A DAY AFTER CRAWFISH
There are certain days of one's boyhood which have made so deep an
impression that they seem to stand out like mountain peaks in the
misty plains of the memory, clear and distinct against the sky-line,
when all else is dim and hazy and distorted by distance. One of these
landmarks in the early life of the writer is a certain day, long years
ago--though the recollection of every detail of it is as green as
though it all happened but yesterday--when, in company with two or
three kindred spirits, he made his first grand expedition after
crawfish. It was summer--the summer holidays: holidays long looked
forward to as to be among the most delightful that ever boy spent; for
they were to be passed in Mourino, the paradise of our youthful
imaginations, where the long Russian days were not half long enough
for the multitude of delights to be crammed into each, there being
"more to do" at Mourino, as we always thought, than anywhere in
England, seaside or otherwise. As a matter of fact, the northern haven
of our schoolboy desires was the very place for boys home from an
English public school, and fond of healthy outdoor pursuits and
recreations. There was a river at the bottom of the garden in which
fish of many kinds might be lured to their doom; there was shooting,
in a mild way; there was riding _ad lib._, if galloping about the
country on the spiky backs of the little Finn ponies of the place can
be dignified by that name; there was boating, of course, and canoeing,
at our very doors, as well as the usual English games which the true
Briton takes with him however far afield he may roam. No wonder then
that Mourino was the place in which we preferred, _par excellence_, to
pass our summer holidays; for, as I say, the days were not long enough
to contain all the joys to be crammed into them.
There were crawfish to be had at the bottom of the garden, but these
were neither sufficiently large nor sufficiently numerous to tempt us
to engage very frequently in their capture. When we wanted crawfish of
a size to do their captors credit, we knew well enough where to go for
them, just as well as the giant crawfish themselves knew which part of
the river suited them best as their headquarters. It was, however,
some little distance to the favourite haunt of the monsters, a matter
of ten miles or so; a journey not to be undertaken lightly over the
unspeakable roads of the neighbourhood, so that we did not very often
disturb the scaly warriors in the cool depths of their chosen
pleasure-grounds; when we did organise an excursion, therefore, in
their honour we fully intended to "do the thing in style," and to
create some considerable gaps among the ranks of their best and
mightiest. When a day was to be devoted to the capture of big crawfish
at Sairki, preparations were made over-night in order that no time
should be wasted on the morrow; the usual miscalculation was made as
to the number of sandwiches required--food sufficient for an entire
regiment was invariably provided for us, yet I cannot recall that we
ever brought any back. The stock-in-trade of the complete crawfisher,
a strong hand-net and a pound or two of slightly high meat, was in
readiness for each of us; our pike rods and tackle were seen to; the
most particular instructions were issued as to our awakening as soon
as daylight should appear; the vehicles, or rather their peasant
owners, were hunted up for the hundredth and last time and warned,
with all solemnity, as to the awful consequences that unpunctuality
would bring down upon their heads, and then we all four went to bed
and wished for day.
When morning came--the particular morning I am now recalling--things
were propitious. Two _telyegi_ stood awaiting our pleasure at the
door, each with its pair of small Finn ponies ready harnessed and
impatiently whisking away the horseflies with their long tails. The
_telyegi_, I may explain, are springless carts upon four wheels.
