Miscellaneous Matters, ending with a “Scrimmage” under Water.

We are back again in Hong-Kong—in the pagoda—with our old friends seated comfortably round their little table enjoying a good supper.

Pretty little Mrs Machowl has prepared it, and is now assisting at the partaking of it. Young Master Teddy Machowl is similarly engaged on his father’s knee. The child has grown appallingly during its father’s absence! Ram-stam and Chok-foo are in waiting—gazing at each other with the affection of Chinese lovers re-united.

“What a sight you are, Rooney!” said Mrs Machowl, pausing between bites to look at her husband.

“Sure it’s the same may be said of yoursilf, cushla!” replied Rooney, stuffing his child’s mouth with sweet potato.

“Yes, but it’s what a fright you are, I mane,” said Mrs Machowl.

“An’ it’s what a purty cratur you are that I mane,” replied Rooney, repeating the dose to Teddy, who regarded his father with looks of deep affection.

“Ah! Go ’long wid you. Sure it’s your nose is spoilt entirely,” said Mrs Machowl.

“An’ it’s your own that is swaiter than iver, which more than makes up the difference,” retorted her lord.—“Howld it open as wide as ye can this time, Ted, me boy; there, that’s your sort—but don’t choke, ye spalpeen.”

There seemed indeed some occasion for the latter admonition, for Teddy, unused to such vigorous treatment, was beginning to look purple in the face and apoplectic about the eyes. In short, there is every probability that an attack of croup, or something dreadful, would have ensued if the child’s mother had not risen hastily and snatched it away from the would-be infanticide.

“Now then, Ram-stam and Chok-foo,” said Edgar Berrington, putting down his spoon, “clear away the rat’s-tail soup, and bring on the roast puppy.”

Grinning from ear to ear, and with almost closed eyes, the Chinese servitors obeyed.

While they cleared the table and laid the second course, the conversation became general. Previously it had been particular, referring chiefly to the soup and the free circulation of the salt.

“So, then,” observed Joe Baldwin, leaning back in his chair, “we must make up our minds to be content with what we have got. Well, it an’t so bad after all! Let me see. How much did you say the total is, Mister Eddy?”

“Close upon eight thousand five hundred pounds.”

“A tidy little sum,” observed Rooney, with an air of satisfaction.

“Eight thousand—eh?” repeated Joe; “hum, well, we’ll cut off the five hundred for expenses and passage home, and that leaves eight thousand clear, which, according to agreement, gives each of us two thousand pounds.”

Maxwell, who still looked pale and thin from the effects of his late accident, nodded his head slowly, and growled, “Two thousand—jus’ so.”

“An’ that, Molly, my dear,” said Rooney, “if properly invisted, gives you an’ me a clair income—only think, an income, Molly—of wan hundred a year! It’s true, cushla! That ye won’t be able to rowl in yer carridge an’ walk in silks an’ satins on that income, but it’ll pay the rint an’ taxes, owld girl, an’ help Teddy to a collidge eddication—to say nothin’ o’ pipes an’ baccy. Ochone!—if we’d only not lost the first haul, we’d have bin millerinaires be this time. I wouldn’t have called the Quane me grandmother.”

“Come, Rooney, be grateful for what you’ve got,” said Edgar. “Enough is as good as a feast.”

“Ah! Sur, it’ll be time to say that when we’ve finished the puppy,” replied the Irishman, as Chok-foo placed on the board a savoury roast which bore some resemblance to the animal named, though, having had its head and legs amputated, there could be no absolute certainty on the point. Whatever it was, the party attacked it with relish, and silence reigned until it was finished, after which conversation flowed again—somewhat languidly at first. When, however, pipes were got out by those who smoked, and chairs were placed in the verandah, and no sound was heard around save the yelling of Chinese children who were romping in the Chinese kennel that skirted the pagoda, and the champing of the jaws of Ram-stam and Chok-foo as they masticated inside—then came the feast of reason, not to mention the flow of soul.

“I wonder what our friends at Whitstable will say to this ventur’ of ours,” said Maxwell.

