The Corfu Trilogy Part 22

'Well, I am glad you have managed to get here at last,' said Mother, brightly and untruthfully. 'Do come in and have some tea.'

I carried his accordion and his Gladstone bag and we all went and sat on the balcony and drank tea and stared at each other. There was a long, long silence while Sven munched on a piece of toast and occasionally smiled lovingly at Mother, while she smiled back and desperately searched her mind for suitable intellectual topics of conversation. Sven swallowed a piece of toast and coughed violently. His eyes filled with tears.

'I love toast,' he gasped. 'I simply love it. But it always does this to me.'

We plied him with more tea and presently his paroxysms of coughing died away. He sat forward, his huge hands folded in his lap, showing white as marble against the hideous pattern of his plus fours, and fixed Mother with an inquiring eye.

'Are you,' he inquired wistfully, 'are you, by any chance, musically inclined?'

'Well,' said Mother, startled, and obviously suffering from the hideous suspicion that if she said 'Yes' Sven might ask her to sing, 'I like music, of course, but I... can't play anything.'

'I suppose,' said Sven diffidently, 'you wouldn't like me to play something for you?'

'Oh, er, yes, by all means,' said Mother. 'That would be delightful.'

Sven beamed lovingly at her, picked up his accordion and unstrapped it. He extended it like a caterpillar and it produced noise like the tail-end of a donkey's bray.

'She,' said Sven, lovingly patting the accordion, 'has got some sea air in her.'

He settled his accordion more comfortably against his broad chest, arranged his sausage-like fingers carefully on the keys, closed his eyes, and began to play. It was a very complicated and extraordinary tune. Sven was wearing such an expression of rapture upon his ugly face that I was dying to laugh and was having to bite the insides of my cheeks to prevent it. Mother sat there with a face of frozen politeness like a world-famous conductor being forced to listen to somebody giving a recital on a penny whistle. Eventually the tune came to a harsh, discordant end. Sven heaved a sigh of pure delight, opened his eyes, and smiled at Mother.

'Bach is so beautiful,' he said.

'Oh, yes,' said Mother with well-simulated enthusiasm.

'I'm glad you like it,' said Sven. 'I'll play you some more.'

So for the next hour Mother and I sat there, trapped, while Sven played piece after piece. Every time Mother made some move to seek an escape, Sven would hold up one of his huge hands, as though arresting a line of imaginary traffic, and say, 'Just one more,' archly, and Mother, with a tremulous smile, would sit back in her chair.

It was with considerable relief that we greeted the rest of the family when they arrived back from town. Larry and Sven danced round each other, roaring like a couple of bulls and exchanging pa.s.sionate embraces, and then Larry dragged Sven off to his room and they were closeted there for hours, the sound of gales of laughter occasionally drifting down to us.

'What's he like?' asked Margo.

'Well, I don't really know, dear,' said Mother. 'He's been playing to us ever since he arrived.'

'Playing?' said Leslie. 'Playing what?'

'His barrel organ, or whatever you call it,' said Mother.

'My G.o.d,' said Leslie. 'I can't stand those things. I hope he isn't going to play it all over the house.'

'No, no, dear. I'm sure he won't,' said Mother hastily, but her tone lacked conviction.

Just at that moment Larry appeared on the veranda again.

'Where's Sven's accordion?' he asked. 'He wants to play me something.'

'Oh, G.o.d,' said Leslie. 'There you are. I told you.'

'I hope he isn't going to play that accordion all all the time, dear,' said Mother. 'We've already had an hour of it and it's given me a splitting headache.' the time, dear,' said Mother. 'We've already had an hour of it and it's given me a splitting headache.'

'Of course he won't play it all the time,' said Larry irritably, picking up the accordion. 'He just wants to play me one tune. What was he playing to you, anyway?'

'The most weird music,' said Mother. 'By some man you know the one something to do with trees.'

