Chapter III: Front Matter (3)

"Ah," said Hewitt, "I think I know the name of the young lady who gave you those slippers."

Crockett looked ashamed and indignant. "Yes," he said; "they've done me nicely between 'em. But I'll pay her--I'll----"

"Hush, hush!" Hewitt said: "you mustn't talk unkindly of a lady, you know. Get into this carriage, and we'll take you home. We'll see if I can tell you your adventures without making a mistake. First, you had a note from Miss Webb, telling you that you were mistaken in supposing she had slighted you, and that as a matter of fact she had quite done with somebody else--left him--of whom you were jealous. Isn't that so?"

"Well, yes," young Crockett answered, blushing deeply under the carriage-lamp: "but I don't see how you come to know that."

"Then she went on to ask you to get rid of Steggles on Thursday afternoon for a few minutes, and speak to her in the back lane. Now, your running pumps, with their thin soles, almost like paper, no heels and long spikes, hurt your feet horribly if you walk on hard ground, don't they?"

"Ay, that they do--enough to cripple you. I'd never go on much hard ground with 'em."

"They're not like cricket shoes, I see."

"Not a bit. Cricket shoes you can walk anywhere in."

"Well, she knew this--I think I know who told her--and she promised to bring you a new pair of slippers, and to throw them over the fence for you to come out in."

"I s'pose she's been tellin' you all this?" Crockett said, mournfully. "You couldn't ha' seen the letter--I saw her tear it up and put the bits in her pocket. She asked me for it in the lane, in case Steggles saw it."

"Well, at any rate, you sent Steggles away, and the slippers did come over, and you went into the lane. You walked with her as far as the road at the end, and then you were seized and gagged, and put into a carriage."

"That was Browdie did that," said Crockett, "and another chap I don't know. But--why, this is Padfield High Street!" He looked through the window and regarded the familiar shops with astonishment.

"Of course it is. Where did you think it was?"

"Why, where was that place you found me in?"

"Granville Road, Padfield. I suppose they told you you were in another town?"

"Told me it was Newstead Hatch. They drove for about three or four hours, and kept me down on the floor between the seats so as I couldn't see where we was going."

"Done for two reasons," said Hewitt. "First, to mystify you, and prevent any discovery of the people directing the conspiracy; and, second, to be able to put you indoors at night and unobserved. Well, I think I have told you all you know yourself now as far as the carriage.

"But there is the 'Hare and Hounds' just in front. We'll pull up here and I'll get out and see if the coast is clear. I fancy Mr. Kentish would rather you came in unnoticed."

In a few seconds Hewitt was back, and Crockett was conveyed indoors by a side entrance. Hewitt's instructions to the landlord were few but emphatic. "Don't tell Steggles about it," he said; "make an excuse to get rid of him, and send him out of the house. Take Crockett into some other bedroom, not his own, and let your son look after him. Then come here, and I'll tell you all about it."

Sammy Crockett was undergoing a heavy grooming with white embrocation at the hands of Sergeant Kentish, when the landlord returned to Hewitt. "Does Danby know you've got him?" he asked. "How did you do it?"

"Danby doesn't know yet, and with luck he won't know till he sees Crockett running to-morrow. The man who has sold you is Steggles."

"Steggles?"

"Steggles it is. At the very first, when Steggles rushed in to report Sammy Crockett missing, I suspected him. You didn't, I suppose?"

"No. He's always been considered a straight man, and he looked as startled as anybody."

"Yes, I must say he acted it very well. But there was something suspicious in his story. What did he say? Crockett had remarked a chilliness, and asked for a sweater, which Steggles went to fetch. Now, just think. You understand these things. Would any trainer who knew his business (as Steggles does) have gone to bring out a sweater for his man to change for his jersey in the open air, at the very time the man was complaining of chilliness? Of course not. He would have taken his man indoors again and let him change there under shelter. Then supposing Steggles had really been surprised at missing Crockett, wouldn't he have looked about, found the gate open, and _told_ you it was open, when he first came in? He said nothing of that--we found the gate open for ourselves. So that from the beginning, I had a certain opinion of Steggles."

"What you say seems pretty plain now, although it didn't strike me at the time. But if Steggles was selling us, why couldn't he have drugged the lad? That would have been a deal simpler."

"Because Steggles is a good trainer and has a certain reputation to keep up. It would have done him no good to have had a runner drugged while under his care--certainly it would have cooked his goose with _you_. It was much the safer thing to connive at kidnapping. That put all the active work into other hands, and left him safe, even if the trick failed. Now you remember that we traced the prints of Crockett's spiked shoes to within a couple of yards of the fence, and that there they ceased suddenly?"

"Yes. You said it looked as though he had flown up into the air; and so it did."

