Chapter III: Part 3

“Lor!” said the man again. “It’s boilin’! It’s boilin’! You don’t boil when you stew, my son; an’ as for _this_”—up came a grey slab of mutton—“there’s no odds between this and motor-tyres. Well! Well! As I was sayin’——” He joined his hands behind his globular back and shook his head in silence. After a while, The Prawn tried to assert himself.

“Cookin’ isn’t my strong point,” began The Prawn, “but——”

“Pore boys! Pore boys!” the stranger soliloquized, looking straight in front of him. “_Pore_ little boys! Wicked, _I_ call it. They don’t ever let you make bread, do they, my son?”

The Prawn said they generally bought their bread at a shop.

“Ah! I’m a shopkeeper meself. Marsh, the Baker here, is me. _Pore_ boys! Well! Well!... Though it’s against me own interest to say so, _I_ think shops are wicked. They sell people things out o’ tins which save ’em trouble, an’ fill the ’ospitals with stummick-cases afterwards. An’ the muck that’s sold for flour....” His voice faded away and he meditated again. “Well—well! _As_ I was sayin’—— Pore boys! _Pore_ boys! I’m glad you ain’t askin’ me to dinner. Good bye.”

He rolled away across the fern, leaving The Prawn dumb behind him.

It seemed to William best to wriggle back in his cover as far as he could, ere The Prawn should call him to work again. He was not a Scout by instinct, but his uncle had shown him that when things went wrong in the world, someone generally passed it onto someone else. Very soon he heard his name called, acidly, several times. He crawled out from the far end of the fern-patch, rubbing his eyes, and The Prawn re-enslaved him on the spot. For once in his life William was alert and intelligent, but The Prawn paid him no compliments, nor when the very muddy Pelicans came back from the bridging did The Prawn refer in any way to the visit of Mr. E. M. Marsh & Son, Bakers and Confectioners in the village street just outside the Park wall. Nor, for that matter, did he serve the Pelicans much besides tinned meats for their evening meal.

To say that William did not sleep a wink that night would be what has been called “nature-faking”; which is a sin. His system demanded at least nine hours’ rest, but he lay awake for quite twenty minutes, during which he thought intensely, rapidly and joyously. Had he been asked he would have said that his thoughts dealt solely with The Prawn and the judgment that had fallen upon him; but William was no psychologist. He did not know that hate—raging hate against a too-badged, too virtuous senior—had shot him into a new world, exactly as the large blunt shell is heaved through space and dropped into a factory, a garden or a barracks by the charge behind it. And, as the shell, which is but metal and mixed chemicals, needs only a graze on the fuse to spread itself all over the landscape, so did his mind need but the touch of that hate to flare up and illuminate not only all his world, but his own way through it.

Next morning something sang in his ear that it was long since he had done good turns to any one except his uncle, who was slow to appreciate them. He would amend that error; and the more safely since The Prawn would be off all that day with the Troop on a tramp in the natural history line, and his place as Camp Warden and Provost Marshal would be filled by the placid and easy-going Walrus, whose proper name was Carpenter, who never tried for badges, but who could not see a rabbit without going after him. And the owner of the Park had given full leave to the Pelicans to slay by any means, except a gun, any rabbits they could. So William ingratiated himself with his Superior Officer as soon as the Pelicans had left....

No, the excellent Carpenter did not see that he needed William by his side all day. He might take himself and his bruised foot pretty much where he chose. He went, and this new and active mind of his that he did not realize, accompanied him—straight up the path of duty which, poetry tells us, is so often the road to glory.

He began by cleaning himself and his kit at seven o’clock in the morning, long before the village shops were open. This he did near a postern gate with a crack in it, in the Park wall, commanding a limited but quite sufficient view of the establishment of E. M. Marsh & Son across the street. It was perfect weather, and about eight o’clock Mr. Marsh himself in his shirt-sleeves rolled out to enjoy it before he took down the shutters. Hardly had he shifted the first of them when a fattish Boy Scout with a flat face and a slight limp laid hold of the second and began to slide it towards him.

“Well, well!” said Mr. Marsh. “Ah! Your good turn, eh?”

“Yes,” said William briefly.

“That’s right! Handsomely now, handsomely,” for the shutter was jamming in its groove. William knew from his uncle that “handsomely” meant slowly and with care. The shutter responded to the coaxing. The others followed.

“Belay!” said Mr. Marsh, wiping his forehead, for, like William, he perspired easily. When he turned round William had gone. The Movies had taught him, though he knew it not, the value of dramatic effect. He continued to watch Mr. Marsh through the crack in the postern—it was the little wooden door at the end of the right of way through the Park—and when, an hour or so later, Mr. Marsh came out of his shop and headed towards it, William retired backwards into the high fern and brambles. The manœuvre would have rejoiced Mr. Hale’s heart, for generally William moved like an elephant with its young. He turned up, quite casually, when Mr. Marsh had puffed his way again into the empty camp. Carpenter was off in pursuit of rabbits, with a pocket full of fine picture-wire. It was the first time William had ever done the honours of any establishment. He came to attention and smiled.

“Well! Well!” Mr. Marsh nodded friendlily. “What are _you_?”

“Camp-guard,” said William, improvising for the first time in his life. “Can I show you anything, sir?”

“No, thank’ee. My son was a Scout once. I’ve just come to look round at things. ’No one tryin’ any cookin’ to-day?”

“No, sir.”

“’Bout’s well. _Pore_ boys! What you goin’ to have for dinner? Tinned stuff?”

“I expect so, sir.”

“D’you like it?”

“’Used to it.” William rather approved of this round person who wasted no time on abstract ideas.

“_Pore_ boys! Well! Well! It saves trouble—for the present. Knots and splices in your stummick afterwards—in ’ospital.” Mr. Marsh looked at the cold camp cooking-place and its three big stones, and sniffed.

“Would you like it lit?” said William, suddenly.

“What for?”

“To cook with.”