“Have you many friends there?” asked Edgar.

“Many?—of course I has. W’y, I suppose every English diver must have friends there.”

“Where is it?” asked Edgar.

“Why, sir, don’t you know Whitstable?” exclaimed Joe Baldwin, in surprise.

“You forget, Joe,” replied Edgar, with a smile, “that although I have learnt how to dive, and have read a good deal about the history of diving, I am only an amateur after all, and cannot be supposed to know everything connected with the profession. All I know about Whitstable is that it is a port somewhere in the south of England.”

“Right, sir,” said Joe, “but it’s more than that; it lies on the coast of Kent, and is famous for its oyster-beds and its divers. How it came to be a place of resort for divers I don’t know, but so it is, an’ I have heard say it was divin’ for oysters in days of old that gave the natives a taste for the work. Anyhow, they’ve got the taste very decided somehow, an’ after every spell o’ dirty weather they’re sure to have telegrams from all parts of the coast, and you’ll see Lloyds’ agents huntin’ up the divers in the public-houses an’ packin’ ’em off wi’ their gear right and left by rail to look after salvage.

“These men,” continued Joe, “are most of ’em handicraftmen as well as divers, because you know, sir, it would be of no use to send down a mere labourer to repair the bottom of a ship, no matter how good he was at divin’; so, you’ll find among ’em masons, and shipbuilders, and carpenters, and engineers—”

“Ah!” interrupted Edgar, “I was just wondering how they would manage if it were found necessary to have the engines of a sunk steamer taken to pieces and sent up.”

“Well, sir,” rejoined Joe, “they’ve got men there who can dive, and who know as much about marine engines as you do yourself. And these men make lots of tin, for a good diver can earn a pound a day, an’ be kept in pretty regular employment in deep water. In shallow water he can earn from ten to fifteen shillings a day. Besides this, they make special arrangements for runnin’ extra risks. Then the savin’ they sometimes effect is amazin’. Why, sir, although you do know somethin’ of the advantages of diving, you can never know fully what good they do in the world at large. Just take the case of the Agamemnon at Sebastopol—”

“Och!” interrupted Rooney, whose visage was perplexed by reason of his pipe refusing to draw well, “wasn’t (puff) that a good job intirely (puff! There; you’re all right at last!) He was a friend o’ mine that managed that job. Tarry, we called him—though that wasn’t his right name. This is how it was. The fleet was blazin’ away at the fortifications, an’ of coorse the fortifications—out o’ politeness if nothin’ else—was blazin’ away at the fleet, and smoke was curlin’ up like a chimbley on fire, an’ big balls was goin’ about like pais in a rattle, an’ small shot like hail was blowin’ horizontal, an’ men was bein’ shot an’ cut to pieces, an’ them as warn’t was cheerin’ as if there was any glory in wholesale murther—bah! I wouldn’t give a day at Donnybrook wid a shillelah for all the sieges of Sebastopool as ever I heard tell of. Well, suddintly, bang goes a round shot slap through the hull of the Agamemnon, below the water-line! Here was a pretty to do! The ordinary coorse in this case would have bin to haul out of action, go right away to Malta, an’ have the ship docked and repaired there. But what does they do? Why, they gets from under fire for a bit, and sends down my friend Tarry to look at the hole. He goes down, looks at it, then comes up an’ looks at the Commodore,—bowld as brass.

“‘I can repair it,’ says Tarry.

“‘Well, do,’ says the Commodore.

“So down he goes an’ does it, an’ very soon after that the Agamemnon went into action again, and blazed away at the walls o’ the owld place harder than ever.”

“That was a good case, an’ a true one,” said Joe Baldwin, with an approving nod.

“And these divers, Mr Edgar,” continued Joe, “sometimes go on their own hook, like we have done this time, with more or less luck. There was one chum of mine who took it into his head to try his chances at the wreck of the Royal Charter, long after all hope of further salvage had been abandoned, and in a short time he managed to recover between three and four hundred pounds sterling.”

“An immense amount of money, they do say, was recovered from the Royal Charter by divers,” observed Maxwell.

“That is true, and............