They are provided with so-called "cushions," which consist of a square
bag of sacking with a certain amount of hay inside it. The sensations
of the traveller who has once been bumped about in a _telyega_
over Russian roads are memorable--indeed, I have spent the rest of my
days since my boyhood in wondering how in the world I managed to
remain "all in one piece" throughout the awful joltings to which my
body was submitted during those _telyega_ days. Has the reader
ever seen a Russian country road? It is not a road at all, as we are
accustomed to understand the term, but a mere succession of deep and
wide holes worn in the natural sandy soil. The Finn ponies think
nothing of such trifling drawbacks, however, and pursue their headlong
course without regard to the feelings of the evil-entreated passengers
behind them. Perhaps the good-natured creatures experience a
mischievous delight in thus "taking it out" of those who weary their
flesh by causing them to drag a heavy load at breakneck speed through
all the heat and dust and breathlessness of a Russian summer day. The
pair are harnessed in an original manner; one, the better trotter of
the two, is between shafts, while his companion canters alongside,
attached, in a happy-go-lucky way, to the vehicle by means of a couple
of loose ropes, but otherwise free to do pretty much as he pleases,
consequently he is sometimes close enough to his comrade to make that
animal, if irritably inclined, put back his ears and snap at him as a
gentle reminder that he is taking liberties, and sometimes a yard or
two away, frisking over puddles or shying all over the road on his own
account. When a pit of more than the average depth is encountered,
both horses will jump it in preference to running down to the bottom
and up again, and at such a moment the fate of the passenger in the
cart behind is melancholy. He is tossed up into the air for all the
world like a spun coin, sharing also the uncertain destiny of that
coin as to the manner of his descent--whether "heads or tails." It
must not be for one moment supposed that we, in the exuberance of our
happiness, and in the all-accepting, unquestioning, all-enjoying
spirit of the British schoolboy, cared a farthing for the depth or
width of the very vilest hole that time and horseshoes ever wore in a
Russian road; on the contrary, we loved the sensation of being sent
flying up into the air every other minute, and if we came down upon
the top of one another or of the luckless driver on his hard box-seat,
or even into the six-inch dust of the road in the rear of the
_telyega_, why, I believe we liked it all the better. As every one
knows, a special Providence watches over drunken men and school-boys,
and I have often reflected that we must have caused our particular
bodyguard a terrible amount of anxiety, and kept it very hard at work
during these wild _telyega_ drives of ours at Mourino, for we were
racing, most of the time, with the wheels of the two carts interlaced,
the horses--all four of them--galloping _ventre à terre_, and the
demented Russian drivers--quite as far gone in lunacy as our British
selves--shouting at the top of their voices and bumping about half in
air and half in cart, like a couple of demon Jehus let loose for the
occasion, and for our especial and particularly complete destruction;
and yet I cannot remember that any one was ever hurt! Truly that
special Providence of ours was well up to its arduous duties, and
performed them admirably.
Sairki was reached at last, and the horses put up at the village. As
for us, we unpacked the carts before a group of admiring Finnish
children; for Sairki, like many a score of other villages within
twenty miles of the Tsar's capital, is inhabited exclusively by Finns,
who cannot speak a word of Russian. Hand-nets and rods were got out;
the crawfish meat was produced (extremely unsavoury by this time,
owing to the intense heat of the day, but all the better for that from
the point of view of the crawfish, who likes his dinner to be
attractive to his olfactory senses); huge fishing-baskets were
strapped upon our shoulders, containing our food at present, but to be
used for another purpose soon, and away we headed for the riverside.
The Ochta is a tributary of the Neva, into which it flows close to St.
Petersburg--a pretty little river as one would wish to see, if he
cares for the sort of scenery that Ruysdael loved to depict. Down by
the river there grew countless clusters of leafy young birches and
aspens, and to these our attention was first directed, for from them
we must draw one of the essential items of our stock-in-trade.
