for the Fiji and Queensland labour market is
about the best sport a man can have, since they spoiled the fun we used
to have off the West Coast.’

‘Ay, but that game’s pretty near played out too,’ answered Hold
meditatively. ‘Why, you yourself, Captain Grincher, lost your schooner
that the man-o’-war captured off the Solomons, and were tried at Sydney
for what the government fellows called kidnapping. No; give me Chinese
waters, and a handy crew aboard a bit of a fast-sailing lorcha to’——

‘Gentlemen, gentlemen!’ broke in the American, now in a good temper;
‘allow me to say it air a pity to see men of your talents a-huddling of
’em into corners wheer they’ll fail of their just reward. Now, listen,
ef I could but get together a few spirited citizens and, mind ye, the
handful of coin necessary for preliminary expenses, this child could
point the place where lies, in fourteen fathom water, the treasure-ship
_Happy Land_ that left San Francisco, bound for New York, in the fall
of ’49, and never was heard of more. She had the value, in dust and
bars, of’——

But the precise amount of the golden freight which, on board the _Happy
Land_, awaited the bold explorers who should reach that sunken vessel,
is not destined to be set down in these pages, for the coloured steward
at this juncture appeared holding a letter between his dusky finger and
thumb. ‘For Cap’en Hold,’ said the mulatto; and Hold, recognising the
handwriting, jumped to his feet in a trice, and snatched rather than
received the envelope which the dark Ganymede of Plugger’s held out to
him; and tearing it open, read as follows: ‘Come, and come at once.
There is no time to lose. Something has occurred—something which makes
your presence necessary. Come by noonday train. I will be at the park
gate to the north soon after ten o’clock. Meet me there.’ The letter
was signed ‘Ruth Willis.’

Hold’s mind was instantly made up. ‘I must heave anchor in a hurry,’
he said, as he thrust back the letter into his pocket. ‘So good-bye,
Grincher; and good-bye, Barks!’ and without further delay, he withdrew
to prepare for the journey to Carbery. To pay his reckoning, to push
some needful articles into a bag, and to consign his sea-chest to the
custody of the authorities of Plugger’s, well used to similar trusts,
took but half an hour; and when the mid-day train started for the west
of England it carried with it a second-class passenger, whose only
luggage was a black bag, and who could easily have been mistaken for
a man-o’-war’s man bound for Plymouth, there to rejoin one of those
_Hornets_ or _Monkeys_ which have superseded the _Arethusas_ and
_Hermiones_ of the past.

Arrived at the station most convenient for his purpose, Hold trudged
sturdily on until he reached his old quarters at _The Traveller’s
Rest_, where he installed his bag in one of those single-bedded rooms
which were always at the service of so solvent a customer as Mr Hold,
who, while inland and among shore-going folks, dropped his titular
distinction of captain. After supper, the fresh arrival at _The Rest_
sallied forth, and making his way to Carbery, waited, pacing softly to
and fro, under the shelter of the park wall.


CHAPTER XVIII.—UNDER THE PARK WALL.

All through that August day which witnessed the hurried journey of Mr
Richard Hold, master mariner, from the river-side bowers of Plugger’s
to the silvan shades of _The Traveller’s Rest_, Sir Sykes Denzil’s ward
was in a state of feverish agitation, which it was hard for even her
to conceal from those about her. We may fairly own that women surpass
us in the social diplomacy which they study from the cradle almost,
and that their powers of suppressing what they feel—not seldom from a
noble motive—are greater than ours. All of us must have wondered, as we
read the marvellous narratives of such prisoners as Trenck and Latude,
at the patient ingenuity that could contrive rope-ladders out of the
flax thread of shirts, files out of scraps of rusty iron, tools from
any fragment of metal that came to hand. None the less should we be
astonished at the power of dissembling evinced by the captives on the
watch for the propitious moment to break prison.

What Ruth dreaded above all other things was what a woman always does
dread, the scrutiny of her own sex. That men are credulous, careless,
prone to give credit to the shallowest excuse, readily hoodwinked, and
easy to pacify, has been an article of faith with Eve’s daughters
since prehistoric times. The real spy to be feared, the real censor
before whom to tremble, is decidedly feminine, in the estimation of
women who have anything to hide. Ruth therefore devoted her whole
attention to keeping up a brave outside before the eyes of her
guardian’s daughters, Blanche and Lucy, two as honestly unsuspicious
girls as could be met with in all Devonshire.

But as all _a priori_ reasoning is tainted with the fatal flaw of
bad logic, Ruth forgot Jasper Denzil, still shut up in the house on
account of his recent accident, and whose crooked mind had not much to
do save to employ itself in fathoming the crooked ways of others. Now
a man, if circumstances coerce him to limit his powers of observation
to the narrow sphere of domesticity, is capable of becoming a spy more
formidable than women would readily admit. If he sees less, he reasons
more cogently as to what he does see, and he has the further advantage
of being an unsuspected scout from whom no danger is anticipated.

Jasper Denzil had excellent reasons for the profound mistrust with
which he regarded the Indian orphan. The very presence beneath his
father’s roof of such a one as Ruth was in itself a standing puzzle and
challenge to his curiosity. That she was Hold’s sister, the sister of a
coarse-mannered adventurer of humble birth, was what the captain could
not bring himself to believe. For Ruth seemed innately a lady. Either
she must have had the advantages of gentle nurture and education, or as
an actress in the never-ending social drama she displayed consummate
skill. But whatever might have been her birth (and there were times
when he was tempted to fancy that in her he saw that young sister of
his own, long dead, the date of whose decease was supposed to coincide
with that of the sad mood which had become habitual to Sir Sykes),
Jasper with just cause regarded her as a most artful person.

The ex-cavalry officer remembered well enough that interview between
Sir Sykes and Hold, at which he had played the part of an unsuspected
audience. The demand to which his father had acceded was that Sir
Sykes should receive in a false character Hold’s sister as an inmate
of Carbery. True the seafaring fellow—smuggler, pirate, or whatever he
might be—had laughed mockingly, and had spoken in strangely ironical
accents when dictating to the baronet on this subject. But be she who
she might, Ruth must be either an accomplished schemer or the willing
instrument of others, or she would not have been where she was.

It may have been a petty malice, suited to his feline nature, that
caused Jasper on that particular night to remain down-stairs later than
usual, causing his sisters also to defer their retiring to rest for an
extra half-hour. They kept early hours at Carbery as a rule, as rich
people, in the profound dullness of the dignified ease which is not
enlivened by guests, are sometimes apt to do. Sir Sykes, who always
stayed long enough in the drawing-room to sip his coffee, was the first
to disappear; but no one save himself and his valet knew when he left
the library for his bedroom. When the captain was in health it was his
custom to spend an hour or two in trying rare combinations of skill
and luck among the ivory balls in the billiard-room; but since the
steeplechase he had been glad to retire unfashionably early.

It was because he fancied that Miss Willis was impatiently awaiting the
moment for separating for the night, that Jasper chose to delay it; but
at length the time came when the good-nights had been exchanged, and
the drawing-room was abandoned. Captain Denzil’s room, which adjoined
the picture-gallery on the first-floor, was immediately beneath that
occupied by the Indian orphan. Repeatedly, after he reached it, did
Jasper fancy that he heard a light swift step overhead, as if Sir
Sykes’s ward were hurrying to and fro; and then his sharpened ear
caught the sound of a stealthy tread upon the oaken staircase.