The rest of the day was, to say the least, harrying. Sven's repertoire was apparently inexhaustible and when, during dinner, he insisted on giving us an impression of meal-time in a Scottish fortress by marching round and round the table playing one of the more untuneful Scottish reels, I could see the defences of the family crumbling. Even Larry was beginning to look a little pensive. Roger, who was uninhibited and straightforward in his dealings with human beings, summed up his opinion of Sven's performance by throwing back his head and howling dismally, a thing he only did normally when he heard the national anthem.

But by the time Sven had been with us three days, we had become more or less inured to his accordion, and Sven himself charmed us all. He exuded a sort of innocent goodness, so that whatever he did one could not be annoyed with him, any more than you can be annoyed with a baby for wetting its nappy. He quickly endeared himself to Mother, for, she discovered, he was an ardent cook himself and carried round an enormous leather-bound notebook in which he jotted down recipes. He and Mother spent hours in the kitchen, teaching each other how to cook their favourite dishes, and the results were meals of such bulk and splendour that all of us began to feel liverish and out of sorts.

It was about a week after his arrival that Sven wandered one morning into the room I proudly called my study. In that ma.s.sive villa we had such a superfluity of rooms that I had succeeded in getting Mother to give me a special room of my own in which I could keep all my creatures.

My menagerie at this time was pretty extensive. There was Ulysses, the scops owl, who spent all day sitting on the pelmet above the window, imitating a decaying olive stump, and occasionally, with a look of great disdain, regurgitating a pellet onto the newspaper spread below him. The dog contingent had been increased to three by a couple of young mongrels who had been given to me for my birthday by a peasant family and who, because of their completely undisciplined behaviour, had been christened Widdle and Puke. There were rows and rows of jam jars, some containing specimens in methylated spirits, others containing microscopic life. And then there were six aquariums that housed a variety of newts, frogs, snakes, and toads. Piles of gla.s.s-topped boxes contained my collections of b.u.t.terflies, beetles, and dragon-flies. Sven, to my astonishment, displayed a deep and almost reverent interest in my collection. Delighted to have somebody displaying enthusiasm for my cherished menagerie, I took him on a carefully conducted tour and showed him everything, even, after swearing him to secrecy, my family of tiny, chocolate-coloured scorpions that I had smuggled into the house unbeknownst to the family. One of the things that impressed Sven most was the underwater bell of the spider, and he stood quite silently in front of it, his great blue eyes fixed on it intensely, watching the spider as she caught her food and carried it up into the little dome. Seven displayed such enthusiasm that I suggested to him, rather tentatively, that he might like to spend a little time in the olive groves with me, so that I could show him some of these creatures in their natural haunts.

'But how kind of you,' he said, his great, ugly face lighting up delightedly. 'Are you sure I won't be interfering?'

No, I a.s.sured him he would not be interfering.

'Then I would be delighted,' said Sven. 'Absolutely delighted.'

So, for the rest of his stay, we would disappear from the villa after breakfast and spend a couple of hours in the olive groves.

On Sven's last day he was leaving on the evening boat we held a little farewell lunch party for him and invited Theodore. Delighted at having a new audience, Sven immediately gave Theodore a half-hour recital of Bach on his accordion.

'Um,' said Theodore, when Sven had finished, 'do you, you know, er... know any other tunes?'

'Just name it, Doctor,' said Sven, spreading out his hands expansively. 'I will play it for you.'

Theodore rocked thoughtfully for a moment on his toes.

'You don't by any chance, I suppose, er... happen to know a song called "There Is a Tavern in the Town"?' he inquired shyly.

'Of course!' said Sven and immediately crashed into the opening bars of the song.

Theodore sang vigorously, his beard bristling, his eyes bright, and when he had come to the end, Sven, without pause, switched into 'Clementine.' Emboldened by Theodore's Philistine att.i.tude towards Bach, Mother asked Sven whether he could play 'If I Were a Blackbird' and 'The Spinning Wheel Song,' which he promptly executed in a masterly fashion.

Then the cab arrived to take him down to the docks, and he embraced each one of us fondly, his eyes full of tears. He climbed into the back of the cab with his Gladstone bag beside him and his precious accordion on his lap, and he waved to us extravagantly as the cab disappeared down the drive.

