From Sail to Steam Naval Recollections, 1878-1905 Admiral C. C. Penrose Fitzgerald

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PREFACE

THE meeting of an old friend is always a pleasant incident in our lives, and I make bold to assume that you who are now reading these words have previously read my " Memories of the Sea," and that you are therefore not loth to renew our previous acquaintance, nor to listen patiently to some more stories of life in the Navy in the last century. I trust, therefore, that 1 succeeded in entertaining, or perhaps amusing, you on a former occasion, and that I may claim you as an old friend who will indulgently accompany me upon a few more cruises, in Her Majesty's ships, to various quarters of the globe, to show the flag, police the seas, and maintain that very real but rather indescribable thing we call British prestige.

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CHAPTER I

H.M.S. " RAPID " AT CORFU

THE reader will perhaps remember that when I said farewell, or rather au revoir, with the promise to go on if I received encouragement, I had gone on shore from H.M.S. Asia, had tried to break my neck in the huntingfield, got concussion of the spine and spent a year on the flat of my back, suffering a good deal, though slowly recovering; and, indeed, I had good reason to be thankful that I was not paralyzed for life, as I was threatened with this for several months.

At the end of a year the doctors told me I might go to sea again, so I applied to the Admiralty for an appointment; and as my old friend Lord Clanwilliam was at that time a Lord of the Admiralty, he got me appointed to the command of the Rapid in the Mediterranean, the commander of that ship (C. Drummond) having been promoted.

The Rapid was my first independent command, and a very delightful command she was. She was the slowest ship on the station - too slow to keep up with the fleet and too slow to carry mails or despatches; so that I was always on detached service and very much my own master. I was fourteen months on the station before I ever met the Admiral (Sir Geoffrey Hornby),

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though, of course, I was in frequent communication with him - but that was a very different thing from being always under his eye, for when the cat's away the mice can play.

It must be admitted that we were not quite so strenuous in the Navy thirty-five years ago as we are to-day. We took matters easier. Our naval supremacy had not been seriously threatened since Trafalgar, and we were resting on our laurels, or rather on the laurels of our forefathers - a condition of affairs which is apt to make people sleepy and indifferent and over-confident. Competition and opposition are good for all of us; they are the very salt of life, without which we should soon get rotten. So that it is perhaps a blessing in disguise that we should now find ourselves boldly challenged to make good our claim to rule the waves, though it is perhaps not altogether a good sign that we should see a successor of Lord St. Vincent go whining, hat in hand, to the challenger, begging him to desist, and thus save us from the expense of insuring our wealth and our national independence. But at the time of which I am writing no ambitious potentate had stretched forth his hand to seize Neptune's trident and wrest it from our grasp. So we just jogged along comfortably, taking things easy, not paying much attention to gunnery or fighting efficiency of any sort, though we still kept up the good old tradition of making our men sailors by giving them plenty of exercise at sail drill and making our passages under sail whenever it was possible to do so; for " saving coal " was still the order of the day and the order of the Admiralty too, and this last was a matter of great importance to a commander expecting and hoping for his promotion. The Rapid was a slightly enlarged Cordelia, of which ship I gave a description

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in my former volume; but instead of being now a baby corvette, fully rigged and carrying eleven guns, she had lately been transformed into a sort of glorified gunboat: her rig altered to that of a barque and her guns reduced from eleven to three, one of these being a 7½ ton muzzle-loader and the other two 40-pounder Armstrong breech-loaders - what the sailors used to call " two-muzzled guns, what shoots inboard." And this they not uncommonly did, killing or wounding some of their crew. In fact, I have very little doubt that if a true record could be obtained of the execution done by the so-called Armstrong gun, with its lively breech-block, it would be found to be on the wrong side of the balance-sheet - killed more friends than foes, like the modern revolver.

Be that as it may, and with all respect to the great Elswick firm, it cannot be denied that the Armstrong gun of the period was a dangerous and inefficient weapon, and far behind the French breech-loading gun of the same date.

This fact was fully recognized by our naval ordnance people; yet, instead of developing an efficient breech-loading weapon, they clung to muzzle-loaders for many years after other nations had discarded them; so that as late as well on into the last decade of the century we had in commission that interesting naval curiosity the Inflexible, with her four 80 ton muzzle-loading guns, her 24 inches of armour over a small patch amidships, and two-thirds of her sides and waterline open to be riddled by the smallest guns afloat.

But to return to the Rapid. Her one more or less efficient gun was a 7½ ton muzzle-loader, mounted amidships and supposed to fire on either broadside; but the spare topmast was stowed right across the port on

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the port side, so that the gun could only be fired on the starboard side. This I altered directly I joined, as I thought an enemy might possibly come up on the port side, and that in this case a gun would be more useful than a spare topmast.

The above would appear to be somewhat in the nature of an unkind reflection cast upon the memory of my numerous predecessors who had commanded the Rapid. It is not so intended, but is merely quoted with the object of showing that at this period we were not quite so strenuous in seeking fighting efficiency in the Navy as our successors are to-day. We had, it must be confessed, relapsed into a sort of dolce far niente condition; due no doubt to the absence of that serious rivalry and competition which are, as I have before remarked, the very salt of life.

I joined the Rapid at Corfu in January, 1878. This was only a few years after Mr. Gladstone had made Corfu a present to the Greeks, withdrawn the British troops, and blown up the fortifications which had cost Great Britain more than two millions of money. It was very generous of Mr. Gladstone, who, it was said, had been reading Homer.

It was at the request of Austria that the fortifications of Corfu were demolished. The Austrians no doubt had visions of some future Agamemnon and Achilles making Corfu their base of operations for the siege of Trieste. At any rate, it is in accordance with the custom of civilized Powers (International Law, as it is vaguely termed) to demolish your fortifications when you abandon a position to other people who may be less friendly to the neighbours than you have been. So up went two millions of British gold, in a fit of altruistic generosity.

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Liberal Governments have a way of being very liberal with other people's gear.

When I arrived at Corfu in January, 1878, the Corfiotes were feeling acutely the economic depression caused by the withdrawal of the British troops and the transference to the Greek government of their beautiful island. The good roads made by the British had already fallen into a state of disrepair. Business in the towns was very slack; in fact, the grass had begun to grow in some of the streets. The country people complained that there was no market for their produce, and Wolfe the saddler remarked to me that there were not quite so many English sovereigns knocking about as there used to be. But they had Home Rule, and some of them pretended to like it.

In the days of the British protectorate of the Ionian Islands, Corfu had been known as " the soldiers' paradise." The regiments and the gunners that got a couple of years there were the envy of all their comrades; and it certainly was a very delightful station, especially during the winter months, when the climate is neither too hot nor too cold, and the best woodcock-shooting in the world is only five miles off - just across the bay.

Truly the glory of Corfu had departed. There had been a Lord High Commissioner of the Ionian Islands, who lived in a palace overlooking the anchorage. But that office, once held by Mr. Gladstone, had been abolished and the palace was empty, swept and garnished.

The first time our Consul visited the ship he received a salute of seven guns. He looked sad and crestfallen, and told me that when he was Commissioner of one of the other islands - I think Santa Maura - he had been

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accustomed to receive a salute of fifteen guns, and that it was a great come down. I agreed with him, but assured him that the regulations were very strict, and that I could not possibly give him more than seven. He sighed and said he knew it, and went on shore again.

It has occasionally struck me that Consuls, though nearly always civilians, are very fond of guns.

I had not been many days at Corfu before I took a trip to the happy hunting-grounds of Albania, on the opposite side of the bay - the first of many trips, which were attended with varying success, amongst the woodcock, the snipe, and the pigs.

On the Albanian coast opposite to Corfu Island there are several beautifully snug little harbours - not exactly ship harbours, but perfect for small vessels and yachts; and in the days of the British occupation there were about a dozen small yachts for hire, exactly suited for these little harbours, where they could lie sheltered from all winds while the lucky British soldiers of the Corfu garrison landed to shoot woodcock, and returned on board at sunset to dine and sleep.

The woodcock-shooting in Albania is perhaps the best in the world. The snipe-shooting in the marshes is also very good; and these two sports can be varied with " pigging," or wild-boar-shooting, which under some circumstances is rather exciting, though, on the other hand, it becomes monotonous when the pigs won't bolt, or bolt the wrong way. The country is far too rough and hilly to ride after them and stick them as they do in India, so the only way to get them is to shoot them as they do in Germany.

There is always a chance of a wounded boar charging, which adds something to the excitement of the sport.

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I was never charged myself, though on one occasion one of my boat's crew, who were beating for me, was charged and badly ripped in the thigh by a boar which had not only not been wounded, but had not even been fired at, or even previously seen by either the beaters or the shooters; but this happened in Northern Syria and not in Albania.

I always used my double-barrelled shot-gun, with spherical bullets, for pigging. Some people used rifles, but they rarely hit a pig. Most of the shots one got were under fifty yards. It was not stalking, as you very seldom saw the pig until he bolted from the cover at full speed, sometimes within four or five yards of you; so that you had a much better chance of hitting him with your number twelve bore fowling-piece you were accustomed to shoot with, than with a rifle which you were not accustomed to - at least, I found it so.

It was something like rabbit-shooting on a big scale, with a chance of the rabbit charging.

The pigs were excellent eating, like venison, and not a bit like tame pork.

The first time I went pigging in Albania I got a shot at a running boar, at about fifty yards, and hit him, but too far back, breaking his near hind-leg. He did not charge, but made off, and my coxswain and I gave chase. At first we gained a little on him, and I fired several end-on shots, but he was dodging amongst bushes, and I never hit him again. The trail, however, showed so much blood that we thought he would soon weaken and get slower or stop, and that we should come up to him and finish him but the ground was very rough, and it soon became obvious that the pig was better on three legs than we were on two, and was rapidly leaving us; so with a parting shot at about

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one hundred yards, we sat down, thoroughly blown, and watched him. He had now got into fairly open country, and we could see him going as straight as a line for a hill about a mile off, upon which we observed another pigging party with their beaters, apparently having lunch. We shouted for all we were worth, to warn them that the wounded pig was going straight for them, and they evidently heard our yell, though probably not the purport of it.

We could still see the pig at intervals amongst the scrub, and he kept a perfectly straight course, as if he had been steering by compass, until he got right in amongst the luncheon-party, and then there was great commotion and a rapid succession of shots.

My coxswain and I were very tired and hungry, and our luncheon was a long way off in the other direction, so we did not cross the valley to see what had happened; but two days afterwards, on my return to Corfu, I found out that the party we were watching, and who had finished my wounded pig, consisted of an English lunatic and his doctor, who were staying at an hotel in Corfu, and had gone over to Albania on a pigging expedition the same day that I had gone.