Extinguishing the lights for the time being, Captain Denzil threw open
his window, which overlooked the park; and by the time his eyes grew
somewhat accustomed to the darkness, he saw, or thought he saw, a
female form glide from under the black shadow of the giant sycamores
and flit bat-like away through the solitary gloom.

‘If it were not for this provoking arm,’ said the captain, who was
still, despite the skilful care of worthy little Dr Aulfus from
Pebworth, suffering less from his hurts than from the Nemesis that dogs
the steps of the hard-liver, ‘I’d win the odd trick to-night. But if I
can’t follow to see who it is that she meets, at anyrate I shall get a
second peep at yonder ingenuous creature when she comes back. A rare
moonless night it is for such an errand!’

Jasper’s eyes had not deceived him. It was Ruth whose slight figure had
passed away into the deepening shadows of the night, crossing the park
towards its northern boundary, which abutted upon the broken country
leading to the royal forest, treeless, but none the less in sound law
the forest of Dartmoor. It was so dark that even one better accustomed
to the locality might have failed to keep to the right course among
narrow and grass-grown paths, many of them trodden by no human foot,
but by the cloven hoofs of the deer trooping down to pool or pasture.

Yet Ruth threaded her devious way past holt and thicket, past pond
and hollow, almost as well as the oldest keeper on the estate would
have done, and presently gained the gate which, as has been already
remarked, stood always open on the northern side of the park,
corresponding to that on the southern or seaward side, for, as has
been said, the public had an ancient right or user to traverse Carbery
Chase. But as a right of ingress for men might imply a right of egress
for deer, some zigzag arrangement of iron bars had been set up,
screen-like, at either extremity of the footpath, and this effectually
restrained the roving propensities of the antlered herd within.

‘So—you are late, Ruth! I have kicked about here, till I began to think
you’d thrown me over. No wonder, living among fine folks, that you’re
getting to care little how long a rough fellow like yours to command is
kept on the look-out.’

Such was the surly greeting of the stout sailor-like man whom Ruth
found irritably pacing to and fro under the lee of the wall.

‘I could not come, brother, one moment earlier without arousing
suspicion that might be the ruin of us both,’ answered the girl
steadily, but in a conciliatory tone. ‘And what, after all, signify
a few minutes more or less of expectation, compared with a life of
constant effort, constant watchfulness, and the sense of depending on
one’s self alone in the midst of enemies who sleep beneath the same
roof and feed at the same table? I tell you that the tension on my
nerves is far greater than I ever dreamed that it could be, and that
there are times when I even fancy that I shall be driven mad by the
strain imposed upon me of playing a part, ever and always, without rest
or respite!’

Ruth’s voice as she proceeded had grown shrill and tremulous with the
effect of the emotions, long pent up, that found expression at last,
and she pressed her slender hand upon her heated brow with a gesture
which Hold was not slow to mark.

‘Come, come, Missy,’ he said in accents far more gentle than those
which he had first employed; ‘you’ve taken this thing, whatever it is,
too much to heart. See, now; I’d never have suggested the plan if I
had not believed that in the house of Sir Sykes Denzil, Baronet, you’d
have been like a fish in water. Didn’t we always call you in joke “My
Lady,” and that because your ways weren’t as our plain ways? Haven’t
you got your head stuffed as full of book-learning as an egg is full of
meat? Aren’t you dainty and proud and what not? Till folks declared, to
be sister o’ mine, you must have been changed at nurse. And now do you
find it a hardship to have to consort with yon Denzil people?—not your
equals, I’ll be bound, if all had their due.’

‘You can’t understand me, Brother Dick,’ said the girl softly, and
turning away her face. ‘Give me, I say, a real stand-point; let not my
life be a lie, and I should fear no comparison with those who are daily
my dupes. But I hold my tenure of the bed I sleep on, the bread I eat,
by mere sufferance, and I see no way as yet to’——

‘That fop—the dandy Lancer fellow—Captain Jasper don’t seem to take
to you then?’ asked Hold; and Ruth winced perceptibly at the blunt
question.

‘Captain Denzil will never, I imagine, care very much for any one but
his dear self,’ she answered gently. ‘Now that he is an invalid—though
he will soon be out and about again—he thinks that he pays me no small
compliment in preferring my conversation to the insipid society of his
excellent sisters. But I no more expect a proposal of marriage from
Jasper Denzil than I expect the sky to fall.’

‘That’s a pity,’ said Hold dryly; and then a pause ensued. ‘You didn’t
send for me, Missy, to tell me that?’ he added, after some moments
spent in thought.

‘No!’ returned Ruth in her low clear voice. ‘I sent for you that you
might read a letter—how obtained I leave you to guess—which concerns us
both. Have you the means of doing so?’

‘Catch me without light, Missy!’ complacently replied the seaman,
drawing from one of his deep coat-pockets a small dark-lantern, which
he lighted. ‘Now for this letter,’ he said; and receiving it from
Ruth’s hand, read it attentively twice over. As he did so, some rays
from the shaded lantern that he held illumined his resolute face.

‘Wilkins, eh? Enoch Wilkins. That’s the name the craft hails by;
and he’s a land-shark, it seems,’ muttered Hold, as he refolded the
document.

‘He is a London lawyer, as you see,’ explained Ruth; ‘and all I know
of him, gleaned from various sources, is that he was the captain’s
creditor for a large sum, which Sir Sykes has very recently paid. He
is, I gather, a sort of turf solicitor of no very good repute, and has
somehow a grip on poor weak Sir Sykes. Now the baronet, I feel sure,
has but one secret’——

‘That, you may be certain of!’ interjected Hold.

‘And this man knows it and trades on it,’ said the baronet’s ward
eagerly; ‘and in doing so his path crosses ours. See! The word
“others,” which is underlined, must surely have reference to you and
me. Rely on it, he has an inkling of our plans, and may counteract
them.’

‘Take the wind out of my sails, will he, eh?’ said Hold grimly, and
with a threatening gesture.

‘Brother Dick, Brother Dick, when will you learn wisdom!’ said his
sister, smiling. ‘Your buccaneer tricks of clenched fist and angry
frown are as out of place in peaceable England as it would be to strut
about with pistols and cutlass. You are not on the West Coast now, or
off the Isle of Pines, or in the Straits of Malacca, to carry things
with a high hand. Our plain course is to make an ally, not an enemy of
this lawyer. He knows much, but perhaps not all, and may be induced to
accept as true the story that has been told to Sir Sykes. In any case,
he cannot be very scrupulous; and will not be desirous, by bringing
about a dispute and a scandal, to kill the goose that lays the golden
eggs. The baronet’s purse is deep enough for all of us.’

‘You’re right!’ rejoined the sailor, with a whistle that was meant
to express unbounded admiration for his sister’s shrewdness. ‘I’ll
make tracks to London, and see what terms can be made with Commodore
Wilkins, before he shews his face here.’

‘Tell him nothing that he does not know,’ said Ruth, as the pair
separated.

‘Trust me for that!’ was Hold’s confident reply.

Jasper, still at his window, caught but a glimpse of the girl’s slight
form as it glided by and re-entered the house.

_To be continued._




RECOLLECTIONS OF THE IRISH BAR.


If the walls of the Dublin ‘Four Courts’ could speak, how many a
pleasant story and witty repartee and sparkling bon-mot they could
tell! Let me recall and string together some of these pearls of
anecdote and wit, some of which, though perhaps not altogether new to
lovers of anecdote, may well bear repetition.

The first Viscount Guillamore, when Chief Baron O’Grady, was remarkable
for his dry humour and biting wit. The latter was so fine that its
sarcasm was often unperceived by the object against whom the shaft was
directed.