"But I was sure that it was by that gate that Crockett had left, and by no other. He couldn't have got through the house without being seen, and there was no other way--let alone the evidence of the unbolted gate. Therefore, as the footprints ceased where they did, and were not repeated anywhere in the lane, I knew that he had taken his spiked shoes off--probably changed them for something else, because a runner anxious as to his chances would never risk walking on bare feet, with a chance of cutting them. Ordinary, broad, smooth-soled slippers would leave no impression on the coarse cinders bordering the track, and nothing short of spiked shoes would leave a mark on the hard path in the lane behind. The spike tracks were leading, not directly toward the door, but in the direction of the fence, when they stopped--somebody had handed, or thrown, the slippers over the fence and he had changed them on the spot. The enemy had calculated upon the spikes leaving a track in the lane that might lead us in our search, and had arranged accordingly.

"So far, so good. I could see no footprints near the gate in the lane. You will remember that I sent Steggles off to watch at the Cop before I went out to the back--merely, of course, to get him out of the way. I went out into the lane, leaving you behind, and walked its whole length, first toward the Old Kilns and then back toward the road. I found nothing to help me except these small pieces of paper--which are here in my pocket-book, by-the-bye. Of course, this 'mmy' might have meant '"Jimmy' or 'Tommy,' as possibly as 'Sammy,' but they were not to be rejected on that account. Certainly Crockett had been decoyed out of your ground, not taken by force, or there would have been marks of a scuffle in the cinders. And as his request for a sweater was probably an excuse--because it was not at all a cold afternoon he must have previously designed going out--inference, a letter received: and here were pieces of a letter. Now, in the light of what I have said, look at these pieces. First there is the 'mmy'--that I have dealt with. Then, see this 'throw them ov'--clearly a part of 'throw them over'; exactly what had probably been done with the slippers. Then the 'poor f,' coming just on the line before, and seen, by joining up with this other piece, might easily be a reference to 'poor feet.' These coincidences, one on the other, went far to establish the identity of the letter, and to confirm my previous impressions. But then there is something else. Two other pieces evidently mean 'left him,' and 'right away'--send Steggles 'right away,' perhaps; but there is another, containing almost all of the words 'hate his,' with the word 'hate' underlined. Now, who writes 'hate' with the emphasis of underscoring--- who but a woman? The writing is large and not very regular; it might easily be that of a half-educated woman. Here was something more--Sammy had been enticed away by a woman.

"Now, I remembered that when we went into the tap-room on Wednesday, some of his companions were chaffing Crockett about a certain Nancy Webb, and the chaff went home, as was plain to see. The woman, then, who could most easily entice Sammy Crockett away was Nancy Webb. I resolved to find who Nancy Webb was and learn more of her.

"Meantime I took a look at the road at the end of the lane. It was damper than the lane, being lower, and overhung by trees. There were many wheel tracks, but only one set that turned in the road and went back the way it came--- towards the town--and they were narrow wheels, carriage wheels. Crockett tells me now that they drove him about for a long time before shutting him up--probably the inconvenience of taking him straight to the hiding-place didn't strike them when they first drove off.

"A few inquiries soon set me in the direction of the 'Plough' and Miss Nancy Webb. I had the curiosity to look round the place as I approached, and there, in the garden behind the house, were Steggles and the young lady in earnest confabulation!

"Every conjecture became a certainty. Steggles was the lover of whom Crockett was jealous, and he had employed the girl to bring Sammy out. I watched Steggles home, and gave you a hint to keep him there.

"But the thing that remained was to find Steggles's employer in this business. I was glad to be in when Danby called--he came, of course, to hear if you would blurt out anything, and to learn, if possible, what steps you were taking. He failed. By way of making assurance doubly sure, I took a short walk this morning in the character of a deaf gentleman, and got Miss Webb to write me a direction that comprised three of the words on these scraps of paper--'left,' 'right,' and 'lane'--see, they correspond, the peculiar 'f's,' 't's,' and all.

"Now, I felt perfectly sure that Steggles would go for his pay to-day. In the first place, I knew that people mixed up with shady transactions in professional pedestrianism are not apt to trust one another far--they know better. Therefore, Steggles wouldn't have had his bribe first. But he would take care to get it before the Saturday heats were run, because once they were over the thing was done, and the principal conspirator might have refused to pay up, and Steggles couldn't have helped himself. Again I hinted he should not go out till I could follow him, and this afternoon when he went, follow him I did. I saw him go into Danby's house by the side way and come away again. Danby it was, then, who had arranged the business; and nobody was more likely, considering his large pecuniary stake against Crockett's winning this race.

"But now, how to find Crockett? I made up my mind he wouldn't be in Danby's own house--that would be a deal too risky, with servants about, and so on. I saw that Danby was a builder, and had three shops to let--it was on a paper before his house. What more likely prison than an empty house? I knocked at Danby's door and asked for the keys of those shops. I couldn't have them. The servant told me Danby was out (a manifest lie, for I had just seen him), and that nobody could see the shops till Monday. But I got out of her the address of the shops, and that was all I wanted at the time.

