Part 4

One or more of the ponds is always reserved for large breeding individuals, or “parents,” as they are called, and one of the assistants visits this pond twice a day to look out for new deposits of eggs. Over these he places a wire basket, with the date marked upon it. In one of our photographs a number of these wire baskets may be seen, though unfortunately the eggs are not shown, being covered with a slight layer of sand, this work being done by the turtle itself. The covering serves a twofold purpose--the obvious one of marking the place, and, in addition, that of keeping other females from digging in the same spot. When hundreds, or even thousands, of these baskets are seen along the bank of a “parents’ pond,” the sight is one to gladden the heart of an embryologist, to say nothing of the proprietor.

The hatching of the eggs occupies, on an average, sixty days. The time, however, may be considerably shortened or lengthened, according to whether the summer is hot and the sun pours down its strong rays day after day, or whether there is much rain and the heat not great. As the turtles lay sixty eggs to the nest at two sittings, it will be seen that in a single season many thousands are added to this unique establishment, but at least five years must elapse before they are large enough for the _chef_.

One would imagine, remembering the quantities of eggs laid by turtles, that they would be very plentiful, but there are few creatures that have more enemies. All that the mother turtle does is to deposit her eggs on the sand of some island and there leave them to be hatched out by the sun. Before this process is accomplished they are often destroyed by rats and birds, while very few of those that are hatched survive very long. The moment the young turtle emerges from its shell it seeks the water, and there crabs and various kinds of fish are ever ready to devour it. The young just hatched at the farm under notice are put in a pond or ponds by themselves and given finely-chopped meat of a fish like the pilchard, while the bigger ones are fed largely on live eels. This feeding continues to the end of September. In October the snapping-turtle ceases to take food, and finally burrows in the muddy bottom of the pond to hibernate, coming out only in April or May.

Snapping-turtle farming is much more exciting than raising the American terrapin. The former is a vicious creature and will snap at anything--hence its name. Indeed, in disposition it is the very opposite of its American brother. It believes most thoroughly in the survival of the fittest, and to it the fittest is number one. It is a chronic fighter, and inasmuch as its jaws are very strong and, like a bulldog, it never knows when to let go, it is a reptile to be either mastered or avoided. Indeed, the men at Mr. Hattori’s farm can tell many exciting little stories concerning the voracity of this strange creature. One farm hand, for instance, is minus a finger, the result of not using sufficient care when transferring one of the larger reptiles to a new pond.

Many naturalists have visited this unique farm and, after a close study of the turtle and its habits, have confirmed all the bad qualities that have been recorded concerning it. In securing its food it shows that it possesses no mean intelligence. At one time it crawls slowly and silently along with neck outstretched towards an unsuspecting fish, springs upon it by a powerful thrust of its hind legs, and snaps it up; at another time it drives the fish around the basin and terrifies it until it falls an unresisting victim. Again, the reptile may be observed buried in the sandy soil of its prison with only its bill and eyes protruding. On the approach of a fish the head and long neck dart forth from the sand with lightning speed and the prey is caught and instantly killed by a savage bite.

In its wild state the snapping-turtle is distinctly a nocturnal animal, and does its hunting after sunset, when it emerges from its muddy home to look for food. In the presence of danger it becomes bold, defiant, and even desperate. When driven to bay it retracts its neck, head, and widely-gaping jaws into its shell, awaiting a favourable opportunity to thrust them forth slyly and bite savagely. Anything which it has seized in its jaws it holds with wonderful tenacity, at the same time vigorously scratching the earth with its sharp claws. There is only one way to catch the snapping-turtle, and that is to secure it by the tail. Some of the men at Mr. Hattori’s farm are very dexterous in seizing their victims in this fashion.

A little time ago a Russian officer visited the establishment and listened, with some incredulity, to the stories of the voracity of the reptiles in the ponds before him. He carried in his hand a stout cane, and was told to place it near one of the bigger animals. He did so, and was surprised to find that in a few minutes it was bitten clean through. Before now the snapping-turtle has been known to bite through the flat of an oar. Not only will this turtle catch all kinds of fish and frogs and devour them greedily, but it is not averse to hunting waterfowl. Mr. Hattori declares that, in addition to raising turtles, he could rear ducks and geese as well, but dare not, as the reptiles would only kill them. When a snapping-turtle detects a duck it cunningly makes its way towards the creature, seizes it by its legs, pulls it down under water, and then drags it to the bottom of the pond. Here it tears the duck to pieces with the aid of the long claws of its fore paws and devours it.

It is this snapping propensity which makes it desirable to keep the reptiles in ponds according to their ages; it would not do to put those just hatched in the same basin as the bigger ones, as they would quickly be eaten. Until they reach their sixth year they are never “mixed.” When they reach this age, however, they are capable of taking care of themselves and are allowed access to the bigger ponds. By this time the turtle has reached maturity and may begin to deposit eggs, though it is not at its prime till two or three years later.