A legal friend, extremely studious, but in conversation notoriously
dull, was once shewing off to him his newly-built house. The bookworm
prided himself especially on a sanctum he had contrived for his own
use, so secluded from the rest of the building that he could pore over
his books in private quite secure from disturbance.

‘Capital!’ exclaimed the Chief Baron. ‘You surely could, my dear
fellow, read and study here from morning till night, and no human
being be _one bit the wiser_.’

A young and somewhat dull tyro at the bar pleading before him
commenced: ‘My lord, my unfortunate client’—— then stopped, hemmed,
hawed, hesitated. Again he began: ‘My lord, my most unfortunate
client’—— Another stop, more hemming and confusion.

‘Pray go on, sir,’ said the Chief Baron. ‘So far the court is with you.’

       *       *       *       *       *

In those days, before competitive examinations were known, men with
more interest than brains got good appointments, for the duties of
which they were wholly incompetent. Of such was the Honourable —— ——.
He was telling Lord Guillamore of the summary way in which he disposed
of matters in his court.

‘I say to the fellows that are bothering with foolish arguments, that
there’s no use in wasting my time and their breath; for that all their
talk only just goes in at one ear and out at the other.’

‘No great wonder in that,’ said O’Grady, ‘seeing that there’s so little
between to stop it.’

It was this worthy, who being at a public dinner shortly after he got
his place, had his health proposed by a waggish guest.

‘I will give you a toast,’ he said: ‘The Honourable —— ——, and long may
he continue indifferently to administer justice.’ The health was drunk
with much merriment, the object of it never perceiving what caused the
fun.

       *       *       *       *       *

Lord Guillamore could tell a story with inimitable humour. He used
to vary his voice according to the speakers, and act as it were the
scene he was describing, in a way infinitely diverting. Very droll was
his mimicry of a dialogue between the guard of the mail and a mincing
old lady with whom he once travelled from Cork to Dublin, in the old
coaching days.

The coach had stopped to change horses, and the guard, a big red-faced
jolly man, beaming with good-humour and civility, came bustling up to
the window to see if the ‘insides’ wanted anything.

‘Guard!’ whispered the old lady.

‘Well, ma’am, what can I do for you?’

‘Could you’—in a faint voice—‘could you get me a glass of water?’

‘To be sure, ma’am; with all the pleasure in life.’

‘And guard!’—still fainter—‘I’d—hem—I’d—a—like it hot.’

‘_Hot_ water! Oh, all right, ma’am! Why not, if it’s plazing to you?’

‘With a lump of sugar, guard, if you please.’

‘By all manner of means, ma’am.’

‘And—and—guard dear’—as the man was turning to go away—‘a small squeeze
of lemon, and a little—just a thimbleful—of spirits through it.’

‘Och, isn’t that _punch_!’ shouted the guard. ‘Where was the good of
beating about the bush? Couldn’t you have asked out for a tumbler of
punch at once, ma’am, like a man!’

Another favourite story was of a trial at quarter-sessions in Mayo,
which developed some of the ingenious resources of Paddy when he
chooses to exercise his talent in an endeavour not to pay. A doctor
had summoned a man for the sum of one guinea, due for attendance on
the man’s wife. The _medico_ proved his case, and was about to retire
triumphant, when the defendant humbly begged leave to ask him a few
questions. Permission was granted, and the following dialogue took
place.

_Defendant._ ‘Docthor, you remember when I called on you?’

_Doctor._ ‘I do.’

_Defendant._ ‘What did I say?’

_Doctor._ ‘You said your wife was sick, and you wished me to go and see
her.’

_Defendant._ ‘What did you say?’

_Doctor._ ‘I said I would, if you’d pay me my fee.’

_Defendant._ ‘What did I say?’

_Doctor._ ‘You said you’d pay the fee, if so be you knew what it was.’

_Defendant._ ‘What did you say?’

_Doctor._ ‘I said I’d take the guinea at first, and maybe more at the
end, according to the sickness.’

_Defendant._ ‘Now, docthor, by vartue of your oath, didn’t I say: “Kill
or cure, docthor, I’ll give you a guinea?” And didn’t you say: “Kill or
cure, I’ll take it?”’

_Doctor._ ‘You did; and I agreed to the bargain. And I want the guinea
accordingly.’

_Defendant._ ‘Now, docthor, by vartue of your oath answer this: Did you
cure my wife?’

_Doctor._ ‘No; she’s dead. You know that.’

_Defendant._ ‘Then, docthor, by vartue of your oath answer this: Did
you kill my wife?’

_Doctor._ ‘No; she died of her illness.’

_Defendant_ (to the bench). ‘Your worship, see this. You heard him tell
our bargain. It was to kill or cure. By vartue of his oath, _he done
neither!_—and he axes the fee!’

The verdict, however, went against poor Pat, notwithstanding his
ingenuity.

       *       *       *       *       *

Something like the following story has been told before in these pages.
It will, however, bear repetition. Mr F——, Clerk of the Crown for
Limerick, was over six feet high and stout in proportion. He was the
dread of the cabmen, and if their horses could have spoken, they would
not have blessed him.

One day when driving in the outlets of Dublin, they came to a long
and steep hill. Cabby got down, and walking alongside the cab, looked
significantly in at the windows. ‘His honour’ knew very well what he
meant; but the day was hot, and he was lazy and fat, and had no notion
of taking the hint and getting out to ease the horse while ‘larding the
lean earth’ himself. At last Paddy changed his tactics. Making a rush
at the cab, he suddenly opened the door, and then slammed it to with a
tremendous bang.

‘What’s that for?’ roared Mr F——, startled at the man’s violence and
the loud report.

‘Whist, yer honour! Don’t say a word!’ whispered Paddy, putting his
finger on his lips.

‘But what do you mean, sirrah?’ cried the fare.

‘Arrah, can’t ye hush, sir? Spake low now—do. Sure, ’tis letting on I
am to the little mare that your honour’s got out to walk. Don’t let her
hear you, and the craythur ’ll have more heart to face the hill if she
thinks you’re not inside, and that ’tis only the cab that’s throubling
her.’

       *       *       *       *       *

Baron R——, one of the gravest and most decorous judges on the bench,
had a younger brother singularly unlike him, who was a perpetual thorn
in his side. A scapegrace at school, the youth would learn nothing, and
was the torment of his teachers. Having been set a sum by one of the
latter, he, after an undue delay, presented himself before the desk and
held up his slate, at one corner of which appeared a pile of coppers.

‘What is the meaning of all this, sir?’ said the master.

‘Oh!’ cried the youth, ‘I’m very sorry, sir, but I really can’t help
it. All the morning I’ve been working at that sum. Over and over again
I’ve tried, but in spite of all I can do, it will not come right. So
I’ve made up the difference in halfpence, and there it is on the slate.’

The originality of the device disarmed the wrath of the pedagogue, and
young R—— was dismissed with his coppers to his place.

The youngster when grown up boasted an enormous pair of whiskers, of
which he was very proud. One day a friend met him walking up Dame
Street with one of these cherished bushy adornments shaved clean off,
giving a most comical lop-sided appearance to his physiognomy.

‘Hollo, R——!’ he exclaimed, ‘what has become of your whisker?’

‘Lost it at play,’ he replied. ‘Regularly cleaned out last night at the
gaming-table of every mortal thing I had—nothing left to wager but my
whisker.’

‘And why, man, don’t you cut off the rest, and not have one side of
your face laughing at the other?’