"Now, why was nobody to see those shops till Monday? The interval was suspicious--just enough to enable Crockett to be sent away again and cast loose after the Saturday racing, supposing him to be kept in one of the empty buildings. I went off at once and looked at the shops, forming my conclusions as to which would be the most likely for Danby's purpose. Here I had another confirmation of my ideas. A poor, half-bankrupt baker in one of the shops had, by the bills, the custody of a set of keys; but _he_, too, told me I couldn't have them; Danby had taken them away--and on Thursday, the very day--with some trivial excuse, and hadn't brought them back. That was all I wanted, or could expect in the way of guidance; the whole thing was plain. The rest you know all about."

"Well, you're certainly as smart as they give you credit for, I must say. But suppose Danby had taken down his 'to let' notice, what would you have done then?"

"We had our course even then. We should have gone to Danby, astounded him by telling him all about his little games, terrorized him with threats of the law, and made him throw up his hand and send Crockett back. But as it is, you see, he doesn't know at this moment--probably won't know till to-morrow afternoon--that the lad is safe and sound here. You will probably use the interval to make him pay for losing the game--by some of the ingenious financial devices you are no doubt familiar with."

"Aye, that I will. He'll give any price against Crockett now, so long as the bet don't come direct from me."

"But about Crockett, now," Hewitt went on. "Won't this confinement be likely to have damaged his speed for a day or two?"

"Ah, perhaps," the landlord replied: "but, bless ye, that won't matter. There's four more in his heat to-morrow. Two I know aren't tryers, and the other two I can hold in at a couple of quid apiece any day. The third round and final won't be till to-morrow week, and he'll be as fit as ever by then. It's as safe as ever it was. How much are you going to have on? I'll lump it on for you safe enough. This is a chance not to be missed--it's picking money up."

"Thank you: I don't think I'll have anything to do with it. This professional pedestrian business doesn't seem a pretty one at all. I don't call myself a moralist, but, if you'll excuse my saying so, the thing is scarcely the game I care to pick up money at in any way."

"Oh! very well, if you think so, I won't persuade ye, though I don't think so much of your smartness as I did, after that. Still, we won't quarrel--you've done me a mighty good turn, that I must say, and I only feel I aren't level without doing something to pay the debt. Come, now, you've got your trade as I've got mine. Let me have the bill, and I'll pay it like a lord, and feel a deal more pleased than if you made a favour of it--not that I'm above a favour, of course. But I'd prefer paying, and that's a fact."

"My dear sir, you have paid," Hewitt said, with a smile. "You paid in advance. It was a bargain, wasn't it, that I should do your business if you would help me in mine? Very well, a bargain's a bargain, and we've both performed our parts. And you mustn't be offended at what I said just now."

"That I won't. But as to that Raggy Steggles, once those heats are over to-morrow, I'll ---- well ----!"

* * * * *

It was on the following Sunday week that Martin Hewitt, in his rooms in London, turned over his paper and read, under the head "Padfield Annual 135 Yards Handicap," this announcement: "Final Heat: Crockett, first; Willis, second; Trewby, third: Owen, 0; Howell, 0. A runaway win by nearly three yards."

ZIG-ZAGS AT THE ZOO

By Arthur Morrison and J A Shepherd]

XXII.--ZIG-ZAG SAURIAN.

People, as a rule, are not fond of lizards, and the larger the lizards the less people like them; until the crocodile and the alligator, largest of all, are received with positive antipathy, and rarely treated as pets. People make many excuses for such an attitude toward lizards; calling them ugly, crawly, slimy, scaly, and so forth. I have an hypothesis that envy is a large element in this human antipathy. For after all, if we will but confess it, the alligator's is rather an enviable lot. To lie all day in a bed of warm, soft mud--really, it is a pleasant thing. To be able, without inconvenience, to postpone dinner for a fortnight--that is attractively economical. To enjoy the advantages of six eyelids and the resulting capability in winks--there is something even in this. But chiefly, envy for the crocodile has got into the grain of humanity by heredity from those ancients who believed everything that Plutarch told them in his book, _De Iside et Osiride_. The crocodile, he informs us therein, can render itself invisible at will, everything else being perfectly visible to it the while. This is a noble privilege, and worthy of the most respectful envy. Jack the Giant Killer performed the trick by means of a cloak; but Plutarch's crocodile does it "merely by the power of the heye," as the street-corner mesmerist has it--does it "like winking," in fact. The mechanism is very simple, and quite easy to understand. It consists only of a membrane to draw over the eye; and as the eye it is drawn over is the crocodile's, it is obvious that he becomes invisible at once. His ability to see others is provided for by the ingenious expedient of having the membrane transparent--and there you are. What could be simpler? Anybody who can run to a transparent membrane fitting for his eyes may dodge his creditors at will, thanks to the tip of the benevolent and ingenious Plutarch.