'Such a manly manly man,' said Mother with satisfaction, as we went inside. 'Quite one of the old school.' man,' said Mother with satisfaction, as we went inside. 'Quite one of the old school.'

'You should have told him that,' said Larry, stretching himself out on the sofa and picking up his book. 'There's nothing h.o.m.o's like better than to be told they are virile and manly.'

'Whatever do you mean?' asked Mother, putting on her spectacles and glaring at Larry suspiciously.

Larry lowered his book and looked at her, puzzled.

'h.o.m.os.e.xuals like to be told they are virile and manly,' he said at length, patiently, and with the air of one explaining a simple problem to a backward child.

Mother continued to glare at him, trying to a.s.sess whether or not it was one of Larry's elaborate leg-pulls.

'You are not trying to tell me,' she said at last, 'that that man is a is a is one of those? those?'

'Dear G.o.d, Mother, of course he is,' said Larry, irritably. 'He's a rampaging old queer the only reason he's gone rushing back to Athens is because he's living with a ravishing seventeen-year-old Cypriot boy and he doesn't trust him.'

'Do you mean to say,' asked Margo, her eyes wide, 'that they get jealous jealous of each other?' of each other?'

'Of course they do,' said Larry, and dismissing the subject, he returned to his book.

'How extraordinary,' said Margo. 'Did you hear that, Mother? They actually get jealous '

'Margo!' said Mother quellingly. 'We won't go into that. What I I want to know, Larry, is why you invited him here if you knew he was, er, that way inclined?' want to know, Larry, is why you invited him here if you knew he was, er, that way inclined?'

'Why not?' Larry inquired.

'Well, you might at least have thought of Gerry Gerry,' said Mother, bristling.

'Gerry?' asked Larry in surprise. 'Gerry? What's he got to do with it?'

'What's he got to do do with it? Really, Larry, you do make me cross. That man could have been a bad influence on the boy if he had had much to do with him.' with it? Really, Larry, you do make me cross. That man could have been a bad influence on the boy if he had had much to do with him.'

Larry sat back on the sofa and looked at Mother. He gave a small exasperated sigh and put his book down.

'For the last three mornings,' he said, 'Gerry's been giving Sven natural history lessons in the olive groves. It doesn't appear to have done either of them irretrievable harm.'

'What?' squeaked Mother. 'What?'

I felt it was time to intervene. After all, I liked Sven. I explained how, early in his stay, he had wandered into my room and had become immediately absorbed and fascinated by my collection of creatures. Feeling that one convert was worth half a dozen saints, I had offered to take him into the olive groves and show him all my favourite haunts. So every morning we would set off into the olives and Sven would spend hours lying on his stomach peering at the busy lines of ants carrying their gra.s.s seeds or watching the bulbous-bodied female mantis laying her frothy egg case on a stone, or peering down the burrows of trap-door spiders, murmuring, 'Wonderful! Wonderful!' to himself, in such an ecstatic tone of voice that it warmed my heart.

'Well, dear,' said Mother, 'I think, in future, if you want to take one of Larry's friends for walks you should tell me first.'

5.

Cuttlefish and Crabs Each morning when I awoke the bedroom would be tiger-striped by the sun peering through the shutters. As usual, I would find that the dogs had managed to crawl onto the bed without my realizing it and would now be occupying more than their fair share, sleeping deeply and peacefully. Ulysses would be sitting by the window staring at the bars of golden sunlight, his eyes slit into malevolent disapproval. Outside, one could hear the hoa.r.s.e, jeering crow of a c.o.c.kerel and the soft murmuring of the hens (a sound soothing as bubbling porridge) as they fed under the orange and lemon trees, the distant clonk of goat bells, sharp chittering of sparrows in the eaves, and the sudden outburst of wheezing, imploring cries that denoted one of the parent swallows had brought a mouthful of food to their brood in the nest beneath my window. I would throw back the sheet and turf the dogs out onto the floor, where they would shake and stretch and yawn, their pink tongues curled like exotic leaves, and then I would go over to the window and throw back the shutters. Leaning out over the sill, the morning sun warm on my naked body, I would scratch thoughtfully at the little pink seals the dogs' fleas had left on my skin, while I got my eyes adjusted to the light. Then I would peer down over the silver olive tops to the beach and the blue sea which lay half a mile away. It was on this beach that, periodically, the fishermen would pull in their nets, and when they did so this was always a special occasion for me, since the net dragged to sh.o.r.e from the depths of the blue bay would contain a host of fascinating sea life which was otherwise beyond my reach.