‘I’m keeping that for to-night,’ said the scamp with a wink, as he
passed on.

       *       *       *       *       *

The father of the Lord Chancellor—afterwards Lord Plunket—was a very
simple-minded man. Kindly and unsuspicious, he was often imposed upon,
and the Chancellor used to tell endless stories illustrative of his
parent’s guileless nature.

One morning, Mr Plunket taking an early walk was overtaken by two
respectable-looking men, carpenters apparently by trade, each carrying
the implements of his work.

‘Good-morning, my friends,’ said the old gentleman; ‘you are early
afoot. Going on a job, eh?’

‘Good-morrow kindly, sir; yes, we are; and a quare job too. The quarest
and the most out-of-the-way you ever heard of, I’ll be bound, though
you’ve lived long in the world, and heard and read of many a thing.
Oh, you’ll never guess it, your honour, so I may as well tell at once.
We’re going to cut the legs off a dead man.’

‘What!’ cried his hearer, aghast. ‘You don’t mean’——

‘Yes, indeed, ’tis true for me; and here’s how it come about. Poor
Mary Neil’s husband—a carpenter like ourselves, and an old comrade—has
been sick all the winter, and departed life last Tuesday. What with
the grief and the being left on the wide world with her five orphans,
and no one to earn bit or sup for them, the craythur is fairly out of
her mind—stupid from the crying and the fret; for what does she do,
poor woman, but send the wrong measure for the coffin; and when it come
home it was ever so much too short! Barney Neil was a tall man; nigh
six feet we reckoned him. He couldn’t be got into it, do what they
would; and the poor craythur hadn’t what would buy another. Where
would she get it, after the long sickness himself had, and with five
childher to feed and clothe? So, your honour, all that’s in it is to
cut the legs off him. Me and my comrade here is going to do it for the
desolate woman. We’ll just take ’em off at the knee-joints and lay them
alongside him in the coffin. I think, sir, now I’ve told you our job,
you’ll say ’tis the quarest ever you heard of.’

‘Oh!’ cried the old gentleman, ‘such a thing must not be done. It’s
impossible! How much will a new coffin cost?’

The carpenter named the sum, which was immediately produced, and
bestowed on him with injunctions to invest forthwith in the necessary
purchase.

The business, however, took quite an unexpected turn. Mr Plunket on
his return home related his matutinal adventure to his family at
breakfast, the future Chancellor, then a young barrister, being at the
table. Before the meal was ended, the carpenters made their appearance,
and with many apologies tendered back the coin they had received. He
who had been spokesman in the morning explained that on seeing the
gentleman in advance of them on the road, he had for a lark made a bet
with his companion that he would obtain the money; which, having won
his wager, he now refunded. Genuine Irish this!




MONSIEUR HOULOT.

IN THREE CHAPTERS.


CHAPTER III.—TO-MORROW—LIBERTY.

There is no phrase of abuse so apparently innocent and yet so cutting
and disturbing as that, ‘I know all about you.’ It asserts nothing
of which one can take hold, and yet it implies a great deal that may
well be offensive. It is customary to say that the life of the best of
men, could it be subjected to the full glare of daylight in all its
bearings, would be found more or less spotty and blemished; and perhaps
it is this secret consciousness of hidden iniquities that gives such
force to the innuendo.

But in the mouth of Houlot, who you will remember made use of the
expression, and thus caused his speedy expulsion from my premises, the
phrase was one that gave us all considerable uneasiness. Did he really
know anything about my connection with the firm of Collingwood Dawson?
It seemed hardly likely that he would have come to borrow money of me,
had such been the case. But this, after all, might have merely been a
device to throw dust in our eyes. His visit might have been a spying
one, for the purpose of seeing how the land lay. He might indeed have
seen his wife and recognised her.

Mrs Collingwood was full of terror lest such should have been the case.
She dreaded that he was coming to claim her. Every passing footstep,
every ring at the bell of the outer gate caused her a vivid throb of
fear. For my own part I did not think the danger thus great in that
direction. It was hardly likely that a man who had taken such pains to
escape from a tie that must have been profoundly irksome to him, would
wish to renew it now. His habits were fixed and eccentric, and probably
he would be as much dismayed at the prospect of being claimed by his
wife, as she would at the idea of going back to him. These thoughts I
did not divulge to Mrs Collingwood. They suggested to me, however, a
plan of action.

I determined to go and see M. Houlot, to beard the lion in his den.
Probably I should be ill-treated and abused for my pains; but it was
worth the trial. Houlot’s house was, as I have said, on the slope of
one of the hills overlooking the town, the top of which was fringed
with forest, whilst all down the sides were houses with terraced
gardens, full of greenery, and with dividing walls covered thick with
vines and pear-trees. It was a tall, timbered house, occupied by many
families; and a common staircase, rickety and creaky, but with fine old
carved oak balusters, led to the various floors. Houlot lived on the
fourth stage, I found; and I made my way up panting, and not without
fear lest the boards should give way beneath me. A sempstress who was
busily at work in one of the rooms with her door wide open and her
children scattered about the landing, indicated the door of Houlot’s
room, and told me that she had just seen him go in.

I knocked several times without any one taking notice of me. Finally,
after I had made a considerable din, the door was suddenly opened and
Houlot stood before me.

‘What do you want?’ he cried, after glaring at me a few moments from
under his pent-house brows. ‘Have you come to bring me the money?’

‘Let me come in and explain matters,’ I said.

He looked doubtfully at me for a moment, and then sullenly drew on one
side and allowed me to pass in. His room was bare of furniture, except
for one square deal table and a chair without a back. In one corner of
the room a mattress and blanket were spread on the floor, in another a
lot of books and papers were heaped confusedly together, all covered
by a thick mantle of dust. A small cooking stove stood in the middle
of the room, the black iron pipe from which went through a hole into
the huge chimney; and a large open fireplace, which had once warmed
the room, was covered with a rough framework of planks and sacking.
The aspect of the place was squalid and comfortless, but it had one
redeeming feature—there was a splendid view from the open window. A
great fold of shining river, inclosing a stretch of marsh-land and wide
green prairie, dotted with feathery aspens and monumental poplars,
among which shewed here and there a cluster of farm buildings, and
an occasional church spire. A black morose-looking windmill, with
sails pugnaciously stretched out, as if daring an attack from some
nineteenth-century Don Quixote, stood solitary on its grass toft. Range
upon range of hills inclosed the landscape, dappled with the shadow of
the lazy clouds; with here a dark ravine, and there a white gleaming
chalk cliff.

‘You are well placed here,’ I said, making for the window. There was an
overpowering smell of brandy in the room, that made one feel quite sick
this fine summer morning. ‘You have a splendid view.’

‘Well enough for that,’ growled Houlot. ‘But what is the good of a view
to a hungry man?’

I noticed now that he looked haggard and starved, and that there was an
unhealthy fiery flush upon his face and a wild look in his eyes, as if
he had been drinking without eating for a good while.

‘You need not go hungry unless you like,’ I said. ‘I can’t lend you all
the money you ask for; but anything you want for daily needs I will let
you have till you get your remittances from England.’

‘I have no remittances coming from England,’ said Houlot. ‘I have given
up writing for the rascal who filched my work. But if you will only
let me have that five-pound note we will put matters on a different
footing. Let me shew up Collingwood Dawson!’

‘Yes, that’s all very well; but what will you gain by it?’

‘I shall vindicate my own name.’

‘What! the name of Houlot?’

He winced, but retorted angrily: ‘What business is it of yours what
name?’