“What d’ _you_ know about cookin’?” Mr. Marsh’s little eyes opened wide.

“Nothing, sir.”

“What makes you think _I_’m a cook?”

“By the way you looked at our cooking-place,” the mendacious William answered. The Prawn had always urged him to cultivate habits of observation. They seemed easy—after you had observed the things.

“Well! Well! Quite a young Sherlock, you are. ’Don’t think much o’ _this_, though.” Mr. Marsh began to stoop to rearrange the open-air hearth to his liking.

“Show me how and I’ll do it,” said William.

“Shove that stone a little more to the left then. Steady—So! That’ll do! Got any wood? No? You slip across to the shop and ask them to give you some small brush-stuff from the oven. Stop! _And_ my apron, too. Marsh is the name.”

William left him chuckling wheezily. When he returned Mr. Marsh clad himself in a long white apron of office which showed so clearly that Carpenter from far off returned at once.

“H’sh! H’sh!” said Mr. Marsh before he could speak. “You carry on with what you’re doing. Marsh is my name. My son was a Scout once. Buffaloes—Hendon-way. It’s all right. Don’t you grudge an old man enjoying himself.”

The Walrus looked amazedly at William moving in three directions at once with his face on fire.

“It’s all right,” said William. “He’s giving us cooking-lessons.” Then—the words came into his mouth by themselves—“I’ll take the responsibility.”

“Yes, yes! He knew I could cook. Quite a young Sherlock he is! _You_ carry on.” Mr. Marsh turned his back on the Walrus and despatched William again with some orders to his shop across the road. “And you’d better tell ’em to put ’em all in a basket,” he cried after him.

William returned with a fair assortment of mixed material, including eggs, two rashers of bacon, and a packet of patent flour concerning which last Mr. Marsh said things no baker should say about his own goods. The frying-pan came out of the push-cart, with some other oddments, and it was not till after it was greased that Mr. Marsh demanded William’s name. He got it in full, and it produced strange effects on the little fat man.

“An’ ’ow do you spell your middle name?” he asked.

“G-l-a-double-s-e,” said William.

“Might that be your mother’s?” William nodded. “Well! Well! I wonder now! I _do_ wonder. It’s a great name. There was a Sawyer in the cooking line once, but ’e was a Frenchman and spelt it different. Glasse is serious though. And you say it was your ma’s.” He fell into an abstraction, frying-pan in hand. Anon, as he cracked an egg miraculously on its edge—“Whether you’re a descendant or not, it’s worth livin’ up to, a name like that.”

“Why?” said William, as the egg slid into the pan and spread as evenly as paint under an expert’s hand.

“I’ll tell you some day. She was a very great cook—but she’d have come expensive at to-day’s prices. Now, you take the pan an’ I’ll draw me own conclusions.”

The boy worked the pan over the level red fire with a motion that he had learned somehow or other while “boiling up” things for his uncle. It seemed to him natural and easy. Mr. Marsh watched in unbroken silence for at least two minutes.

“It’s early to say—yet,” was his verdict. “But I ’ave ’opes. You ’ave good ’ands, an’ your knowin’ I was a cook shows you ’ave the instinck. _If_ you ’ave got the Touch—mark you, I only say if—but _if_ you ’ave anything like the Genuine Touch, you’re provided for for life. _An’_ further—don’t tilt her that way!—you ’old your neighbours, friends and employers in the ’ollow of your ’and.”

“How do you mean?” said William, intent on his egg.

“Everything which a man _is_ depends on what ’e puts inside ’im,” was the reply. “A good cook’s a King of men—besides being thunderin’ well off if ’e don’t drink. It’s the only sure business in the whole round world; and _I_’ve been round it eight times, in the Mercantile Marine, before I married the second Mrs. M.”

William, more interested in the pan than Mr. Marsh’s marriages, made no reply. “Yes, a good cook,” Mr. Marsh went on reminiscently, “even on Board o’ Trade allowance, ’as brought many a ship to port that ’ud otherwise ’ave mut’nied on the ’igh seas.”

The eggs and bacon mellowed together. Mr. Marsh supplied some wonderful last touches and the result was eaten, with the Walrus’s help, sizzling out of the pan and washed down with some stone ginger-beer from the convenient establishment of Mr. E. M. Marsh outside the Park wall.

“I’ve ruined me dinner,” Mr. Marsh confided to the boys, “but I ’aven’t enjoyed myself like this, not since Noah was an able seaman. You wash up, young Sherlock, an’ I’ll tell you something.”

He filled an ancient pipe with eloquent tobacco, and while William scoured the pan, he held forth on the art and science and mystery of cooking as inspiredly as Mr. Jorrocks, Master of Foxhounds, had lectured upon the Chase. The burden of his song was Power—power which, striking directly at the stomach of man, makes the rudest polite, not to say sycophantic, towards a good cook, whether at sea, in camp, in the face of war, or (here he embellished his text with personal experiences) the crowded competitive cities where a good meal was as rare, he declared, as silk pyjamas in a pig-sty. “An’ mark you,” he concluded, “three times a day the ’aughtiest and most overbearin’ of ’em all ’ave to come crawling to you for a round belly-full. Put _that_ in your pipe and smoke it out, young Sherlock!”

He unloosed his sacrificial apron and rolled away.

The Boy Scout is used to strangers who give him good advice on the smallest provocation; but strangers who fill you up with bacon and eggs and ginger-beer are few.

“What started it all?” the Walrus demanded.

“Well, I can’t exactly say,” William answered, and as he had never been known to give a coherent account of anything, the Walrus returned to his wires, and William lay out and dreamed in the fern among the cattle-flies. He had dismissed The Prawn altogether from his miraculously enlarging mind. Very soon he was on the High Seas, a locality which till that instant had never appealed to him, in a gale, issuing bacon and eggs to crews on the edge of mutiny. Next, he was at war, turning the tides of it to victory for his own land by meals of bacon and eggs that brought bemedalled Generals in troops like Pelicans, to his fire-place. Then he was sustaining his uncle, at the door of an enormous restaurant, with plates of bacon and eggs sent out by gilded commissionaires such as guard the cinemas, while his uncle wept with gratitude and remorse, and The Prawn, badges and all, begged for scraps.

