Upon the return of the delegates, magnesium lights arranged upon the ends of the breakwater were lighted as the Margherita passed between them, and a searchlight display of 140 lights was given by the Fleet.
Vice-Admiral Sir Harry Grenfell, second in command, was a most distinguished officer, a great sportsman, an accomplished athlete, and a charming friend. His premature death was a sad loss to the Service. Grenfell was so powerful a man that he could take a small pony under one arm and walk about with it. I saw him perform this feat at a luncheon party given by the Governor of Algeria, to whom the pony belonged.
Grenfell told me the story of his extraordinary adventure in Albania. The country is infested with wild and savage dogs, which are apt to attack the traveller. The Albanians do not resent the dogs being killed, if they are slain with a knife in self-defence; but to shoot them the Albanians consider a mortal offence. Being aware of their sentiments, I used to take with me a couple of Marines armed with boarding pikes when I went shooting in Albania.
But when Grenfell went, he was accompanied by another naval officer, named Selby, who, upon being attacked by a native dog, shot it. A party of Albanians thereupon closed in upon Grenfell and Selby and attacked them. There was a fierce struggle, in the course of which one of the guns went off, the charge killing an Albanian. The accident so infuriated the rest that they beat Selby, as they thought, to death. They smashed in his skull, so that the brains protruded, and left him for dead. Then they took Grenfell, lashed his hands behind his back, set him on a three-legged stool, put the bight of a rope round his neck, and secured the other end to the branch of a tree, hauling it taut. There they left him, in the hope that the stool would slip and that he would be strangled. He remained in that position for three hours.
In the meantime the interpreter who had come with Grenfell had run to fetch an official of the country. The official arriving, released Grenfell. Selby, dreadfully wounded as he was, actually walked back to the ship, and lived until the next day.
But strong as Grenfell was, his terrible experience left him with an extraordinary optical affliction. He was constantly haunted by the illusion of an enormous ape, which he plainly saw both by day and by night. He used to behold the phantom enter the room and sit on a chair; and if a visitor came to see him, he would ask the visitor to take the chair upon which the ape was sitting; whereupon the spectre would move to another place. I am glad to say that he was eventually cured of this distressing affection.
An Irish lieutenant of a regiment at Malta told me the following pathetic story in a broad Irish brogue, his natural way of speaking:
"Me little brother and meself were very fond of rhabitting. The loikely place was the family cemetery. There were lashings of holes within it. One day by-and-by the ferret himself laid up, and with that we dug him (bad cess to the work). We out wid a shkull. Me little brother he says, 'That's profanation; it will be the shkull of an ancestor,' says he. 'Niver moind that,' says I, 'we'll have a joke wid it.' I ensconced it in me pockut. On getting within, I passed through the kitcher and dhropped me ancestor's shkull (God forgive me!) into the stock-pot. All went very well till dinner and we through wid it, when the cook burst in in great qualms, and sheloodering at haste to me poor mother, says she,
"'Glory be to God and save us, Milady, we are all desthroyed intirely, for there's a man in the soup,' she says."