In the reptile-house at these Gardens, the largest saurian bears the apt name of Little-'un. He is a youthful alligator, although, being rather more than 10 ft. 6 in. long, he has quite grown out of short frocks. Nothing infantile remains about his appearance, and he has in full development that curious cravat of fleshy folds and creases noticeable in no animals but alligators and 'bus-drivers, and among the latter species only in the stout and red-faced variety. Little-'un's name was not given him by way of a joke, but because, nine years ago, he was only a foot long--which _is_ little for an alligator. Little-'un has always been a good business alligator, however, and by strict industry and invincible perseverance in the pursuit of whatever might be eatable, has risen to an honoured and considerable eminence in the higher Zoo circles. To observe the open countenance of Little-'un bearing down on a piece of meat that ought properly to belong to some other alligator, is to get a sight of a truly original edition of "Smiles's Self-Help." Little-'un's one moral principle is--the greatest good of the greatest alligator. His business maxim is get something to eat; honestly, if there is no other way, but, anyhow, get it as large as possible, and as often as you can. He would, without the least bashfulness, proceed to eat his friends in the same tank if Tyrrell (the keeper, whom you know already) neglected the commissariat. Indeed, he once began on one fellow-lodger, with no other excuse than opportunity. Feeding was in progress, and, in the scramble and confusion, a smallish crocodile, lunging his nose in the direction of the desired morsel, without particularly noticing where that direction led, found himself up to the eyes in Little-'un's dental establishment. Little-'un's prudent habits rendered it unlikely that he would deliberately fling away anything that Providence had actually thrust into his mouth, even if it were his own grandfather: and only a vigorous application of Tyrrell's pole saved the crocodile from making a meal in a sense he didn't originally intend.

Eighty-five degrees is the temperature prescribed for the water here, and every crocodile is a thermometer unto himself, soon showing signs, notwithstanding his thick hide, of any variation in the rate of his gentle stewing--Little-'un being as sensitive as any, in spite of his assiduous attention to business.

200°

"HERE, STOP IT, TYRELL!"

150°

100°

80°

70°

60°

J.A.S.

SWAIN SO

THE CROCODILE THERMOMETER]

With Tyrrell, by the way, Little-'un is comparatively affable, for an alligator. Tyrrell climbs calmly into the basin, among its inmates, to swill and mop it out at the weekly cleaning, herding crocodiles and alligators into a corner by the flourish of a mop, in a manner more than disrespectful--almost insulting. There is some mysterious influence about that mop. Why should alligators shut their heads and stand meekly aside at its potent waggle? I would never venture up the Nile without Tyrrell's mop. With one wave of that mystic sceptre I would assume immediate sovereignty over all the crocodiles in Africa, and drive them into corners. There is no withstanding that mop. If it will intimidate crocodiles, plainly it would be successful with leopards, cobras, lions, and tigers. If I could borrow it I would even try it on the beadle at the Bank of England, and if I could wave _him_ aside with it, I should know that thenceforth the world was at my feet; and I'm afraid Tyrrell wouldn't get his mop back.

But I was speaking of Little-'un: his affability; and of Tyrrell: his irreverent familiarity. When Tyrrell mops out the basin, he finds it convenient to leave somewhat under a foot of water in the bottom for cleaning purposes, and as this would be damp (as is water's nature) to tread in, he calmly stands on Little-'un's back and proceeds placidly with his mopping. To wave an alligator aside with a mop is an insult altogether, but to stand on his back for the sake of dry shoes is an outrage unutterable. Little-'un seems a very appropriate name as it stands, but if ever a time should arrive when it must be changed, I think, with every respect and honour to the departed statesman, I should suggest John Bright. "Mr. Speaker," said an honourable member, who spoke before he thought, but whose name I have forgotten, "Mr. Speaker, the right honourable gentleman" (Mr. Bright) "accuses me of making allegations. Why, sir, the right honourable gentleman is the greatest alligator in this House!" Which is precisely what Little-'un is now.

Round at the back, in his private domains, Tyrrell keeps a crocodile and alligator nursery. It is a metal box fixed against a wall and holding about a gallon. Here are all the infants, eight inches to a foot long, squirming, wriggling, and struggling, with a lively activity foreign to the nature of the full-grown alligator. Tyrrell will plunge his hand into the struggling mass and produce a handful for your inspection. They are charming little pets and as ready to bite as if they were twenty feet long. An alligator may be pardoned some impatience in growing; if he is to be ten feet and a half long at nine years of age, there is a deal of lee-way to make up. Most creatures would be discouraged at being born only to a measurement in inches, and refuse to grow at all.