I called on the lunatic and his doctor, and suggested that I was entitled to a portion of the pig, as they certainly would never have got him if I had not wounded him first and then warned them that he was coming in amongst them. The doctor agreed with me in principle, but said they had already eaten the pig; and the lunatic offered me the skin, which I declined.

The lunatic was only a monomaniac, and quite sane upon all subjects save one. It was a very strange form of monomania, and one I have never heard of before or since.

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If anyone looked straight at him and at the same time happened to cough, he conceived that he was being accused of a horrible and unnatural crime, and went for the accuser with great fury and without more ado, no matter where or when. So that the doctor had rather a ticklish business in hand, as he had not only to warn strangers, but also to look out to try and stop the assault, should anyone be so unfortunate as to give the unintentional offence.

I dined at the hotel one night, where there were a good many guests, as I was rather curious to see a demonstration of this peculiar form of monomania; but the guests had probably all been warned by the doctor, and nothing happened. I did not feel disposed to try the experiment myself, as there were a lot of knives on the table, and the doctor was on the offside.

I had not been long in command of the Rapid at Corfu before my friend the Consul informed me that he had received reliable information that two Christian villages on the Albanian coast, opposite to the northern part of Corfu Islands, were expecting a visit from a battalion of Turkish irregular troops, to punish the inhabitants for something they had done to offend the Turkish Government.

" It is quite possible," said the Consul, " that these villages may have been rebellious and insubordinate; but when irregular Mahomedan troops are sent to punish Christian villages, it generally comes rather hard upon the women and children."

The Consul added that he had received urgent requests from the head-men and the priests of both the villages (Tre Scogli and Santa Quaranta) imploring him to get the women and children taken across the water to their co-religionists in Corfu before the Turkish

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troops arrived, else there would probably be a wholesale massacre of the women, or worse; and he asked me if I would go over in the Rapid and fetch them, as there was no time to lose and no merchant vessels he could hire or charter for the job.

I felt rather puzzled at the request, and not at all sure whether I should be justified in offering sanctuary in one of Her Majesty's ships to anyone save bona-fide British subjects; but as there was no time to ask my Admiral (at Malta) for instructions, and the matter was urgent, I thought of a motto taught me by one of my old Captains: " When in doubt, act first, and ask leave afterwards." So over I went in the Rapid into Turkish territory, and brought over to Corfu about one hundred and eighty women and children and a few very old and infirm men from the two threatened villages. We had to make two trips to do it, as the poor wretches naturally wanted to save and bring with them whatever they could hastily pack and get our men to bring off for them.

It was indeed a pitiful sight to see these poor people torn suddenly from their homes, struggling to save some of their very modest possessions - bedding, clothes, pots and pans, cheap and gaudy sacred pictures, even children's toys; but they knew too well what was in store for them if they did not escape before the punitive expedition from Scutari came down upon them.

A few days after I had landed the refugees at Corfu the avenging Turk came down and burnt both villages; and more than a year afterwards the homeless Epiriotes were still leading a wretched life in the town of Corfu, almost entirely dependent on charity.

There were very eulogistic articles in the Corfu newspapers about " the historic Rapid, her noble crew and

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gallant commander," etc., who rescued these unfortunate people from almost certain death, and I felt rather proud of myself; but pride goeth before a fall, and I still felt a little bit anxious as to what my Admiral would say about my proceedings.

I had not long to wait, for by return of post from Malta I received the following memorandum from Admiral Hornby, who was at that time Commander-in-Chief in the Mediterranean:

" I have received your letter No. 5, of the 4th inst., reporting your proceedings and acquainting me that you had embarked and conveyed to Corfu certain men, women, and children from the ports of Tre Scogli and Santa Quaranta on the Albanian coast. In reply I have to point out to you that I do not consider your instructions in any way authorize you to receive on board such persons, not being British subjects . . . . On the ground of humanity the removal of women and children from the actual scene of fighting would be permissible, but even in that case they should not be landed in a country not their own . . . . In the instances you report it appears to me that granting the people you did a passage was a misuse of one of Her Majesty's ships, and tended to encourage hostilities, by the removal from danger of the wives and families of men at a time when their continued presence would probably have deterred such men from committing excesses and from resisting lawful authority by force of arms.

" I shall forward a copy of this memorandum to the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty, with your report of proceedings."

This was rather a damper to the ambitions of a commander expecting his promotion, and caused me to take a gloomy view of my future prospects, until, about a month afterwards, I received another memorandum from my Admiral, to the effect that

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"The Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty have informed me that, as you embarked fugitives on board the Rapid by the advice of Her Majesty's Consul at Corfu, and your proceedings have been approved by Her Majesty's Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, their Lordships are not prepared to withhold their approval of your proceedings - although not enjoined by your instructions - as it appears what you did was justifiable as a measure of humanity."

It did not strike me that "not prepared to withhold their approval" was a very gracious way of expressing their approval on the part of the Admiralty; but that, of course, is a mere matter of taste, and it was enough for me to know that I had not done anything which would be likely to block my promotion.

In 1878 there were still a good many English living in the town of Corfu; they were mostly business people who had established themselves there during the palmy days of the British occupation of the Ionian Islands, and having made their homes there, they did not leave when the islands were handed over to the Greek Government. The British community was, however, a rapidly dwindling one, as there was the natural wastage, and no fresh supply coming in to fill up the gaps. An English episcopal church still flourished, more or less, with a parson paid by either the Foreign or Colonial Offices - I am not sure which. The said parson, a fiery Welshman, was in the habit of preaching inordinately long sermons, which bored and irritated his congregation. They had frequently remonstrated with him and begged him to spare .them, but entirely without any result, and they had always been worsted in their encounters and forced to retreat, baffled and discomforted; for their pastor told them (perhaps truly)

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that he knew much better what was good for them than they did themselves.

These peaceful and innocent-looking people entered into a conspiracy and formed a plot, in which they assigned to me the role of Archibald Bell-the-Cat; for, as a matter of fact, they were all very much afraid of the fiery Welshman, and were particularly anxious that I should tackle him on the subject of his long sermons.

And this was how it was managed: As the Rapid did not carry a chaplain, I was in the habit of sending those of the crew who belonged to the Church of England to the English church, and of going myself; but the poor, tired sailors found it impossible to keep awake during the sermon no matter how loudly the impassioned orator threatened and thundered; and I had seen whole benches of them fast asleep long before the oration was finished.

Here, then, was a handle for a remonstrance against the long sermons - at least, so we thought, and I, nothing loth, joined the conspiracy. Some of my friends came on board the Rapid to consult, and to their great joy, I wrote an extremely polite letter to the parson, pointing out how very glad I was to avail myself of the privilege of sending my men to his church; but that, unfortunately, I had noticed that most of them went to sleep during the sermon, which was not seemly on their part nor creditable to the intelligence of British seamen; and I further added that after many years' experience of sailors I found that they never could keep awake during any sermon which lasted more than ten minutes. If, therefore, he could manage to curtail his sermons to about that length, I should be glad to continue to avail myself of the privilege of sending my men to his church; but that, if not, I was afraid I should have to discontinue doing so.

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I thought it was a very polite and inoffensive letter. But not so the fiery Welshman, who came on board next day in a towering rage, and sought an interview with me. He did not swear - parsons don't swear - but he cussed majestically. I am not sure that he did not threaten to excommunicate me, or at any rate to get the Pope or somebody else to do so. He would report me to Lord Salisbury (the Foreign Secretary) for interfering with his clerical duties and dictating to him as to what length his sermons ought to be. I had insulted him by implying that he was unable to keep British seamen awake. To which I replied that I found it difficult to do so myself when I only read the prayers on Sunday morning, without any sermon at all. I told him that our men had been taught to regard Sunday as a day of rest, and that they always followed that rule, adding, sotto voce, "When we let 'em." I told him, further, that the days had long gone by when the sailor's eleventh commandment was in vogue - "Six days thou shalt labour and do all that thou art able, and on the seventh thou shalt holystone the deck and scrub the cable."

But so far from this pacifying him, it only made him worse. He said I was chaffing him, and he finally went on shore and had interviews with some of the leading members of his congregation.

What specially riled him was that he knew it was a put-up job, and that I was merely the stalking-horse, selected to bell the cat - and a very fierce cat he was. The total result, however, was quite satisfactory, and the sermons were very much curtailed.

I had already remarked that the woodcock-shooting in Albania is about the best in the world, and I made the most of it during the winter of 1877-78. Our

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cruising ground extended from Corfu to Antivari, and included Avlona, Durazzo, San Giovanni di Medua; and several other happy hunting-grounds, which have lately become famous for other shooting than woodcock-shooting; and I fear that the woodcock, the snipe, and even the gallant wild boar, must have been very much scared by recent events at and around the above-named places.* But in 1878 there was nothing to disturb this quiet coast, beyond occasional raids on Christian villages by Turkish regulars or irregulars, and there was good woodcock-shooting all along the coast, wherever there were suitable covers. San Giovanni di Medua was a particularly delightful place. There you could shoot a woodcock directly you landed from your boat, as the covers came right down to the water's edge.

While I am talking of sport, and particularly of shooting, it occurs to me that the reader may perhaps think we have nothing else to do in the Navy save to amuse ourselves. Several books of naval reminiscences have appeared lately which might naturally give rise to this idea, notably those by Admiral Sir William Kennedy and Sir Robert Harris, which are very largely devoted to descriptions of sport in various parts of the world; but it would be a great mistake to suppose that we have nothing else to do, or even that shooting occupied any large proportion of our time. The explanation is that we naturally dwell upon the pleasant incidents in our naval careers, and skip over and try to forget the unpleasant ones.

It would not interest the reader to hear of the monotony of being becalmed at sea (none of this in the present day), nor of the weary months we sometimes had to spend at some God-forsaken place where some

* written at the time of the second Balkan War,

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shadowy British interests were supposed to require the presence of a man-of-war. Were we to dwell upon these things and write lugubrious lamentations of the misery we endured, it would sound like grumbling, and it is well known that sailors never grumble-or hardly ever.

I shot my first pig at Avlona, a very fine animal, whose tusks now adorn the wall of my study.

Albania is a wild and rough country, vast tracts of the extensive foot-hills being covered with scrub, mainly that of the dwarf oak, which shrub supplies the commercial article known as "valonia," largely imported into England for tanning, dyeing, and making ink. It takes its name from Avlona, and the article, as exported, consists of the cups of the acorns of the dwarf oak; the acorns themselves are left for the wild boar out of the woods, who thrives well upon them.