If I saw the little fishing boats bobbing on the water I would get dressed hurriedly, and taking my collecting gear I would run through the olive trees down to the road and along it until I reached the beach. I knew most of the fishermen by name, but there was one who was my special friend, a tall, powerful young man with a mop of auburn hair. Inevitably, he was called Spiro after Spiridion, so in order to distinguish him from all the other Spiros I knew, I called him Kokino, or red. Kokino took a great delight in obtaining specimens for me, and although he was not a bit interested in the creatures himself, he got considerable pleasure from my obvious happiness.

One day I went down to the beach and the net was half-way in. The fishermen, brown as walnuts, were hauling on the dripping lines, their toes spreading wide in the sand as they pulled the ma.s.sive bag of the net nearer and nearer to the sh.o.r.e.

'Your health, kyrie kyrie Gerry,' Kokino cried to me, waving a large freckled hand in greeting, his mop of hair glinting in the sun like a bonfire. 'Today we should get some fine animals for you, for we put the net down in a new place.' Gerry,' Kokino cried to me, waving a large freckled hand in greeting, his mop of hair glinting in the sun like a bonfire. 'Today we should get some fine animals for you, for we put the net down in a new place.'

I squatted on the sand and waited patiently while the fishermen, chattering and joking, hauled away steadily. Presently the top of the net was visible in the shallow waters, and as it broke surface you could see the glitter and wink of the trapped fish inside it. Hauled out onto the sand, it seemed as though the net were alive, pulsating with the fish inside it, and there was the steady, staccato purring noise of their tails, flapping futilely against each other. The baskets were fetched and the fish were picked out of the net and cast into them. Red fish, white fish, fish with wine-coloured stripes, scorpion fish like flamboyant tapestries. Sometimes there would be an octopus or a cuttlefish leering up from inside the net with a look of alarm in its human-looking eyes. Once all the edible contents of the net had been safely stowed away in the baskets, it was my turn.

In the bottom of the net would be a great heap of stones and seaweed and it was among these that I found my trophies: once a round flat stone from which grew a perfect coralline tree, pure white. It looked like a young beech tree in winter, its branches bare of leaves and covered with a layer of snow. Sometimes there would be cushion starfish, almost as thick as a sponge-cake and almost as large, the edges not forming pointed arms as with normal starfish, but rounded scallops. These starfish would be of a pale fawn colour, with a bright pattern of scarlet blotches. Once I got two incredible crabs, whose pincers and legs when pulled in tight fitted with immaculate precision the sides of their oval sh.e.l.ls. These crabs were white with a rusty-red pattern on the back that looked not unlike an Oriental face. It was hardly what I would call protective colouration, and I imagine they must have had few enemies to be able to move about the sea-bed wearing such a conspicuous livery.

On this particular morning I was picking over a great pile of weed, and Kokino, having stowed away the last of the fish in the baskets, came over to help me. There was the usual a.s.sortment of tiny squids, the size of a match-box, pipe-fish, spider-crabs, and a variety of tiny fish which, in spite of their small size, had been unable to escape through the mesh of the net. Suddenly Kokino gave a little grunt, half surprise and half amus.e.m.e.nt, and picked something out of a tangled skein of seaweed and held it out to me on the calloused palm of his hand. I could hardly believe my eyes, for it was a sea-horse. Browny-green, carefully jointed, looking like some weird chess-man, it lay on Kokino's hand, its strange protruded mouth gasping and its tail coiling and uncoiling frantically. Hurriedly I s.n.a.t.c.hed it from him and plunged it into a jar full of sea-water, uttering a mental prayer to St Spiridion that I was in time to save it. To my delight it righted itself, then hung suspended in the jar, the tiny fins on each side of its horse's head fluttering themselves into a blur. Pausing only to make sure that it really was all right, I scrabbled through the rest of the weed with the fervour of a gold prospector panning a river-bed where he had found a nugget. My diligence was rewarded, for in a few minutes I had six sea-horses of various sizes hanging suspended in the jar. Enraptured by my good luck, I bid Kokino and the other fishermen a hasty farewell and raced back to the villa.

