Part 3

The faces and figures of the two men were perfect studies of sternness and resolution; they stretched and craned, they knelt, they floundered, they hopped up and jumped down; for the time-being the entire universe of each of them was concentrated in that palm-shaded pool. But the bird stuck resolutely in the middle, in spite of coaxing and flopping and all sorts of cunning endeavours to waft it to one side or the other. Suddenly a puff of wind carried it towards Mac. His face lighted up with joy, and he uttered a smothered ‘Hooroo!’ In a moment his walking-stick was under it, he was slowly but surely pulling it towards him; when there was a vision of a sort of fishing-rod in mid-air, a momentary struggle and splash, and Goodhew triumphantly dragged it towards him. Mac made a desperate dash at the retreating spoil, missed his footing, and fell plump into the pool. Our long-restrained feelings were no more to be kept in, and the laughter which followed awakened the echoes of the solitary Penang waterfall. To emerge from the water, hatless, dripping, and vanquished, was humiliating enough for poor Mac; but when he looked at Mrs Fuller, and saw that she was endeavouring to stifle immoderate laughter with her pocket-handkerchief, his cup of misery was full, and without another word, he strode off ahead of us on the path leading to the Settlement, and was soon lost to view.

We sailed that evening for Singapore. Mac was not visible. Next evening, however, as we were sitting on deck after dinner smoking our cigars and gazing at the peerless panorama of the tropical heavens, we saw him come on deck. We hushed our talk, for we felt that something was pending. Goodhew was sitting by Mrs Fuller’s chair—that is, poor Mac’s chair—at some distance from us. Mac seeing this, strode up and down the deck behind them. Presently, Mrs Fuller rose, wished us good-night, and disappeared below. We nudged one another, watched round the corners of our eyes, and listened.

Mac strode up to Goodhew, who was approaching us. ‘Mister Goodhew,’ he said, ‘oi call that a dirty mane trick!’

‘What do you mean, sir?’ angrily retorted Goodhew, stopping short.

‘Oi mane what oi say, sir,’ said Mac. ‘It was a dirty mane trick. Mrs Fuller asked me to get the bird for her, and oi got it; and you come in with a pole like a mast, and you fish it out under me very oyes!’

‘Under your very stick, you mean, Mac,’ said Goodhew, laughing.

‘No matter what oi mane!’ exclaimed the infuriated Irishman. ‘Oi mane, that when one gintleman recaives a commission from a lady, and another gintleman executes it by a mane trick, the other gintleman’s no gintleman at all at all—but a cad, Mister Goodhew, a cad!’

‘I say, Mac, draw it mild,’ said Goodhew, in his turn irritated; ‘we’re not all bogtrotters here!’

‘Is it bogtrotter ye’re callin’ me!’ exclaimed Mac in a frenzy. ‘Bedad, oi’ll tache ye to call a MacWhirter a bogtrotter, ye spalpeen!’ And he sprang at Goodhew furiously.

Goodhew seized him by the waist, and in another minute would have certainly dropped Mac overboard, had we not all jumped up and interposed. Mac danced and kicked and struggled and used every vilifying expression he could. Goodhew also was endeavouring to wrest himself from our grasp; but we held on, and the opponents seeing that they could not get at each other, gradually desisted from trying.

‘Doctor!’ said Mac, after a breathing-space, ‘this is an affair for immadiate settlement.’

‘Pooh! my dear fellow,’ said the officer, ‘who can fight duels on the deck of a P. and O. steamer? Better wait till we get to Hong-kong; there’s plenty of room there.’

‘Hong-kong be it then,’ said Mac.—‘Mister Goodhew, oi’ll send ye me card in the morning.’

‘All right, Mac,’ replied Goodhew, who was recovering his good temper. ‘Send as many as you like. But don’t you think we’re a couple of fools, to be going on in this absurd way about a trifle?’

‘A trifle ye call it?’ roared Mac. ‘An’ if there’s a fool hereabouts, it isn’t Terence MacWhirter; but ye needn’t travel very far to find him.’

The doctor whispered in Goodhew’s ear. The latter nodded and smiled, and said: ‘All right, Mac. You challenge me to a duel. I accept it. Pistols?’

