nearly twenty flowers and grasses, weaving their pretty names into his verses with great naturalness and charm.

I think that this book may become, in its way, a classic; as has been said it is the one solitary treatise on any scale of the art of deerstalking from a professional's point of view. In its 250 pages it sets down clearly all that the hunter need to know or can be taught by writing; what is not here must be learnt by experience.

And to bring before the eye yet more clearly the wild mountains and glens where the hunter pursues his distant quarry, there are some beautiful photographs, taken in various forests, by Mr. Frank Wallace.

I am sure that everyone who has to do with deer will be grateful to this fine old forester for his interesting and entertaining book.

GILFRID HARTLEY.

468

HEARTS OF OAK.

I.

MR. HILARY SLEATH was one of those people who ought to make a fortune but are always, on the contrary, on the verge of starvation.

He was a tall, lank, sandy-haired person, slightly good-looking, decidedly ingenious, and educated in parts. He wasn't a gentleman. He wore a pair of horn-rimmed glasses on the bridge of his rather long nose-not that he needed them to see with, but because they contributed, he thought, to the fierceness and sagacity of his appearance, and at any rate masked a pair of eyes which Nature had designed in a mild and rather washy blue. Hilary was ashamed of those eyes. He looked into them every morning while he shaved, and every morning they disgusted him afresh.

'You're weak,' said Hilary, that's what you are.'

It was Hilary's education that had warped him, or rather had brought to light a peculiar and unfortunate kink in his character. Anything he wanted to know-any odd thing to which he took a fancy-he could master with preposterous rapidity; but like so many of us, he could not take a fancy to the proper things. For instance, in the sphere of languages, he knew not a word of French, German, or Italian but was thoroughly conversant with archaic Portuguese and Dutch-tongues which, however attractive in themselves, are generally acknowledged as of less practical value in the struggle for existence. Again, in the sphere of geography, he confined himself to The Atlantic Pilot' and similar useful volumes; he could have navigated a ship through Torres Straits but he couldn't have told you the chief town of Poland. I doubt if he had any clear ideas on the Norman Conquest or the Petition of Right; on the other hand he could quote you, with names of ships and their captains, the annals of almost every notable voyage from Magellan onwards. In a word, his mind was an encyclopædia in some matters, in others a blank.

It is hard to make a living in this grudging world on a knowledge of seventeenth-century Dutch, Vasco da Gama's voyages, and the principal coastwise lights of Brazil. More often than not Hilary failed. Employers of labour in Great Britain were not interested

in these matters-or were insufficiently interested to pay anyone for knowing them; and Hilary fell into the usual complacent assumption that there was 'less competition in the Colonies.' He migrated, only to find that while there was no doubt less competition in knowledge of these obscure subjects, there was even less competition still to employ Hilary Sleath. He started in South Africa-principally because he had not the price of a passage to Australia; and in South Africa he landed presently on his beam ends.

Nature, however, is a just creature; for all parasites she has created the appropriate host. Why parasites should persist is another question, but no doubt Nature knows best. She declined to exterminate Hilary. In Durban Hilary met an Indian publicist returning to his native land. The publicist had accumulated about nine hundred pages of pencil notes about South Africa and was utterly unable to make head or tail of them; Hilary persuaded him that he required a secretary and succeeded-principally because the publicist could not understand half what Hilary said and was too proud to admit it. I need not say that Hilary was a ready optimist.

'The white man's top dog in India,' he said besottedly. Once I'm there I'm bound to get on.'

Once in India, however, the publicist swindled Hilary over his pay, dumped him in Madras and disappeared up-country to some place whose name Hilary could not remember. (If you can string off the principal lights and soundings between Birkenhead and Buenos Ayres, little things like addresses are apt to slip your memory.) Madras was warm climatically but bitter cold when it came to employment; Hilary sank from a Mount Road hotel to a Vepery boarding-house and thence to a café in Georgetown. There is a delightful statute in India called the European Vagrancy Act, under which destitutes in Hilary's position can present themselves before a magistrate and receive the rail fare to the next magistrate's headquarters; if the magistrate is soft they may receive also sums varying from two to ten rupees from his private purse. Hilary came within close touch of this Act. He would have come closer still but for the reappearance in a new form of Nature's host.