Provided with large knives as we were, we soon possessed ourselves of
the necessary number of long sticks, about a dozen each, and stripped
the leaves off to the end. In order to explain the exact object of
these sticks, I will now, with the reader's permission, make him
acquainted with the _modus operandi_ of the scientific crawfisher. I
have said already that a lump of meat is required. This is cut into
small sections of about an inch and a half square, one of which is
firmly tied to the end of each stick with a piece of string or
"machalka," the birch-bark ribbon known to gardeners. This is the
nastiest part of the proceedings, and it is better to get a friend to
do it for you if you can. The preliminaries being thus completed, the
next thing is to take the twelve baited sticks one by one and place
them in the water, the meat downwards and resting on the bottom, while
the top end of the stick is allowed to project a foot or so above the
surface and to rest against the bank. The sticks must not be placed
too close to one another. The proper distance is about ten yards
between each. It will be remarked by the intelligent reader that the
crawfisher thus requires a considerable portion of the stream to
himself, for no two sportsmen can find scope for their energies within
a hundred and fifty yards or so; while a party of four or five will
occupy the best part of half-a-mile of bank. When the sticks are all
placed scientifically, according to the fisher's knowledge of the
spots likely to be favoured of crawfish, the sportsman must possess
his soul in patience for a quarter of an hour at least, in order to
give time to the gentlemen of the claws to realise the good fortune
that has come their way in the shape of a lump of meat dropped
apparently from the skies. After the interval indicated, the hand-net
is taken and the sticks are visited one by one. Now comes the moment
when the skill and science of the performer is put to the test. The
water is not very clear. It is not muddy, but the colour is dark--a
brownish tint--caused, as we always believed, by the quantities of
iron in it, so that we cannot see to the bottom or near it. Hence, the
first part of the proceedings must be done in faith and hope, and with
an extremity of caution and lightness of hand not attainable without
considerable practice in the art of crawfishing. The stick is taken
firmly in the left hand, while the right grasps the handle of the net.
Then the stick is raised from the bottom, but so gradually and
imperceptibly that the movement is, presumably, unnoticeable down
below. The baited stick is thus slowly and carefully lifted inch by
inch, until the lump of meat at the end of it is visible. If a
crawfish is clinging on to the meat the stick is raised no higher, for
the hand-net now comes into play. This latter instrument is brought
cautiously up against the current, placed deftly underneath the
clinging feaster, the stick and the net are raised together, and as
the crawfish reaches the surface of the water, and at length realises
that he had better quit this perambulating breakfast, he lets go, only
to discover that he is too late and has been outwitted, and that his
place henceforth is in the fishing-basket, or a watering-pot half full
of water, until such time as he is taken out and boiled for the use of
man. It is very simple, and were the crawfish not the most criminally
greedy and careless creature in the world, he would never allow
himself to be captured in so ridiculously elementary a way. But it is
his nature to, and no amount of experience will teach him the
foolishness of his conduct, for you may, if you please, catch and
return to his element the self-same crawfish a dozen times in an
afternoon. In a good place, the fisher may find two or three, or even
more, of these hungry fellows clinging to the same piece of meat, and,
if clever enough, may easily capture the lot at one swoop.
Such, in brief, is the _modus operandi_ of the crawfisher. We all
knew the way to do it, we of the Sairki party; and the tying on of the
bait and the placing of the sticks were finished as quickly as these
operations could be performed with a due regard to efficiency, lots
having decided the portion of bank to be worked by each of us. Then
came the quarter of an hour during which it is the etiquette of the
crawfisher to allow his prey to discover and to enjoy undisturbed the
refreshments provided for him. I do not know whether schoolboys
possess souls--presumably they are provided with a special schoolboy
quality--but in any case we, at least, were entirely unable to possess
those souls in patience, and that little quarter of an hour was spent
by each of us upon his own portion of bank under a carking sense of
grievance. We felt that we were conceding too much to the crawfish.
Personally I passed my fifteen minutes at full length in the long
grass, within a yard or two of the water, and any one but a schoolboy
would have been glad enough of the opportunity to lie thus beneath the
brilliant northern August sky upon a bed of wild flowers, which, if
one chose to sit still and pick one specimen of each, would have
filled his hands with a hundred delicate stems without the necessity
to stretch beyond an easy arm-reach. I have never seen any place that
equalled the country about Mourino for the wealth and variety of its
wild flowers, or the luxuriance of the ground-berries in the
woods--Arctic strawberry, bilberry, cranberry, raspberry, and a berry
which I remember as making the most delicious bitter-sweet jam, called
brousnika. As for the flowers, the anemone is the only representative
of our familiar spring visitors, but the summer months are gorgeous
with every blossom that our own English fields can boast, with few
exceptions, besides lilies of the valley, linnæa borealis, a lovely
creeping plant with a tiny starry flower; "star of Bethlehem," and
other varieties not often seen in this country.
