strained uplifted head watched the winged vehicle of the air swimming through the ether aeross the blue sky. Then he stuck his spade in the earth and moistened the palms of his hands. "Would there be any one up in that?" His face is insoratably composed. "Two men," I reply. He moistens a little more. "Augh - a - musha, they've little to do with their lives, so they have, that'd trust themselves to that." Sometimes I go a-fishing. My luck is seldom brilliant-a ciroumstanee which Andy ascribes with ungallant and out-of-date conviction to the accident of my sex-but on this one occasion the unbelievable nearly happened. After more than an hour of industrious but futile endeavour, I suddenly felt a tug which sent my heart into my mouth. Agonised seconds of suspense resolved themselves into the certainty of a salmon on the line! To throw a fly for trout and catch a salmon! Flaming visions of an epic return to home, bearing with me this lordly trophy to lay at the feet of relations strieken for once into awed admiration, dazzle and intoxicate me. With panting breast and quivering nerves I enter upon the struggle to land my prey. But the battle is indeed to the strong. Bereft of gaff or help, what chance have I? From first to last I am outclassed. Suddenly in the midst of chagrin and approaching defeat I catch sight of Andy digging in an adjacent field, He is within call. I call; he heeds not. I cry, I yell, I seream. No response. At length, after interminable ages, during which the monster (a 17-pounder at least, my imagination feels sure) at the other end is dragging my arms out of their sockets, he raises himself, and turning round scans the far horizon with inquiring mien. I shout again, but with no result. I cannot beckon, for my hands are glued to the rod in desperate grip. But I yell till my voice breaks and dies in a strangled cry. He has returned to his work, and continues to dig unmoved. And with my last breath away my captive goes free and victorious, while in the jerk of release I nearly fall backwards on the bank. Crushed and collapsed, all I can do is to recover sufficient strength to pack up and go hence-empty. The flaming vision of triumph is replaced by flaming anger with Andy. I wish I could kill that old man. I should like to see him dig his own grave. Worn with emotion and bursting with spleen, I approach him with what I trust is the vengeful dignity of an accusing angel. He is still digging. Infuriation makes me long to lay my rod across those bowed shoulders. "Well!" I exclaim when I am standing over him, "that was a pretty trick to play me! Do you hear?" The spade arrested by the movement of his hands remains uplifted. He turns himself upwards painfully. "Eh-h?" "Yes," I retort. "But what I really do want to kill could I do? I had no gaff, him. and it's no joke to land a twenty-pound fish. I roared and shouted to you, and you wouldn't take the trouble to cross the field to help me. Did you think I was shouting like that for fun?" He gazes at me with griefstricken eyes, and lips that tremble so much that the old pipe becomes dislodged from its corner and drops out of his mouth to the ground, where, like the spade, it lies unregarded. His voice, when he can bring himself to utter a word again, is agitated almost beyond recognition. "Oh, be the Holy Father, an' if I'd known it was a salmon ye had! But be the way ye were screechin' and eryin', musha, bedad I was full sure 'twas only a child had fell into the river..." A SECRET SURVEY. BY REAR-ADMIRAL BOYLE SOMERVILLE, C.M.G. DURING the year 1902 a good deal of diplomatic anxiety had been felt, not only on account of the slow but sure movement of the Russia of those days towards India - an anxiety that had been ours for a long time previously-but because the movement had begun to take another direction, and one even more serious to us. The giant hands and yearning fingers which had been suocessfully groping south-eastward through the hidden and easy roads of Caucasia and Turkestan, had now begun upon Persia. Reports reached us of mysterious inspections by "foreigners" of the Persian coastline, evidently seeking for some hitherto disregarded notch in it, which might show possibilities of being converted into a commercial or a naval port, or (better still) into both. In the early days of 1903 it became necessary to take steps of some sort. Ever since the seventeenth century, when John Company began to oust Portuguese trade from India, it has been realised that we must hold in our hands that side-door to the East-that 'Tradesmen's entrance"-the Persian Gulf. With this end in view, several naval battles have been fought in the Gulf, from 1620 onwards; I. com all of them forgotten, as "sideshows" easily may be, though all of them were quite successful. The prestige they produced is still maintained visibly and effectively in the sway exercised by the British Political Residents established at various points on both shores of the Gulf. They, in their turn, are supported by naval vessels, whose manders keep the peace of the narrow seas, preventing piracy, gun-running, and slavery; and are, besides, the upholders of the truce that has been enforced by us on the wild Arab coastal chiefs, in order to keep them from one another's throats. With all of this necessary, ancient, and undisputed supremacy at stake, prompt counteraction against interference by any other nation was necessary. The first step to be taken by the Foreign Office was to inquire at the Admiralty whether there was, in fact, any notch or inlet on the Persian coast which could, with reasonable chance of success, be converted into a Russian naval base. This question