Puslapio vaizdai
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is not in itself a pleasing occupation, so something had to be done. I approached a stall, and pointing at a queerlyshaped but reasonably sized creature, asked its price. The intelligent vendor of it immediately picked it up and began to put it in paper. I stammered, "Lé! lé! lé!" which I believed to be the local method of saying noeither it was or my violent shakes of the head were international in their emphasis, but anyhow the monger desisted. There were some very small and beautiful red fish which tempted me, but Octavia would be sure to think me heartless, they looked so like gold-fish. Beyond them was a creature whose expression made my blood as cold as his own. I hoped he was caught very far from the shore, for if one met one while bathing, death from shock would be the verdict. I tried once more, and my eye fell on a reasonable mild looking animal, about the size of cut-and-can't-come-again salmon, and in a suit of quite conventional grey scales. pointed at it with my parasol, and again asked, "How much?" trying to look as successfully interrogative as in the jeweller's. But the fishmonger's brain was of a lower order, as befitted his less exalted trade, and with the inevitable "Si, signora," he again picked up the resigned-looking fish, and with much grinning and empressement wrapped it in a most inefficient remnant of paper,

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and laid it in my reluctant arms, making me feel like a godmother at godmother at a christening. Having attained his object, he seemed to have less difficulty in announcing its price, and even introduced me me to the animal, "Signora-lampouki— ve' goo'."

I saw Bobbie arrive at the landing-stage, but dissembled myself behind the waiting row of carrozze till the other officers who had come in the same launch had removed themselves. This was not all shyness, but the lampouki, lying lankly in my arms like a weary child, made me unusually self-conscious.

The great ditch comes right down to the shore just here, and on the face of the cliff-like walls there has been erected a lift, so instead of clattering up the steep streets in a carrozza we took this contrivance. Surely it is the most curious lift in Christendom-hanging on by its teeth to the great limestone cutting, and giving those in the cage a slowly widening view out over that whole end of the island. The lift deposits one on the Barracca, which I never can leave without at least one long look out over the harbour to the three cities opposite. The three cities-Cospicua, Senglea, and Vitoriosa-are not separated but in name, but the harbour's lesser arms run up between them, and each point is headed by a stately fortress. Between them and the outermost fort, and high up, stands a splendid

looking palace. I asked Bobbie but there was no such a person who lived in it.

"The poor blokes who go sick-it's the naval hospital. Bighi, its name is; not much palace about it."

I looked it up later in the library, and found that I was more nearly right than Master Bobbie imagined, for it was Bighi that Napoleon had decided to make his Mediterranean palace, only the scheme somehow fell through, in measure due, no doubt, to Bobbie's history - making and historyignoring Service.

Bobbie was not due at the Admiral's for half an hour, so we wandered down Strada Reale to have an ice at Bizazza's. I was, of course, still carrying the half-warmed fish in my bosom. The very négligé dress of thin paper my lampouki was garbed in had evidently been included in the awful curse from "Princess Ida "and you yourselves, at inconvenient moments, come undone," for by the time we neared Bizazza's, its unhappy tail was flapping nakedly over my arm. The Navy, personified by Bobbie, took the situation in hand at once. Strongly and silently, Bobbie lead me by the un-fish arm up a narrow side-street, and without a moment's hesitation in at the half-open door of a house. He drew

his sword. Still the Strong-Silent-Man, he took the innocent fish from my unresisting arm. Association of ideas made me murmur anxiously, "Sister Anne! Sister Anne !

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to interfere, and Bobbie carried out his execution, but on Fatima's-I mean the lampouki's-tail. Then, covering the bloodless stump with the tail of its paper gown, he returned the mutilated corpse to my arms with a bow. The naval motto should surely be, "Suaviter in modo, fortiter in re."

"That," said Bobbie, as we emerged from the borrowed house, "is the first time I have ever used my sword."

After four years of war, that seems a very reasonable record.

By the time we had eaten our ices and returned up the Strada Reale, en route for the Admiral's, the lampouki's dress had suffered still more from the damp and clammy body within, and had now given way at the head, and the creature looked out at me with its glassy patient eye!

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to be one of the diners, but it spurred him to invention. He suggested my covering its head with my handkerchief. I attempted to obey, but my handkerchief on the lampouki's head was about as much the letter of the law as a bridesmaid's wisp of tulle and two roses! For once I devoutly wanted to observe the spirit of St Paul's order, but although the spirit was willing, my handkerchief was small. Bobbie, that mariner of infinite resource and sagacity," came to the rescue and produced one of more Pauline dimensions, and we tied it over the lampouki's head with a couple of knots round its neck. What the thing looked like now it would be difficult to say, and Bobbie could not stay to think, but betook himself and his fishmongery sword to Admiralty House. I had at least an hour to wait for Bobbie's return, so I was confronted with the old problem, "how to dispose of the body." Being innocent of the original murder makes it no easier. I decided to go into the Ladies' Room at the Club, and at least lay the thing out of my arms. I did. As a rule, one can ring many times before producing a waiter, but this afternoon, because I did not want any, there were two standing in the room all the time. Another problem in cause and effect: does drink lead to crime, or crime lead to drink? My feeling of crime, although morally as innocent as a babe, made me order a "Traveller "

cocktail, just to get rid of the waiter. But one remained, so in desperation I sent him after the first to change my order to tea, as it would take longer to get. Alone, but for some women with their noses in fashion papers, I bent down, and deposited the body under the sofa. So far good. But by the end of my tea, I was haunted with the belief that now I could smell it! But my mind was soon turned off the painful subject by the return of Bobbie and two others from his ship, whom he had not invited, and quite obviously did not want.

