Naval Occasions, and Some Traits of the Sailor-man

by Bartimeus

  *XI.*

  *A COMMITTEE OF SUPPLY.*

  The Junior Watch-keeper entered the Wardroom and rang the bell with anair of gloomy mystery.

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

  The Young Doctor looked up from the year-old 'Bradshaw' with which hewas wont to enliven moments of depression by arranging mythicalweek-ends at friends' houses in various parts of England. It was adreary 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 theaffairs of the Mess for that quarter.

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

  The Junior Watch-keeper applied himself to his cocktail in silence, andthe Celestial bandit who, in consideration of a monthly levy of thirtydollars per head, starved or poisoned them according to his whim,appeared in the doorway. The Mess broached the subject with quailinghearts; 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 hadbeen gracefully pursuing the olive at the bottom of his glass with thetip of his tongue. "Pull your socks up, Ah Chee, an' think ofsomething."

  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. "Wenever 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 theother stretched a waste of sand-dunes. Inland not a tree or vestige ofhuman habitation broke the dreary expanse of plain, which was coveredwith stunted bushes and rolled away to a range of low hills in thedistance.

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

  "Make one," suggested the Junior Watchkeeper, with cheerful resourcebegotten 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 fellowtold me at Shanghai. 'Sides, we can't chuck a fly."

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

  "Why not take the lower boom and have done with it?" inquired the YoungDoctor, who had abandoned 'Bradshaw' in favour of his gun-case, and wasdabbling 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 wrestledgrimly with the lid of a tobacco-tin. Half an hour's toil, conducted inprofane silence, resulted in a triangular object which, embellished withred bunting and bristling with hooks, he passed round for the startledconsideration of the Mess.

  "Well," admitted the Young Doctor, with the air of one generouslyconceding a debatable point, "you _might_ catch the bottom, with acertain amount of luck, but--" a well-flung cushion cut short furthercriticism, and the Committee of Supplies adjourned.

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

  The three adventurers gazed despondently at the sand-dunes, the recedingstern of the boat, and finally each other's sleepy, unshaven faces. TheYoung Doctor broke suddenly into a feeble cackle of laughter. Anunfamiliar chord of memory vibrated, and with it came a vision of acertain coffee-stall outside Charing Cross Station and the JuniorWatch-keeper's wan face surmounted by a battered opera-hat. "Jove!" hemurmured. "... Reminds me ... Covent Garden Ball...!"

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

  "Well," said the Junior Watch-keeper, "_Vive le sport_! If there wereno fools there'd be no fun." He shouldered his strange impedimenta andjoined the A.P.

  Away to their left a glint of water showed intermittently as the riverwound between clumps of low bushes and hillocks. Patches of levelground covered with reeds and coarse grass fought with the sand-dunes,and stretched away in dreary perspective to the hills. Briefly theyarranged their plan of campaign: the Junior Watch-keeper was to fishup-stream, the other two meeting him about five miles inland in a coupleof hours' time. They separated, and the Junior Watchkeeper dippedbehind a rise and was lost to view.

  It is not recorded what exactly the snipe were doing that day. TheYoung Doctor had it that they were "taking a day off," the A.P. thatthey had struck the wrong part of the country. But the melancholy factremains that two hours later they sat down to share their sandwicheswith empty bags and clean barrels. A faint shout from out of thedistance 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.'stone. Neither was prepared for the spectacle that met their astonishedeyes 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'sflag, while a smother of foam and occasional glimpses of a silver bellytwenty yards up-stream testified that the age of miracles had not yetpassed.

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

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

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

  But the Junior Watch-keeper had abandoned his rod. Seizing the stoutline in his fingers, his feet braced in the yielding sand, shamelesslyhe hauled the lordly fish, fighting, to his feet. "Come on," hespluttered, "bear a hand, you blokes!" The "blokes" rushed into theshallows, and together they floundered amid a tangle of line and showersof spray, grabbing for its gills. Eventually it was flung ashore, andthe _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 and surveyed it inamazed silence, struck dumb with the wonder of the thing. Contrastedwith the salmon as they knew it--decorated with sprigs of fennel on afishmonger's slab--it looked an uncouth creature, with an underhung jawand a curiously arched back. The A.P. prodded it suspiciously with thetoe of his boot.

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

  "Course it is," replied the Junior Watchkeeper indignantly. He knew nomore about its condition than the other two, but his was all the prideof capture. He relieved the tedium of the return journey with tales ofwondrous salmon that lurked in pools beneath the bank; unmoved theylistened to outrageous yarns of still larger salmon that swam inopen-mouthed pursuit of the home-made spinner, jostling each other byreason of their numbers. The Junior Watch-keeper had set out thatmorning an honourable man, who had never angled for anyt
hing larger thana stickleback in his life. He returned at noon hugging a thirty-poundsalmon, his mouth speaking vanity and lies.

  "An' I nearly shot the damn thing," sighed the Young Doctor at the closeof the recital.

  "What _did_ you shoot, by the way?" asked the Junior Watch-keeperloftily.

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

  * * * * *

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

  All eyes turned to the Junior Watchkeeper, who, prevented by a mouthfulfrom replying, sat breathing heavily through his nose. "Because if itwas," went on the Russian, "I think I ought to warn you--at the risk ofgiving you offence--that local salmon are poisonous. That is, unfit forhuman consumption."

  Followed an awful silence. The Young Doctor broke it. "Howinteresting," he observed feebly; "but why?"

  The Russian shook his head. "I don't really know. And I hope you willforgive 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, asuccess. The Mess and their guests eyed one another at intervals withfurtive apprehension, much as Cleopatra's poisoned slaves must haveawaited the appearance of each other's symptoms. But it was not untilsome hours later that the Young Doctor was awakened by some one callinghis name aloud. He sat up in his bunk and listened, and presently itwas borne upon him that somewhere, in the stillness of the night,watches, the Junior Watch-keeper was dreeing his weird.