(_BY OUR OWN GRANDOLPH._)
[Illustration: "Put out the light, and then--" Being the true story of
The Wonderful Lamp.]
I pause in my communications. Friends, real friends, have wired
over accounts of me on the trip, which have not been written by
"friendlies." Somebody wrote to _Black and White_ what purported to
be Notes about me aboard the gallant _Grantully Castle_, than which
a better-found vessel--"found" is the word--never put to sea. This
somebody ("bless him!"--DR-MM-ND W-LFF will know what I mean) observes
that "he didn't notice" any particular gratitude on my part towards
Captain HAY and his talented assistants. Hay! what? why, confound
them, I was all gratitude! Is it because I did not run at him, embrace
him, and shake his arms off, that therefore I did not _feel_ grateful!
I was awfully grateful. I felt inclined to alter the name of the
vessel to the _Gratefully_ _Castle_. But "she" (you always call a
vessel "she"--isn't that nautical?) "is" as the song says "another's,
and never can be mine!" so I can't change her name. I was overpowered
by my feelings--and what does that mean but the swallowing, with a
gurgle in the throat, of the silent tear, and the avoidance of the
topic uppermost in one's mind at the moment.
"The soldier leant upon his sword, and wiped away a tear"--but the
sailor didn't, _Verb. sap._ What did I do? Why, in my note of notes,
my Private Diary, I made this mem., "_Make Hay while the sun shines._"
Now what, I ask any unprejudiced person, what does this mean? If
Captain HAY were suddenly to be promoted in the hay-day of his
valuable career to be an Admiral, would he suspect that he owed this
elevation to the man who, strictly obeying the ship's orders, _never
even spoke to the man at the wheel_? Now to come to the next point.
This correspondent girds at my having had a special cabin and a
special steward. _Why!_ the envious grumbler! if he had been as
specially unwell as I was--but there, I own I lose patience with
him--didn't I go out as a "Special," and if a Special doesn't have
everything special about him, _he is simply obtaining money under
false pretences_. I've a great mind--I hear the jeerer snigger in his
sleeve--but I repeat emphatically I have a great mind to come back.
"He will return, I know him well," my traducers may sing; and I
shall return when I consider my special work specially done in my own
special manner, and be blowed to em all, the detractors!
[Illustration: Grandolph confiding to the _Chef_ his secret receipt
for cooking a flying-fish.]
He grumbles because I had _a special portable light_ all to myself,
"when I wanted to play cards." Aha! do we see the cloven hoof now?
Was I to play cards _in the dark_? Those who know me best know that I
am all fair and above-board, and no hole-and-corner gambling for me.
And what tale has he to tell? Why that "_Another night, not using his
special light at the time, two other passengers began a game of chess
under its rays._" Which they had no right whatever to do. But I winked
at it, and when the first officer was coming his rounds I winked
at _them_; but this friendly act on my part they did not heed, and
consequently _to save them from being put in irons_ and confined in
the deepest dungeon beneath the _Grantully Castle_ moat, I "_came
along just then_," as he reports, "_and removed the lamp to another
part of the deck, leaving the chess-players in the dark_"--as if this
consequence were anything extraordinary when a lamp is removed! Why
any schoolboy, the merest tyro in Scripture History, knows where the
great Hebrew Lawgiver was _when the candle went out_. And were these
passengers to be exempt from the action of Nature's ordinary laws!
Bah!--"_without a word of apology or explanation_." I _had_ winked,
but they were worse than blind horses, and more resembled the
inferior quadruped in obstinately refusing to move, or in subsequently
acknowledging this act of thoughtful kindness on my part.
As to my eating for breakfast a flying-fish, which somebody on board
had caught and given me, all I ask is, _why shouldn't I?_ I never had
eaten a flying-fish before, and I don't think I ever shall again. If
the gentleman who caught it didn't want me to eat it, he should have
said so: for there were three courses open to him; viz., _first_, to
refuse to give it me; _secondly_, to give it me on condition that I
kept it in memory of the occasion; _thirdly_, to throw it back into
the sea. But there was only one course open to _me_ when I got it,
and that was the first course at breakfast; the second course was
kidgeree. It was a small fish _just enough for one_, and now I rather
fancy I remember this _Black and White_ correspondent, for it must
have been he, coming to my table, eyeing the fish, smacking his lips,
and observing that _he_ "had never had the chance of tasting a fried
flying-fish." At that moment I was just finishing the tail (a sweet
morsel and not the worst part by any means), and there was nothing
left to offer him. So he went away disappointed, with a grudge against
yours truly. This, Sir, is the true tale of the flying-fish, and
if it isn't, let me hear the revised version from my aspersers and
caluminators. I can write no more to-day. I am boiling over, and must
go and kick somebody. Yours, &c.,
[Illustration: Grandolph the Explorer.]
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