‘If I lend you the money to carry out your plans, it seems that I am
entitled to ask what chance I have to be repaid. But apart from that,
having vindicated your name, how many five-pound notes will it be
worth?’

‘Why, look here,’ he said; ‘if that rascal can make a reputation and
money by his stuff, which is only mine diluted and spoilt, surely for
the genuine work of the real man’——

‘If you are trusting to that, I must decline to advance any money for
the speculation. Why on earth, man, when you had a sufficient income
paid you regularly, and lived as you liked, did you give it up and
embark on a sea of trouble?’

‘Because I have a mission in this world, which I dream sometimes I
shall accomplish.’

‘And the mission is?’

‘To open the eyes of fools.’

‘My dear fellow, they object to the operation, and have punished a good
many people for trying it.’

‘Then I will be punished,’ he said. ‘But anyhow, I’ll expose these
wretched smatterers, who serve up my things with all their wit and
wisdom taken out of them, who travesty my best thoughts. Why, they have
even made vulgar my very name!’

‘Houlot?’ I said, ‘Houlot? Is that the French for Dawson or
Collingwood?’

‘That is not my real name,’ he said. ‘I abandoned that years ago. Every
one turned his back upon the name. I did so myself at last.’

‘One of the results of the eye-opening process, I suppose?’

He nodded sullenly. ‘My name used to be Dawson,’ he said.

‘You don’t mean to say,’ I cried, ‘that you are the Dawson who was
supposed to have been drowned years and years ago?’

‘I was that man—that unhappy man! But why,’ he cried, turning round
fiercely upon me, ‘why do you make me go back to all these hateful
things?’

‘Then is the memory of your former life hateful to you?’

‘I escaped from the most wretched condition that a man was ever in:
tied to a woman who made my life an intolerable burden. She was not a
bad woman, not an unworthy woman. She was—— Well, she had a mother who
was fat and well to do, and lived in St John’s Wood.’

Houlot laughed hoarsely, knocked out his pipe on the empty stove,
looked mechanically for some tobacco in a jar on the chimney-piece.
It was empty. I offered him my pouch, which he took with an indignant
scowl.

‘Well, I was meant for great things,’ he went on between the whiffs
of his pipe—‘meant for great things; and here I am. Life fribbled and
frittered away, and that woman the main cause of it! There was no
escape from her any other way. I believe in my heart that the woman
loved me in her fashion; all the greater was my unutterable woe.’

‘And you ran away from her?’

‘I disappeared from existence. I would not harm the woman. I would not
spoil her life any longer. No; I adopted another plan. At the risk of
my own life, I contrived that my death should be apparent. The means
were simple enough, although they caused me some anxious thought and
preparation. I went down to a little visited part of the coast with
which I was well acquainted, and put up at an inn where I was known.
Taking my cue partly from the well-known farce of _Box and Cox_, I went
out one morning early and deposited a suit of clothes in a little niche
in the cliffs: a wild and solitary spot, rarely visited by any living
creature. Later in the day, I went out again, telling the people of the
inn that I was going to bathe. I left my clothes on the beach and took
to the water. I had chosen my time so that the set of the tide would
carry me to the place where I had deposited my clothes, and I drifted
along with little exertion. Arrived at the spot, I landed, found my
clothes all right, and put them on. Then I started on foot along the
coast till I reached a road-side station, made my way to London, and
then crossed the Channel, intending to go to Paris. I thought that I
should be able to get literary employment there; for French is as a
second native tongue to me. My mother was a Frenchwoman; her name was
Houlot; hence the name I adopted. But I took this place on my way; and
on the journey I fell from the roof of the diligence, and the wheel
went over my hand. Amputation was necessary; and by the time that I
was cured, I had spent all my little store of money and owed something
beside. But the people here were very humane and kind. I set to work
to write with my left hand, and earned a little money meanwhile by
teaching English; and by degrees I got into the knack of writing again,
and contributed some articles to the English press, by which I got a
little money. It was all a flash in the pan; my pupils fell away, my
articles were no longer acceptable. My friend here’—pointing to the
bottle—‘was always at my elbow. But I shall shake myself free one of
these days.’

‘And if it happened,’ I said, as he finished and was silent, sitting
puffing at the pipe that had long since gone out—‘if it happened that
the wife was still waiting for you—that she had heard a rumour of your
existence, and had come to seek you’——

‘No; don’t talk of that, for any sake!’ he cried, springing to his
feet. ‘Wretched and miserable as I have been, I have never wished
myself again tied in that hateful knot. There! you would never betray
me?’

‘But if she were rich, and able to give you a good home?’

‘Never, never!’ he said. ‘What degradation, what abasement!’

‘To take you out of this den of yours, to clothe you in well-made
garments, to bring you again into society?’

‘Never, never! I would hide myself in the remotest corner of the world.
Tell me, man, what do you mean? You know something; you are a spy, a
traitor!’

Houlot looked here and there as if for a weapon, and I thought it
prudent to make quickly for the door.

I went home and told Mrs Collingwood all that had occurred, excepting
the horror that M. Houlot had shewn at the idea of returning to her.
That I thought it most prudent to suppress. She seemed a little
softened, I thought, when I told her his account of his disappearance
in the sea, and that his motive was a good one as far as she was
concerned.

We sat till late that night talking in the little pavilion, the
light from the windows of which was reflected in the dark river. I
fancied every now and then I heard a footstep softly pacing up and
down the embankment between us and the water’s edge. I certainly
thought I had securely locked the garden gate, and never dreamt of
our being disturbed. Just as my guest had risen to take her leave,
the door suddenly opened, and M. Houlot stood upon the threshold. Mrs
Collingwood screamed, and ran to the furthest corner of the room,
crouching behind the window curtains. Houlot glared at her for a
moment, then slammed to the door and strode away. I ran after him.

‘You have deceived me!’ he said savagely, as, breathless, I overtook
him upon the embankment; ‘and I, like a fool, believed you, and
pictured her to myself—still loving, still faithful to the memory of
a wretched being; and I came to seek you, to know more about this
wonderful phenomenon. And now I see it all; she dreads me as if I were
a leper! Well, it matters not now; I am away to-morrow. Some kind
friends have raised a little money for me; I don’t need your help now.
To-morrow before daylight I start on my way to make my claim for that
which is mine own. Tell her—tell her that she need not fear me, that I
shall never trouble her, nor she me! I have been a slave long enough;
but to-morrow, light; to-morrow, freedom!’

‘Take care what you do,’ I said, ‘for the person whom you seek to ruin,
whom you would expose and bring to confusion, is the woman whom you
abandoned and left to the mercy of a pitiless world! Every step you
take to that end is over her, poor creature! The harm you did before
came right, after much misery; the harm you will do now can never be
cured!’

He uttered an exclamation of rage and despair, and disappeared in the
darkness.

‘Is he gone?’ cried Mrs Collingwood, as I returned once more to the
pavilion.

‘Yes, he is gone; he is away to London to-morrow to claim his rights,
as he calls them—to ruin us if he can. We must go also, and fight him.’

‘Do you know,’ faltered Mrs Collingwood, ‘that there has come a great
change over me these last few minutes? The thought that he really loved
me and sacrificed himself for my sake; and then he living here so
lonely and wretched, and I luxuriating on the fruits of his genius! Oh,
my heart has smitten me sorely, and I think if he came again I should
not be frightened!’

‘In that case,’ I said bitterly, ‘your course is easy enough; you
have only to make him understand he is forgiven. I will go with you
to-night.’