But the longest and most vexatious wait must come to an end in its
season, and at last the crawling minutes had sped by and we were at
liberty to commence the business of the day. Oh, the delightful
excitement of the first visit to each stick! How my heart beat, I
remember, as I grasped the first of them, and with somewhat trembling
fingers raised it cautiously a few inches towards the surface, peering
the while into the dark brown depths to catch the earliest possible
glimpse of the desired visitor. The water seemed extra dark in colour
to-day, to spite one, and the stick had to be slowly lifted to within
a foot or so of the keen eyes watching above it before the meat could
be distinguished at the end of it. There it is at last--now then! Is
that the claw of a crawfish sticking on to it, or not? It may be, but
if so it is a tiny one. Carefully the hand-net is drawn towards the
bait, up the stream, for otherwise the current bulges the network
inside out, and deftly the string-prison is placed underneath the end
of the stick--there! If it is a crawfish I have got him safe. Up comes
stick, and up comes net with it to the surface--alas, no! It was but
the split end of a piece of "machalka," and not the claw of a
crawfish. Down goes the stick again to its place at the bottom of the
stream, and away go I to the next one. Here a strong waggling at the
end of it when it is raised from the bottom tells me that undoubtedly
a guest is availing himself of my hospitality; caution must be
observed--yea, caution must be doubly cautious. It is a big fellow by
the feel, and he is still tugging away as I raise the stick with
breathless care towards the surface. Now I can see the bait, or rather
I can see the place where the meat may be supposed to be; for there is
nothing visible but a dark mass which hides the bait from view. Now
comes the tug of war. The current is rather strong, and the exertion
of bringing the broom-handled net against it is considerable; but this
is not a moment to think of difficulties. Down comes fate upon the
thoughtless reveller; a turn of the wrist with the right, and a swift
upward motion of the left arm, and anything there may chance to be
busying itself at the baited end of the stick is my own. What do I
see? A big crawfish? It is indeed a big crawfish, and with it a second
and yet a third, true Sairki monsters, all three of them, seething and
glistening in their dark brown armour at the bottom of the net, and
laying hold angrily of each other wherever they can fasten a claw, as
though each were chastising his companions for having brought him into
this mess. They must be taken up carefully, one by one, and held by
the back, else those cruel-looking claws will lay hold of one's
fingers and inflict a pinch which will be a memorable circumstance for
some little while. These three fellows, exactly like lobsters made in
a smaller mould, so far as the unscientific eye can judge, are about
six to seven inches in length from head to end of tail; one of them
has one large claw and the other quite a miniature member, as though
it had never emerged from its baby stage; the truth being that the
warrior has lost one of his natural weapons, probably in a fight with
a rival, and that a beneficent nature is providing him with a
substitute as quickly as can be managed. If I place one of these
creatures upon the ground, instead of in the watering-pot prepared for
his reception, he will instantly set off backwards in the direction of
the river. I have tried this at all distances from the water, placing
a crawfish as far as several hundred yards from his native element,
and pointing him in the wrong direction; yet in defiance of all
obstacles, the poor fellow invariably and without hesitation made
straight for that point of the compass in which instinct told him lay
the stream which was his home. And so was made the round of the
sticks; one producing nothing, another a single tiny victim, a third
four at once, and so on to the twelfth and last; the net results
of the first round being seventeen crawfish of a fair average size.
Then the proceedings began again, _da capo_. The sport generally
improved up to about the fifth round, while the inhabitants of the
stream were gradually becoming aware of the feast spread for them at
easy distances all down the river. After the sixth round the numbers
fell off again, until, eventually, a second portion of the bank had to
be worked, the original lie having been exhausted. The largest haul
that I ever made from one stick at one swoop was six crawfish, all
good ones, and one of them a giant. We had agreed to put back the
babies, the very tiniest, that is; though we invariably took a great
number home with us which we did not intend to eat, in order to let
them go at the bottom of the garden as stock for our own portion of
the river, and to afford us sport when they should have grown to more
respectable dimensions. They always accommodated themselves to
circumstances, and remained contentedly where they had been put in.