What the Japanese epicure prefers are turtles not more than five years of age, when the flesh is soft and in desirable condition for the making of stews and soups. At this age the snapping-turtle weighs from sixty to eighty pounds. Those that are destined for the table are kept in a pond to themselves, and taken as required in nets or pulled out of the water by their tails. They are then placed in tin boxes or cases with air-holes, and sent by train to their destination.

The turtle that is consumed in this country is the green species, from the West Indies. The creatures are imported by Mr. T. K. Bellis, who will not hesitate to tell you that of edible turtles the green variety is the best. Mr. Bellis imports some three thousand turtles a year. They arrive in batches of one hundred or more every fortnight by the Royal Mail steamers from Kingston, Jamaica, and are obtained from the coral reefs lying to the north of the island of Jamaica. Twelve to fifteen small schooners are employed in the trade, and upwards of a hundred and twenty men.

These fishers of strange “fish” (the turtle’s technical name) stretch nets of twine from rock to rock, and the moment the turtle feels itself entangled it clings tenaciously to the meshes, and is then hauled to the surface. The schooners in due time return to Kingston with from eighty to a hundred and fifty of these remarkable creatures, which are promptly deposited in palisaded enclosures, flooded at every tide by the sea. Here they are fed upon a certain kind of herbage known as “turtle grass,” and taken as required. The bringing of these creatures overseas is a very delicate business, and frequently sixty out of a hundred perish _en route_, in spite of the most elaborate precautions, such as the constant spraying of salt water daily on board the mail steamer, and the use of foot warmers for the turtles in the railway vans from Southampton to Waterloo. Before now, Mr. Bellis has lost eighty-eight turtles out of a shipment of a hundred.

This susceptibility to travel is one of the most remarkable things about the turtle. If you are anxious to transport him alive it is a hundred to one he perishes of cold, but if you do succeed in getting him home the difficulty then is to kill him. The vitality of this strange sea creature after decapitation is almost beyond belief. Mr. Bellis once sent a large turtle to an hotel in Newcastle. The _chef_ cut the turtle’s head off and hung the body upside down to bleed. Twenty-four hours after that turtle knocked down a man cook with one blow of its fin! The green turtle is not a vicious creature to handle, like its snapping Japanese brother, but its fins are very strong, and one blow from them is quite sufficient to break a man’s arm.

Mr. Frank T. Bullen gives a remarkable instance of the tenacious hold of the turtle upon life. “On one occasion,” he records, “our men cut all the flesh and entrails of a turtle away, leaving only the head and tail attached to the shell. Some time had elapsed since the meat had been scooped out of the carapace, and no one imagined that any life remained in the extremities. But a young Dane, noticing that the down-hanging head had its mouth wide open, very foolishly inserted two fingers between those horny mandibles. It closed, and our shipmate was two fingers short, the edges of the turtle’s jaws had taken them clean off, with only the muscular power remaining in the head. Then another man tried to cut the horny tail off, but as soon as his keen blade touched it on the underside it curled up and gripped his knife so firmly that it was nearly an hour before the blade could be withdrawn.” Signor Redi, the great zoologist, records how he once cut a turtle’s head off and noted that it lived for twenty-three days without a head, and another whose brains he removed lived for six months.

The green turtle, the species favoured in this country, is not a carnivorous creature, like the snapping-turtle, its food being a particular kind of sea grass found on the coral reefs in the West Indies. Some time ago Mr. Bellis brought a large quantity of this grass to London, with the idea of feeding the creatures in captivity, but they refused to take it. In his cellars in the City one can see any day a number of these turtles. Here they are kept until a telegram arrives from a distant hotel, when away goes the turtle to be turned into soup for the forthcoming banquet. Those hotels which do not care about the trouble of killing the creature can procure the soup in tins and bottles direct from the importer, and it is not surprising to learn that large quantities are sold. It requires eight pounds of the best turtle-flesh to make one quart of soup.

The green turtle grows to an immense size, but it has been found that specimens weighing more than a hundred and fifty pounds are not desirable, the flesh becoming coarse as the animal increases in weight. The shell of this variety is practically valueless, but the hawksbill turtle yields what is popularly known as “tortoiseshell,” and the armour covering of a good specimen may be worth eight pounds. Its flesh, however, is too coarse for consumption, though here it should be added that it is doubtful whether those who occasionally partake of green-turtle soup would relish that made from the flesh of the snapping-turtle.

It is a notorious fact that turtles grow very slowly and attain a great age. Curiously enough, neither Mr. Hattori nor Mr. Bellis can tell to what age a snapping or green turtle will live. Mr. Hattori has quite a number of turtles that are known to be from thirty to fifty years of age, while some of the bigger specimens that arrive at Waterloo for the Bellis cellars are, it is believed, twelve to fifteen years old.