‘Of coorse,’ replied Mac. ‘Ye didn’t think oi mane fishing-rods? Insulting a MacWhirter’s no trifle, oi tell ye.’

So they separated.

It may be imagined that the chief topic on board during the interval between Singapore and Hong-kong was the approaching duel. Mac had given out more than once that he was no novice; and he certainly had shown himself a dead-shot with a rook-rifle at bottles or pieces of wood; but whether, considering the extreme excitability of his nature, he would preserve his calmness on the field of battle sufficiently to make any use of his accomplishment, we were inclined to doubt. Goodhew had never fired a pistol in his life; but there was an easy, calm confidence about him that foretold no want of nerve on his part.

‘Pat,’ said the doctor, on the evening before our arrival at Hong-kong, ‘haven’t you a qualm of conscience about going to shoot this poor fellow?’

‘Faith, doctor,’ replied Mac, ‘the odds are even. If he wins the toss, he shoots me.’

‘You’re not afraid of the consequences of manslaughter?’ continued the doctor. ‘I don’t mean the judicial consequences, but the remorse, the fear of being haunted’——

‘Doctor,’ said Mac, ‘oi took ye for the only sensible man on the ship, and ye go and talk blarney about haunting and all that. Oi tell ye, doctor, oi’m not a believer in spirits; and if oi kill Goodhew, and his ghost makes a pother about me afterwards, oi’ll have to settle him as well. Look ye, doctor, ye and the whole lot of ’em want to get me off this duel; but oi’ve been insulted; and if oi put up with it, oi’ll not be worthy of the name of MacWhirter at all at all.’

The next evening we steamed into Hong-kong harbour. Mrs Fuller was on deck, admiring the effects of the great mountain shadows upon the moonlit water, and of the innumerable twinkling lights from the shore, which mount up and up until they seem to mingle with the stars.

Mac was standing by her chair. ‘Mrs Fuller,’ he said, in a low impressive voice, ‘this is a beauteous scene. It remoinds me of Doblin Bay or the Cove of Cark. It is a sad scene.’

‘A sad scene, Mr MacWhirter!’ said Mrs Fuller. ‘Why, I was just thinking it was a gay scene, with all those lights, and’——

‘It is a sad scene for those who are looking at it for the last toime, Mrs Fuller,’ said Mac in an almost sepulchral tone.

‘Gracious! Mr MacWhirter, what do you mean?’ asked Mrs Fuller. ‘What a dreadfully uncomfortable thing to say!’

‘Oi mane, Mrs Fuller,’ replied Mac, ‘that this toime to-morrow noight there’ll be one less passenger on board the _Sicilia_.’

‘Why, of course, Mr MacWhirter; for I suppose our little company will be broken up here, and it is never pleasant separating from kind friends.’

‘Ye mistake me,’ said Mac. ‘The moon that will shoine to-morrow noight will look upon the corpse of either Mister Goodhew or of Terence MacWhirter; and it’ll be all for the sake of yerself, Mrs Fuller.’

Mrs Fuller saw that Mac was serious, and the idea flashed across her mind that the two rivals for her hand were about to fight a duel on her account, so she resolved to take the earliest opportunity of speaking to the captain about it.

She did speak to the captain, who spoke certain words to her in return.

Very early the next morning, before even the sun had peered round the corner of the Victoria Peak, the captain’s gig put off from the _Sicilia_. In it were the captain himself, the doctor, Goodhew, Mac, and we outsiders. We were soon alongside the Bund, and in a few seconds were being whisked away in the direction of the Happy Valley as fast as chairmen could take us. We went swiftly by the cemetery gate and the Grand Stand to the extreme end of the Valley, where there was no chance of interruption.

After each of the combatants had been armed with one of the captain’s pistols, the doctor measured fifteen paces. The coin was spun into the air. Mac won the toss, and took up his position, as did Goodhew.

‘Captain,’ said Goodhew, ‘if—if I fall, you’ll find a memorandum as to the disposition of my property in a tin box in my cabin. Here’s the key.’

‘At the word Three,’ said the captain, ‘Mr MacWhirter will fire.’

Mac raised his pistol, half closed his left eye, and took aim.

‘One! Two! Three!’

He fired. Goodhew, with a cry, pressed his hands to his head, and then fell like a stone with one deep groan. The red stain on the right temple told Mac the fatal truth. The Irishman’s vaunts and threats had been justified.

