Chapter XI

THE Junior Watch-keeper entered the Wardroom and rang the bell with an air of gloomy mystery.

"The Russians are coming,"he announced."Cocktail, please, waiter."

The Young Doctor looked up from the year-old ` Bradshaw ' with which he was wont to enliven moments of depression by arranging mythical week-ends at friends' houses in various parts of England. It was a dreary amusement, and, conducted off the coast of Russian Tartary, stamped him as the possessor of no small imaginative powers

"Who said so?"

"Skipper: three Russian Destroyers, an' we're to invite them to dinner, an' there's nothing to eat."The Junior Watch-keeper managed the affairs of the Mess for that quarter.

"Those chaps feed like fighting-cocks,"observed the Assistant Paymaster."Let's send for the Messman."

The Junior Watch-keeper applied himself to his cocktail in silence, and the Celestial bandit who, in consideration of a monthly levy of thirty dollars per head, starved or poisoned them according to his whim, appeared in the doorway. The Mess broached the subject with quailing hearts; it was proposed to dine the representatives of a foreign Power. Could he for once rise to the occasion and produce a suitable repast?

The Oriental summed up the situation with impassive brevity

"No can do."

"Oh, rot!"said the Junior Watch-keeper, who up to this juncture had been gracefully pursuing the olive at the bottom of his glass with the tip of his tongue."Pull your socks up, Ah Chee, an' think of something."

The Messman brooded darkly."S'pose you go shore-side, catchee salmon, catchee snipe, pl'aps can do."

"By Jove, yes,"said the A.P., rising and walking to the scuttle."We never thought of that. But it's a God-forsaken place - look at it."

The ship was anchored in a little bay off the mouth of a shallow river. On one side the ground rose abruptly to a bleak promontory, and on the other stretched a waste of sand-dunes. Inland not a tree or vestige of human habitation broke the dreary expanse of plain, which was covered with stunted bushes and rolled away to a range of low hills in the distance,

"All very fine to talk about salmon,"said the Young Doctor,"but there isn't a rod in the ship, and no one could use it if there was."

"Make one,"suggested the Junior Watchkeeper, with cheerful resource begotten of cocktails.

"But flies-? A rod's no good without flies and things."

"I'll make a spinner. They won't take a fly in these parts, a fellow told me at Shanghai. 'Sides, we can't chuck a fly."

The Carpenter was summoned to the conclave, and the result of his labours was a formidable spar, resembling more closely a hop-pole than a salmon-rod, some fourteen feet in length.

"Why not take the lower boom and have done with it?"inquired the Young Doctor, who had abandoned 'Bradshaw' in favour of his gun-case, and was dabbling with awful joy in oil and cotton-waste.

The Junior Watch-keeper vouched no reply. His was the spirit of the"Compleat Angler,"and armed with a nippers and clasp-knife he wrestled grimly with the lid of a tobacco-tin. Half an hour's toil, conducted in profane silence, resulted in a triangular object which, embellished with red bunting and bristling with hooks, he passed round for the startled consideration of the Mess.

"Well,"admitted the Young Doctor, with the air of one generously conceding a debatable point,"you might catch the bottom, with a certain amount of luck, but -"a well flung cushion cut short further criticism, and the Committee of Supplies adjourned.

The rising sun next morning beheld three depressed-looking figures disembarking on the sandy beach. The Junior Watch-keeper had fashioned a wondrous reel out of pieces of a cigar-box, and the Boatswain had provided about thirty fathoms of mackrel-line and some thin wire. The A.P. essayed a joke about using the rod as a flagstaff to commemorate their landing, but it lacked savour - as indeed jests do in the pale light of dawn. Wreaths of mist hung over the river, swirling between sandy banks, leaden-grey and noiseless. A few gulls wheeled overhead, protesting at the invasion with dismal cries, and the waves broke whispering along the beach in an arc of foam.

The three adventurers gazed despondently at the sand-dunes, the receding stern of the boat, and finally each other's sleepy, unshaven faces. The Young Doctor broke suddenly into a feeble cackle of laughter. An unfamiliar chord of memory vibrated, and with it came a vision of a certain coffee-stall outside Charing Cross Station and the Junior Watch-keeper's wan face surmounted by a battered opera-hat."Jove !"he murmured.". . . Reminds me . . . Covent Garden Ball . . . !"

The A.P. had toiled to the top of an adjacent mound, from which, like Moses of old, he"surveyed the landscape o'er.""Come on,"he shouted valiantly.