THE AMBASSADOR’S TRUNK.

BY E. A. MORPHY, LATE EDITOR OF THE “STRAITS TIMES,” SINGAPORE.

The circumstances of this little smuggling incident, though known to several persons in the Far East, have hitherto been hidden, so to speak, under a bushel. In bringing them to the light it should be stated that--for obvious reasons--fictitious names have been given to the individuals chiefly concerned, but the facts are just as stated.

Far and away the most distinguished passenger on the big German liner was the homeward bound Japanese Ambassador. He did not look the part, however. He was a squat, unobtrusive little man whose trousers fitted him badly, and whose carriage, when he was hampered by European clothes, suggested an insignificance that was only partially belied by the intelligence of his homely countenance. His appearance reflected no radiant blaze of glory, yet he was returning to his native land crowned with some of the finest diplomatic achievements of the century.

This statement is due to his Excellency, but it practically dismisses him from the story, which mainly concerns his trunk--his trunk No. 23, to be precise, for the Ambassador’s trunks were all numbered. There must have been half a hundred of them at least; all the same typical German steel trunks, but distinguished from other less important trunks of the same make insomuch that each one was adorned with two broad painted bands of scarlet, which showed out bravely and effectually prevented their being mixed up with any ordinary baggage. Apart from all other considerations, the wisdom of the Ambassador in thus distinctively marking his own trunks lay in the fact that the process insured their instant recognition by the Japanese Customs officials, by whom they were immune from examination.

This last fact was the one which counted for most with Fritz Vogel, steward and trombonist of the liner, as he daily contemplated the mountain of luggage and calculated how many Manila cigars one of those great red-striped trunks would hold.

Carefully packed, he figured it, one might crowd ten thousand cigars into each trunk. Ten thousand cigars, at eighty Mexican dollars a thousand, meant eighty pounds. Duty at one hundred and fifty per cent. _ad valorem_ on eighty pounds would mean a hundred and twenty pounds, or, as Fritz Vogel calculated, two thousand four hundred marks. Therefore, as the meditative trombonist further worked out the possibilities, his Excellency could, by simply loading up a few dozen more trunks with cigars at Hong-Kong and getting them passed free through the Customs at Yokohama--or at Nagasaki or Kobe for that matter--make more in a week than he could hope to earn in a month of Sundays by sticking to the thorny paths of diplomacy.

Born west of the Suez, the fertile idea germinated in Vogel’s brain all through the dreary wastes of the Canal, and sprouted up green and vigorous, despite the withering blasts that pursued the liner down the Red Sea and across the Indian Ocean to Colombo. At Singapore it had become an obsession. When steaming through the Narrows into the latter port, however, on the way to the German mail wharf, Vogel observed a red-funnelled Jardine liner at the Messageries wharf, with the blue-peter flying.

An hour later the _Laisang_ left for China, carrying a hastily-written letter from Fritz Vogel to his friend Max Krebs at Hong-Kong. It contained a fair statement of the salient facts in the case, and a crude but lucid sketch of one of the pieces of baggage, together with a description of the scarlet bands and full measurements. It also stated what has not been set forth above--that each of his Excellency’s trunks was numbered in large white figures at each end and on the top, and it suggested that in the case of any person desiring to have access to those trunks whilst they were still on board the liner, Nos. 23, 24, 27, 32, etc., were the easiest to reach.

Mr. Krebs was a “runner” for a native compradoring firm. He went out to the ships to “drum up” business for his employers, who supplied anything and everything that a ship could require, from cigarettes to engine-oil. In the old days before the Russian War Mr. Vogel had done a good deal of trade with Mr. Krebs on the short run between Yokohama and Hong-Kong. But the stringent Customs regulations that had ensued upon the increased tariffs imposed after the war had practically killed the business, save so far as concerned a paltry bit of trading with passengers in faked curios, and the occasional disposal of a few imitation gems to homeward-bound tourists when the vessel was west of Colombo.

Opportunities like the return of an Ambassador to Japan did not occur once in a blue moon.

The liner tarried a day and a half over cargo at Singapore, and the _Laisang_ got into Hong-Kong nearly twenty-four hours ahead of her. Mr. Vogel learned the fact the moment the German liner arrived at the big China port, and his heart was filled with sickening apprehension. He had been dreaming of trunks full of cigars--German steel trunks with red bands, and numbered with big white characters--ever since he left Singapore. He had marked off the state-room wherein, until the proper psychological moment, the extra trunks--if any--could be stored safely. He had mentally arranged every other detail in his projected bid for fortune, and had even marked down those of his comrades who should be selected as his accomplices. He had counted over, time and time again, the round thousand marks that would be his personal profit out of every trunk full of cigars he could pass through the Yokohama Customs as the baggage of the returning Ambassador. He did all this while still faithfully, if mechanically, discharging his onerous duties as steward and master of the trombone.