‘You’ve done it, Mac!’ whispered the captain in a voice of agony. ‘Come away as fast as you can. The doctor will attend to the poor fellow, if life still remains.’

And so Mac and the captain hastened away, leaving Goodhew on the ground, with us gathered around him.

* * * * *

As we were to shift over to the smaller steamer which was to convey us to Yokohama the next day, and were to bid farewell to Mrs Fuller and the captain and the old _Sicilia_, the banquet that evening was of an unusually lavish description: the champagne went merrily round with jest and gibe, as if there had never been such a being as poor Goodhew in existence. Even Mac aroused himself after a few glasses, although at first he was rather solemn, and remarked: ‘Ye’re a rum lot, all of ye. If oi’d been killed instead of Mister Goodhew, ye’d have enjoyed your dinner and drink all the same. Oi’m sorry for him; but it’ll be a lesson to Sassenachs not to insult Oirishmen.’

Then Mrs Fuller’s health was drunk, and the captain’s, and every one else’s, and not until a small-hour of the morning did we think of breaking up.

‘I say, Mac,’ said the doctor, ‘aren’t you afraid of seeing poor Goodhew to-night?’

‘Whisht, doctor; ye’ve taken more than’s good for ye!’ was the contemptuous reply.

As the ship’s bell tolled two o’clock, we prepared to turn into bed, when the saloon door opened quietly, and a tall figure, ghastly white, with a crimson patch on its face, glided a few inches in. Mac was seated next to the door, and saw it. His cigar fell from his fingers, beads of perspiration burst upon his forehead, and he trembled violently.

‘What on earth is the matter, Mac?’ we asked.

‘Why!—Don’t ye see? There, at the door!—Him! Mister Goodhew!’ stammered Mac.

‘Nonsense, man; you’re dreaming. There’s nobody there at all!’ we said.

‘Strikes me you’ve had a drop too much, Mac,’ said the doctor, quietly.

The figure still stood there with its eyes fixed on Mac, who, after remaining for a few moments petrified with horror, rushed with a shriek into his cabin.

Such a night as the poor fellow passed will never be known to any one but himself, although it was manifest that he was undergoing extreme agony by the groans and smothered cries which we heard for a long time after he had turned in. He was not visible at breakfast the next morning; nothing was seen of him during the process of transferring passengers, mails, and baggage from the _Sicilia_ to the Yokohama steamer; and we began to fear that the poor fellow had really been affected by what he had seen, and had taken some rash step. However, about an hour before our starting-time, it was reported that Mac had come on board. There was a festive assembly in the saloon, the captain, doctor, and officers of the _Sicilia_ being our guests, although an unusual spruceness in the general costume proclaimed that the affair was something more than a mere return of the compliment paid us by the captain of the _Sicilia_ on the previous evening.

The doctor had risen to his feet, was clearing his throat preparatory to an important speech, when the saloon door was pushed open, and Mac looked in—not the careless, swaggering Mac of past days, but Mac haggard, weird, scarcely human, with unkempt locks and bloodshot eyes. Goodhew was seated next to the pretty Londoner. ‘Hillo, Mac, old fellow; come in, come in; you’re just in time,’ he said.

‘By the powers!’ exclaimed Mac, ‘ye’re not dead, Mister Goodhew!’

‘No, old fellow,’ replied Goodhew, with a laugh. ‘But if your pistol had carried a bullet, I should have been.’

‘But the blood on your forehead—I saw it!’ cried Mac.—‘And Mrs Fuller—she’s wid ye, I see!’

‘No, no, Mac; wrong this time,’ returned Goodhew, smiling. ‘There was no blood on my forehead; and it isn’t Mrs Fuller that’s beside me.’

‘Whisht, man! I’m not draming now; I know what I’m talking about,’ exclaimed Mac. ‘D’ye mane that there was no blood on your forehead after I’d hit ye, and d’ye mane that it isn’t Mrs Fuller alongside of ye at all?’

‘Yes, old fellow,’ said Goodhew, rising, and stretching out his hand to the bewildered Irishman. ‘The mark on my forehead was only a little red paint carried in the palm of my hand, and ready to be slapped on the moment you discharged your deadly weapon; and the lady’——

‘Yes, yes, the lady?’ interposed Mac with eagerness.

