"Doesn't say anything about it." "He's a liar," observed Jan Naarden, as though that were the chorus of his song. "The ship, I tell you, is mine." The Commandant scratched his head, and looked from one to the other. "He's a liar," intoned Jan Naarden, taking advantage of the silence. "Don't keep saying that!" spat out the little Commandant irritably. "I want to think." "But how does all this affect you?" I asked. "Why all the troops and the cannon? 66 'I haven't got any cannons,' he replied hotly. "And I'm here to keep the peace." "Then get off the ship and let me go," advised Jan Naarden. "It's mine!" "That's what I don't see." 66 66 But you can't prove it." "You won't? I asked incredulously. "I won't, and that's flat," said he obstinately. "Then the boat stays here," decided the Commandant, rising to his feet. "And the troops," he added. "In that case, I'm off to bed," I observed. "I don't intend sitting here all night." "Nor do I," agreed Blatherton. And he too rose. "That's right," said Jan Naarden bitterly. "Leave me to it." "You've got the remedy in your own hands," I told him. Sign the document and we'll go across in the ship." 66 growled Blatherton, dismissing and almost before the words the subject from his mind. "I'll come over and stay the night with you at your camp, and to-morrow we'll see what happens." "Good enough," I agreed, and the house-boat sheered off on her trip to the far side. It must have been about seven o'clock next morning when I awoke to a violent shaking. "What the—” I began irritably, but stopped as I saw the mountain of nose leaning over me. 66 'She's coming!" Blatherton. "Eh?" I asked. coming?" were out of his mouth there was a sickening, grinding crash, and the Ajax shivered all over her length, and stopped dead. "She's aground. They've beached her," yelled Blatherton. And I dashed after him to the canoe. In two or three minutes we were alongside. There was a fearful racket on the bridge where Jan Naarden and M'Gregor were cursing each other at the top of their voices. "You damn fool!" we heard. "You wouldn't let me bring cried her in myself, and now you've run her aground. And serve "Who's you damn well right. I'm through!" And, purple with rage, M'Gregor stamped down the companion on to the welldeck. "The boat! The Ajax!" For a moment I failed to grasp the situation, but while I struggled, the loud yelp of a siren shattered the silence of the camp. In a flash I understood. "By Jingo!" I cried, "she's here! And jumping out of bed I rushed to the door close on Blatherton's heels. Not three hundred yards from the shore was the Ajax. Her funnel was belching smoke, and her stern wheel thrashed the water into a lather of spume. As she swept up the channel our boys broke into a chorus of cheers, and were answered by a triumphant blast of the siren. From where we stood we could hear the clatter and plonk of her ancient engines, and see two figures moving on her bridge. "They're mighty close in," remarked Blatherton suddenly; Jan Naarden swore and raved and cursed until he collapsed, and sitting down on the hatch, burst into tears and cried like a child. He was in a pitiable state by the time we got him back to the house. Towards four o'clock he was delirious, and was raving about all manner of things. "Can't we do anything?" I asked of Blatherton, who seemed to know a lot about steamers. "No," said he. 'She'll break in half before to-morrow. Her stern is hanging over deep water, and all the weight is aft in these stern-wheelers. It's quite hopeless." "What are we going to do with him?" I asked anxiously, nodding towards the bed. Blatherton pursed his lips, plates buckling like so much paper along her side. Came a single and louder report from somewhere at the back of us. For one instant I felt cold all over, and my eye sought Blatherton's, anxiously. No word passed between us but, turning swiftly, we fled like hares back to the grass house and met M'Gregor, white-faced and indignant, on the threshold. "Dead, by God! Shot himself," he cried shakily. "The fool!" One glance was sufficient. Jan Naarden was past all human aid. "God rest his soul," breathed Blatherton reverently. "But I daresay he chose the wiser course," he added, more practically, a moment later. And by some queer twist of imagination, into my mind flashed a vision of Mrs Commissioner as she had sat in the crimson "Not more than a couple of shaded candle-light, hotly dethousand, I should say." "If Silitass proves to be right, then, he will still owe fourteen hundred pounds or So. I doubt if he could meet it," said I, remembering what I had heard up north. When night fell the Ajax was still intact, though sagging badly. At six o'clock next morning loud reports came from the river, and rushing outside we saw the rails were snapping under the tension, and the nouncing this same poor clay that lay stretched on his bed in the peace of death. "And she'll never be paid her two hundred now," I thought. The next day we laid Jan Naarden in his nameless grave, deep in the hot soil of the country that had made him what he was; and if the hyenas let him rest, he still sleeps in the bank of that