‘O no, not to-night!’ she said. ‘No; it is too sudden. But don’t let
him go away; tell him to stay, and that perhaps things may yet be well.’

‘He can’t leave before the first diligence,’ I said, ‘and I will meet
him there and tell him to stop.’

‘Do, do!’ she cried. ‘Keep him here for to-morrow; then I may have made
up my mind what will be for the best.’

I went to see the diligence start next morning; but no M. Houlot was
there. He had overslept himself probably. Well, I would go and see him
at his apartment, and tell him how matters stood. I knocked at his
door; but could not make him hear. Then I scribbled some words upon a
visiting card I happened to have in my pocket, and thrust it under the
door.

The next time I saw that card it was in the hands of the _commissaire_
of police, who came, accompanied by the _juge d’instruction_, to make
some _perquisitions_ as to what I might know of the last hours of M.
Houlot; for he had been found that morning lying dead on his mattress.

The sad end of Houlot—well, of Dawson, if you like, but I have grown
to think of him and talk of him as Houlot—quite unmanned me for a
while. I could not help blaming myself as being in some way the cause
of it. From the moment of its discovery, I took a violent antipathy
to the work I had in hand. Houlot seemed to be always standing at
my elbow, reproaching me with killing him over again. I don’t know
whether the widow—really now a widow—had any such visions; I fancy not.
After the first shock of the news, she found that Houlot’s death was
really a great relief to her. It put an end to her troubles once for
all. We found at his lodgings a great heap of manuscript, which she
purchased from the agent acting for the landlord of the premises—who
had taken possession of everything in satisfaction of rent—for a
few francs. Whether she found the material among it for a series of
novels, I don’t know, for as soon as I had finished the work in hand,
I gave up my connection with Collingwood Dawson. I have since taken
to writing improving books for the young, and find that it pays much
better. Still I hear of him occasionally, and find that he continues
to be a tolerably successful author; and the other day I met my late
employer, who told me that she was married for a third time, and to a
gentleman of great literary ability, who had undertaken the management
of Collingwood Dawson. For my own part, I advised her to form him into
a Limited company, with a preference in the allotment of shares for
gentlemen of the press.




MR FAIR, ‘THE SILVER KING.’


The prodigious quantities of silver recently dug from the mines of
Nevada and California, have, as is generally known, had the effect
of lowering the commercial value of silver to the extent of several
pence per ounce, and thereby depreciated the American dollar from one
hundred to about ninety cents; that is to say, the dollar has sunk
nearly fivepence in value—a circumstance greedily seized hold of by
certain parties in the United States, who propose, with more ingenuity
than honesty, to pay the public creditors in silver money without
making any allowance for depreciation. On this extraordinary policy so
much has been said by the newspapers, that we do not need to go into
particulars, further than to hint that before all the play is played,
the supporters of this scheme may unpleasantly find that there is some
truth in the old proverb that ‘honesty is the best policy.’

Something like an idea of what enormous wealth is being realised by
means of the above-mentioned silver mines is given in an account of
Mr Fair, ‘The Silver King,’ in a late number of that smart London
newspaper, _The World_. The following is an abridgment of this amusing
paper.

‘There is a man alive at this present moment who, if he were so minded,
could give his daughter a marriage-portion of thirty millions sterling.
He would then have about ten millions left for himself. He lives six
thousand miles west of London, half-way up a mountain-side in Nevada;
and his daughter lives with him. Seven years ago he was a poor man;
to-day he is the Silver King of America. He has dug forty million
pounds’ worth of silver out of the hill he is living on, and has about
forty millions more yet to dig. If he lives three years longer he will
be the richest man in the world. His name is James Fair, and he is the
manager, superintendent, chief partner, and principal shareholder in
the Consolidated Virginia and California Silver Mines, known to men as
the “Big Bonanzas.” He has an army of men toiling for him day and night
down in the very depths of the earth—digging, picking, blasting, and
crushing a thousand tons of rock every twenty-four hours.

‘Seven years ago there were two little Irishmen in the city of San
Francisco keeping a drinking-bar of very modest pretensions, close to
one of the principal business thoroughfares. Their customers were of
all kinds, but chiefly commercial men and clerks. Among them was an
unusually large proportion of stock and share dealers, mining-brokers
and the like, who, in the intervals of speculation, rushed out of the
neighbouring Exchange five or six times a day for drinks. Whisky being
almost the religion of California, and the two little bar-keepers being
careful to sell nothing but the best article, their bar soon became a
place of popular resort. And as no true Californian could ever swallow
a drink of whisky under any circumstances without talking about silver
mines or gold mines or shares in mines, it soon fell out that, next
to the Stock Exchange itself, there was no place in San Francisco
where so much mining-talk went on as in the saloon of Messrs Flood
& O’Brien, which were the names of the two little Irishmen. Keeping
their ears wide open, and sifting the mass of gossip that they listened
to every day, these two gentlemen picked up a good many crumbs of
useful information, besides getting now and then a direct confidential
tip; and they turned some of them to such good account in a few quiet
little speculations, that they shortly had a comfortable sum of money
lying at their bankers’. Instead of throwing it away headlong in wild
extravagant ventures, which was the joyous custom of the average
Californian in those days, they let it lie where it was, waiting, with
commendable prudence, till they knew of something good to put it into.
They soon heard of something good enough. On Fair’s advice they bought
shares in a mine called the Hale and Norcross, and were speedily taking
out of it fifteen thousand pounds a month in dividends. This mine was
the property of a company, and though it had at one time paid large
and continuous dividends, it was now supposed to be worked out and
worthless. Mr Fair, however, held a different opinion; and when he came
to examine it carefully, he found just what he expected to find—a large
deposit of silver-ore. Thereupon he and Flood and O’Brien together
bought up all the shares they could lay their hands upon, and obtained
complete control of the mine.’

Besides being a clever and experienced miner, Mr Fair entertained the
belief that by patient examination into holes and corners of the mine
he would discover a gigantic vein of silver-bearing ore. He discovered
the vein, the estimated value of which was a hundred and twenty
millions sterling.

‘In the excitement caused by this astounding discovery it is scarcely
more than the hard truth to say that San Francisco went raving mad. The
vein in which the Bonanza was found was known to run straight through
the Consolidated Virginia and California mines, dipping down as it
went, and could not be traced any farther. But that fact was nothing
to people who were bent on having mining stock; and vein or no vein,
the stock they would have. Consequently they bought into every mine in
the neighbourhood—good and bad alike—sending prices up to unheard-of
limits, and investing millions in worthless properties that have never
yielded a shilling in dividends, and never will. When Flood had bought
a large quantity of the Bonanza stock, and had assured to himself and
his partners the controlling interest in the mines, he recommended all
his friends to buy a little; and O’Brien did the same. Those who took
the advice are now drawing their proportionate shares of dividends,
amounting to about five hundred thousand pounds a month. The majority
of those who bought into other mines are, in Californian parlance
“busted.” What these three men and their latest partner Mackay are
going to do with their money is a curious problem, the solution of
which will be watched with great interest in a year or two to come. The
money they hold now is yielding them returns so enormous that their
maddest extravagances could make no impression on the amount. Every
year they are earning more, saving more, and investing more. They
have organised a bank with a capital of ten millions of dollars; they
control nearly all the mining interests of Nevada and California;
they have a strong grip of the commercial, financial, and farming
interests all along the Pacific slope; and by a single word they can at
any moment raise a disastrous panic, and plunge thousands of men into
hopeless ruin. It will be an interesting thing to wait and watch how
this terrible power for good or evil is to be wielded.’