His chin struck his chest and half waked him to fresh flights of glory. He might have the Genuine Touch, Mr. Marsh had said it. Moreover, he, the Mug, had a middle name which filled that great man with respect. All the 47th Postal District should ring with that name, even to the exclusion of the racing-news, in its evening papers. And on his return from camp, or perhaps a day or two later, he would defy his very uncle and escape for ever from the foul business of French-polishing.

Here he slept generously and dreamlessly till evening, when the Pelicans returned, their pouches full of samples of uncookable vegetables and insects, and the Walrus made his report of the day’s Camp doings to the Scoutmaster.

“Wait a minute, Walrus. You say the Mug actually _did_ the cooking?”

“Mr. Marsh had him under instruction, sir. But the Mug did a lot of it—he held the pan over the fire. I saw him, sir. And he washed up afterwards.”

“Did he?” said the Scoutmaster lightly. “Well, that’s something.” But when the Walrus had gone Mr. Hale smote thrice upon his bare knees and laughed, as a Scout should, without noise.

He thanked Mr. Marsh next morning for the interest he had shown in the camp, and suggested (this was while he was buying many very solid buns for a route-march) that nothing would delight the Pelicans more than a few words from Mr. Marsh on the subject of cookery, if he could see his way to it.

“Quite so,” said Mr. Marsh, “_I_’m worth listenin’ to. Well! Well! I’ll be along this evening, and, maybe, I’ll bring some odds and ends with me. Send over young Sherlock-Glasse to ’elp me fetch ’em. _That’s_ a boy with ’is stummick in the proper place. ’Know anything about ’im?”

Mr. Hale knew a good deal, but he did not tell it all. He suggested that William himself should be approached, and would excuse him from the route-march for that purpose.

“Route-march!” said Mr. Marsh in horror. “Lor! The very worst use you can make of your feet is walkin’ on ’em. ’Gives you bunions. Besides, ’e ain’t got the figure for marches. ’E’s a cook by build as well as instinck. ’Eavy in the run, oily in the skin, broad in the beam, short in the arm, _but_, mark you, light on the feet. That’s the way cooks ought to be issued. You never ’eard of a really good _thin_ cook yet, did you? No. Nor me. An’ I’ve known millions that called ’emselves cooks.”

Mr. Hare regretted that he had not studied the natural history of cooks, and sent William over early in the day.

Mr. Marsh spoke to the Pelicans for an hour that evening beside an open wood fire, from the ashes of which he drew forth (talking all the while) wonderful hot cakes called “dampers”; while from its top he drew off pans full of “lobscouse,” which he said was not to be confounded with “salmagundi,” and a hair-raising compound of bacon, cheese and onions all melted together. And while the Pelicans ate, he convulsed them with mirth or held them breathless with anecdotes of the High Seas and the World, so that the vote of thanks they passed him at the end waked the cows in the Park. But William sat wrapped in visions, his hands twitching sympathetically to Mr. Marsh’s wizardry among the pots and pans. He knew now what the name of Glasse signified; for he had spent an hour at the back of the baker’s shop reading, in a brown-leather book dated 1767 A.D. and called “The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy by a Lady,” and that lady’s name, as it appeared in facsimile at the head of Chap. I, was “H. Glasse.” Torture would not have persuaded him, or Mr. Marsh, by that time, that she was not his direct ancestress; but, as a matter of form, he intended to ask his uncle.

When The Prawn, very grateful that Mr. Marsh had made no reference to his notions of cookery, asked William what he thought of the lecture and exhibition, William came out of his dreams with a start, and “Oh, all right, I suppose, but I wasn’t listening much.” Then The Prawn, who always improved an occasion, lectured him on lack of attention; and William missed all that too. The question in his mind was whether his uncle would let him stay with Mr. Marsh for a couple of days after Camp broke up, or whether he would use the reply-paid telegram, which Mr. Marsh had sent him, for his own French-polishing concerns. When The Prawn’s voice ceased, he not only promised to do better next time, but added, out of a vast and inexplicable pity that suddenly rose up inside him, “And I’m grateful to you, Prawn. I am really.”

On his return to town from that wonder-revealing visit, he found the Pelicans treating him with a new respect. For one thing, the Walrus had talked about the bacon and eggs; for another, The Prawn, who when he let himself go, could be really funny, had given some artistic imitations of Mr. Marsh’s comments on his cookery. Lastly, Mr. Hale had laid down that William’s future employ would be to cook for the Pelicans when they camped abroad. “And look out that you don’t poison us too much,” he added.

There were occasional mistakes and some very flat failures, but the Pelicans swallowed them all loyally; no one had even a stomachache, and the office of Cook’s mate to William was in great demand. The Prawn himself sought it next Spring when the Troop stole a couple of fair May days on the outskirts of a brick-field, and were very happy. But William set him aside in favour of a new and specially hopeless recruit; oily-skinned, fat, short-armed, but light on his feet, and with some notion of lifting pot-lids without wrecking or flooding the whole fire-place.

“You see, Prawn,” he explained, “cookin’ isn’t a thing one can just pick up.”

“Yes, I could—watchin’ you,” The Prawn insisted.

“No. Mr. Marsh says it’s a Gift—same as a Talent.”

“D’you mean to tell me Rickworth’s got it, then?”

“Dunno. It’s _my_ job to find that out—Mr. Marsh says. Anyway, Rickworth told me he liked cleaning out a fryin’ pan because it made him think of what it might be cookin’ next time.”

“Well, if that isn’t silliness, it’s just greediness,” said The Prawn. “What about those dampers you were talking of when I bought the fire-lighters for you this morning?”

William drew one out of the ashes, tapped it lightly with his small hazel-wand of office, and slid it over, puffed and perfect, towards The Prawn.