having reached their Lordships, was docketed "Urgent," and sent on to the Hydrographic Department. This Department, in its wideflung survey of the world, embraces not only all nautical of had been "compiled" in 1860 by two reliable men, the actual small and detached surveys from which it had been pieced together had been made during the eighteen-twenties by two named officers of John Company's sea - service, whose character and ability nothing was known, either one way or the other. Now, the original field-work of all hydrographical surveyors, from which their published charts are drawn, is kept, carefully labelled, and stored in dim cellars of the Admiralty, awaiting a day of judgment, such as now seemed to have dawned for "Captains Gay and Brucks of H.E.I.C. Marine, 1821-29." Sir William sent for these originals. science and sea-knowledge, but, in those days, still retained in its dark cupboards the germs from which sprang the present Naval Intelligence Division. It was the "Inquire within" on all maritime and naval subjects, and it is still the boast of the Department that no inquirer is ever sent empty away. Admiral Sir William Wharton was Hydrographer to the Admiralty at the time, having already held that responsible post for eighteen years, and on receipt of the pink-tabbed query, he sent at once for the published charts of the Persian Gulf. They were not modern charts, but though the scale on which they had been plotted was a small one, the indentations and other details of the coastline had every appearance of having been projected from the results of large-scaled scientifio surveys. Hydrographic surveyors, god-like young boys, presumably their as they may appear to be in their attribute of omniscience (as mentioned above), are, how ever, human to this extent namely, that some are good and some are evil. The latter denomination, the Untrustworthy, are now all well known. When one or two wrecks have been the result of navigating by his chart, the character of any surveyor as a bungler, or, worse still, as an omitter of rooks and dangers, is soon and painfully established. Sir William looked at the title-heading of the chart (in which the names of its authors are set forth), and saw that while the chart There is, in the Hydrographic Department, a oollection of naval grandfathers who undertake the duties of "Messenger," attended by grandsons, "chips," whose most ostensible duty in life is to make tea for the "old blocks." The order for search for the documents having been received by them through Mr China, the Head Messenger (for such was his remarkable name), great was the company of the paper-chasers. They rushed forth, both grey-haired eld and squeaking youth, down to the Persian Gulf store, leaving the nice drop o' tea wetting in its pot, and the perpetual kettle of the Messengers' Lobby to pour forth its steam upon the deserted air. One hour, two hours went by; the tea cooled and notified accordingly, and I was blackened, the kettle-bottom burnt through, and still the agitated search amongst the dust of archæo-hydrographical ages remained unrewarded by any discovery of the relios of the required date. At last it was found out from the registers that, when John Company "turned over" its naval records to the Admiralty, all that had reached the Hydrographie Department, so far as the Persian Gulf was concerned, were the engraved copperplates, embodying the compilation of 1860 before deseribed, from which the charts themselves were struck. The Hydrographer was not to be satisfied by this discovery, as might have been a lesser man, He cabled to Bombay to inquire where the "originals" were, and to request that they might be sent home at once for his inspection. The reply came back that they no longer existed. There had been a great fire in Bombay dockyard at about the time of the turn - over, and the whole of the documents, with many others, had then been destroyed! "Very well, then," said Sir William Wharton, an officer must be sent out forthwith to examine the coast of Persia by 'running survey,' and to report whether the Russians will be able to find there a harbour capable of being fortified for use as a commercial and naval base; for the available evidence as to the existence, or otherwise, of such a harbour is not conclusive." The First Lord was 66 appointed to start for the Persian Gulf by the next steamer to make the required survey. The cloak of secrecy was cast over me. Instruments and books for my use were gathered together, stealthily, in the Secretary's room, unnamed, unaddressed, which I was to take away furtively and pack in my private portmanteau. I was ordered to drop my rank, and to take my ticket as a plain if mysterious Mister; and, under a general smoke-screen of lies and dissimulation, I set out from Charing Cross at 9 A.M. on April 2, 1903, overland to Marseilles, sailing on the following day for the Shiny East in the (quite appropriately named) P. and O. s.s. Persia. The great steamer was nearly empty of passengers, and the few she carried were almost all of them military officers. Unfortunately, one of them happened to be an acquaintance, and this fact at once tore a largish hole in my cloak of invisibility. Those were times when it was still etiquette to ask questions of naval officers as to where they were going, and what job lay before them. Polite interest, such as this, was all the more trying through being quite casual and unnecessary, but it was given to me (by the Father of Lies, I suppose) to reply, on the first occasion of such inquiry, that I was going out to the East Indies Station, "for disposal." This answered perfectly. All the soldiers left |