‘The lady was made Mrs Goodhew about a couple of hours back,’ calmly replied the Englishman. ‘Give us your hand, and drink our healths.’

Mac did both, and ever after remained a firm friend of Goodhew’s, although always a little touchy on the subject of ghosts.

SEALS AND SEAL-HUNTING IN SHETLAND.

IN TWO PARTS.—PART II.[1]

A relative of mine, now dead, used to be a mighty seal-hunter. It was before the days of the modern ‘arms of precision,’ long before breech-loaders were in common use, and even before the Enfield or Minié rifles were invented. In those days, the old muzzle-loading rifle was found to be not a trustworthy weapon; he therefore used a very thick metalled fowling-piece, which was deadly up to sixty or eighty yards. He had a splendid boat, which he named the _Haff-fish_, about seventeen feet of keel, a capital sea-boat, equally good for sailing and rowing, safe, therefore, in bad weather and rough sea, and at the same time handy to manage when rapid movements might be required, such as landing in narrow creeks, or on slippery shelving rocks, or shallow beaches with a surf on. His crew was composed of four picked men from amongst his fishermen tenants, and his henchman, who was as much friend and adviser as servant, a man of great natural sagacity, intelligence, and fertility of resource, and of prodigious bodily strength; all of them first-class boatmen, expert pilots, familiar with every rock and reef and tideway on the coast and amongst the islands, and withal steady, bright, intelligent fellows. Master and men, all save one, gone now! With this crew, my uncle was wont to start on his seal-hunting expeditions. He would be absent for a week, sometimes more, if the weather should turn out unfavourable; for the distance from his residence to the haunts of the seals was considerable. The first day would be spent amongst the nearest islands; and in the evening he would land, and spend the night in the hospitable mansion of one of his brother lairds, where he was always a welcome guest, his boatmen at the same time making good their quarters at very small cost in the nearest fishermen’s cottages. Next day, and each day while the expedition lasted, he would explore new hunting-ground, spending the nights at some other friends’ houses; and so he would hunt all the islands in Blummel Sound and Yell Sound, the Holms of Gloup, the Neeps of Gravaland, the long line of precipitous coast on the west side of Roonees Hill, the Ramna Stacks, and even the distant Vee Skerries, and other places well known as the principal haunts of the seal. Sometimes, of course, the weather, always fickle in those latitudes, would put a stop to all sport. Not often, but sometimes, even with the most favourable weather, he would return ‘clean.’ At other times he would bring back a number of very substantial trophies of his prowess. In some seasons he would bag—_boat_ I should rather say—as many as forty or fifty. In ten years, during which he kept a careful record of the number he shot, he secured close upon three hundred of both species, and of various ages and sizes, besides killing a considerable number more, which sunk, and he was unable to recover. The most he shot in one day was eleven, ten of which he secured. Not a bad day’s sport.

I have often heard him tell with pride the story of the most deadly shot he ever fired. The weapon was a favourite fowling-piece charged with two bullets, which occasionally wrought great havoc. A small herd of tang-fish was lying on a rock within easy range of some large boulders in the ebb, close to the water’s edge, to which, with infinite labour and circumspection, my relative had crept. Very cautiously, his piece on a good rest, he took a well-calculated aim at the seals, lying close together in a particularly favourable position, and fired. The first bullet killed no fewer than three, and the second ball struck, but did not kill two others, which floundered into the water and escaped; but the other three were secured.

The most extraordinary _hour’s_ sport I have ever heard of was that of a young Shetlander, about three years ago. Reports of it had reached me; but they seemed so incredible, that I thought they must be exaggerated. I therefore wrote to the gentleman himself for the particulars; so I can vouch for the accuracy of what I am going to relate. I quote from his letter:

‘My evening sport at Muckla Skerry was certainly a good one. I started from the Whalsay Skerries about five o’clock of an evening about the end of August or first of September 1881. When nearing the rock, I could see with a glass that it was almost covered with seals—I should say there would have been eighty or more—but all took to the water before a shot was fired, and while we were three to four hundred yards off, and were soon sporting about the boat, but keeping at a respectable distance. It had been perfectly calm for some days, and the sea was like a mirror. I fired eight shots from a short Enfield rifle with government ball cartridge. Two shots missed, and the other six secured a seal each. They were all shot in the water; and singular to say, every one floated on the surface till we took hold of it. One of them was a large fish, measuring six feet four inches long; the others would run from three and a half to five feet in length.... I feel certain I could have shot as many more, if we could have taken them in the boat; but the boat was only ten and a half feet keel, and I had four sturdy oatmeal-fed islanders with me, so that you can fancy how much freeboard we had when the six seals were in our little craft. The time we were at the rock did not exceed forty minutes, and I think that half the time was expended in getting the largest seal into the boat. This was no easy matter, and attended with very considerable risk; but he was quite a prize, and we did not like to let him go.’

Several things in this interesting and spirited account are, so far as I am aware, unprecedented in the annals of seal-hunting in this country. I have never known or heard of any one in so short a time and out of a single herd getting so many fair shots. When one gets amongst a lot of seals, swimming and diving around the boat, one shot is commonly all that you can hope for, and whether you kill or not, it is almost invariably sufficient to send the rest at once far beyond range. Then out of eight shots, to strike and kill with six, considering the expertness of seals in ‘diving on the fire,’ is, I believe, also unprecedented; and to cap all, that not one of the six should have sunk when shot, is extraordinary and unaccountable; for, as I have already said, they sink when killed in the water quite as often as they float, if not oftener. Anyhow, Mr A—— had the rare good fortune to encounter a splendid opportunity, and he made a splendid use of it.

A good dog is a useful auxiliary to a seal-hunter; but he requires a good deal of training to learn his work. Very soon he acquires the art of stalking; but most dogs at first are apparently afraid to lay hold of a dead seal floating in the water, and very commonly, when sent off to fetch him ashore, simply attempt to mount on him, and in consequence do harm rather than good by helping to sink him. But generally—not always, for some dogs we never could train to do the right thing—we succeeded in teaching them to retrieve. When we had brought a seal home, we used to throw it over the jetty or out of a boat with a stout cord attached, and encourage the dog to fetch him. Great praise was bestowed when he learned to lay hold of a flipper and tow the selkie shoreward; in this way, with a little patience and perseverance, the dog soon came to learn what was required; and many a seal was secured by his help, which without it might inevitably have been lost, for a seal shot in the water from the shore, which they often were, was very generally on the opposite side of an island or long promontory, where a landing had been effected; and it took many minutes before the boat could be got round; and by that time, but for the dog, the seal might have sunk.

We tried many breeds of dogs—Newfoundland, Retriever, St Bernard, Rough water-dog, and Collie; but after all, the best seal retriever of the lot was a Collie. When he comprehended what was wanted and how to do it, he did it neatly and thoroughly. I well remember the first seal I shot. I had landed on the weather-side of a small island. A cautious reconnoitring discovered a good-sized seal ‘lying up’ on a detached rock. Then I commenced the stalking, closely followed by my dog. But ere I could approach within range, one of those seal-sentinels and provoking tormentors of the seal-hunter, a herring gull, set up his wild warning scream. The seal perfectly understood what it meant, at once took the alarm, plunged into the water, and disappeared. I sprang to my feet, rushed down along a little promontory, and then crouched behind a big boulder, in hopes that selkie would show his head above water and give me a chance at him. And he did. Raising his head and neck, he took a good look shoreward; but seeing nothing to account for the gull’s persistent screaming, he turned round, and raised his head preparatory to a dive. I had him well and steadily covered; now was my chance. I pulled the trigger; no splash followed, which would have meant a miss; but the _lioom_—that is, the smoothing of the water by the flow of the oil—told that my bullet had taken effect. ‘Fetch him, old dog! fetch him!’ I cried. In an instant he plunged into the sea and swam to the seal, which I could see was floating. Neatly he dipped his head under water, seized a hind flipper, turned it over his neck, and towed him towards the shore. Passing the rock on which I stood in his way to the beach, he turned his eyes upwards for the praise and encouragement I was not, it may well be believed, backward to lavish on him. Such a look it was! I shall never forget it, instinct with the brightest intelligence, joy, pride, triumph. Indeed, I don’t know whether he or his master was proudest and happiest that day. Alas, that our noble ‘humble friends’ should be so short-lived!