Once again the wave of pity—the Master’s pity for the mere consuming Public—swept over him as he watched The Prawn wolf it down.

“I’m grateful to you. I reely _am_, Prawn,” said William Glasse Sawyer.

After all, as he was used to say in later years, if it hadn’t been for The Prawn, where would he have been?

PROLOGUE TO THE MASTER-COOK’S TALE

_This is what might be called a parody or imitation of the verses of Geoffrey Chaucer, one of the earliest and the greatest of our English poets. It looks difficult to read, but you will find it comes quite easily if you say it aloud, remembering that where there is an accent over the end of a word, that word is pronounced as two syllables—not one. “Snailés,” for instance, would be spoken as “snai-les” and so on._

With us there rade a Maister-Cook that came
From the Rochelle which is neere Angoulême.
Littel hee was, but rounder than a topp,
And his small berd hadde dipped in manie a soppe.
His honde was smoother than beseemeth mann’s,
And his discoorse was all of marzipans,[5]
Of tripes of Caen, or Burdeux snailés swote,[6]
And Seinte Menhoulde wher cooken piggés-foote.[7]
To Thoulouse and to Bress and Carcasson
For pyes and fowles and chesnottes hadde hee wonne;[8]
Of hammés of Thuringie[9] colde hee prate,
And well hee knew what Princes hadde on plate
At Christmas-tide, from Artois to Gascogne.

Lordinges, quod hee, manne liveth nat alone
By bred, but meatés rost and seethed, and broth,
And purchasable[10] deinties, on mine othe.
Honey and hote gingere well liketh hee,
And whalés-flesch mortred[11] with spicerie.
For, lat be all how man denie or carpe,[12]
Him thries a daie his honger maketh sharpe,
And setteth him at boorde[13] with hawkés eyne,
Snuffing what dish is set beforne to deyne,
Nor, till with meate he all-to fill to brim,
None other matter nowher mooveth him.
Lat holie Seintés sterve[14] as bookés boast,
Most mannés soule is in his bellie most.
For, as man thinketh in his hearte is hee,
But, as hee eateth so his thought shall bee.
And Holie Fader’s self[15] (with reveraunce)
Oweth to Cooke his port and his presaunce.
Wherbye it cometh past disputison[16]
Cookes over alle men have dominion,
Which follow them as schippe her gouvernail[17]
Enoff of wordes—beginneth heere my tale:—

A FLIGHT OF FACT

_Most of this tale actually happened during the War about the year 1916 or 1917 but it was much funnier as I heard it told by an English Naval officer than it is as I have written it from memory. It shows, what one always believed was true, that there is nothing that cannot happen in the Navy._

H. M. S. _Gardenia_ (we will take her name from the Herbaceous Border which belonged to the sloops, though she was a destroyer by profession) came quietly back to her berth some time after midnight, and disturbed half a dozen of her sisters as she settled down. They all talked about it next morning, especially _Phlox_ and _Stephanotis_, her left- and right-hand neighbours in the big basin on the east coast of England, that was crowded with destroyers.

But the soul of the _Gardenia_—Lieutenant-in-Command H. R. Duckett—was lifted far above insults. What he had done during his last trip had been well done. Vastly more important—_Gardenia_ was in for a boiler-clean—which meant four days’ leave for her commanding officer.

“Where did you get that fender from, you dock-yard burglar?” _Stephanotis_ clamoured over his rail, for _Gardenia_ was wearing a large coir-matting fender, evidently fresh from store, over her rail. It creaked with newness. “You common thief of the beach, where did you find that new fender?”

The only craft that a destroyer will, sometimes, not steal equipment from is a destroyer; which accounts for the purity of her morals and the loftiness of her conversation, and her curiosity in respect to stolen fillings.

Duckett, unmoved, went below, to return with a valise which he carried on to His Majesty’s quarter-deck, and, atop of a suit of rat-catcher clothes, crammed into it a pair of ancient pigskin gaiters.

Here _Phlox_, assisted by her Dandy Dinmont, Dinah, who had been trained to howl at certain notes in her master’s voice, gave a spirited and imaginary account of _Gardenia’s_ return the night before, which was compared to that of an ambulance with a lady-driver. Duckett retaliated by slipping on to his head for one coquettish instant a gravy-coloured soft cloth cap. It was the last straw. _Phlox_ and _Stephanotis_, who had no hope of any leave for the present, pronounced it an offence, only to be wiped out by drinks.

“All things considered,” said Duckett. “I don’t care if I _do_. Come along!” and, the hour being what it was, he gave the necessary orders through the wardroom’s tiny skylight. The captains came. _Phlox_—Lieutenant Commander Jerry Marlett, a large and weather-beaten person, docked himself in the arm-chair by the wardroom stove with his cherished Dinah in his arms. Great possessions and much land, inherited from an uncle, had removed him from the Navy on the eve of war. Three days after the declaration of it he was back again, and had been very busy ever since. _Stephanotis_—Lieutenant-in-Command Augustus Holwell Rayne, _alias_ “The Damper,” because of his pessimism, spread himself out on the settee. He was small and agile, but of gloomy outlook, which a D. S. O. earned, he said, quite by mistake, could not lighten. “Horse” Duckett, _Gardenia’s_ skipper, was a reversion to the primitive Marryat type—a predatory, astute, resourceful pirate, too well known to all His Majesty’s dockyards, a man of easily injured innocence who could always prove an alibi, and in whose ship, if his torpedo-coxswain had ever allowed any one to look there, several sorts of missing Government property might have been found. His ambition was to raise pigs (animals he only knew as bacon) in Shropshire (a county he had never seen) after the war, so he waged his war with zeal to bring that happy day nearer. He sat in the arm-chair by the door, whence he controlled the operations of “Crippen,” the wardroom steward, late of Bolitho’s Travelling Circus and Swings, who had taken to the high seas to avoid the attentions of the Police ashore.