THE MONTH:

SCIENCE AND ARTS.


Professor Osborne Reynolds, in his presidential address to the
Scientific and Mechanical Society of Manchester, discussed the
Smoke question; a very pressing question in a town with so grimy an
atmosphere as Manchester. He pointed out that great part of the smoke
is produced by the furnaces of small steam-engines carelessly managed,
which are numerous throughout the town and neighbourhood, and suggested
that it might be possible to do away with these by producing power at
some great central establishment, and supplying it by transmission to
all the little factories of a district. But how is the transmission
to be effected? That is a question which has often been considered by
engineers, ‘not so much as a means of preventing smoke, but because
there are in our towns numberless purposes for which power is, or at
all events might be, usefully employed, and for which it is almost
impossible or very inconvenient to provide on the spot. Very small
steam-engines are very extravagant in coal, besides requiring almost
as much attention as large ones; and they are dangerous.... If,
therefore,’ continues Professor Reynolds, ‘power in a convenient form
could be obtained whenever and wherever required, at a fixed and
reasonable charge, and with no other trouble than the throwing into
gear of a clutch or the turning of a tap,’ it would be largely made use
of, and would ‘supplant steam-engines, which are now kept working with
little or nothing to do for the greater part of their time;’ whereby an
important saving of coal would be effected. The suggestion of supplying
steam-power on a retail principle is not new, and nothing but some
practical difficulties stand in the way. All we want is a solution of
the question by some competent engineer. Let the genius but arise; he
will find fame as well as fortune waiting for him.

The Council of the Statistical Society will give their Howard Medal for
the present year and twenty pounds to the author of the best essay on
‘The Effects of Health and Disease on Military and Naval Operations.’

The Council of the Royal Geographical Society have resolved to devote
five hundred pounds yearly—‘in grants to assist persons having proper
qualifications, in undertaking special geographical investigations
(as distinct from mere exploration) in any part of the world—To aid
in the compilation of useful geographical data and preparing them for
publication, and in making improvements in apparatus or appliances
useful for geographical instruction, or for scientific research by
travellers—In fees to persons of recognised high attainments for
delivering lectures on physical geography in all its branches, as well
as on other truly scientific aspects of geography, in relation to its
past history, or the influences of geographical conditions on the human
race.’ Adherence to this course for a few years will do more to advance
geography as a science than having recourse to sensational meetings.

Mr Dumas, the distinguished chemist, in giving an account to a
scientific Society in Paris of the liquefaction and solidification of
gases, stated that the specimen of oxygen produced by Mr Pictet of
Geneva was the size of a hen’s egg, and resembled snow in the solid
form, and water in the liquid form. Theoretically he had concluded that
the density of liquid oxygen would be about the same as that of water;
and this has been confirmed by experiment.

As regards hydrogen, Mr Dumas explained that it was liquefied under
a pressure of six hundred and fifty atmospheres with cold minus one
hundred and forty degrees; and by evaporating the liquid thus obtained,
the solid condition, shewing the colour of blue steel, was arrived at.
Many years ago this possibility was foreseen, and the most advanced
chemists admitted the existence of a theoretical metal—hydrogenium.
‘This confirmation of the real nature of hydrogen,’ continued Mr
Dumas, ‘is not to be regarded merely as a theoretical result useful to
pure science; it appears to be of great importance for the future of
industry. A certain knowledge of the metallic nature of hydrogen will
have a certain influence on metallurgy, of which manufacturing arts
will take advantage.’

The phonograph has been exhibited, and made the subject of lectures
and experiments in many places, and as we anticipated, has given ample
demonstration that the statements put forth concerning it are true.
Marvellous as the fact may appear, all the words spoken into the
instrument seem to be there stored up ready for repetition whenever
excited by the cylinder of tinfoil. They do not come out quite in
the same tone as that in which they go in; but they are perfectly
distinct, and retain the characteristics of the speaker or singer.
At a scientific meeting in London, one of the company sung _God Save
the Queen_ into the phonograph. On coming to the highest note, he had
to make three attempts before he could reach it; and these failures
excited much merriment when the stanza was (only too faithfully)
repeated by the instrument. The same air was sung and produced
without failures, and a comic ditty was sung and inscribed on the
same cylinder: and very curious it was afterwards to hear the stately
movement of the national hymn accompanied by the jingling notes of the
funny melody. An instrument so ingenious as this ought to be applicable
to many useful purposes. Already there are improvements on the original
invention, and we shall doubtless hear of others.

The very best photographs of the sun ever yet seen have been taken
at the Observatory, Meudon, near Paris, by Mr Janssen; and copies on
glass, twelve inches diameter, are now placed in the hands of some
of our scientific societies. They well repay study, for they shew
distinctly the granular appearance of the sun’s surface: millions of
white specks imbedded, so to speak, in a dense dark cloud. This surface
is liable to violent commotions, or ‘vortex movements,’ as Mr Warren
De la Rue calls them, ‘of which we can form no conception whatever
in thinking of tornados on the earth’s surface. The photosphere,’
he continues, ‘had been whirled up in cloud-like masses in various
parts of the sun; and he saw at once that that might be the origin of
the luminous prominences with which we are all now so familiar.’ A
conclusion drawn from these appearances is that sunspots are not the
most important of solar phenomena. ‘There are changes taking place
from day to day, from hour to hour, and in some cases from minute to
minute, which completely change the aspect of the various parts of the
sun, shewing an amount of activity which it is extremely necessary
to study.’ And it is suggested that this could best be done by
establishing a physical observatory devoted to ceaseless observation
of the sun accompanied by photography. Such an observatory has been
recently founded at Potsdam, near Berlin.

Professor Wolf of Zurich has spent many years in collecting from
every possible source records of sun-spots from the beginning of the
seventeenth century, and the beginning of the telescope. And after
careful examination he arrives at the conclusion that they do not bear
out the theory of an eleven years’ period, for since 1610 there are
twenty or thirty different maxima and minima, extending to sixteen
years in some instances, and in others contracting to seven years.
This is a fresh proof that many more observations are required for a
settlement of the question.

Put a lump of zinc into the boiler of a steam-engine, and it will
prevent the formation of ‘scale;’ that is, the stony crust which, as
all engineers know to their sorrow, is very injurious and involves
constant expenditure. The experiment having been successfully tried
during four years by certain manufacturers in France, the Minister of
Public Works appointed a Commission to inquire into and report upon it.
From their Report, which was published last year in the _Annales des
Mines_, we learn that the zinc is to be placed in the boiler as far
as possible from the furnace, the quantity being a quarter-pound for
every five square feet of boiler-surface if the water be soft, and a
half pound if the water be hard. The boiler is then worked in the usual
way; and when opened for the usual cleaning the appearances as the
Commission describe will be—‘If the water be but slightly calcareous,
the deposits, instead of forming solid and adherent scale, are found in
a state of fluid mud, which is easily removable by simple washing. The
iron being clean and free from rust, no picking or scraping is needed,
whereby an important saving of time and labour is effected.’

On the other hand, if the water be strongly calcareous or hard, ‘the
deposits are as coherent and strong as though the zinc had not been
employed; but this strong coat does not stick to the iron. It can be
pulled off by hand, or at the worst detached without much effort,
leaving the iron clean. A simple washing clears it from the boiler;
and in this case, as in the foregoing, picking and scraping are
avoided.’

Here the question arises—What has become of the zinc? The answer given
is, that it is not strictly correct to say it has disappeared, for it
has been transformed into oxide of zinc, a white and earthy substance,
which often preserves the lamellar texture of the metal, the central
part sometimes continuing metallic and unattacked. At the same time it
is worth remark that no trace of dissolved zinc is found in the water
taken from the boilers.