great river upon whose bosom he staked his last throw-and lost. GULLIVER'S TRAVELS. BY CHARLES WHIBLEY. In this month falls the two hundredth birthday of Gulliver's Travels.' It was given to the world on 28th October 1726, and it has not yet lost its shining youth. It did not come unheralded from the press. As Swift had been a long time about the writing of it, so he had not scrupled to whet the curiosity of his friends. Even when it was finished-there is evidence that the book was partially written before 1720 -he still kept it in a drawer and pondered over it. He seems to have used it as a common subject of his talk. As early as 1st January 1721-22, Bolingbroke was making an eager demand for it. "I long to see your 'Travels,' he wrote, "for, take it as you will, I do not retract what I said, and I will undertake to find, in two pages of your bagatelles, more good sense, useful knowledge, and true religion than you can show me in the works of nineteen or twenty of the profound divines and philosophers of the age." A few months later Esther Vanhomrigh betrays an intimate knowledge of her friend's masterpiece. She has been to She has been to a party at a great lady's, and she wishes that he, too, had been there. The audience seemed to her a creation of the lady's own, "they were SO very obsequious. Their forms and gestures were very like those of baboons and monkeys; they all grinned and chattered at the same time, and that of things I did not understand. The rooms being hung with arras, in which were trees well described, just as I was considering their beauty, and wishing myself in the country with one of these animals snatched my fan, and was so pleased with me, that it seized me with such a panic that I apprehended nothing less than being carried up to the top of the house and served as a friend of yours was." The allusion to the mishap of Gulliver, who was carried off to the roof of the king's palace in Brobdingnag, is plain for all to see. Whether the Yahoos of Twickenham - Pope and his friends-had read the manuscript of 'Gulliver's Travels' or not we have no means of knowing. Even in moments of professed ignorance, they betray a guilty knowledge of the book, but their habit of mystification does but increase our doubt. The book is the subject of common talk. "Your travels I hear much of," says Pope in September 1725. Two months earlier Bolingbroke discusses with Swift his friend's "travels into those countries of pigmies from whence he imports a cargo I value at a higher rate than that of the richest galleon." Nor can Sheridan, already admitted into the secret, manage to hold his tongue, and is the first of many to deplore the Yahoos. He is finely rapped over the knuckles for his pains. 'Sit down and be quiet," Swift writes to him on 11th September 1725, "and mind your own business, as you should do, and contract your friendships, and expect no more from men than such an animal is capable of, and you will every day find my description of Yahoos more resembling." At last Swift confesses to Pope that the work, so long held back, is ready for the press. "I have employed my time," writes the author to his expectant friend, besides ditching, in finishing, correcting, and amending my Travels' in four parts complete, newly augmented, and intended for the press, when the world shall deserve them, or, rather, when a printer shall be found brave enough to venture his ears." And that Swift and his friends apprehended danger is quite evident. Swift had no illusion about the risk he ran. He had paid far too dearly for the indiscretion of The Tale of a Tub' to believe either that he could conceal himself behind a line of his writing, or that he would be granted freedom of criticism by an indulgent world. And from those who were at the pains to discover the real meaning of the 'Travels' their purpose could not be concealed. They who wanted preferment were wise, two hundred years ago, if they said and wrote nothing about public affairs, and those for whom the impulse of free discourse was irresistible, were forced to take refuge in allegory. So Swift, whose conduct was often no less freakishly ironical than his method of writing, discussed his Travels with his friends, and when the moment of publication came hid himself behind disguised names and trusty messengers. On 8th August 1726 one Richard Sympson, a name chosen at hazard, addressed a letter to Mr Motte, who carried on the craft of publishing at Middle Temple Gate in Fleet Street. "Richard Sympson," with the candour we should expect of him, informs Mr Motte that some years ago his cousin, Mr Samuel Gulliver, entrusted him with his book of travels, which had been cut down by judicious editors to one quarter of their original length. These travels Richard Sympson, so he says, has shown to many persons of judgment, and distinction, who are confident that they will sell well. With laudable honesty he warns the excellent Motte that the 'Travels' are a little satirical in one or two places, but he is assured that they will give no offence. And then Sympson comes down to the plain level of commerce. Having confessed that the good |