There would appear to be a sort of general reluctance to make a domestic pet of the crocodile; it is not fashionable now, and nobody seems anxious to set the _mode_. To encourage anybody who is disposed to distinguish himself, I may observe that a crocodile is cheapest when young. This is doubly fortunate, because for a less sum you have a longer run for your money--the last expression not being intended in any uncomfortable sense. I believe the usual price of young crocodiles and alligators, up to a certain size, is a guinea a linear foot; at any rate, I know you could buy them at that rate of my old friend Mr. Jamrach, and I have no doubt that the Zoological Society may be able, from time to time, to spare a foot or two of alligator at the price. If you buy a foot--or a yard, as the case may be (the _case_, of course, will be a little longer, but that is unworthy trifling)--you must be careful to keep it in a warm place, in water at the right temperature, at night as well as day. Then when it grows to the size of Little-'un, it will make an imposing embellishment for your entrance-hall, and useful to receive subscription-collectors. And to take them inside.

It is a bad thing to generalize in a world containing China. China upsets everything. If you venture to put a date to the invention of gunpowder, somebody is sure to remind you to except China; the same with printing and everything else. There is nothing China hasn't got or hasn't had. So that naturally, after America has many years flaunted and gloried in the exclusive possession of the broad-nosed alligator as distinguished from the sharp-snouted crocodile, China, in the old familiar aggravating way, bobs up serenely with _her_ alligators--perfectly authentic and genuine, and here some of them are, in the small basin. There's no getting ahead of China.

But Temminck's Snapper is the wonder and gaping-stock of this house. Bring the most impassive country cousin, let him sneer at the snakes, lounge past the lizards, turn up his nose at the tigers, elevate it more at the elephants, ridicule the rhinoceros, and disparage the donkeys. Let him do all this, and then confront him with the Snapper. He will be beaten. "Well, of all the----" He will probably refuse to believe the thing alive, and it certainly looks more like a fine old Paleozoic Fossil than anything else imaginable. This is due to the operation of Misdirected Patience--a virtue so noticeable as to demand capital letters. For the Snapper has been in this not very large tank for ten years, and has not yet become convinced that there are no fish in it. Wherefore he laboriously and patiently fishes without a moment's cessation. Fishing, with him, means waiting immovably with open mouth for a fish to come and be gobbled. He has waited ten years for a bite, but that is nothing unusual, as you may try for yourself, if you buy a rod and line. It is calculated, I believe, that a hundred years more in his present attitude will be sufficient to fossilize him, when, no doubt, he will be passed on to the Geological Society. He has never yet found the need for an individual name; but I am thinking of suggesting a suitable combination--I think it should be Job Walton.

J. A. Sigmund]

Job is not an emotional person. He never exhibits enthusiasm, even for fishing. I shouldn't myself, after ten years' waiting for a bite. There he floats, with all the mental activity of an ordinary brick, while visitors come and go, nations are convulsed, elections, boat-races are decided, and green weed grows all over his back, but he doesn't care. "A rolling stone gathers no moss" is a capital proverb for the guidance of people who care for moss as a personal adornment. Job avoids all rolling, in common with other forms of movement, and is lavishly rewarded with moss of the greenest, on back, legs, toes, and tail. Beyond his patience (a negative sort of virtue, after all), Job Walton has no particular personal characteristic that I can discover, except extreme niggardliness plain and patent in his face. He has nothing in the world to be niggardly with, except his moss, but if he had, he would make a very un-indulgent uncle. I have a theory that Job is not an animal at all, but a fossilized concretion of the twin virtues (or what you like to call them), patience and stinginess; a sort of petrified fungus, produced by the chemical action consequent on the mingling of the two qualities. Probably some very shocking old miser (perhaps it was Scrooge himself) lost all his stinginess at once, just at the identical moment when some long-suffering person lost his patience (this was, probably, an angler). The subtle essences comprising these qualities met and mingled--result, a fungus growth, Job Walton. The same sort of thing occurs a thousand times a day in the case of toadstools.

I am really friendly with only one of the smaller lizards here--and he is a large one; the big monitor at the corner. But I have never been able to learn from him, even in his most confidential moments, how many feet of tongue he really has. It is a round, whip-lash sort of tongue, like the ant-eater's, and I have a private superstition in both cases that there actually is no other end to that tongue. The monitor is fond of rats, but the rats are not at all partial to his society.

Lesueur's Water Lizard is a curious specimen. He has not been here long, but has already assumed, on his own nomination, a position of great responsibility and importance. He is Inspector of Visitors. He won't have questionable characters in the reptile-house. When not actively inspecting, he is watching for his victims. He observes a visitor approaching. He is on guard at once, by the front glass of the case. His aspect is official and stern, his manner abrupt and peremptory; he is not a lizard to be trifled with. "Paid your shilling?" he demands, as plainly as a silent lizard may. "Got your railway ticket? Show it." Any respectable visitor with the fear of the law before his eyes will comply at once. "Where do you live? Produce your last water-rate receipt." He looks you up and down suspiciously. "Been vaccinated lately? Date? All right. Pass along." And he swings abruptly round to watch for somebody else.