A communication to the Royal Institute of British Architects by Mr
Penrose makes known certain important ‘improvements in paint materials
invented by Mr W. Noy Wilkins,’ which have been satisfactorily tested
in the decoration of St Paul’s Cathedral. In the words of Mr Penrose,
‘The results arrived at are of such extreme simplicity as to make
their general application extremely easy, and also to give a strong
_a priori_ conviction of their permanence. In the matter of pigments,
white-lead is entirely banished from the painter’s stock, and the
substitution of kaolin, mixed with a smaller proportion of zinc-white,
combined with the limitation of the palette to the mineral colours.
Mr Wilkins has practised for twenty-five years exclusively with
these materials.... His discovery is that the chemical driers, which
produce a very unfavourable effect upon painter’s work, whether of the
house-painter or the artist, causing it to darken and to crack, can be
entirely dispensed with, by simply boiling for a short time a small
quantity of Turkey umber in the oil to be used for painting—whether
linseed, poppy, or nut oil—producing as desired a drying painting oil
or a varnish, and the residuum forming a valuable oil cement.’ Mr
Wilkins permits cultivators of art, desirous of more particulars, to
address him at ‘The Cottage, Elm Grove, Peckham’ (London).

In another communication, by Mr I’Anson, on the Architecture of Norway,
the wooden churches were of course mentioned, and something was said
about Norwegian timber which will bear repetition. ‘The Scotch fir
furnishes the red wood, and the spruce-fir the white. What strikes
one,’ said the speaker, ‘is, that the Scotch fir, which with us is
regarded as the least valuable kind of fir-wood, scarcely fit for
railway sleepers or fences, is the best fir in Norway. I account for
that superiority of the Norwegian over the English tree in some measure
by the greater length of time that Scotch fir takes to come to maturity
in Norway than in this country. Scotch fir grows at the rate of as much
as two feet a year in Britain, and takes about fifty years to become a
usable tree; whereas in Norway it would take probably a century to grow
to a tree of equal size.’

In the last annual Report of the Royal Asiatic Society it is stated as
a now nearly accepted fact, that the language of Madagascar is a Malay
language from Sumatra, and that its connection with the African Suahili
is only that of loan-words, just as Persian has borrowed largely from
Arabic. Philologists and others interested in Eastern Africa will
perhaps be glad to hear that a grammar of Malagasi has been recently
published.

Plantations of the cinchona tree were first begun in Jamaica in 1860,
at the cost of the government. The experiment has proved so successful
that more than eighty thousand trees are now growing in different
parts of the island. Henceforth the West Indies will compete with India
in supplying the world with quinine.

It is well known that in some churches and large halls a reverberation
prevails which annoys the persons assembled, and prevents their
hearing distinctly. A few years ago the discovery was made that the
reverberation could be deadened by stretching threads across the
building from wall to wall below the ceiling. This curious fact has
been further confirmed at the Palace of Industry, Amsterdam, and in the
church of Notre-Dame des Champs, Paris, in each of which, by the simple
means of threads, the reverberation is silenced.

The importation of fresh meat from the United States of America
commenced in the autumn of 1875. Since then the quantity brought to
this country from New York, Philadelphia, and other ports, has reached
a total of more than sixty million pounds; and great as the trade
has become, it tends to increase. The graziers and agriculturists
of Europe will have to consider whether some means may not be found
for increasing and cheapening cattle-food, if they desire to compete
with the transatlantic graziers. Whether the way shall be by improved
irrigation, extended drainage, or creation of pastures, remains to be
discovered. On this subject much valuable information is contained in a
work entitled _Food from the Far West_, with special reference to the
Beef Production and importation of Dead Meat from America (W. P. Nimmo,
London and Edinburgh).

‘On Some Means used for testing Lubricants’ is the title of a paper
by Mr W. H. Bailey, read before the same Society. There needs no
argument to prove that if it be possible to discover the oil or grease
which will best prevent friction, it ought to be discovered; and the
engravings in this paper shew the contrivances for effecting this
discovery. To Dr Joule, F.R.S. all who use machinery are indebted for
having, as Mr Bailey remarks, ‘enabled us to look upon the cost of
friction and the cash value of heat as mere questions of arithmetic.
The energy which passes away in wasted heat may be measured and valued
with nearly as much facility as any article of commerce. The science of
heat teaches us that the relations between heat and mechanical motion
are regulated by well-defined, accurate, and rigid principles. Those
who would command Nature’s forces must first learn her laws; the first
rudiments of which say, that when we produce frictional heat in our
machinery, we become law-breaking prodigals, who have incurred fines
and penalties, which are generally paid when a cheque is given to
settle the coal-bill.’

Perhaps not many people south of the Border are aware that there are
gold-fields in Scotland; but that gold can be found in Sutherlandshire
and in the south-west, has long been known to the dwellers in those
localities; and now in the _Scottish Naturalist_, Dr Lauder Lindsay
describes the gold-fields of Lanarkshire. In the Upper Ward of that
county he tells us that ‘of alluvial gold, from nuggets big enough to
make breast-pin heads down to granular dust, there is no scarcity. It
may be collected at any time by simple washing from the beds or banks
of any streams of the district. Whenever a supply of gold is wanted
for museum specimens or for presentation jewellery, a sufficiency is
forthcoming. A few hours’ work of a miner, and still more the conjoint
efforts of a band of miners extending over several days, produce the
number of grains or ounces required.’ The people of Scotland have
long known that gold can be found in various parts of the country.
The difficulty, however, is to find it in sufficient quantities to
pay the expense of working, or even in searching for it. Persons of
an eager turn do not sufficiently think of this, and hence endless
disappointments.

Our notice (No. 726, p. 750, 1877) of Dr Sayre’s method of treating
curvature of the spine has led to inquiries for further particulars:
we have pleasure therefore in mentioning that Smith, Elder, & Co. have
published a book by Dr Sayre, entitled _Spinal Disease and Spinal
Curvature—their Treatment by Suspension, and the Use of the Plaster
of Paris Bandage_. Besides clear descriptions, the book contains
engravings which represent the method of treatment, and may be easily
understood.




BUTTERFLIES.


    Once more I pass along the flowering meadow,
    Hear cushats call, and mark the fairy rings;
    Till where the lych-gate casts its cool dark shadow,
    I pause awhile, musing on many things;
    Then raise the latch, and passing through the gate,
    Stand in the quiet, where men rest and wait.

    Bees in the lime-trees do not break their sleeping;
    Swallows beneath church eaves disturb them not;
    They heed not bitter sobs or silent weeping;
    Cares, turmoil, griefs, regrets, they have forgot.
    I murmur sadly: ‘Here, then, all life ends.
    We lay you here to rest, and lose you, friends.’

    By no rebuke is the sweet silence broken.
    No voice reproves me; yet a sign is sent;
    For from the grassy mounds there comes a token
    Of Life immortal—and I am content.
    See! the soul’s emblem meets my downcast eyes:
    Over the graves are hovering butterflies!

            G. S.




WASTE SUBSTANCE.


A correspondent suggests that the refuse from broken slate which is
thrown aside at the quarries as useless, might be ground down into
powder and used as paint. The writer informs us that he has tried
powdered slate, and found that it not only made good paint but that the
paint lasted well for outdoor work.

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[Transcriber’s Note—the following changes have been made to this text.

Page 193: beech to beach—“a white beach”.]