As usual, Duckett’s character had been blackened by My Lords of the Admiralty, and he was in the midst of a hot campaign against them. An able-seaman’s widowed mother had sent a ham to her son whose name was E. R. Davids. Unfortunately, Engineroom-Artificer E. Davies, who swore that he had both a mother and expectations of hams from her, came across the ham first, and, misreading its address, had had it boiled for, and at once eaten by, the Engineers’ mess. E. R. Davids, a vindictive soul, wrote to his mother, who, it seems, wrote to the Admiralty, who, according to Duckett, wrote to him daily every day for a month to know what had become of E. R. Davids’ ham. In the meantime the guilty Engineroom-Artificer E. Davies had been transferred to a sloop off the Irish coast.

“An’ what the dooce _am_ I to do?” Duckett asked his guests plaintively.

“Apply for leave to go to Ireland with a stomach-pump and heave the ham out of Davies,” Jerry suggested promptly.

“That’s rather a wheeze,” said Duckett. “I _had_ thought of marrying Davids’ mother to settle the case. Anyhow, it was all Crippen’s fault for not steering the ham into the wardroom when it came aboard. Don’t let it occur again, Crippen. Hams are going to be very scarce.”

“Well, now you’ve got all that off your chest”—Jerry Marlett lowered his voice—“suppose you tell us about what happened—the night before last.”

The talk became professional. Duckett produced certain evidence—still damp—in support of the claims that he had sent in concerning the fate of a German submarine, and gave a chain of facts and figures and bearings that the others duly noted.

“And how did your Acting Sub do?” asked Jerry at last.

“Oh, very fair, but I didn’t tell him so, of course. They’re hard enough to hold at the best of times, these makee-do officers. Have you noticed that they are always above their job—always thinkin’ round the corner when they’re thinkin’ at all. On our way back, this young merchant o’ mine—when I’d almost made up my mind to tell him he wasn’t as big tripes as he looked—told me his one dream in life was to fly. Fly! He flew alright by the time I’d done with him, but—imagine a Sub _tellin’_ one a thing like that! ‘It must be _so_ interestin’ to fly,’ he said. The whole North Sea one blooming burgoo of what-come-nexts, an’ this pup complainin’ of lack of interest in it! Fly! Fly! When _I_ was a Sub-Lootenant——”

He turned pathetically towards The Damper, who had known him in that rank in the Mediterranean.

“There wasn’t much flyin’ in our day,” said The Damper mournfully. “But I can’t remember anything else we didn’t do.”

“Quite so; but we had some decency knocked into us. The new breed wouldn’t know decency if they met it on a dungfork. _That’s_ what I mean.”

“When _I_ was Actin’ Sub,” Jerry opened thoughtfully, “in the _Polycarp_—the pious _Polycarp_—Nineteen-O-Seven, I got nine cuts of the best from the Senior Sub for occupyin’ the bathroom ten seconds too long. Twenty minutes later, just when the welts were beginnin’ to come up, y’ know, I was sent off in the gig with a Corporal o’ Marines an’ a private to fetch the Headman of All the Pelungas aboard. He was wanted for slavery, or barratry, or bigamy or something.”

“All the Pelungas?” Duckett repeated with interest. “’Odd you should mention that part of the world. What are the Pelungas like?”

“Very nice. Hundreds of islands and millions of coral reefs with atolls an’ lagoons an’ palm-trees, an’ all the population scullin’ round in outrigger canoes between ’em like a permanent regatta. Filthy navigation, though. _Polycarp_ had to lie five miles out on account of the reefs (even then our navigator was tearin’ his hair) an’ I had an hour’s steerin’ on hot hard thwarts. Talk o’ tortures! _You_ know. We landed in a white lather at the boat-steps of the Headman’s island. The Headman wasn’t takin’ any at first. He’d drawn up his whole army—three hundred strong, with old Martini rifles an’ a couple of ancestral seven-pounders in front of his fort. _We_ didn’t know anything about his domestic arrangements. We just dropped in among ’em so to say. Then my Corporal of Marines—the fattest man in the Service bar one—fell down the landin’ steps. The Headman had a Prime Minister—about as fat as my Corporal—and he helped him up. Well, _that_ broke the ice a bit. The Prime Minister was a statesman. He poured oil on the crisis, while the Headman cursed me and the Navy and the British Government, and I kept wrigglin’ in my white ducks to keep ’em from drawin’ tight on me. _You_ know how it feels! I remember I told the Headman the _Polycarp_ ’ud blow him an’ his island out of the water if he didn’t come along quick. She could have done it—in a week or two; but we were scrubbin’ hammocks at the time. I forgot that little fact for the minute. I was a bit hot—all over. The Prime Minister soothed us down again, an’ by and by the Headman said he’d pay us a state call—as a favour. I didn’t care what he called it s’long as he came. So I lay about a quarter of a mile off-shore in the gig, in case the seven-pounders pooped off—I knew the Martinis couldn’t hit us at that range—and I waited for him till he shoved off in his State barge—forty rowers a side. Would you believe it, he wanted to take precedence of the White Ensign on the way to the ship? I had to fall him in behind the gig and bring him alongside properly. I was so sore I could hardly get aboard at the finish.”

“What happened to the Headman?” said The Damper.

“Nothing. He was acquitted or condemned—I forget which—but he was a perfect gentleman. We used to go sailing with him and his people—dancing with ’em on the beach and all that sort of thing. _I_ don’t want to meet a nicer community than the Pelungaloos. They aren’t used to white men—but they’re first-class learners.”

“Yes, they _do_ seem a cheery crowd,” Duckett commented.

“Where have _you_ come across them?” said Jerry.

“Nowhere; but this Acting Sub of mine has got a cousin who’s been flying down there.”

“Flying in All the Pelungas?” Jerry cried. “That’s impossible!”

“In these days? Where’s your bright lexicon of youth? Nothing’s impossible anywhere now,” Duckett replied. “All the best people fly.”

“Count me out,” Jerry grunted. “We went up once, Dinah, little dog, and it made us both very sick, didn’t it? When did it all happen, Horse?”