It was not until a few hours after the arrival of the steamer in Hong-Kong--hours that felt like ages--that Vogel heard from Krebs. A note was handed to him by a Chinese messenger boy, and Vogel opened it with feverish impatience. Mr. Krebs wrote with that laconic brevity of diction which indicates the resourceful mind. “Will send you one trunk.--O. K.,” it read.

Mr. Vogel pondered for a moment whether “O. K.” meant Oscar Krebs or “All correct” (American fashion); then he heaved a great sigh of relief as he realized that it was all the same.

That evening Mr. Krebs came on board unostentatiously, and a big trunk wrapped in rough sacking came with him, and was temporarily stowed away by Mr. Vogel in one of the state-rooms which held some of the Ambassador’s spare boxes. Thence it was subsequently carried to another cabin, where there were some spare things of Mr. Vogel’s. Had a hypercritical observer subsequently studied all the trunks in the Ambassador’s collection he might have noticed that one of them appeared to be the least trifle newer than the rest, but it would have taken a Sherlock Holmes to detect the circumstance off-hand. The trunk in question was numbered “23.”

In due time the liner arrived at Yokohama, but the mails that had been forwarded overland from Nagasaki reached there a day before her. Thus it came about that when the Ambassador’s baggage was franked through the Custom House and sent up to the Imperial Hotel at Tokio, two friends of Messrs. Krebs and Vogel were installed as guests at the last-named establishment. Thus also it came about that, thanks to ten yen well spent on a porter, the Ambassador’s trunk, No. 23, was whisked away to the nether cellars of the hotel the moment it arrived there, and--as the Ambassador himself did at an earlier stage--it virtually passes out of this story. That is to say, what must have been the ghost of the Ambassador’s trunk vanishes from mortal view; but not so the real article. When the diplomat’s baggage was supposed to be all in, and a count was taken, trunk No. 23 was found to be missing.

The row that ensued was something awful. Telegraphs and telephones were called into requisition, and imperative, not to say drastic, orders were dispatched to the Customs authorities at Yokohama, to the railway authorities at Shimbashi, and to all other authorities everywhere, commanding them to instantly produce his Excellency’s missing trunk.

The Customs authorities declared they had not got the trunk; they had passed it and forwarded it, and got a receipt for it. There could be no doubt, from their point of view, that the Ambassador had taken delivery of his trunk No. 23. The railway authorities were equally agreed on the same point. The baggage was all in special carriages; not a pin could have been lost between Yokohama and the Shimbashi station at the capital, whence it had been handed over to his Excellency’s servants for removal to the hotel. The police authorities were equally certain that there had been no hanky-panky business of any kind. It would have been impossible for one of the Ambassador’s trunks to go astray or be stolen, either in the streets of the seaport or in the capital itself. The steamship authorities had a receipt for every article. They knew the Ambassador’s trunks, and especial care had been taken of them throughout the voyage. Nevertheless, they would again investigate.

Then, Banzai! there came a telegram from the chief purser of the liner:--

“_Ambassador’s trunk No. 23 found on board. Must have been left behind inadvertently. Forwarding to Tokio at once._”

The little Custom House inspectors looked at the newly-found trunk in utter stupefaction.

“Truly,” said they, “we passed this identical trunk not three hours ago.”

“_Hayako!_” (Hurry, there!) shouted the head inspector, as they dallied over the mystery. “His Excellency waits!”

The trunk was expressed up to the Imperial Hotel by special train.

Ten minutes later the Director of His Imperial Majesty’s Customs at Yokohama ordered a Commission of Inquiry into the matter of the registering as received and delivered of one Ambassador’s trunk, No. 23, when the same had never either been received from the liner or delivered to the railway or to any other authorities by His Imperial Majesty’s Customs. The matter was also taken in hand by the Imperial Railway and by the Tokio and Kanagawa police authorities.

Though a couple of years have passed since these investigations were inaugurated, no definite finding in the matter has yet been officially published. In certain quarters, however, there is a consensus of opinion that such a trunk did really pass through the Yokohama Customs, but that it was a phantom one.

Mr. Vogel took away two thousand two hundred yen (two hundred and twenty pounds) from Yokohama that trip. At Hong-Kong, nine days later, he settled up with Mr. Krebs.

The cigars and trunk had cost nine hundred dollars, while the expenses and “commissions” in Japan amounted to a trifle less than three hundred dollars. There was a balance of a thousand dollars to divide, and they duly divided it.

HALF AN HOUR IN A BLAZING FURNACE.

BY GEORGE S. GUY.