Here I unceremoniously foreclosed on fourteen slowworms and usurped their aquarium to house my new catches. I knew that the oxygen in the jar in which the sea-horses were imprisoned would not last for long and if I wanted to keep them alive I would have to move quickly. Carrying the aquarium, I raced down to the sea again, washed it out carefully, filled the bottom with sand and dashed back to the villa with it; then I had to run down to the sea again three times with buckets to fill it up with the required amount of water. By the time I had poured the last bucket into it, I was so hot and sweaty I began to wonder whether the sea-horses were worth it. But as soon as I tipped them into the aquarium I knew that they were. I had placed a small, twiggy, dead olive branch in the aquarium, which I had anch.o.r.ed to the sand, and as the sea-horses plopped out of the jar they righted themselves and then, like ponies freshly released in a field, they sped round and round the aquarium, their fins moving so fast that you could not see them and each one gave the appearance of being driven by some small internal motor. Having, as it were, galloped round their new territory, they all made for the olive branch, entwined their tails round it lovingly, and stood there gravely at attention.

The sea-horses were an instant success. They were about the only animal that I had introduced to the villa that earned the family's unanimous approval. Even Larry used to pay furtive visits to my study in order to watch them zooming and bobbing to and fro in their tank. They took up a considerable amount of my time, for I found that the sea-water soon grew rancid, and in order to keep it clear and fresh I had to go down to the sea with buckets four or five times a day. This was an exhausting process, but I was glad that I kept it up, for otherwise I would not have witnessed a very extraordinary sight.

One of the sea-horses, obviously an old specimen since he was nearly black, had a very well-developed paunch. This I merely attributed to age; then I noticed one morning there was a line along the paunch, almost as though it had been slit with a razor blade. I was watching this and wondering whether the sea-horses had been fighting and if so what they used as a weapon (for they seemed so defenceless), when to my complete and utter astonishment the slit opened a little wider and out swam a minute and fragile replica of the sea-horse. I could hardly believe my eyes, but as soon as the first baby was clear of the pouch and hanging in the clear water, another one joined it and then another and another until there were twenty microscopic sea-horses floating round their giant parent like a little cloud of smoke. Terrified lest the other adult sea-horses eat the babies, I hurriedly set up another aquarium and placed what I fondly imagined to be the mother and her offspring in it. Keeping two aquariums going with fresh water was an even more Herculean task and I began to feel like a pit-pony; but I was determined to continue until Thursday, when Theodore came to tea, so that I could show him my acquisitions.

'Aha,' he said, peering into the tanks with professional zeal, 'these are really most interesting. Sea-horses are, of course, according to the books, supposed to be found here, but I myself have er... you know... never seen them previously.'

I showed Theodore the mother with her swarm of tiny babies.

'No, no,' said Theodore. 'That's not the mother, that's the father.'

At first I thought that Theodore was pulling my leg, but he went on to explain that when the female laid the eggs and they had been fertilized by the male, they were taken into this special brood-pouch by the male and there they matured and hatched, so what I had thought was a proud mother was in reality a proud father.

Soon the strain of keeping my stable of sea-horses with a supply of microscopic sea-food and fresh water became too great, and so with the utmost reluctance I had to take them down to the sea and release them.

It was Kokino who, as well as contributing specimens from his nets to my collection, showed me one of the most novel fishing methods I had ever come across.