The Australian Bearded Lizard (most quaint lizards are Australian) is supposed to derive his colloquial name--the Jew Lizard--from his beard. But he has an Israelitish acquisitiveness of his own, too. He goes about his shop--everything he does makes it seem a shop--and brings his paw down on one pebble and one twig after another with an unmistakable air of assertive proprietorship. "Mine," he intimates, "mine, every one of them; and you keep your hands off them, unless you're ready to do business." He would pronounce it "pishnesh" if mere gesture-talk admitted of it. A little irritation goes a long way with the Jew lizard. His beard stands out tremendously, he swells to a rib-threatening degree, and stands at bay with open mouth, ready to smite the Philistines hip and thigh and spoil the Egyptians of their finger-tips--let them but come near enough. But he is a very respectable lizard, not so lazy as most, and pleasant to the touch.

He is not so lazy, for instance, as the chameleon. The chameleon is the slowest creature alive. If there were a race between a chameleon and a pump, it would be safest to back the pump. An active little Gallot's lizard was placed here lately, with a pair of chameleons, but the contrast was so disgraceful to the chameleons that he was removed, and made to chum with a Gecko, a few cases off. He absorbed all the rations, too, which was an addition of injury to insult, although chameleons can always put off dinner for a month or two without inconvenience. A chameleon is a sort of twin. Like other things, he has two halves; but these halves are only acquainted with one another--not really intimate. His left-hand side is often asleep while the right is as wide awake as a chameleon's side can be. His eyes, also, are quite independent of one another, and roll in opposite directions as often as not, so that he would be inconvenient as a Speaker. Everybody would catch his eye at once and there would be quarrels--possibly even fights--a thing impossible in the House of Commons as it is. A chameleon never walks, he proceeds in this way: After a long and careful deliberation, extending over half an hour or so, he proceeds to lift one foot. You may not be able to see it moving, but it is moving all the same, like the hand of a watch. Take a look round the Gardens and come back, when, if you have not been too hurried in your inspection, you may see the lifted foot in mid-air, and the chameleon probably asleep. He usually takes a nap after any unusual exertion. In an hour or two he will wake up, and proceed to plant that foot, with proper deliberation, before him. Then there will be another nap and a good think, after which the tail will begin to unwind from the branch it clings to. This process, persistently persevered in for many days, will carry the intrepid gymnast quite a number of inches. But a journey of this sort is an enterprise rarely ventured on. Chameleons prefer the less exciting sport of sitting face to face and daring each other to mortal combat, secure in the assurance that neither will think of moving toward the other. They _have_ been known to fight. A chameleon fight is an amusement whereunto neither the Peace Society nor the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals need have any objection. No evangelistic clergyman need incur scandal by being present, an interested spectator, at a chameleon fight. The savage combatants never attempt to bite. They gaze gravely and seriously at the surroundings, and at proper pre-arranged intervals solemnly dab their tails together--not hard, nor with any particular feeling beyond a desire to conduct the rite with proper formality and decorum. It is the most harmless and dignified scuffle in the animal creation.

"WHAT, YOU?"

"YUS, ME."

"GARN!"]

_My Diving-Dress._

BY ONE WHO HAS DONE WITH IT.

A large part of my life has been spent in seeking and experiencing novel sensations. Precisely what quality of mind it is that urges me to try experiments with myself and other things I do not know positively; but I firmly believe it to be dauntless intrepidity. My fond mother, in early days, used to call it a noble thirst for information, and predicted for me a life of scientific eminence; other people have been so ill-natured as to call it abject imbecility, and to predict an early grave from a broken neck or a dynamite explosion, or something equally sensational and decided. Never mind what it is. In boyhood's days it led me once up the chimney, once on a river in a wash-tub, once down a gravel-pit with a broken head, and frequently across my father's knee, with a pain in another place. Since I have arrived at years of discretion (or greater indiscretion--just as you please), it has taken me up in a balloon, out to sea in a torpedo-boat, up the Matterhorn (with no guide but a very general map of Europe, having the height of the mountain marked on it in very plain figures), along Cheapside on a bicycle at mid-day, to a football match in the capacity of referee, and lastly, and most recently, down under water in a diving-dress. Many of these experiences were sharp enough while they lasted, and the diving was as disturbing as most; but, still, I believe nothing was quite so uncomfortable as the football referee-ship.

But, just now, I am concerned only with the diving. I have been now and again to Whitstable, where, I believe by some remarkable process of Nature, every third male person is born a diver. Anyway, Whitstable is the place where divers mostly grow, and where I caught the temptation to go a-diving myself. I should feel grateful to any obliging Anarchist who would blow up Whitstable to-morrow.