Interspersed amongst the oak scrub there are tracts of coarse grass, upon which the wild-looking, petticoated Albanian shepherds feed their flocks, closely guarded by those splendid and courageous animals the Molossian dogs, which fiercely resent the intrusion of all strangers and occasionally become extremely troublesome, attacking at close quarters until their masters call them off.

We always found these Albanians very friendly, and we could generally manage to engage half a dozen of them to act as beaters for either pigs or woodcock, and they did not expect a large remuneration; a plug of ship's tobacco was more acceptable than money. For scaring the pigs and driving them from cover they used a curious implement which made a weird and unearthly noise; it was composed of the dried shell of a gourd and a piece of waxed string, which they pulled through their fingers, making a strange noise, the like of which

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I never heard before. But the best of all the beaters for pigs was the marine bugler. I found that he was getting fat, from want of exercise, and that he also wanted practice; so he joined the beaters, and when he sounded the light-infantry calls on his bugle amongst the wild valleys of the Albanian foot-hills, the pigs put back their ears and bolted like rabbits from the other end of the cover, where the guns had been previously placed. Thus we got some very pretty running shots; not by any means easy, for a wild pig can go at a great pace, and there is always a chance that he may charge, especially if wounded.

Considering the great part which the Island of Corfu (Corcyra) played in ancient history, it does not contain so many remains of antiquity as one would have expected, though it appears that the Kaiser has lately been digging with some success. The soil is fertile, but the Corfiot peasantry are reputed to be the idlest of all the Ionians. Oil, wine, and garlic are the principal products. The olive-tree requires but little attention or cultivation. A dead donkey, buried at the roots, is said to be the best manure, and failing this, rags from the Jewish quarter, which, no doubt, give a fine flavour to the oil. Some attention and some labour have to be expended on the vineyards, but this is so carelessly done that the wine produced has no reputation, and does not leave the island; and as to the garlic, to judge by the smell of the people, it is of first-rate quality and very strong.

Those who have travelled in the East need not be reminded of the smell of " eaten " garlic; but if they have not walked through the streets of Corfu city on the evening of one of the numerous feast-days, they have not known it at the summit of its power.

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CHAPTER II

IN THE LEVANT

IN the autumn of 1878 the Rapid was ordered to Malta for her annual refit, and I was then informed by that best of all Admirals, the late Sir Geoffrey Hornby, that he intended to send me to the coast of Syria for the winter. Visions of sport !

I had heard many tales of the happy hunting-grounds on the coast of Syria. Perhaps they were not all true, yet there must be some foundation for them, and the sequel proved that there was, and a very solid foundation too.

I should be " senior officer " ; for although I was only a commander, and there were many ships in the Mediterranean commanded by Post-Captains, none of these would be on the Syrian branch of the station during the winter; so that I should be in the enviable position of having no one to give me orders nearer than my Admiral, who would probably spend most of the winter at Malta.

The prospect was rosy in the extreme; and although we sailors frequently find our best-laid schemes frustrated by the so-called " exigencies of the Service," I thought there was sufficient probability of the Syrian cruise coming off, to justify me in inviting my old friend R. W. Mirehouse to come out from England and spend a few months with me on board the Rapid, and take his chance of getting some rough shooting; and he, being

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a thorough sportsman, came out as soon as possible and joined me at Beyrout.

The Captain of a man-of-war is undoubtedly in a proud position. He is an absolute monarch in his own little kingdom; yet the position has its drawbacks, and the greatest of these is that he is obliged to mess alone. He, of course, occasionally has a small dinner-party, and asks two or three of his officers to dine with him, and also he occasionally dines with them in the wardroom; but as a general rule he sits down alone to his three meals a day, and this is rather trying to some people, especially to those who love talking and are fond of the sound of their own voice. The solitary meals sometimes become very depressing, and are bad for the digestion.

Solitary confinement, with the chance of being drowned, as some sage - was it not Dr. Johnson? described life at sea.

It was therefore with unfeigned delight that I heard my old and tried friend was coming out to join me and be my messmate and shooting companion at the happy hunting-grounds which I hoped to visit during the winter of 1878-79, on the coast of Syria. For although I had a charming set of officers in the Rapid, and was on the best of terms with them, they were all, without exception, uncommon bad shots, and it was rather irritating to see them blazing away all day at snipe and woodcock, or even at pigs quite close to them, and never hitting anything.

My first port of call on my new station was Beyrout, where there was a British Consul-General, a very grand man, who somehow had got it into his head that I was under his orders, and that he could order me about wherever he thought proper - a strange delusion, concerning

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which I had to undeceive him. It appeared that my predecessor had rather encouraged this absurd idea, which was decidedly weak on his part.

On one occasion I applied to my friend the Consul-General about some trouble there was on board a British merchant steamer which was lying at the anchorage; but was loftily informed that, "My Vice-Consul attends to these matters. My business is entirely diplomatic." So I pocketed my pride and went to the Vice-Consul.

It is not at all uncommon to find British Consuls and especially Consuls-General - somewhat haughty and ashamed of their own proper job. They often have an ambitious and anxious eye on the diplomatic service, which they consider much grander and more important. Some few succeed in getting transferred, and no doubt some specially selected ones make good diplomats. At any rate a good many of them think it worth trying for.

The coast of Syria is the most interesting station - quite apart from sport - that I have ever had the luck to be stationed on. It is not necessary to be a learned antiquary in order to take an interest in such places as Jerusalem, Damascus, Tyre, Sidon, Antioch, Mount Carmel, and Baalbec, all of which I was able to visit; and although the glory of them has departed, it is still possible to give free scope to one's imagination, and picture in the mind what they must have been in the day of their pride.

As to Tyre and Sidon, this is somewhat difficult, as there is scarcely a trace left of their ancient grandeur upon which to form a mental picture of these twin queens of the Levant, the nursery of sea-going fleets, the home of those pioneer seamen whose ships dominated the Mediterranean before Romulus and Remus were

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suckled by the wolf, before Athens started on her colonial career, before Alexander set forth on his campaign of conquest, and at a time when our ancestors in Britain were still painting their hairy bodies blue, and had not yet seriously discussed the question of female suffrage.

The harbours of Tyre and Sidon are silted up, and will now accommodate nothing bigger than a fishing-boat. Both towns were besieged and battered at the time of the Crusades and changed hands on several occasions, and they have gradually dwindled down into being dirty, third-rate Turkish towns, with little to show save the site where once they reigned in all their glory.

Of the other cities, or sites, I have mentioned above, Damascus is reputed to be the oldest city in the world; that is to say, the oldest city still in existence and flourishing. Older than Babylon, older than Nineveh, Damascus no doubt owes its perennial vigour to its exceptionally favourable site and its splendid water-supply.

Are not Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus better than all the waters of Israel ? The cool waters of the Abana, rising in the Anti-Lebanon Mountains, flow through Damascus, the melting snow keeping it as well supplied in the summer as in the winter. The life-giving stream never fails, until finally it flows eastward and is lost amidst the arid wastes of the Great Syrian Desert.

The Rapid had not been many weeks on the coast of Syria before we paid a visit to Jaffa (ancient Joppa) and arranged for a trip to Jerusalem. This was before the Holy Land had been desecrated by the railway and the motor omnibus, so that the only way to get to

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Jerusalem from Jaffa was on the back of a horse, mule, or ass. The distance is about forty miles, and as some of the animals were rough in their paces and Eastern saddles are not exactly beds of roses, the ride to Jerusalem proved to be rather trying to the stern-sheets of some of our sailors; but they stuck to the job - though not always to their horses - and all arrived eventually at the Holy City.

We were a large party: five officers and forty of the crew started on a week's trip to Jerusalem. One day going up, one day coming down, and five to spend sight-seeing, under the guidance of that most excellent dragoman Joe Ferris. Poor Joe! he was on board the Victoria when she was rammed and capsized some years afterwards, and was not amongst the saved. He was the regular naval dragoman and bumboatman attached to the senior officer's ship on the coast of Syria. He accompanied me on all my trips, and it was with grief that I heard of his tragic end.

The party started from Jaffa at seven a.m., stopped at a halfway-house for lunch, and some of us got to Jerusalem at six o'clock in the evening; but not all of us. Far from it; for on comparing notes in the morning, we found that most of our gallant sailors had struggled in by twos and threes, leading their tired steeds, between the hours of one and four a.m., which was not surprising, seeing that directly we were out of the town of Jaffa, and there was plenty of sea-room, they started to run races; and by the time the course and distance made good from Jaffa was east ten miles the actual courses steered had been so erratic and the speed so excessive, that even the hardy little Syrian horses had had about enough of it, and refused to go any faster than a walk, and in some cases to carry their

IN THE LEVANT     23

would-be riders at all, who therefore had to "tow" them, as they called it. Hence the late arrivals at Jerusalem.

I have not the least intention of embarking upon an attempt to describe Jerusalem and the so-called Holy Places. This has been done already a hundred times over by competent painters of word-pictures, men gifted with vivid imaginations, who have described in glowing terms all that they saw, and sometimes what they didn't see, but thought they saw and wished to see.

I will spare the reader from any attempts to emulate the writings of the distinguished travellers in the Holy Land. Has he not Dean Stanley and Mark Twain ? What more can he want ?

Personally I was disappointed with Jerusalem. Probably I expected too much. There is an artificiality about many of the show-places (so called sacred sites) which produces a feeling of scepticism and an unholy inclination to scoff. For instance, it is difficult to believe that the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is on the site of our Lord's tomb. It is well inside the walls of the city, and the city must have been at least as extensive 1,900 years ago as it is to-day; and as to the Church of the Nativity, which is supposed to be built on the site of the stable wherein Christ was born, it can be no better than a vague guess which placed it where it is, as they never thought of looking for the site until several centuries after the date of that event which so profoundly affected the course of the world's history.

Amongst other marvels, the credulous tourist is shown Noah's tomb; it is one hundred and twenty feet long, and one cannot help thinking that if Noah required a tomb of that length, he might have stepped

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overboard from the ark and walked ashore several days before he did.

In the Church of the Nativity we found an armed Turkish guard of Mahomedan soldiers - a precaution which is found to be necessary to prevent the rival Christian sects from cutting each other's throats. "Behold how these Christians love one another" !

There can be no question as to the site of Jerusalem itself, nor of the Mount of Olives, nor of Solomon's Temple; but of the Garden of Gethsemane, of Calvary, of the site of the stable of the Nativity, one may be permitted to be sceptical, without irreverence.

