“Are there many trout in there, then?” I asked innocently.
The man smiled. “Come along and I’ll show you,” he said. “We’re just going to feed ’em.”
We went, and the keepers started throwing handfuls of fish offal into the water. Instantly all was commotion. Never had I seen such a sight. Hundreds of trout, great speckled beauties, rushed together, churning the water to foam, and leaping into the air in their excitement.
Then we took a punt and went out on the lake, and oh the sport I had. I caught ten brace, which I was informed was the limit, and then put back to bank.
Nor was this all. The following Christmas I was performing in pantomime at the Hippodrome, Sheffield, when to my unbounded surprise I received yet another invitation for a day’s fishing. On this occasion also I had the honour of lunching with the family, and I was likewise introduced to Earl Fitzwilliam, who had just returned from the Front.
He was affability itself, and before I took my leave, hearing from me that I intended shortly to pay a professional visit to Paris, he gave me a personal letter of introduction to the Hon. Maurice Brett, our Provost-Marshal there.
CHAPTER XIX
IN EGYPT IN WAR-TIME
My trip to the land of the Pharaohs—Giants and dwarfs on a P. & O. liner—We are ordered into Plymouth—Submarines—An exciting experience—Destroyers to the rescue—The dwarfs and the lifebelts—Sports at sea—My contortionist is taken ill—Anxious days—Kindness of the Maharajah of Jodhpur—Arrival at Port Said—Cairo—I engage another contortionist—Pelted with money—Pigs at Port Said—Captured Turkish pontoons at Cairo—Turkish prisoners playing tennis—Interned enemy ships at Alexandria—Wounded soldiers—At the Pyramids—Ammunition from India—On the way home—Across France in war-time—The Channel passage—Elaborate precautions—Submarine nets—Paris in war-time—Madrid in war-time.