When we grew tired of capturing our crawfish in the orthodox manner we
adopted another plan; this involved, first, the finding of a shallow
place in which, when found, we waded about with a short stick in one
hand and a net in the other. When we caught sight of a crawfish
wandering along or trying to hide the too expansive volume of his tail
beneath a stone designed to conceal a junior member of the family
only, all we had to do was to suddenly place the stick in front of his
nose, at the same instant holding the net immediately behind him, when
the simple creature would promptly commit suicide by running backwards
into prison.
Then there was trolling for pike in the quiet pools when we were weary
of the crawfish. There were good pike to be had at Sairki, and their
favourite food was spoons--so, at least, one would suppose from the
voracity with which they endeavoured to devour those we offered for
their destruction. Many an exciting half-hour was afforded us by the
good-natured Sairki pike; they generally got away in the end, but
always thoroughly entered into the fun of the thing and obliged us,
while the game lasted, by pretending to be doing their best to escape
our unscientific attempts to bring them to book. Probably they could
have rid themselves of the bait and us at any moment if they had been
so disposed, but they were too good-natured. Now and then we caught
one, but very rarely.
And so the summer day would pass with its sport and its bathing and
its incalculable sandwiches, until the brilliant sunshine began to
wane and the time came to shoulder our nets and hoist our heavily
loaded watering-pots and mount the hill to the village. As for our
sticks, we hospitably left these in the water in order that the
crawfish remaining in the neighbourhood might enjoy themselves to the
full and learn to laugh at those of their fellows who were disposed to
look with suspicion at bits of meat attached to the ends of sticks.
They might now finish the food with absolute impunity, and would come
to the feast at our next visit without a thought of danger.
A memorable ceremony was the counting of the victims up at the
village. This was performed in the midst of a gaping and ejaculating
crowd of Finnish children, a score or so of scantily dressed,
fair-haired little maidens and their brothers, who expressed their
delight with the outcome of our prowess in a ceaseless chatter of
their own language, monosyllabic, but full of extremely expressive
inflections. We put ourselves upon the best of terms with these little
foreigners by letting loose a number of our scaly captives among their
naked toes, a move which caused them to jump about and scream in the
wildest delight. The distribution of a few copecks among them
completed our popularity thus easily acquired. The Finns are a
good-natured, inoffensive race, when properly treated; but proud and
stolid and somewhat lazy, and withal dignified and extremely jealous
of their personal independence. The commonest Finn peasant considers
himself the equal of any other man. Destiny may have put the Tsar in a
warmer corner than himself, perhaps, but that does not make the Tsar
the better man of the two. "The Tsar has a pair of legs exactly like
my own," a Finn peasant once remarked to the writer, and the saying
sums up very concisely the attitude of this quiet but dignified member
of the human family towards his fellow-men.
Six hundred and thirty-seven was the sum total of our day's netting,
besides many others caught and put back: not a bad tally! It was
sufficient to supply the whole of the British colony in Mourino, which
is a good large one, with crawfish enough to last them for some time.
These are most delicious eating, as highly flavoured as the lobster,
but much more tender and less stringy. A certain soup made of crawfish
is declared by gourmets to be simply unequalled by any other decoction
known under the name of _potage_.
And so, sped upon our way by the shouts of our admiring friends the
little Finnish maids and urchins, we set forth once more to brave the
perils and discomforts of the return journey. I know not what the
unfortunate creatures in the watering-pots and the fishing-baskets may
have thought of the bumpings and jars that marked our progress along
that terrible road, but I do know that the day's wading and netting
had not damped our own spirits in any appreciable degree. The ponies,
knowing that they were directed homewards, flew along like mad things;
breakneck races were once again the order of the day, and once again
did our special Providence preserve us from the destruction we
courted. Swiftly, too swiftly for us, the miles were left behind, and
the last rays of the setting sun had scarcely lighted up the green
cupola of Mourino church when, with whips cracking, drivers shouting,
dust flying in clouds, and six human beings (counting schoolboys as
coming under that category) and 637 crawfish bumping about like peas
on a drum-head, we raced up to the lodge gates--and the day was over.