I met him one day down by the sh.o.r.e putting a kerosene tin full of sea-water into his rickety little boat. Reposing in the bottom of the tin was a large and very soulful-looking cuttlefish. Kokino had tied a string round it where the head met the great egg-shaped body. I asked him where he was going and he said he was going to fish for cuttlefish. I was puzzled because his boat did not contain any lines or nets or even a trident. How then did he propose to catch cuttlefish?

'With love,' said Kokino mysteriously.

I felt it was my duty, as a naturalist, to investigate every method of capturing animals, so I asked Kokino whether it was possible for me to accompany him in order to see this mysterious process. We rowed the boat out into the blue bay until it hung over a couple of fathoms of crystal clear water. Here Kokino took the end of the long string that was attached to the cuttlefish and tied it carefully round his big toe. Then he picked up the cuttlefish and dropped it over the side of the boat. It floated in the water for a brief moment, looking up at us with what seemed to be an incredulous expression, and then, squirting out jets of water, it shot off in a series of jerks, trailing the string behind it, and soon disappeared in the blue depths. The string trailed gradually over the side of the boat, then tautened against Kokino's toe. He lit a cigarette and rumpled his flaming hair.

'Now,' he said, grinning at me, 'we will see what love can do.'

He bent to his oars and rowed the boat slowly and gently along the surface of the bay, with frequent pauses during which he stared with intense concentration at the string fastened to his toe. Suddenly he gave a little grunt, let the oars fold to the side of the boat like the wings of a moth, and grasping the line, he started to pull it in. I leaned over the side of the boat, staring down into the clear water, my eyes straining towards the end of the taut black line. Presently, in the depths, a dim blur appeared as Kokino hauled more quickly on the line and the cuttlefish came into sight. As it got closer, I saw, to my astonishment, it was not one cuttlefish but two, locked together in a pa.s.sionate embrace. Swiftly Kokino hauled them alongside and with a quick flip of the line landed them in the bottom of the boat. So engrossed was the male cuttlefish with his lady-love that not even the sudden transition from his watery home to the open air seemed to worry him in the slightest. He was clasping the female so tightly that it took Kokino some time to prise him loose and then drop him into the tin of sea-water.

The novelty of this form of fishing greatly appealed to me, although I had the sneaking feeling that perhaps it was a little unsporting. It was rather like catching dogs by walking around with a b.i.t.c.h in season on the end of a long leash. Within an hour we had caught five male cuttlefish in a comparatively small area of the bay and it amazed me that there should be such a dense population of them in such a small area, for they were a creature that you very rarely saw unless you went fishing at night. The female cuttlefish, throughout this time, played her part with a sort of stoical indifference, but even so I felt that she should be rewarded, so I prevailed upon Kokino to let her go, which he did with obvious reluctance.

I asked him how he knew that the female was ready to attract the males, and he shrugged.

'It is the time,' he said.

Could you then at this time, I inquired, put any female on the end of a string and obtain results?

'Yes,' said Kokino. 'But of course, some females, like some women, are more attractive than others and so you get better results with those.'

My mind boggled at the thought of having to work out the comparative merits between two female cuttlefish. I felt it was a great pity that this method could not be employed with other creatures. The idea, for example, of dropping a female sea-horse over the side on a length of cotton and then pulling her up in a tangled entourage of pa.s.sionate males was very appealing. Kokino was, as far as I knew, the only exponent of this peculiar brand of fishing, for I never saw any other fisherman employ it, and indeed, the ones I mentioned it to had never even heard of it and were inclined to treat my story with raucous disbelief.