I mentioned my desire to one or two old divers who had permitted me to make their acquaintance in consideration of a suitable succession of drinks, but met with jeers and suspicion. I believe they were afraid of opposition in the business. But Whitstable never produced a diver that could put me off. I took the royal road. I bought a diving-dress for myself--how much I paid I shall not say here, for why should an unsympathetic world measure my lunacy by pounds, shillings, and pence?--especially as that would make rather a long measurement of it. Never mind what I paid. I got the dress, and I also got permission to go down and amuse myself on a sunken coasting vessel lying off Shoeburyness.

It was a very noble diving-suit, and the new india-rubber squeaked musically as I moved, and smelt very refreshing. There was a shield-shaped plate, rather like a label on a decanter, hanging on my chest, that would have looked more complete with "Whisky," or some similar inscription, on it. There was a noble metal collar--about thirty-two, the size would have been, on the usual scale. I had also a very fetching red night-cap, while my helmet was a terror to all beholders. I don't mind confessing to a certain amount of discomfort while they were building me up in this dress--partly due to a vivid imagination. The helmet made me think of the people in the story who put hot-pots on the heads of strangers, and I seemed stifling at once. What if I were unpacked at last from this smelly integument--a corpse? But this was unmanly and un-diver-like. There wasn't much comfort to be got out of the leaden shoes--try a pair for yourself and see--but when all was ready I made a shift to get overboard and down the ladder provided. It was not a great deal of the outer world that I could see through my windows, and I hung on to that ladder with something of a desperate clutch. When at last the water stretched away level around my windows, then, I confess, I hesitated for a moment. But I made the next step with a certain involuntary blink, and I was under water. All the heaviness--or most of it--had gone out of my feet, and all my movements partook of a curiously easy yet slowish character. It looked rather dark below me, and I tried to remember the specific gravity of the human body in figures by way of keeping jolly. At the top of my helmet the air-escape-valve bubbled genially, and I tried to think of myself as rather a fine figure of a monster among the fish, with a plume of bubbles waving over my head. You do think of trivial things on certain cheerful occasions. Remember Fagin in the dock, for instance.

It was not as long as it seemed before I was on the wreck, and down below in the nearest hold. Regular professionals had already been at work, and access to different parts of the ship had been made easy. Now, in this big hold was an immense number of barrels, stood on end and packed tightly together--barrels of oil, to judge from externals. I tried to move one, but plainly they were all jammed tightly together, and not one would shift. I took the light axe with which I had furnished myself, using it alternately as wedge and lever, and at last felt the barrel move. I had certainly loosened it, and pulled up the axe with the intention of trying to lift the barrel, when I was suddenly engulfed in an awful convulsion as of many earthquakes in a free fight. The world was a mob of bouncing oil-barrels, which hit me everywhere as I floundered in intricate somersaults, and finally found myself staggering at the bottom of the hold, and staring at the roof, whereunto all the barrels were sticking like balloons, absolutely blocking up the hatchway above me.

What was this? Some demoniac practical joke of fiends inhabiting this awful green sea about me? Were they grinning at me from corners of the hold? or had some vast revolution in the ways of Nature taken place in a second, and the law of gravity been reversed? It was not at all warm down there, but I perspired violently. Then a notion flashed upon me. Those barrels must have been _empty_. Jammed together, they stayed below, of course, but once the jam was loosened they would fly at once towards the surface. Then I thought more. I had been an ass. Of course, those barrels would do as they had done, even were they full of oil. Oil floats on water, as anybody should know. They might be either full or empty, it didn't matter a bit. I had forgotten that I was moving in a different element from the air I was used to, where barrels of oil did _not_ incontinently fly up into space without warning. Obviously, I had made a fool of myself, but I had some comfort in the reflection that there was nobody about to see it. Then it came upon me suddenly that I would rather have someone there after all, for I was helpless! Those horrible barrels were having another jam in the hatchway now, and my retreat was cut off entirely. Here I was like a rat in a cage, boxed in on every side. My communication-cord and my air-pipe led up between the barrels, to outer safety; but what of that? I perspired again. What would happen to me now? Why did I ever make a submarine Guy Fawkes of myself, and thus go fooling about, where I had no business, at the end of a flexible gas-pipe? If I could have dated myself back an hour at that moment, I believe I should have changed my mind about going in for this amusement. At this, I began thinking about trivial things again--how, paraphrasing a certain definition of angling, diving might be described as matter of a pipe with a pump at one end and something rather worse than a fool at the other. I determined, if ever I got out alive, to fire off that epigram at the earliest possible moment--so here it is.

I made an effort, pulled myself together, and determined on heroic measures. My axe lay near, and, with a little groping, I found it. I would hew my way out of this difficulty through the side of the vessel. I turned on the inoffensive timbers at my side and hacked away viciously--with, I really fancy, a certain touch of that wild, stern, unholy joy that anyone feels who is smashing somebody else's property with no prospect of having to pay for it. Every boy with a catapult, who lives near an empty house, will understand the feeling I mean--especially if the empty house has a large conservatory.