On several occasions I asked our guide, Joe Ferris, if he thought the various "places of interest" he was pointing out to us were really the sites they professed to be; but Joe was very conscientious, and would never commit himself beyond a cautious, " That's what they say."

On our return to Beyrout I paid a visit to Damascus and also to Baalbec; but both these places have so often been described by intelligent travellers - and others - that I do not propose to say anything about them, further than to record the fact that Baalbec is about the only one of all the famous places in this classic land which not only fulfilled, but surpassed, my expectations of its beauty and grandeur. In my humble opinion, the temples at Baalbec - or what is left of them - far surpass the magnificence of the Parthenon at Athens, or any other Grecian temples.

Mark Twain christened his horse " Baalbec," because he was a noble ruin; but it does not follow that the American humorist failed to admire and appreciate Baalbec because he made a joke about it. He made a joke of most things.

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Antioch was another of the famous sites we visited. Its glory has departed, and it is now but a third-rate Turkish town. There are, however, a few remains still in existence, which enable one to picture its former extent and the splendour and grace of its Grecian architecture.

The famous grove of Daphne was just outside the walls of ancient Antioch, but the site is as doubtful as that of many of the other show-places of Syria and Palestine.

There are still some remains of the walls of the great city in the days of its pride, and there is a large piece of a colossal aqueduct which has also withstood the shocks of the numerous earthquakes which have from time to time devastated the city. The first of these, duly recorded in history - though there are traditions of earlier ones - was in 148 B.C.; then one in A.D. 47; one in A.D. 115, when the city was full of the Roman army, which Trajan was to lead against the Parthians; one in A.D. 526; one in A.D. 528, in which 5,000 lives were lost; one in 587; and one in 588. Small wonder, then, that there are such scanty remains of this once famous city, where the disciples were first called Christians.

I made the trip to Antioch, with some of my shipmates, from Alexandretta. It is a beautiful ride, through the Bielan Pass, the so-called gates of Syria, the route by which Alexander the Great invaded that country after defeating Darius on the Plain of Issus.

At Antioch we took up our quarters in the house of the British Consular Agent. These Consular Agents occupy a peculiar position; they get no pay, but they make it pay, to use a popular expression. This gentleman was a rich Jewish merchant, who owned one of

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the best houses in the town, and he entertained us most hospitably for three days, with the best of everything that Antioch could supply. We were a party of four, and he placed at our disposal two bedrooms and a sitting-room, all comfortably furnished. Being an Israelite, neither he nor any of his family took their meals with us; in fact, we never saw the family at all; but our host was most kind and attentive, frequently visiting us and seeing that all our wants and comforts were attended to.

When we were about to take our leave and return to Alexandretta, I called for Joe, our dragoman, and asked him what there was to pay. "Nothing, sir," said Joe. "The old gentleman would be very much insulted if you were to offer him money." "Well," I said, "if he won't take money, we must at any rate make him a handsome present of some sort, as he is an absolute stranger. He did not invite us to his house; you brought us here on your own responsibility, and the old gentleman must be a good deal out of pocket by our visit." "Never fear, sir," said Joe. "You need not be alarmed about his being out of pocket; your visit to his house will probably be worth about five hundred pounds to him."

This sounded rather strange, so I asked Joe to explain, and his explanation was somewhat to the following effect. Our host was not only a merchant on a considerable scale, but he was also a money-lender, and he had a large amount of outstanding debts owing to him throughout the town. He was entitled to fly the British ensign, by virtue of his office as British Consular Agent, and he would represent to his debtors that the Captain of the British man-of-war had come to stay with him for the purpose of enabling him to collect his debts !

IN THE LEVANT     27

Strange as this may sound to those unacquainted with the customs of Eastern merchants, and making due allowance for exaggeration on the part of Joe and his five hundred pounds, I still felt that in all probability our courteous host would not be out of pocket by our visit; so with hearty thanks and many polite speeches on both sides, we bid him farewell, mounted our horses, and had a delightful ride back to Alexandretta, or Iscanderoon, as the Turks call it.

Our visit to Antioch was most interesting and enjoyable; but there is no rose without a thorn, and our thorn consisted in the fact that our host's house was over a coppersmith's shop, and at about six o'clock every morning there arose a most diabolical noise, as if half a dozen lunatics had started off playing cymbals at the same time, all trying to see who could make the most noise. One can get accustomed to most things, and no doubt our host and his family had got accustomed to the coppersmiths. We were not there long enough to enable us to sleep through the din, and as I lay awake in the morning I could think of nothing but St. Paul's remark, " Alexander the coppersmith did me much evil: the Lord reward him according to his works."

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CHAPTER III

THE SPORTSMAN'S PARADISE

I HAD written the two preceding chapters in continuation of my "Memories of the Sea," when I was visited by a severe illness, which kept me in bed for many months; and then came the great war, which had been long foreseen by those who had watched and noted the German preparations for it - preparations which were either not seen by the political lawyers who governed the United Kingdom, or which by them - in their wisdom - were ignored, as being of less consequence than party preparations for catching the votes of those who were ignorant of the ambitions of Germany and of the general trend of European politics.

It will be remembered that the grave and earnest warnings of Lord Roberts, and of those who supported him, were treated with contumely and even with spiteful ridicule by our ruling politicians, who wanted money - not for preparation for the inevitable war which that great soldier had so clearly foreseen, but for bribing the most ignorant and most numerous section of the community to keep themselves in power and in further enjoyment of the rich emoluments of their various offices.

Thus the great war found the British Empire totally unprepared; and while I write (in September, 1915) the consequences of this lack of foresight and sound statesmanship have not yet been fully revealed, though

THE SPORTSMAN'S PARADISE     29

we have already seen enough to make us feel ashamed and disgusted with government by political lawyers.

I have not, however, taken up my pen to write about the war or of the causes which led to it; but rather - at the earnestly expressed wishes of my family - to continue writing my memories of life in the Navy in the last century.

I was at Antioch - in the spirit - when the war broke out, and I feel uncommonly glad that I am not there now - in the flesh; for much as I love my old friends the Turks, greatly as I admire many of their stirling national virtues - yes, virtues - I would not trust their friendship nor their humanity, so long as they are under the influence of a Power which has not only utterly disregarded every practice of civilized warfare, but has also perjured her national honour and good faith, and has openly behaved with a calculated and cold-blooded savagery unknown in Europe for many centuries.

And now to return to the cruise of the Rapid in the winter of 1878-79. Shortly after my return from Antioch to Alexandretta, I took the little ship across the Gulf of Scanderoon and moored her snugly in Ayas Bay, intending to make a fairly long stay there, though going for occasional cruises to exercise the crew and to avoid grounding on our own beef-bones, a danger which is popularly supposed to await any ship which remains too long at anchor at any one place; though I must admit that during all my long service of fifty-one years I never heard any strictly reliable evidence that this catastrophe had ever actually occurred, notwithstanding it is on record that the flagship on the Pacific station did once remain at anchor in Esquimalt Harbour for fourteen months without getting under way.

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The anchorage at Ayas Bay is about two miles from the little town - or rather village - of Ayas, and the country around is extremely wild and very sparsely populated, and is full of game, a veritable sportsman's paradise. Wild boar abound, and in winter there are woodcock, snipe, francolin, plover, wild geese, and a large variety of the great family of wild ducks, and from being so little disturbed they are not so difficult to approach as they are in more civilized countries.

The natives do not appear to shoot anything except the pigs; and, indeed, the actual natives do not shoot these, as they are Mahomedans, and, of course, would not touch the unclean beast; but at the time of our visit there was a party of Armenian Christians who had come across from the other side of the gulf after the pigs, which they shoot mainly for the skins. They also make a very rough kind of sausage from the flesh; but as they appear to put into these all the gristle and sinew they can find in the animal, the sausages were, to us, quite uneatable.

These Armenians were very good fellows, and we made great friends with them. They did not interfere with our shooting in the least; in fact, they assisted us greatly, as they knew all the best places; and as they used to shoot by night and we by day, and also acted as guides and beaters for us in the daytime, I don't know when they slept. Probably they did not remain out all night. We gave them no money pay, but used occasionally to give them presents of Navy tobacco, which they greatly appreciated; we also gave them all our pig-skins, and finally at the end of the campaign we took them and their skins across the gulf in the Rapid, and landed them at their homes, thus saving them a sixty miles' tramp with a good chance of being

THE SPORTSMAN'S PARADISE     31

robbed by the way. "They considered themselves amply repaid for their services, and we parted the best of friends.

I had been told by my predecessor whom I relieved on the coast of Syria that there was a recognized formula of proceedings for that station, which included the spending of three or four of the worst winter months at Ayas Bay. The letter to the Commander-in-Chief ran somewhat as follows:

" Sir,-As I see by the sailing directions for the Eastern Mediterranean that the only safe anchorage on the coast of Syria during the winter months is in the Bay of Ayas, on the north shore of Scanderoon Gulf, I propose to proceed there in H.M. ship under my command, and to make that my headquarters when not cruising. I shall be in telegraphic communication with you through H.M. Consul at Alexandretta."

To which came the brief but welcome reply, " Approved."

My Commander-in-Chief at the time was Sir Geoffrey Hornby, affectionately known in the Navy as Uncle Jeff. He was himself a keen sportsman, and knew all about the attractions of Ayas Bay.

It again occurs to me that in writing an account of my two years' service in the Rapid I may possibly convey to the reader the impression that it was all beer and skittles, and that Queen Victoria kept a fine steam yacht for me, in order that I might enjoy some of the best wild shooting in the world, free of expense.

My two years' command of the Rapid certainly was the easiest and most enjoyable time I have ever had in the Navy, either before or since, and I made the most of it. But it must not be supposed that an independent

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command in the Mediterranean is all joy. The summer months are very trying. The heat is quite tropical, if not more so. Even those who live on shore in airy houses with green verandas and venetian blinds feel it and grumble; but the confined space of the cabin of a small ship adds greatly to the discomfort. My little cabin in the Rapid used to become a veritable oven by two o'clock in the afternoon, either at sea or in harbour. At sea there was generally a breeze of some sort to temper the heat; but in harbour there was no relief. It was useless to go on shore, as it was just as bad there. At Corfu, for instance, during the summer nobody appeared to stir out of their houses until after sunset; the streets were empty, and I found it difficult to get enough exercise to keep one in health.

It is not, however, my intention to grumble or to dwell upon the discomforts of the Mediterranean summer. In the Navy we get ups and downs, rough and smooth, and it is just as well to make the most of the smooth - when we get it. But I have made this digression - the second one of this nature - in order that the reader may not run away with the wrong idea that it is all smooth, even in the Mediterranean.