“Some time last year. This chap, my Sub’s cousin—a man called Baxter—went adrift among All the Pelungas in his machine and failed to connect with his ship. He was reported missing for months. Then he turned up again. That’s all.”

“He was called Baxter?” said The Damper. “Hold on a shake! I wonder if he’s ‘Beloo’ Baxter, by any chance. There was a chap of that name about five years ago on the China Station. He had himself tattooed all over, regardless, in Rangoon. Then he got as good as engaged to a woman in Hongkong—rich woman too. But the Pusser of his ship gave him away. He had a regular cinema of frogs and dragonflies up his legs. And that was only the beginnin’ of the show. So she broke off the engagement, and he half-killed the Pusser, and then he became a Buddhist, or something.”

“That couldn’t have been this Baxter, or my Sub would have told me,” said Duckett. “My Sub’s a morbid-minded young animal.”

“_Maskee_[18] your Sub’s mind!” said Jerry. “What was this Baxter man—plain _or_ coloured—doin’ in All _my_ Pelungas?”

“As far as I can make out,” said Duckett, “Lootenant Baxter was flyin’ in those parts—with an observer—out of a ship.”

“Yes, but what _for_?” Jerry insisted. “And what ship?”

“He was flyin’ for exercise, I suppose, an’ his ship was the _Cormorang_. D’you feel wiser? An’ he flew, an’ he flew, an’ he flew till, between him an’ his observer and the low visibility and Providence and all that sort of thing, he lost his ship—just like some other people I know. Then he flapped about huntin’ for her till dusk among the Pelungas, an’ then he effected a landin’ on the water.”

“A nasty wet business—landin’ that way, Dinah. We know,” said Jerry into the keen little cocked ear in his lap.

“Then he taxied about in the dark till he taxied on to a coral reef and couldn’t get the machine off. Coral ain’t like mud, is it?” The question was to Jerry, but the insult was addressed to The Damper, who had lately spent eighteen hours on a soft and tenacious shoal off the East Coast. The Damper launched a kick at his host from where he lay along the settee.

“Then,” Duckett went on, “this Baxter-man got busy with his wireless and S O S’ed like winkie till the tide came and floated the old bus off the reef, and they taxied over to another island in the dark.”

“Thousands of Islands in All the Pelungas,” Jerry murmured. “Likewise reefs—hairy ones. What about the reefs?”

“Oh, they kept on hittin’ reefs in the dark, till it occurred to them to fire their signal lights to see ’em by. So they went blazin’ an’ stinkin’ and taxyin’ up and down the reefs till they found a gap in one of ’em and they taxied bung on to an uninhabited island.”

“That must have been good for the machine,” was Jerry’s comment.

“I don’t deny it. I’m only tellin’ you what my Sub told me. Baxter wrote it all home to his people, and the letters have been passed round the family. Well, then o’ course, it rained. It rained all the rest of the night, up to the afternoon of the next day. (It always does when you’re in a hole.) They tried to start their engine in the intervals of climbin’ palm-trees for coco-nuts. They’d only a few buscuits and some water with ’em.”

“’Don’t like climbin’ palm-trees. It scrapes you raw,” The Damper moaned.

“An’ when they weren’t climbin’ or crankin’ their engine, they tried to get into touch with the natives on the next nearest island. But the natives weren’t havin’ any. They took to the bush.”

“Ah!” said Jerry sympathetically. “That aeroplane was too much for ’em. Otherwise, they’re the most cosy, confidential lot _I_ ever met. Well, what happened?”

“Baxter sweated away at his engine till she started up again. Then he flew round lookin’ for his ship some more till his petrol ran out. Then he landed close to _another_ uninhabited island and tried to taxi up to it.”

“Why was he so keen on _un_inhabited islands? I wish I’d been there. _I’d_ ha’ shown him round the town,” said Jerry.

“I don’t know his reasons, but that was what he wrote home to his people,” Duckett went on. “Not havin’ any power by that time, his machine blew on to another reef and there they were! No grub, no petrol, and plenty of sharks! So they snugged her down. I don’t know how one snugs down an aeroplane,” Duckett admitted, “but Baxter took the necessary steps to reduce the sail-area, and cut the spanker-boom out of the tail-tassels or whatever it is they do on an aeroplane when they want her to be quiet. Anyhow, they more or less secured the bus to that reef so they thought she wouldn’t fetch adrift; and they tried to coax a canoe over that happened to be passing. Nothin’ doin’ _there_! ’Canoe made one bunk of it.”

“He tickled ’em the wrong way,” Jerry sighed. “There’s a song they sing when they’re fishing.” He began to hum dolefully.

“I expect Baxter didn’t know that tune,” Duckett interrupted. “He an’ his observer cursed the canoe a good deal, an’ then they went in for swimmin’ stunts all among the sharks, until they fetched up on the _next_ island when they came to it—it took ’em an hour to swim there—but the minute they landed the natives all left. ’Seems to me,” said Duckett thoughtfully, “Baxter and his observer must have spread a pretty healthy panic scullin’ about All the Pelungas in their shirts.”

“But why shirts?” said Jerry. “Those waters are perfectly warm.”

“If you come to that, why _not_ shirts?” Duckett retorted. “A shirt’s a badge of civilization——”

“Never mind your shirts. What happened after that?” said The Damper.

“They went to sleep. They were tired by that time—oddly enough. The natives on _that_ island had left everything standing when they bunked—fires lighted, chickens runnin’ about, and so forth. Baxter slept in one of the huts. About midnight some of the bold boys stole back again. Baxter heard ’em talkin’ just outside, and as he didn’t want his face trod on, he said ‘Salaam.’ That cleared the island for the second time. The natives jumped three foot into the air and shoved off.”