The timbers were certainly stout. The work was a bit curious to the senses--the axe feeling to work with a deal more dash and go than the arm that directed it. At any rate, the exercise was pretty hard. Any millionaire in want of an excellent, healthy, and expensive exercise should try chopping his way through the sides of ships--it will do him a world of good, and will be as expensive as anybody could possibly desire. After a while I found I had well started a plank, and, once through, chopping away round the hole was not so difficult. Still, when I had a hole big enough to get through, I did not feel by any means as fresh as I had done when first that horrible copper pot was screwed down over my head.

I squeezed through the hole, and at the first step I had ever made on the real sea-bottom, I fell a savage and complicated cropper over my communication-cord. I got up, but, as I stepped clear of the cord, a frightful conviction seized my mind that I was a bigger fool than I had ever given myself credit for being. What in the world was the good of getting out through the side of the vessel when that communication cord--my only means of signalling--and that air-pipe--my only means of submarine life--led up through the boat itself and among those execrated oil-barrels? Awful! Awful! I sat down helplessly on a broken rock and stared blankly through my windows. To weep would have been mere bravado, with so much salt water already about me. I tried to signal with the communication-cord, but it was caught somewhere in that congregation of oil-barrels. It seemed to be all up, except myself, who was all down, with no prospect of ever rising in the world again. Shadowy forms came and went in the water about me, and I speculated desperately in how long or how short a time these sea-creatures would be having a dinner-party, with _me_ as the chief attraction. I wondered, casually, whether the india-rubber would agree with them, and hoped that it would not. Then I wondered what they would take for the indigestion, and I thought they would probably take each other--it's their way, I believe. I was wandering on in this way, and had just feebly recollected that there was four pounds eight and something in my pockets above, which was a pity, because I might have spent it first, and that I owed my landlady fifteen-and-six, which was a good job, because it would compensate for that claret she said the cat drank, when an inspiration seized me--a great inspiration. I should probably have called out "Eureka!" as did the venerable discoverer of that principle of specific gravity that had lately (literally) taken a rise out of me, if I had thought of it, but I didn't, which was fortunate, because it is rather a chestnut after all.

This was my notion--a desperate one, but still one with hope in it. I would shut off the air-escape valve on my helmet, so that the air being pumped in would inflate my india-rubber dress like a bladder. Then I would cut my air-pipe and communication cord, stuffing the pipe and tying it as best I might, take off my leaden shoes and rise to the surface triumphantly, like an air-cushion, or, say, an oil barrel. Specific gravity having taken a rise--all the rise--out of me, I would proceed to take a rise out of specific gravity; a great, glorious, and effective rise to the upper world. No office-boy on promotion ever looked forward to his rise with more hope than I to mine. It was a desperate expedient certainly, but what else to do?

I took off one leaden shoe and loosened the other, ready to kick away. I shut the escape-valve. I cut the cord with my axe on the rock I had been sitting on, and then, when the air had blown out my dress to most corpulent proportions, I took the decisive stroke. I chopped through the air-pipe. I stuffed it as well as possible and tied it in some sort of a knot--it was _very_ stiff--in a great hurry, and then--I kicked off the leaden shoe.

Never, never, never--even if I live on Jupiter after this planet is blown to shivers--shall I forget the result of my forlorn-hope dodge. I kicked off the shoe, as I have said, and, in an instant, the whole universe of waters turned upside down and swirled away beyond my head. In sober fact, _I_ had turned upside down--as I might have known I should do, if only I hadn't been a bigger fool than ever.

Of course, the moment my leaden shoes went, _down_ came my copper head-pot, being my heaviest part, and up went my feet. I had a pretty quick rise, certainly, but I prefer not to recall my feelings during the rush. I can quite understand now why a rise in the world makes some people giddy. All that I had before felt of amazement and horror, I now felt multiplied by fifty and squeezed into about two seconds, so that they felt like ten hours. Up through that awful water and those moving shadows I went, feeling that I was in reality held still, like a man in a nightmare. When at last I stopped, I felt that it was but a matter of moments, and the air would leak away through that cut tube, and I should go down again, still head under, for the last time, to die in that grisly combination of mackintosh and copper kettle; also I felt choking, stifling, when--something had me roughly by the ankle, and I was dragged, a wretched rag of misplaced ambition, into a boat. The appearance of my legs sticking out above water had, it seemed, caused intense amusement among the boat's crew--a circumstance which probably ought to have gratified me, although it didn't.

I have little more to add, except that I shudder, to this day, whenever I see an acrobat standing on his head, because it is so graphically remindful. But, if anybody is thinking of going in for diving by way of placid enjoyment, I shall be delighted to treat with him for the sale and purchase of a most desirable diving-dress in unsoiled condition, cut in the most fashionable style, with a fascinating copper helmet and commodious collar, and a neat label for the chest. The shoes will not be included in the bargain, having been inadvertently left in a damp place.

_FROM BEHIND THE SPEAKER'S CHAIR._