In a public reading-room one day Hilary read an advertisement requiring a man with a 'knowledge of old Dutch and Portuguese; some nautical experience preferred.' He put on his hornrimmed glasses and read it again, but it remained unchanged.

Inconceivable fact; someone was actually advertising for a person of just his odd accomplishments!

Box Number 7734 proved to be an elderly gentleman of the name of Sidney Murpin. He lived in a little hutch-like house surrounded by books and the smell that hutch-like houses acquire in a hot climate. He looked at Hilary's still presentable figure dubiously.

'I didn't expect I thought perhaps some poor Anglo-Indian. I would not be able to offer emoluments

'We don't need to quarrel over the emoluments, sir,' said Hilary grandly. If the work proves interestin' I would accept something quite small.'

Mr. Murpin named something quite, quite small; Hilary raised him by fifty per cent.; they compromised on half of that. 'And exes?' said Hilary.

'There will be no exes,' said Mr. Murpin, firmly. 'I may give you something for tram-fares now and then.' He proceeded to explain that he was a retired Port Officer and was engaged on a monumental work-namely a history of the British mercantile marine in Indian waters from 1600 to 1750.

'You goin' to call it that?' said Hilary, interestedly.

Mr. Murpin disclaimed any such intention; the book was to be called Hearts of Oak.'

'Snappy,' said Hilary.

'I needn't tell you, Mr.-er-Sleath-what strange names we have, you and I! we ought to work well together-I needn't tell you that for the first part of that period the British Mercantile Marine took a second or third place in Indian waters. All the old records are in Dutch or Portuguese. Unfortunately I don't know these languages. That's why—'

'I see,' said Hilary, helpfully. 'You've come to the right man, Mr. Murpin.' Mr. Murpin was good enough to say that he hoped so indeed.

All this is by way of preamble to explain why Hilary sat one pleasant October afternoon deciphering and translating some crabbed Dutch journals relating to the East Coast port of Ghausti. I have explained the odd nature of Hilary's education, I have mentioned a certain ingeniousness of his disposition and I have pictured him to you as ambitious, pushful and-hard up. That in turn should explain his interest when he found himself translating the following paragraphs.

'This day the English ship Mayflower lay in the roads. Her captain and his mate having come ashore and the weather freshening their boat was capsized in crossing the bar and the captain was drowned.'

And later

'This day the English ship was driven ashore near the Port and wrecked.'

Hilary sat and looked at these. The actual dates were not very clear, but the journal was of the year 1651 and the first extract was certainly later than July. There might have been an interval of days between the two-say a fortnight-or there might have been over a month. The journal was very much battered and torn and pages were missing. In any case it didn't much matter; if her captain was lost on the first occasion, quite likely the ship lay off Ghausti waiting instructions. True, it didn't say that the English ship that was wrecked was 'the English ship Mayflower,' but it didn't say it wasn't. There wouldn't be so many English ships calling at Ghausti in 1651; the two might-nay, musthave been one.

And the Mayflower! There is only one Mayflower in history— that in which the ancestors of all the best American families landed in New England. Hilary began reciting Mrs. Hemans under his breath. In the course of a varied career Hilary had visited America and he had some conception of the magic of that word. And here she was!

'Gosh!' said Hilary. 'If we could find that wreck—or even a few Americans. . . .'

II.

The depôt of the Indo-American Oil Syndicate at Ghausti stands on the ultimate sand-spit of that horrible and decaying town. Two mud-creeks, deep and incredibly foul, run on either side of it and it is separated from the town by the tail end of a seasonal swamp. In the hot weather this is a blur of flame, in the wet a blur of water; and through flame or water the unfortunate Agent of the Syndicate has to tramp daily. Looking landward, he sees beyond the swamp a huddle of scrawny toddy-palms, the masts of boats lying in the canal lock and the wonderful tower of the renowned Venkatramana Temple. Looking seawards, he sees a forgotten lighthouse and far, far out an anchored steamer waiting to do such business as Ghausti still can boast.