“Good Lord!” said Jerry impatiently. “_I’d_ have had ’em eating out of my hand in ten seconds. ‘Salaam’ isn’t the word to use at all. What he ought to have said——”

“Well, anyhow, he didn’t,” Duckett replied. “He and his observer had their sleep out an’ they woke in the mornin’ with ragin’ appetites and a strong sense of decency. The first thing they annexed was some native loin-cloths off a bush. Baxter wrote all this home to his people, you know. I expect he was well brought up.”

“If he was ‘Beloo’ Baxter no one would notice——” The Damper began.

“He wasn’t. He was just a simple, virtuous Naval Officer—like me. He an’ his observer navigated the island in full dress in search of the natives, but they’d gone and taken the canoe with ’em. Baxter was so depressed at their lack of confidence that he killed a chicken an’ plucked it and drew it (I bet neither of you know how to draw fowls) an’ boiled it and ate it all at once.”

“Didn’t he feed his observer?” The Damper asked. “I’ve a little brother what’s an observer up in the air. I’d hate to think he——”

“The observer was kept busy wavin’ his shirt on the beach in order to attract the attention of local fishin’ craft. That was what _he_ was for. After breakfast Baxter joined him an’ the two of ’em waved shirts for two hours on the beach. An’ that’s the sort of thing my Sub prefers to servin’ with me!—_Me!_ After a bit, the Pelungaloos decided that they must be harmless lunatics, and one canoe stood pretty close in, an’ they swam out to her. But here’s a curious thing! Baxter wrote his people that, when the canoe came, his observer hadn’t any shirt at all. ’Expect he’d expended it wavin’ for succour. But Baxter’s shirt was all right. He went out of his way to tell his people so. An’ my Sub couldn’t see the humour of it one little bit. How does it strike you?”

“Perfectly simple,” said Jerry. “Lootenant Baxter as executive officer in charge took his subordinate’s shirt owin’ to the exigencies of the Service. I’d ha’ done the same. Pro-ceed.”

“There’s worse to follow. As soon as they got aboard the canoe and the natives found they didn’t bite, they cottoned to ’em no end. ’Gave ’em grub and dry loin-cloths and betel-nut to chew. What’s betel-nut like, Jerry?”

“Grateful an’ comfortin’. Warms you all through and makes you spit pink. It’s non-intoxicating.”

“Oh! I’ve never tried it. Well then, there was Baxter spittin’ pink in a loin-cloth an’ a canoeful of Pelungaloo fishermen, with his shirt dryin’ in the breeze. ’Got that? Well, then his aeroplane, which he thought he had secured to the reef of the next island, began to drift out to sea. That boy had to keep his eyes open, I tell you. He wanted the natives to go in and makee-catchee the machine, and there was a big palaver about it. They naturally didn’t care to compromise themselves with strange idols, but after a bit they lined up a dozen canoes—no, eleven, to be precise—Baxter was awfully precise in his letters to his people—an’ tailed on to the aeroplane an’ towed it to an island.”

“Excellent,” said Jerry Marlett, the complete Lieutenant Commander. “I was gettin’ worried about His Majesty’s property. Baxter must have had a way with him. A loin-cloth ain’t uniform, but it’s dashed comfortable. An’ how did All my Pelungaloos treat ’em?”

“We-ell!” said Duckett, “Baxter was writin’ home to his people, so I expect he toned things down a bit, but, readin’ between the lines, it looks as if—an’ _that’s_ why my Sub wants to take up flyin’ of course—it looks as if, from then on, they had what you might call Garden-of-Eden picnics for weeks an’ weeks. The natives put ’em under a guard o’ sorts just for the look of the thing, while the news was sent to the Headman, but as far as I can make out from my Sub’s reminiscences of Baxter’s letters, their guard consisted of the entire male and female population goin’ in swimmin’ with ’em twice a day. At night they had concerts—native songs _versus_ music-hall—in alternate what d’you call ’em? Anti-somethings. ’Phone, ain’t it?”

“They _are_ a musical race! I’m glad he struck that side of their nature,” Jerry murmured.

“I’m envious,” Duckett protested. “Why should the Flyin’ Corps get all the plums? But Baxter didn’t forget His Majesty’s aeroplane. He got ’em to tow it to his island o’ delights, and in the evenings he an’ his observer, between the musical turns, used to give the women electric shocks off the wireless. And, one time, he told his observer to show ’em his false teeth, and when he took ’em out the people all bolted.”

“But that’s in Rider Haggard. It’s in ‘King Solomon’s Mines’,” The Damper remarked.

“P’raps that’s what put it into Baxter’s head then,” said Duckett. “Or else,” he suggested warily, “Baxter wanted to crab his observer’s chances with some lady.”

“Then he was a fool,” The Damper snarled. “It might have worked the other way. It generally does.”

“Well, one can’t foresee everything,” said Duckett. “Anyhow, Baxter didn’t complain. They lived there for weeks and weeks, singin’ songs together and bathin’ an’—oh, yes!—gamblin’. Baxter made a set of dice too. He doesn’t seem to have neglected much. He said it was just to pass the time away, but I wonder what he threw for. I wish I knew him. His letters to his people are too colourless. What a life he must have led! Women, dice and song, an’ your pay rollin’ up behind you in perfect safety with no exertion on your part.”

“There’s a dance they dance on moonlight nights,” said Jerry, “with just a few banana leaves—Never mind. Go ahead!”

“All things bright and beautiful—fineesh,” Duckett mourned. “Presently the Headman of All the Pelungas came along——”

“’My friend? I hope it was. A first-class sportsman,” said Jerry.

“Baxter didn’t say. Anyhow, he turned up and they were taken over to the capital island till they could be sent back to their own ship. The Headman did ’em up to the nines in every respect while they were with him (Baxter’s quite enthusiastic over it, even in writin’ to his own people), but, o’ course, there’s nothing like first love, is there? They must have felt partin’ with their first loves. _I_ always do. And then they were put into the full uniform of All the Pelungaloo Army. What’s that like, Jerry? You’ve seen it.”

“It’s a cross between a macaw an’ a rainbow-ended mandrill. Very tasty.”