Shortly after the Rapid bad been snugly moored in Ayas Bay I went for a trip up the Jahun River to a famous sporting district, well known to naval officers who have had the luck to spend the winter on the coast of Syria.

The arrangements for camping out in the wilds of Asia Minor took some time to make, but early in January the expedition started. It consisted of my old friend and very dear chum Mirehouse, who, alas ! has since joined the great majority, the Second-Lieutenant of the Rapid, and myself. I also took my boat's crew of five

THE SPORTSMAN'S PARADISE     33

sailors, for beaters; my Maltese cook and my valet ; Joe Ferris, bumboatman, dragoman, and interpreter; and last, though not least, Sergeant Thomas of the Royal Marines. Sergeant Thomas was a Welshman and a keen sportsman. He accompanied me on all my shooting trips; he was the best, most intelligent and most indefatigable beater I ever saw. Nothing could stop him, not even the famous "wait-a-bit" thorn of the Levant. He was also my right-hand man in camp; he kept everybody in order, and they all obeyed him; and yet he seemed to do more hard work himself than any three other men. He was very silent, a man of few words and of great strength, both moral and physical. I looked on one evening while he conquered a big and savage Molossian dog which I bought from some natives for hunting wild boar out of the covers. The dog was tied up to a tree; the natives got their three dollars and departed. I then told my coxswain to look after the dog and feed him ; but the coxswain came to me in about half an hour and told me he could do nothing with the savage beast, as he called him; that he would not let him nor any of the other men go near him, and he would not eat. I then suggested that we should leave him alone till he got hungry, and perhaps that would tame him; but Sergeant Thomas, who was standing by, said he thought that would only make him worse; that he had had something to do with dogs, and he thought he could tame him if I would let him try. " All right, sergeant," says I; " see what you can do with him."

Karra was about the size of an ordinary Newfoundland dog, but with an unusually big head and teeth like a wolf, which he showed in a most truculent manner, snarling and growling savagely when anyone went near

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him. I asked the sergeant how he was going to tame him. " If you will attract the dog's attention, sir, in the other direction, I'll get hold of him." This I did, taking care to keep beyond the length of his rope. The sergeant then ran in and seized the dog by the throat, before he knew what was the matter. The rope was then cast off by the sergeant's directions; he lifted up the dog as if he had been no bigger than a fox-terrier, swung him round over his head two or three times, and brought him down on the ground with a terrific thud, knocking the wind out of him. This operation was repeated four or five times. The savage growls changed gradually into howls, and finally into piteous whines for mercy; then the sergeant dropped him, and he lay on his side panting, with all the wind knocked out of him. As soon as he had recovered sufficiently to get on his legs again he cringed up to the sergeant and licked his hands. " There, sir," says the sergeant, " I think that will do for the present." And it did, not only for the present, but for all time, and for ever after the sergeant could do whatever he liked with Karra, who obeyed his every command just like one of his own marines. We shall hear more of Karra later on; he was certainly one of the most remarkable dogs I ever came across.

Our camping-ground was about twenty-five miles up the Jahun River, on a suitable spot near some small patches of cultivation and about a quarter of a mile from the river bank. The spot was well known to Joe, our bumboatman and interpreter, who had accompanied many a party of sporting naval officers to the same place on former occasions. We started early. The steam pinnace towed one of the cutters loaded with our camp equipage; and arriving at our

THE SPORTSMAN'S PARADISE     35

camping-ground a little after noon, we had plenty of time to pitch our tents and make ourselves snug before dark. It was my first camping-out expedition, and consequently I knew nothing about it; but my friend Mirehouse and our indefatigable sergeant seemed to be quite at home at the business; they gave the necessary directions and did most of the work.

Game was plentiful, and, to use a popular modern expression, we had the time of our lives, and fed the camp with our guns. The wild pigs were excellent eating; not a bit like pork, but more like venison, tender, fat and juicy. An old boar with big tusks might be a bit tough, but the sows and the young ones were very good, and we not only had enough for ourselves, but sent several consignments back to the ship, where they were much appreciated.

The francolin is a beautiful bird, rather larger than a partridge. I believe he is known in India as the black partridge of the Deccan. The flesh is white and delicate, and is a very pleasant change from woodcock, of which one soon gets tired. We also got wild duck and an occasional wild goose; but the latter is an overrated bird for the table, though he makes a very pretty overhead shot, and comes down with a flop.

Tastes vary, and our bluejacket beaters would not be bothered plucking woodcock for themselves. They liked pig, and as we usually had two or three hanging up on the trees in our camp, they could cut off a steak and fry it whenever they felt hungry, which seemed to be very often. But what they liked above everything was coots. There was a small lake not far from our camp, and besides wild duck, it was inhabited by hundreds of coots, which our sailors asked us to shoot for them. It was not much sport, as the coots were

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very tame, and we shot a large number of them, as it was for the pot. " Ah," said my coxswain, "some flavour about them birds, and they makes the most delicious soup." Coot soup ! I didn't taste it.

One of our beats for pigs was peculiar. There was an island in the river, covered with the densest jungle, and this jungle was the day resort of the pigs, but it was far too thick to give any chance for a shot at them. What appeared to happen was this: The pigs swam the river at nightfall and raided the patches of cultivation on the mainland, and then swam back again before it was daylight. We could see their tracks cut deep in the soft clay of the river banks; quite like a cattle track in a farmyard. There were four or five of these deepcut pig roads on our side of the river, where the bank was very steep, nearly perpendicular; it was obvious, therefore, that if the pigs were driven off the island they would land at one of these roads. There was fairly thick jungle on our side of the river also; so we placed our three guns well concealed at three of these roads and sent all the beaters we could muster, including our friends the Armenians, over to the island in a boat. They made a hideous noise, and the Armenians let off their long, gaspipe, single-barrelled guns, to the great danger of the other beaters, and they also set fire to the jungle in several places, and thus made it too hot for the pigs on the island. The river was here about sixty or seventy yards across, deep and fairly rapid. After a short time several pigs appeared on the island bank, looked round for a moment, then jumped into the river and swam across.

The roads on our side were not all guarded, as we had not enough guns, and it was impossible to tell at which road a pig would land, until he was quite close

THE SPORTSMAN'S PARADISE     37

to the bank; but I had not long to wait before it was obvious that a pig was going to land at my road.

I was lying down, well hidden in bushwood, as I thought; but I could tell by the twinkle in his little eye that the pig saw me just before he landed. I was afraid he would turn, but not a bit of him; it is hard to turn a pig when once he has made up his mind where he wants to go to: he is a plucky beast, and woe betide anyone who gets in his way! I thought my pig would take some little time getting out of the deep water and climbing up the bank; but he came out like a jack-in-the-box, went up the steep road in about three bounds, and then when he reached the top and there was no fear that he would fall back into the river; I put a ball into him just behind the shoulder. He ran a dozen yards into the bush, and I heard him fall, though I could not see him. However, I knew he was dead.

Shortly after this another pig came down to the bank on the island side; he had a good look around, and must have seen either me or one of the other guns, for instead of jumping into the river, like a well-educated pig, he turned slowly round and was walking back into the bush; and as I knew that all the beaters were at the other end of the island, I fired. It was an end-on shot, and not an easy one, but I was lucky enough to rake him fore and aft. He went some little distance into the thicket, and then fell dead; and very fortunately one of the beaters came across him on his return to the boat, and he was brought over. The other two guns were unlucky, and did not get a shot.

Besides the pigs, we had good sport with the woodcock and the francolin, and also with the wild duck.

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the sailors' coot soup there was a large shallow lake covered to a great extent with high canes, but with lanes of open water between the patches of canes. It was an ideal place for wildfowl-shooting, and there were plenty of them; so we built a cane raft to hold two, one gun and a marker, to try and note where the birds fell. The raft was moored and hidden in a patch of high canes, and another gun went round the lake in my little skiff, which we had brought up from the ship. The skiff put the ducks up, and the gun in her got some fairly good shots, and could pick up his birds; but the gun on the raft got the most beautiful overhead shots it is possible to imagine. His sport, however, was greatly clouded by the fact that he could not pick up his birds until the skiff came round again, and a large proportion of them were lost, as it was very difficult to mark the spot where they fell, and to find them amongst the high canes.

There was, however, something even more tantalizing for the man on the raft than the honest loss of dead birds, and that was that some of them were devoured almost directly they fell, by some large birds that were circling round high overhead. I know not if they were osprey or goshawks or fishing eagles, or what their real names were, though they were called some hard and strange names by the man on the raft, and still stranger names by his marker. These birds pounced down from a height out of range for a shot-gun, and as they descended with great rapidity it was very difficult to hit them as they came down; and although you knew that they were eating your duck within twenty or thirty yards of you, they were not in sight, and you could do nothing. It was easy enough to shoot them as they rose, for they rose slowly; but this was not

THE SPORTSMAN'S PARADISE     39

much satisfaction when you knew that they had your duck inside them. Some of them were shot, however.

No doubt these birds of prey had just as much right to the wild duck as we had; but they were quite capable of killing their own, and it would have been more sport for them to do so. It would seem, therefore, that it was downright laziness on their part to come and steal ours.

The weather was, on the whole, very fine during our trip up the river. There were frosts at night, but the days were generally sunny, with a keen bracing air which was most exhilarating, and one never felt more than comfortably tired after the longest day's tramp.

On only one occasion did I ever know a pig to charge, and this case was so remarkable that I think it is worth recording. It was after our return to the ship that we landed one afternoon to beat a marshy canebreak near the mouth of the river, where we knew there were pig. We were obliged, from the nature of the ground, to beat " up wind," which is not in accordance with good pigging tactics, but was in this case unavoidable. There was a strong wind, which made a great noise in the canes. The beaters, all armed with boarding-pikes for self-defence, were sent down to leeward about a mile, with orders to spread out and beat up to the guns in line abreast. There was a long cold wait for the guns, and then I heard, but could not see, the beaters getting nearer and nearer, and I thought it was going to be a blank beat, when suddenly I heard a great and unusual noise amongst the beaters, and running towards them through the canes, I found that a pig, which had never been fired at or even seen by beaters or guns, had suddenly turned and charged back through the line of beaters. Young Henry Rose, the bowman of

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my gig, happened to be in his way, and before Rose had time to bring his boarding-pike to a defensive position, the pig had rolled him over, giving him a deep gash in the thigh as he passed him. But the strangest part of the whole business was that the old boar, instead of going back to his lair, from which he had been driven, turned again and walked quietly out of the cover into the open, close to Mirehouse, who shot him dead. He was the heaviest boar, with the best tusks, of any we killed. The tusks were mounted and given to Rose as a memento, and being a healthy young chap, he was quite recovered in a couple of weeks, though the wound was a deep one.