He made this abundantly clear with his laconic answers and unsmiling countenance, so I had, of course, to make up the balance on the lack of his amiability with a larger share of my own. This did not mend matters somehow. Then I felt sure I smelt It again! Quite illogically, I found myself talking nonsense nineteen to the dozen, as if the smell could be kept down by words. Perhaps it was a sound enough theory, for the others remained cheerfully unconscious, but Bobbie, who did not talk, sat with an expression which conveyed the idea that not only under the sofa, but at the table, were noisome and abhorrent animals. Presently his cheerful, if thick-skinned, fellow-officers removed themselves and Bobbie's stern demeanour relaxed. The fish had, after all, to be cooked as well as bought, so it was soon time

to be making tracks for our distant purple patch of a house. Gingerly I felt for the lampouki. Out it came, trailing clouds of inglorious damp paper from under the sofa, which was its temporary home. Even Bobbie's handkerchief was transparent from damp, and the eye of the mutilated beast gazed at us dimly, but reproachfully. Bobbie returned the look, flinched, then tore off the outer sheet of the Weekly Times,' and covered the almost naked lampouki with a delicacy worthy of Lady Godiva; and it "went forth clothed on with "-newspapers!

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When dressing for our dinnerparty I asked Octavia where she and her Capitano had been.

"Captain Castellani," corrected Octavia reprovingly, "drove me over by Corrodino."

"What an uninteresting direction! Was it to visit the Military Prison, or what saw you there'?"

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Octavia answered with unwonted offhand airiness

"Oh, we looked through the famous cemetery there, you know."

I had vague recollections of some bilious cynic remarking that Malta had only one good thing in it-a really inviting cemetery.

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"What is its name again? I asked. Dolorosa, or something like that, isn't it?"

"Something of the sort, I think," Octavia continued with extreme nonchalance.

the day wandering among those dismal coteries of yews and tombstones, should then refrain from correcting me when I knew I had the name wrong, and should assume a carelessness of manner quite foreign to her, made me suspect the worst. Yet it could hardly be ! It is only my retrograde feminine mind that will jump to these unfeminist conclusions. I could imagine Octavia decorously wooed and won by a strong silent man, or a suffragan bishop, but not-oh, not-an Italian Capitano with little English and less religion ! If that were possible, then none of us are safe-there, indeed, but for the grace of Bobbie, might I go with the Chocolate Soldier!

The object of all this talk and thought was downstairs when we got there, and he and Bobbie were concocting cocktails, Bobbie being the nearest thing we had to a host.

The ginger-beer standard in drink was literally ours as a rule, so we had not properly appreciated till now how much the more alcoholic drinks were also on that standard, at least figuratively. Even in the Club, Bobbie explained, cocktails were only sixpence, so that making them at home really worked out cheaper than sodawater, which, like most statistics, proves what he wanted to believe with great satisfaction, at least to himself. I never believe any of these calculations anyhow: they are

That Octavia should spend generally wrapped round some

VOL. CCXV.-NO. MCCXCIX

C 2

unpalatable fact to induce you to swallow it. Bobbie pointed out that in this instance I swallowed the thing they were wrapped round easily enough.

Undoubtedly the Capitano's English is improving-and he assures me that so is Octavia's Italian.

"Our lezons, they are quid pro quo-my beautiful Italian for your so deeficult and so hessing Englis'."

Even when he renders our undoubtedly sibilant tongue with a sound like a snake, Octavia remains merely amused -condesscendingly amussed! She looked less serene when the Capitano went on

"Mees Fanning she moch like our beautiful Addolorata cimetière-to-day you see all ze world taking flowers for Les Morts-it ees not a gay day

to have for her fête, but we take flowers and in ze cart zey look gay, and in ze cimetière we lay zem on ze graves."

O Octavia! Octavia! Your only hope will be to become Higher and Higher Church, and so enjoy all the picturesque customs and yet not lose your soul-still less your sense of superiority!

I was almost sorry for the erring Protestant as this cat walked out of the bag, and so turned the conversation to the first topic that occurred to me.

"Does Miss Mason learn Italian too?" I asked.

But no, "Mees Maison " only knits endless jumpers for her own adornment, and writes lengthy letters to her " fiancé " in England. Good, then! all is well!

(To be continued.)

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