“Just as they were gettin’ used to that, and they’d taught the Headman and his Court to sing: ‘Hello! Hello! Who’s your lady friend?’ they were embarked on a dirty common sailin’ craft an’ taken over the ocean and returned to the _Cormorang_, which, o’ course, had reported ’em missing and dead months before. They had one final kick-up before returnin’ to duty. You see, they’d both grown torpedo-beards in the Pelungas, and they were both in Pelungaloo uniform. Consequently, when they went aboard the _Cormorang_ they weren’t recognized till they were half-way down to their cabins.”

“And then?” both Captains asked at once.

“That’s where Baxter breaks off—even though he’s writin’ to his own people. He’s so apologetic to ’em for havin’ gone missin’ and worried ’em, an’ he’s so sinful proud of havin’ taught the Headman music-hall songs, that he only said that they had ‘some reception aboard the _Cormorang_.’ It lasted till midnight.”

“It is possible. What about their machine?” said Jerry.

“The _Cormorang_ ran down to the Pelungas and retrieved it all right. But _I_ should have liked to have seen that reception. There is nothing I’d ha’ liked better than to have seen that reception. And it isn’t as if I hadn’t seen a reception or two either.”

“The leaf-signal is made, sir,” said the Quartermaster at the door.

“Twelve-twenty-four train,” Duckett muttered. “Can do.” He rose, adding, “I’m going to scratch the backs of swine for the next three days. G’wout!”

The well-trained servant was already fleeting along the edge of the basin with his valise. _Stephanotis_ and _Phlox_ returned to their own ships, loudly expressing envy and hatred. Duckett paused for a moment at his gang-way rail to beckon to his torpedo-coxswain, a Mr. Wilkins, a peacetime sailor of mild and mildewed aspect who had followed Duckett’s shady fortunes for some years.

“Wilkins,” he whispered, “where _did_ we get that new starboard fender of ours from?”

“Orf the dredger, sir. She was asleep when we came in,” said Wilkins through lips that scarcely seemed to move. “But our port one come orf the water-boat. We ’ad to over’aul our moorin’s in the skiff last night, sir, and we—er—found it on ’er.”

“Well, well, Wilkins. Keep the home fires burning,” and Lieutenant-in-Command H. R. Duckett sped after his servant in the direction of the railway station. But not so fast that he could outrun a melody played aboard the _Phlox_ on a concertina to which manly voices bore the burden:

When the enterprisin’ burglar ain’t aburglin’—ain’t aburglin’,
When the cut-throat is not occupied with crime—’pied with crime.
He loves to hear the little brook agurglin’——

Moved, Heaven knows, whether by conscience or kindliness, Lieutenant Duckett smiled at the policeman on the Dockyard gates.

“STALKY”

_This happens to be the first story that was written concerning the adventures and performances of three schoolboys—“Stalky,” McTurk and “Beetle.” For some reason or other, it was never put into the book, called “Stalky & Co.,” that was made out of the stories. A certain amount of it, I am sorry to say, is founded on fact, though that is no recommendation; and the only moral that I can see in it is, that when for any reason you happen to get into a tight place, you have a better chance of coming out of it comfortably if you keep your head than if you get excited and don’t stop to think._

“And then,” it was a boy’s voice, curiously level and even, “De Vitré said we were beastly funks not to help, and _I_ said there were too many chaps in it to suit us. Besides, there’s bound to be a mess somewhere or other, with old De Vitré in charge. Wasn’t I right, Beetle?”

“And, anyhow, it’s a silly biznai, bung through. What’ll they _do_ with the beastly cows when they’ve got ’em? You can milk a cow—if she’ll stand still. That’s all right, but drivin’ ’em about——”

“You’re a pig, Beetle.”

“No, I ain’t. What _is_ the sense of drivin’ a lot of cows up from the Burrows to—to—where is it?”

“They’re tryin’ to drive ’em up to Toowey’s farmyard at the top of the hill—the empty one, where we smoked last Tuesday. It’s a revenge. Old Vidley chivied De Vitré twice last week for ridin’ his ponies on the Burrows; and De Vitré’s goin’ to lift as many of old Vidley’s cattle as he can and plant ’em up the hill. He’ll muck it, though—with Parsons, Orrin and Howlett helpin’ him. They’ll only yell, an’ shout, an’ bunk if they see Vidley.”

“_We_ might have managed it,” said McTurk slowly, turning up his coat-collar against the rain that swept over the Burrows. His hair was of the dark mahogany red that goes with a certain temperament.

“We should,” Corkran replied with equal confidence. “But they’ve gone into it as if it was a sort of spadger-hunt. I’ve never done any cattle-liftin’, but it seems to me-e-e that one might just as well be stalky about a thing as not.”

The smoking vapours of the Atlantic drove in wreaths above the boys’ heads. Out of the mist to windward, beyond the grey bar of the Pebble-Ridge, came the unceasing roar of mile-long Atlantic rollers. To leeward, a few stray ponies and cattle, the property of the Northam potwallopers, and the unwilling playthings of the boys in their leisure hours, showed through the haze. The three boys had halted by the Cattle-gate which marks the limit of cultivation, where the fields come down to the Burrows from Northam Hill. Beetle, shock-headed and spectacled, drew his nose to and fro along the wet top-bar; McTurk shifted from one foot to the other, watching the water drain into either print; while Corkran whistled through his teeth as he leaned against a sod-bank, peering into the mist.

A grown or sane person might have called the weather vile; but the boys at that School had not yet learned the national interest in climate. It was a little damp, to be sure; but it was always damp in the Easter term, and sea-wet, they held, could not give one a cold under any circumstances. Mackintoshes were things to go to church in, but crippling if one had to run at short notice across heavy country. So they waited serenely in the downpour, clad as their mothers would not have cared to see.

“I say, Corky,” said Beetle, wiping his spectacles for the twentieth time, “if we aren’t going to help De Vitré, what are we here for?”

“We’re goin’ to watch,” was the answer. “Keep your eye on your Uncle and he’ll pull you through.”