“I don’t think,” said I, as Captain Ben Roberts and I sat at breakfast one day in a homely old hotel in Bala, North Wales, “I don’t think, Ben, my boy, I ever ate anything more delicious in the way of fish than these same lovely mountain trout.”
“Well, you see,” replied my friend, “we caught them ourselves, to begin with; then the people here know exactly how to cook them. But, Nie, lad, have you forgotten the delicious fries of flying-fish you used to have in the dear old Niobe?”
“Almost, Ben; almost.”
“Well, I can tell you that you did use to enjoy them, all the same.”
“Ay, and I’ve enjoyed them since many and many is the time in the tropics, and especially in the Indian Ocean.”
“So have I,” said Ben Roberts. “Funny way they used to have of catching them, though, in the old Sans Pareil. Of course you know they will always fly to a light if held over the ship’s side?”
“Yes.”
“Well, but the orders were not to have lights kicking about the deck at night, either naked or in a lantern; so some of our fellows—not that I at all approve of what they did—utilised a wild cat the doctor kept in a cage. When they came on deck to keep the middle watch—we were on a voyage from Seychelles to the Straits of Malacca—they would swing him, cage and all, over the stern. His eyes would be gleaming like bottled wildfire. ’Twasn’t long, I can tell you, before the flying-fish sprang up at the cage. Old Tom put out his claws and hooked some of them in; but lots flew on board, and they were being fried five minutes afterwards.”
“I quite believe you, Roberts,” I said; “though some would call that a traveller’s tale. But just look at that lovely pair of Persian cats in the corner there, Ben; it seems almost impossible to believe they can belong to the same family as the wild cat you’ve been speaking about.”