All things must come to an end, and so did the winter of 1878-79, and with it our delightful stay at Ayas Bay, the sportsman's paradise; but we had excellent sport with the woodcock and the francolin up to the very last.

When there was no longer any good excuse for lying at Ayas Bay, I went down to Beyrout, communicated with our Consul-General there, and then "showed the flag" at all the principal ports on the Syrian coast.

One day while we were lying at Beyrout, our headquarters in the summer, the Danish Consul came on board and asked me if I would accept a present of a small bear, which he had intended to keep, but found that it made so much noise at night that it kept his children awake, and he wanted to find a comfortable home for it. I said I should be happy to give the bear a comfortable home on board the Rapid, and was inquisitive enough to ask him how he got it, and this was what he said: "I was riding on the Damascus road one evening, about three miles from Beyrout, just as it was getting dusk, and I saw five small bears

THE SPORTSMAN'S PARADISE     41

playing in the middle of the road; so I jumped off my horse, picked up one of them, put it in my pocket, and galloped into Beyrout."

I asked him why he did not pick up more of them. "Oh," he said, "I was afraid the mother bear must be somewhere near, and she would come looking for her baby, and catch me off my horse, and be very angry, and perhaps kill me, as I had no gun."

I sent for the little bear and got it on board. It was no bigger than a cat, and for some time we fed it on milk from a small bottle with the finger of a kidglove on the neck of the bottle. The little creature throve, and grew to be a big brown bear. It became omnivorous and very greedy. It would eat or drink anything, but much preferred stealing to waiting until it was fed. It was always loose, and roamed the ship at will and helped itself to whatever it fancied. It was most mischievous, and consequently became a great pet with the men. They would call it a "mascot" in the present day, but pet is a shorter word. The men played tricks on the bear, and the bear played tricks on the men, even to tearing their trousers, but they seemed to think that rather a lark. One day they made the bear very drunk, on a mixture of sardine oil and rum, and Bruin staggered along the deck just like an oldtime tar rolling down Common Hard when a ship paid off in Portsmouth Dockyard. This was a decidedly vulgar joke, and I asked that it might not be repeated, as it was bad for Bruin's morals.

During the hot weather I usually dined on deck, and one evening when the table was laid and my steward had gone below to fetch the dinner and I was on the bridge waiting, I saw Bruin walking aft towards the table, looking quite innocent, and as there was nothing

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to eat on the table but a small bit of bread, I suspected no mischief and called out, " Ah, Bruin, sold again!" But I was rather hasty, and it turned out to be the other way on; for when Bruin arrived at the table he stood up on his hind-legs, had a good look round, and finding nothing to eat, he caught hold of the corner of the table-cloth with his disappointed teeth and whisked everything off on to the deck, breaking glass and crockery. He then galloped off laughing all over his face, before I could get at him with a rope's-end. He was a charming pet, and full of fun.

A TRIP IN THE LEBANON MOUNTAINS     43

CHAPTER IV

A TRIP IN THE LEBANON MOUNTAINS

IN the month of May the Rapid was lying in the Bay of Tripoli - the Syrian Tripoli, not the African one. The weather was getting hot, and as there was nothing particular to do at Tripoli, beyond showing the flag, I decided to take a trip into the Lebanon mountains to try and get a shot at a bear.

The party consisted of Lieutenant Carter (Mirehouse had gone home), my coxswain, Sergeant Thomas, Joe the dragoman, and myself. It is quite useless to travel in Syria without an interpreter, unless you can speak, at least, some of the many languages.

Joe hired the horses, including two for baggage and camp equipage, and we started very early one morning, so as to get out of the plain before the heat of the afternoon sun. Our route through the plain lay along the bank of the Brook Kishon, where the Prophet Elijah was fed by the ravens. We found the Brook Kishon quite brackish and undrinkable.

About noon we got into the valley of the little river Kadisha, and began to ascend rapidly. I am inclined to think that the Kishon and the Kadisha are the same river, but am not certain, as we left the former an hour or two before we struck the latter. (N.B.-Distances in the East are counted by hours and not by miles.)

The scenery in the Kadisha Valley was most beautiful. In some places the valley was little more than a gorge

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but it was thickly and beautifully wooded throughout. There was no road, merely a track, and in some places this was thickly strewn with boulders. Yet I don't think I ever enjoyed a ride more than I did that ride up the Kadisha. We had come out of a sweltering plain, and the cool bracing air on the higher ground, the fresh spring green of the trees, the scenery when the valley opened out enough to get a view, combined with a sort of holiday feeling on getting away from the confined space of a small ship, was most exhilarating and enjoyable. There were some magnificent walnut and chestnut trees, the finest I ever saw.

Of course the sergeant brought the faithful Karra with him to guard the camp, both by day and night, and right well the dog did his work; but he did more than this. Joe and I led the cavalcade, which at times became rather straggling, and as the baggage-horses with their attendants were fond of loitering, Carter brought up the rear to act as whipper-in; but unfortunately he dropped too far behind and lost the track. We did not miss him at first, but when we did we got off our horses and sat down and waited. No Carter.

Then up and spake the sergeant, " I'll send Karra to find him." He called Karra, spoke a few words to him, which might have been in Welsh for all I could make of them; then he waved his hand, and the dog trotted off, back on our tracks, with his nose to the ground. After about half an hour Karra reappeared, with Carter following him. Carter had lost his way; Karra found him and led him back to the party. It seemed to me almost uncanny, like magic, and the most singular part of the business was that Carter and Karra were not on speaking terms. Carter could not touch

A TRIP IN THE LEBANON MOUNTAINS     45

him; nor could I, for the matter of that, though he was supposed to be my dog. No officer could touch Karra, though the men could handle him just as they pleased. I have seen the same thing happen before with another dog in another ship. I cannot account for it, as no officer ever ill-treated Karra. On board the ship he lived forward with the men, and never came abaft the mainmast, except for one purpose.

Our first camping-ground was just outside the village of Bsherra, and we pitched our tents on a piece of inviting-looking greensward on the edge of a little stream. Karra was immediately put on guard by the sergeant, and he kept the inquisitive native children at a respectful distance from our tents.

At Bsherra we were four thousand feet above the sea, and the climate was delightfully cool and bracing. We were going up into the mountains, much farther up than Joe had ever been before, so it was necessary to get a local guide, and Joe was sent into the village to get one. In a short time he returned with a fine weatherbeaten old Arab, who answered to the name of Mousa. He could not speak a word of English, and we only knew a few words of Arabic; but it is astonishing what a lot can be done by signs, and for one whole day Mousa was our sole guide, as the work in the mountains was too hard for fat old Joe.

Mousa was a professional hunter, and he had intended starting in a day or two on his own hook to try and get a shot at a bear, if we had not come along and made it worth his while to act as our guide. But a very unfortunate thing happened. Mousa had a rival living in the same village, and this rival got wind of our intentions, and started off that very night for the place that Mousa intended taking us to; but we did not know

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of this until afterwards, when we got to the place and found that the hated rival had forestalled us and shot our bear !

Our next day's march was a short one, to "The Cedars," six thousand feet above the sea, and we pitched our tents about four o'clock in the afternoon, beneath the spreading branches of these magnificent trees.

Many travellers have written about the famous cedars of Lebanon, but no description of them that I had ever read gave an adequate idea of their beauty and grandeur. Some of the trees are credited with a growth of two thousand years; but, alas ! the whole grove contains only three or four hundred trees, covering a space of from thirty to forty acres, and this is all that is now left of what, in King Solomon's days, was probably a magnificent and apparently inexhaustible forest. The grove is now guarded and strictly preserved; but people are allowed to light fires with the windfalls, which we promptly did, as it was cold.

I measured the girth of one of the trees with a tape, and it was thirty-seven feet six feet from the ground. It was a grand tree, with immense wide-spreading branches, each of which would have made a goodly tree in itself; its grandeur, moreover, was greatly enhanced by modern art and culture, in the shape of a deeply carved inscription on its massive trunk, which told all whom it might concern that the cedars of Lebanon had been visited by Ebenezer Potts, of New York City, in 1868. But it is fair to say that Mr. Potts was not by a long way the only distinguished traveller who left a record of his visit on the trunk of one of these noble trees. There are bumptious vandals in other countries besides the United States, and I only mention

A TRIP IN THE LEBANON MOUNTAINS     47

this particular inscription because it glared conspicuously on our camp.

There was quite a large gathering of wild-looking natives around our camp fire that evening and well into the night. They all seemed to be friends of Mousa, and Joe also found some old acquaintances. We could not understand any of the conversation, but Joe told me there was a long discussion between Mousa and his friends, relative to the practicability or otherwise of the route by which the former intended to take us to our next camping-ground in the mountains. The friends said the season was late, that May was more like April, and that the snow would not be sufficiently melted to enable horses to get to the proposed camping-ground by any route. Mousa was of a different opinion, and said we could do it; and we did, though with some difficulty.

Late that evening Joe brought to me a venerable-looking old Arab, who was holding on to his cummerbund with both hands and groaning. Joe said his friend had internal pains, so I administered a good stiff glass of whisky, and the old boy went his way; but he came back again next morning, saying that the pains, though rather better, were still troublesome. Joe, however, while interpreting, gave me a wink ; and on this occasion I presented the sufferer with two Cockle's pills. The old gentleman - well worthy of that name - was probably greatly disappointed, but was far too polite to show it. He made a bow, took the two pills, loosened a corner of his turban, wrapped the pills up in it, tucked them in, made another bow, and departed. There is certainly a great charm in good manners, even in a wild Arab seeking whisky, contrary to the tenets of his faith.

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We made an early start on the following morning, as we expected that we had a hard day's climb before us.

After leaving the cedars we had about two hours' easy work on a fairly good track, up a gradual slope, and then we came to the snow, and our troubles began. Our route lay across the face of a very steep hill, and the path might be described as a fairly good goat-path, where it was visible; but in many places it was covered with fresh snow and we had some difficulty in finding it. In some places the snow was deep, and in others the angle of the slope was so steep that the snow could not lie anywhere except on the path itself. It was rather exciting; but on the whole the little Syrian horses were wonderfully surefooted.

At one place we came to a sort of gully in the side of the mountain, round which our path wound; here there was a regular snowdrift, and the snow was lying in ridges, notwithstanding the steepness of the slope. We looked long at this place, and then, deciding that discretion was the better part of mountain-climbing, we dismounted and led our horses.