This tattered coast-line near the villa was particularly rich in sea life, and as the water was comparatively shallow it made it easier for me to capture things. I had succeeded in inveigling Leslie into making me a boat, which greatly facilitated my investigations. This craft, almost circular, flat-bottomed, and with a heavy list to starboard, had been christened the Bootle-b.u.mtrinket Bootle-b.u.mtrinket and, next to my donkey, was my most cherished possession. Filling the bottom with jars, tins, and nets and taking a large parcel of food with me, I would set sail in the and, next to my donkey, was my most cherished possession. Filling the bottom with jars, tins, and nets and taking a large parcel of food with me, I would set sail in the Bootle-b.u.mtrinket Bootle-b.u.mtrinket accompanied by my crew of Widdle, Puke, and Roger and, occasionally, Ulysses, my owl, should he feel so inclined. We would spend the hot, breathless days exploring remote little bays and rocky and weed-encrusted archipelagoes. We had many curious adventures on these expeditions. Once we found a whole acre of sea-bed covered with a great swarm of sea-hares, their royal-purple, egg-shaped bodies with a neat pleated frill along the edge and two strange protuberances on the head looking, in fact, extraordinarily like the long ears of a hare. There were hundreds of them gliding over the rocks and across the sand, all heading towards the south of the island. They did not touch each other or display any interest in each other, so I a.s.sumed it was not a mating gathering, but some form of migration. accompanied by my crew of Widdle, Puke, and Roger and, occasionally, Ulysses, my owl, should he feel so inclined. We would spend the hot, breathless days exploring remote little bays and rocky and weed-encrusted archipelagoes. We had many curious adventures on these expeditions. Once we found a whole acre of sea-bed covered with a great swarm of sea-hares, their royal-purple, egg-shaped bodies with a neat pleated frill along the edge and two strange protuberances on the head looking, in fact, extraordinarily like the long ears of a hare. There were hundreds of them gliding over the rocks and across the sand, all heading towards the south of the island. They did not touch each other or display any interest in each other, so I a.s.sumed it was not a mating gathering, but some form of migration.

On another occasion, a group of languid, portly, and good-natured dolphins discovered us riding at anchor in a small bay, and presumably attracted by the friendly colour scheme of orange and white in which the Bootle-b.u.mtrinket Bootle-b.u.mtrinket was painted, they disported themselves around us, leaping and splashing, coming up alongside the boat with their grinning faces, and breathing deep, pa.s.sionate sighs at us from their blow-holes. A young one, more daring than the adults, even dived under the boat and we felt his back sc.r.a.pe along its flat bottom. My attention was equally divided between enjoying this delightful sight and trying to quell mutiny on the part of my crew, who had all reacted to the arrival of the dolphins in their individual ways. Widdle, never a staunch warrior, had lived up to his name copiously and crouched shivering in the bows, whining to himself. Puke had decided that the only way to save his life was to abandon ship and swim for the sh.o.r.e; he had to be restrained forcibly, as did Roger, who was convinced that if he was only allowed to jump into the sea with the dolphins, he would be able to kill them all, single-handedly, in a matter of moments. was painted, they disported themselves around us, leaping and splashing, coming up alongside the boat with their grinning faces, and breathing deep, pa.s.sionate sighs at us from their blow-holes. A young one, more daring than the adults, even dived under the boat and we felt his back sc.r.a.pe along its flat bottom. My attention was equally divided between enjoying this delightful sight and trying to quell mutiny on the part of my crew, who had all reacted to the arrival of the dolphins in their individual ways. Widdle, never a staunch warrior, had lived up to his name copiously and crouched shivering in the bows, whining to himself. Puke had decided that the only way to save his life was to abandon ship and swim for the sh.o.r.e; he had to be restrained forcibly, as did Roger, who was convinced that if he was only allowed to jump into the sea with the dolphins, he would be able to kill them all, single-handedly, in a matter of moments.

It was during one of these expeditions that I came across a magnificent trophy that was, indirectly, responsible for leading Leslie into court, although I did not know it at the time. The family had all gone into town, with the exception of Leslie, who was recovering from a very severe attack of dysentery. It was his first day's convalescence and he lay on the sofa in the drawing-room as weak as a kitten, sipping iced tea and reading a large manual on ballistics. He had informed me, in no uncertain terms, that he did not want me hanging around making a nuisance of myself and so, as I did not want to go into the town, I had taken the dogs out in Bootle-b.u.mtrinket Bootle-b.u.mtrinket.