"Well,"said the Junior Watch - keeper, "Vive le sport! If there were no fools there'd be no fun."He shouldered his strange impedimenta and joined the A.P.

Away to their left a glint of water showed intermittently as the river wound between clumps of low bushes and hillocks. Patches of level ground covered with reeds and coarse grass fought with the sand-dunes, and stretched away in dreary perspective to the hills. Briefly y they arranged. their plan of campaign: the Junior Watch-keeper was to fish up-stream, the other two meeting him about five miles inland in a couple of hours' time. They separated, and the Junior Watchkeeper dipped behind a rise and was lost to view.

It is not recorded what exactly the snipe were doing that day. The Young Doctor had it that they were"taking a day off,"the A.P. that they had struck the wrong part of the country. But the melancholy fact remains that two hours later they sat down to share their sandwiches with empty bags and clean barrels. A faint shout from out of the distance started them again into activity.

"He's fallen in,"suggested the Young Doctor with cheerful promptitude.

"Sat on the hook, more likely."There was grim relish in the A.P.'s tone. Neither was prepared for the spectacle that met their astonished eyes when they reached the river.

Standing on a partly submerged sand-bank, in the middle of the stream, dripping wet and"full of strange oaths,"was the Junior Watchkeeper. The point of his rod was agitated like the staff of a Morse signaller's flag, while a smother of foam and occasional glimpses of a silver belly twenty yards up-stream testified that the age of miracles had not yet passed.

"Play him; you fool!"yelled the A.P.

"Can't,"wailed the Junior Watch-keeper, battling with the rod."The reel's jammed!"

"Look out, then!"shouted the Young Doctor, and the safety-catch of his gun snapped."Let me have a shot-"

But the Junior Watch-keeper had abandoned his rod. Seizing the stout line in his fingers, his feet braced in the yielding sand, shamelessly he hauled the lordly fish, fighting, to his feet."Come on,"he spluttered,"bear a hand, you blokes !"The"blokes"rushed into the shallows, and together they floundered amid a tangle of line and showers of spray, grabbing for its gills. Eventually it was flung ashore, and the coup de grace administered with the butt-end of the A.P.'s gun.

"Thirty pounds, if it's an ounce,"gasped the Junior Watch-keeper, wringing the water out of his trousers. They stood arid surveyed it in amazed silence, struck dumb with the wonder of the thing. Contrasted with the salmon as they knew it-decorated with sprigs of fennel on a fishmonger's slab - it looked an uncouth creature, with an under-hung jaw and a curiously arched back. The A.P. prodded it suspiciously with the toe of his boot.

"'S'pose it's all right-eh? Clean run, an: all the rest of it?"

"Course it is,"replied the Junior Watch keeper indignantly. He knew no more about its condition than the other two, but his was all the pride of capture. He relieved the tedium of the return journey with tales of wondrous salmon that lurked in pools beneath the bank; unmoved they listened to outrageous yarns of still larger salmon that swam in open-mouthed pursuit of the homemade spinner, jostling each other by reason of their numbers. The Junior Watch-keeper had set out that morning an honourable man, who had never angled for anything larger than a stickleback in his life. He returned at noon hugging a thirty-pound salmon, his mouth speaking vanity and lies.

"An' I nearly shot the dam thing,"sighed the Young Doctor at the close of the recital.

"What did you shoot, by the way?"asked the Junior Watch-keeper loftily.

"Nothing,"was the curt reply, and his cup of happiness ran over.

The principal guest of the evening eyed a generous helping of salmon that was placed in front of him, and turned to his neighbour."Pardon me,"he said courteously,"but does this fish happen to have been caught in any of the local rivers?"

All eyes turned to the Junior Watch keeper, who, prevented by a mouthful from replying, sat breathing heavily through his nose."Because if it was,"went on the Russian,"I think I ought to warn you-at the risk of giving you offence-that local salmon are poisonous. That is, unfit for human consumption."

Followed an awful silence. The Young Doctor broke it."How interesting,"by observed feebly;"but why?"

The Russian shook his head."I don' really know. And I hope you will forgive me for assuring you that they are dangerous to the health."

"Oh,"said the captor faintly,"I've eaten my whack !"

The remainder of the dinner was not, gastronomically speaking, a success. The Mess and their guests eyed one another at intervals with furtive apprehension, much as Cleopatra's poisoned slaves must have awaited the appearance of each other's symptoms. But it was not until some hours later that the Young Doctor was awakened by some one calling his name aloud. He sat up in his bunk and listened, and presently it was borne upon him that somewhere, in the stillness of the night watches, the Junior Watch-keeper was dreeing his weird,

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