About halfway across this gully the commissariat horse slipped and fell. Down he went, over and over, first his legs in the air and then his boxes. We looked on breathlessly at what we believed would be the loss of a horse, for which we should have to pay, and also the loss of our provisions; but the snow here was very soft, and after rolling down for about a couple of hundred feet he brought up in an extra soft patch of snow, with his legs in the air and the boxes embedded in the soft snow.

Strange to say, the horse was unhurt and very little damage was done to our provisions; but there was some delay in getting the horse up again, leading him to a

A TRIP IN THE LEBANON MOUNTAINS     49

safe place, and repacking his burden. We then resumed our march, and in about another hour we came to the summit ridge of the spur which had to be crossed to get to our proposed camping-ground. This looked like an insurmountable difficulty; for though the snow slope on our side was gradual and easy, the north wind had blown the snow up into what in Switzerland is called a cornice, and on the other, or southern, side there was a drop of forty or fifty. feet almost perpendicular.

We rode up and down looking for a better place, but it was evident that Mousa, with his local knowledge and hunter's instinct, had already brought us to the best; for, in either direction, to the right or to the left, the snow wall rose higher and was more nearly perpendicular.

Joe chuckled, for he had been a pessimist ever since we left the cedars. He did not like being dragged up into this cold and inhospitable region, and had been repeatedly telling us that we had better give it up and go home. But old Mousa was a man of determination and resource. He had no intention of giving in; his honour and reputation were at stake, and he took entire charge of the proceedings. Once we were down this place, it would be all plain-sailing, as there was no snow lying on the south-eastern face of the mountain, which we should have to traverse; and it did seem hard to be beaten when we were within a few feet of a comparatively good road. So we all set to work under Mousa's directions, and having unloaded the baggage animals, we scooped out a sort of gutter in the snow wall, which, although not quite perpendicular, was very steep. We then strewed shingle in the gutter, and set to work to get the horses down; and this was how it was done.

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The first horse was blindfolded and brought to the edge of the slope; a burly native caught hold of his tail, and another man got hold of the first by his cummerbund. The horse was then shoved over into the gutter, willy-nilly. The two men, planting their heels firmly in the snow, acted as a drag and eased the horse down very slowly till he came to the firm ground at the bottom. This was repeated until all the horses were brought down without accident. We then loaded up and continued our journey; another three hours of easy going brought us to our camping-ground, which was a bare, bleak plateau about eight thousand feet above the sea, and near some of the highest peaks of the Lebanon range, which rise to a height of ten thousand feet.

When we had selected the spot for our camp, by the side of an ice-cold stream, it was just five o'clock, and as we came along we watched Mousa scanning the side of the mountain to see if his rival had been before him and disturbed the game. We saw no one, but late that night the rival arrived in our camp, telling us that he shot a bear about four o'clock that afternoon, and having no means of bringing him down, he had buried him beneath a cairn of big stones to save him from the jackals. This was disappointing for us, as it probably reduced our chances of getting a shot, and old Mousa evidently felt his bad luck keenly, for I am sure he was most anxious that we should get a bear. He said nothing, but sat down on a stone and sighed. He did not scold his rival, or reproach him for cutting us out. On the contrary, he forgave him and next day he helped him to bring down his bear, which was a very big one. Mousa, like most Arabs, was a gentleman, every inch of his gaunt six feet.

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Our tents were pitched by six o'clock, and then we looked about us, scouring the sides of the mountain with our glasses; but Mousa's keen and practised sight spotted a bear before we did, and he pointed out to us a small black spot on the side of the mountain near a patch of snow. We could then, with our glasses, see quite plainly a bear grubbing in the ground. This south side of the mountain that we were looking at was nearly clear of snow, which only lay in small patches. The May sun was hot, though the nights were bitterly cold.

When we sighted the bear on the side of the mountain the sergeant was greatly excited, and said that if I would come a little way up and hide behind a rock, he "would just run round above the bear and drive him down" to me, so that I could get a shot. The clearness of the atmosphere and the vastness of the surroundings had completely deceived the sergeant as to distances, and he found next morning that it took him three hours' hard climbing to get to the patch of snow near which the bear had been seen on the evening before.

It was obviously too late to go bear-hunting that evening, so we had to curb our impatience, eat our supper and go to bed, but not to sleep. I don't think any of our party slept. The cold was intense, and all our clothes and blankets failed to keep us warm.

We had not hampered ourselves on this expedition with the luxury of beds; we had only our little camp stretchers and a blanket, and the cold seemed to come up out of the ground and freeze the marrow in our bones. We were afraid our unfortunate native attendants, without tents, would be frozen to death before morning; but it turned out that they were far better

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off than we were in our tents. They built a circular wall of big stones, and in the centre of it lit a fire of dry brushwood, which they took it in turns to feed. The stones soon got hot, and probably kept the wind out better than our tents; and as there was no rain, they were far more comfortable than we were, though they had only the sky for a canopy.

Two hours before daylight next morning Carter and I, accompanied by Mousa and the sergeant, were stumbling along in the dark over the loose stones, slowly making our way up the side of the mountain, Mousa leading, towards the place where we had seen the bear the evening before.

The exercise soon thawed our frozen marrow, and we had not been long out before we were quite as hot as we wished to be, and rather hotter by the time we got to the patch of snow near which the bear had been seen. It was now broad daylight, but the bear was not there, nor in sight anywhere else. This was disappointing, as Mousa had told Joe that if bears are not disturbed they sometimes remain in the same place for several days.

On the previous evening, while we were watching the bear with our glasses, we wondered what he was doing, as he seemed to remain a long time in one spot and appeared to be very busy. We were equally puzzled now we had got to the place, and could see nothing but the bare mountain-side covered with loose stones and no sign of vegetation of any sort. There were great hollows amongst the stones where the bear had been at work, but still not a vestige of roots nor anything that even a hungry bear would eat; so we applied to Mousa, by signs, to unravel the mystery. He laid down his long single-barrelled gun, went down

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on his knees and began grubbing amongst the stones: presently he held up a large brown moth! Then another, and then we found several ourselves. The bear had been eating moths; but it must have taken a great many moths to satisfy a bear that had been hibernating for six months.

We hunted about on this part of the mountain for several hours, seeing bear tracks wherever there was snow, but no bear, and we got back to our camp about noon, tired and hungry, after eight hours' hard climbing.

On our way down to camp we magnanimously helped our rival to bring down the bear he had shot on the previous afternoon. He was a big bear and very heavy, but he was frozen quite stiff, so that we were able to roll him down the steep places, until we got to a place level enough for a donkey to stand upon, where the bear was skinned, cut up, and packed on the ass. Carter bought the skin, and we had bear steaks for dinner that evening and bear's paws for second course; but we came to the conclusion that, as food, fresh bear was not to be compared to Fortnum and Mason's tinned sausages. Possibly the bear was a little too fresh, as we had always heard that bear's paws were esteemed as a great delicacy.

We were not inclined to do anything more active this afternoon than to loaf about in camp and smoke, and to explore the course of the little stream by which we were encamped. We found that it was one of three, all of which sprang suddenly out of ground, and then, after running a short course, united into one quite respectable little river, which, after running another short course, disappeared down a hole in the ground and was seen no more.

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the following morning, and scour another part of the mountains as a last chance of getting a shot at a bear. Carter, however, had caught a severe cold and was quite knocked up; so it was decided that only the sergeant and I, with the faithful Mousa, should go up the mountain, and that the rest of the party should strike camp at a reasonable hour and drop down to the cedars, whilst the mountain party should cross over the mountain after their hunt, and come down to the cedars by another route.

This plan was carried out, and although the mountain party did not get a shot at a bear, they had a most interesting climb amidst magnificent scenery, ate a box of sardines and drank a tot of Navy rum on the summit of the highest peak of the Lebanon, much to the sergeant's delight, and then dropped down to the cedars at about four p.m., to find the tents pitched and dinner ready.

Mousa was much distressed at our bad luck in failing to get a shot at a bear; but the old boy had done his best, and he could do no more. He gave the sergeant and me a graphic description of a bear hunt, upon the very spot where it occurred some years before, though perhaps it would be more correct to call it a man hunt. He could not speak a word of our language, and we could only understand a few words of his; yet the whole thrilling scene was as clearly and graphically conveyed to us by signs and gestures as if he had spoken fluently in our mother tongue. The spot was a small plateau not far from the snow-line, wild and barren in the extreme, and near the centre of this plateau, amidst other rocks and boulders of various shapes and sizes, there stood a round table of rock ten or twelve feet high, about twenty yards in diameter, a flat top

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and almost perpendicular sides; but there were a few places where an active man might climb up it, if he had time.

On one of his bear-hunting expeditions Mousa had arrived at this place, and creeping cautiously along, listening intently, he became aware of the sound of a bear grubbing amongst the stones. Presently he saw the bear, and taking cover behind the rock, he was able to crawl up to within a dozen yards of the bear without being observed, the animal was so intent upon licking up moths. Mousa waited a minute to get breath, and then, peering round the side of the rock, he let off his long single-barrelled gun and put two bullets into the bear. (Mousa always double-shotted his great gaspipe of a gun. I saw him loading it once. About five drams of powder and two round bullets, rammed down with a greasy rag.) The bear's wounds were not mortal, and, with an angry growl, he came straight for Mousa; and then began as exciting a hunt as any hunter could wish for, the only drawback being that the hunter was now the hunted (" bear behind ").

Mousa thought his only chance was to stick to the rock and not to give the wounded bear the advantage of a straight run in the open over rough ground; so round and round the rock he went, with the bear after him. He had no second shot, and nothing but his long knife to trust to. Once or twice the bear nearly caught him, and he was obliged to lighten himself by dropping his gun, which he had no time to reload. Then Mousa gained a little on the bear, who was probably weakening from his wounds and loss of blood; and choosing a spot - which he showed us - the old sportsman made a rush and clambered up on to the top of the

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rock; but the bear did not give him much breathing time, and was very quickly after him, climbing up at the same place. Mousa, however, had time to pick up a huge stone, which he was lucky enough to find on the top of the rock, and, waiting until Bruin's head appeared over the edge, he brought the stone down on him with a crash which sent him rolling, stunned, to the bottom; and then without giving him a moment to recover, he jumped down after him and plunged his long knife into his heart. The old hunter acted the whole scene splendidly; his eyes sparkled, he trembled with excitement, and we felt as if we had seen it all with our own eyes.

Another night spent beneath the shade of those venerable cedars, and then we marched back to Tripoli, taking two days about it, as before. We said good-bye to Mousa at Bsherra, giving him a good supply of powder and bullets, besides the pay we had agreed upon. The old man was very grateful, and seemed really sorry to part from us. While sitting over our camp fire on our last evening at the cedars he took off some of his clothes and showed us the scars of wounds he had received during various encounters with bears; be had been terribly mauled, and, by the look of the scars, he must, on one occasion, have very nearly had his left arm torn from his body. He was a fine old sportsman, and I hope he may never want powder and shot and bears to hunt.

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CHAPTER V

CONSTANTINOPLE – MARMORA - DERKOS

Shortly after our expedition in the Lebanon, recorded in the last chapter, the Rapid was ordered to Malta to undergo a general refit, to pay off and recommission with a new crew; and as I had only been a year in the ship, I was reappointed in command. I was very sorry to part with the officers, who were a good lot, though very bad shots; and I was especially sorry to part with my sporting sergeant, who would very much have liked to stay in the Rapid, but was obliged to go home with his detachment. I shall never see his like again. The new sergeant did not know a woodcock from a seagull, nor one end of a pig from the other.

The summer at Malta is very trying, and we spent the four hottest months of the year there, refitting the old Rapid for her next, and last, commission; but I had nothing to grumble about, as I had spent a most delightful winter, and all places in the Mediterranean are hot in the summer, though perhaps Malta is the hottest. The Malta stone gets baked with the sun; it becomes a veritable oven, and everyone who can get away from it during the hot months does so. It is, however, only fair to say that Malta in winter is one of the gayest places in the British dominions. Balls, parties, teas, picnics, operas, etc.; so that it is a paradise for those who like these sort of things.

In the late autumn of this year (1879) my Admiral

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informed me that he intended to send me to Constantinople in the Rapid, to spend the winter there as guardship to our Ambassador. Each of the Great Powers keeps a small man-of-war at Constantinople to attend to the wishes of their Ambassadors. They are called the "stationnaires," and are always small ships of little fighting value, as the Porte is very jealous of foreign warships of power coming within range of the capital. A special firman from the Sultan has to be obtained before any of them can pass through the Dardanelles, and the Turkish authorities at Chanak generally keep you waiting two or three days while the firman is being prepared, just to show how important it is, and what a great favour they are conferring by allowing you to go through at all.

It was with great joy that I received my orders for Constantinople. I had not been there since the days of the Crimean War, when I went out in the old three-decker Royal George, to bring home troops; but I appreciated my great luck in once more being selected for detached service, far from the gentle attentions of a senior officer. I also knew, from the reports of my friends, that Constantinople was a very pleasant place in winter, and that there was excellent shooting all round the shores of the Sea of Marmora, where I should have to make occasional cruises to exercise the crew at sail drill and gunnery. In fact, I thought the chances of sport were so good that I wrote home immediate to my dear old friend Mirehouse, and asked him to come out again and join the Rapid at Constantinople, which he did.

On my arrival at Constantinople in October, our Ambassador (Sir Henry Layard, of Nineveh fame) had not yet left his summer residence at Therapia, on the

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Bosphorus; so I took the Rapid up there and moored her in a funny little creek near the Embassy villa. We had two anchors out astern, and the other end of her tied up to a big tree, with the additional security of the stream anchor taken on shore and well dug in. So we were very snug there until it was time to move down to the anchorage at the mouth of the Golden Horn, where we were not nearly so snug.

I got on very well with Sir Henry when I came to know him, though I was a little bit startled at first by his somewhat brusque manners. The first time I called on him I thought he kept me standing rather longer than necessary, considering that there was a good deal to talk about and our conversation lasted some time; but he finally asked me to sit down; and then, opening a drawer in his writing-table, he took out a box of cigarettes, helped himself first, at which I was a little surprised, and still more so when he didn't help me second, or at all, but lit a cigarette and put the box back again. I suppose my presumption soared too high in expecting that a full-blown ambassador would condescend to offer me a cigarette, though I had formed the idea that all our diplomats were the very pink of politeness.

The only other full-blown ambassador that I have ever had anything to do with was Lord Dufferin, when he was at Paris; but he was quite different.

I finally won Sir Henry Layard's heart by getting a steam-launch for him, to take the place of the old Antelope. The Antelope was a very ancient paddlewheel steamer; too big and much too slow, and was quite useless to the Ambassador, though she was called the Ambassador's yacht. He consulted with me concerning the details of a small yacht which would be of

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use to him, and we finally decided upon a sort of glorified steam-launch, with a cabin and certain other conveniences; and after a good deal of correspondence with the Admiralty (which I was allowed to conduct direct, though, of course, sending copies to my Admiral) the glorified steam-launch was sent out, and met with complete approbation.

At the time of my arrival at Constantinople, Hobart Pasha was still alive and was Commander-in-Chief of the Turkish Navy. When the Russo-Turkish War broke out in 1877 he was placed in a very awkward position; for as well as being an Admiral in the Turkish Navy he was a retired Admiral in the British Navy, drawing his retired pay; and as we were at peace with Russia, he had to choose between having his name removed from the British Navy list and losing his retired pay, or desert the Turks in their extremity. Of course, he could not do the latter, so he had to submit to the former, as some busybody in Parliament had called attention to his position.

Hobart felt this very deeply, not only on account of the pecuniary loss, but at being removed from the finest service in the world, in which he had spent all the best years of his life. He was one of several young Captains in our Navy who employed their half-pay time in blockade-running to the Southern States during the American Civil War; and at one time he had made a considerable "pile" at this risky business, but lost it all again in his last venture. He found great difficulty in getting his pay from the Turks, but they allowed him a barge's crew of twelve Turkish sailors, with whom he manned a steam yacht, called the Hawk, and in her he cruised about the Sea of Marmora in the winter, getting most excellent woodcock-shooting. He knew

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all the best places in the Marmora, and was also in communication with the lighthouse-keepers, who used to send him a wire when the woodcock were in at their several districts, and then off he went at once in the Hawk. He took me with him once, and we found the covers full of woodcock, and had excellent sport. We had four days at it, and came back to Constantinople with the davit guys festooned with woodcock, all of which went to the palace. Hobart knew his Turk; but even woodcock to the palace in the days of Abdul Hamid failed to bring the Pasha's pay with any regularity, though it is highly probable that without this little bribe he would have got none at all.

I think Hobart was the best and quickest woodcock shot I ever saw; but he was a little jealous, and it was not good to walk too near him. It was said that he regarded all the shores of the Sea of Marmora as his special preserves; and I certainly did hear rumours that he was in the habit of sending the officers of the stationnaire to the wrong places and going to the right ones himself; and, indeed, I think it highly probable that when he came across some real bad shots he did do so, on the principle that it was no use wasting good places on them. Nevertheless, I was somewhat surprised one day when he volunteered the remark, " Some people say I send them to the wrong places on purpose. Never did such a thing in my life." To which I made the obvious reply, "Who ever said you did?" But got no answer. Qui s'excuse s'accuse.

The winter of 1879-80 was an exceptionally severe one at Constantinople. There had been nothing like it since 1854-55, known in England as the Crimean winter, when our troops suffered so severely in the trenches before Sebastopol. The snow lay in the

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streets of Pera and Galata for weeks, without melting or being removed, and all the country around was deep in snow. Our sporting friends of the English colony told us that this sort of weather afforded a splendid opportunity to go to Derkos to shoot wildfowl. They said that all the lakes in the country would be frozen, except Derkos lake, and as this never froze, we should find it covered with wild ducks and have splendid sport. The English Consul and the Vice-Consul both said they were very fond of duck-shooting (N.B.- They couldn't hit woodcock), and that one or other of them would accompany our party to Derkos, which they both knew well, and would act as guide and interpreter for us; so we made our arrangements for the trip, and as it was too cold for tents, we decided to take only blankets and some commissariat stores, and trust to getting some sort of shelter in the native hovels.

The weather was extremely cold, and the day before that on which we had arranged to start both Consul and Vice-Consul jibbed. One said he could not go because the other was going, and the other said he could not go because one was going. I travelled from one to the other several times trying to arrange matters, until it became obvious that neither of them intended to go. They both preferred the fleshpots of Pera to the wild ducks of Derkos; so that I had to cast about at the last moment and look for a guide and interpreter, which was no easy matter; but at last I hired a ruffianly-looking Levantine, who said he could speak English and could guide us to Derkos. He could not do either; but we did not find this out until it was too late to make a change.

We sent our saddle-horses and a baggage-horse up to Therapia the night before, and started at daylight

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for that place in the steam pinnace, found the horses waiting, loaded up the baggage-animal, and off we went; but we had not gone far before it became clear that our guide had only the very haziest idea of the route to Derkos. Luckily for us, however, the man who led the baggage-horse proved to be a much better pilot, though even he was several times at fault; and small blame to him, for the snow was very deep, and any path there might have been in ordinary weather was completely obliterated, and landmarks also get much changed in appearance when covered with snow.

The distance from Therapia to Derkos is only thirty miles, but our progress was so slow that it soon became obvious we should take two days to get there; so we steered for a small village called Pyrgos, intending to spend the night there.

Then the baggage-horse got into a snowdrift and cast his pack, and we had a troublesome job getting him out again and reloading him. Then we all got into a snowdrift just as night was falling, and our two guides were busy quarrelling as to which direction Pyrgos lay in.

At this point there seemed to be a very good chance that we should spend the night out in the snow, which would have been unpleasant, even if we had been alive in the morning. We could see nothing around us but a dismal and unending waste of snow, and by the time we had got our horses out of the snowdrift it was dark, and so were our prospects. The situation, in fact, looked quite serious, but it was useless to stay where we were; so after some further argument between our two guides, we set off in the direction indicated by the leader of the baggage-horse as being most likely to lead to Pyrgos, though he did not seem to be by any means certain. So off we went, floundering along

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in single line ahead, baggage-horse leading; and after about an hour's time we saw, to our great joy, the twinkle of a dim light in the distance, and another hour brought us to the promised land. But our troubles were not quite over yet. It was now nine o'clock, and the little Greek village of Pyrgos had gone to bed. We rode down the one street, but there was no light in any of the houses; all doors were shut and barred, and it seemed like a village of the dead.

All we wanted was a dry wooden floor to sleep on; so it was

"Up the street and down the street, and knocked at every door.

Give us all the world, Sir, we couldn't find a floor."

But our indefatigable baggage-man was not to be denied. He forced his way into a house at last, told the people that three great Pashas from Constantinople were travelling, that they had lost their way, and that they must have a room to themselves, or else there would be trouble for the village. He then cleared out a family, with all their furniture and belongings, and ushe