It was on my return home in ’69 that I met old Toogood (whom everybody knew) at Aden—who, rushing up to me, whispered, “Come along, I’ve secured a carriage,” and following with that glee that all who have crossed the Desert will appreciate, I was horrified to find he had all his bundles in the quarantine carriage.
“Great heavens,” I exclaimed, “do you know what this means?” and he hardly gave me time to explain the pains and penalties before he was in full cry after the rascally Egyptian guard, who, realising he was dealing with a novice, had accepted a sovereign for placing him in a carriage by himself.
In those long-ago days—and possibly still—every train had a quarantine carriage, entering which meant vigorous isolation till fumigation had taken place, and “even betting” that one’s cabin in the trooper at Cairo would have remained vacant homeward bound.
When the Japanese were airing their aspirations at becoming the great naval power they now are, I witnessed one of their virgin attempts at navigating a warship under the control of British officers. Confident of their ability, and fretting to show what they could do, they one day insisted on landing their instructors and assuming temporary control of the ship. The development was not long in coming. Away flew the ship, in graceful circles round and round the bay, when suddenly a dashing manœuvre beyond the comprehension of the most enlightened observer, and, lo! she was steaming full speed for the shore. Within the hour she was well wedged on a sandy bottom, and a tidal wave not long after having considerately lifted her a few hundred yards higher up, the hull was converted into an hotel, and for years gave ocular proof of Japan’s first triumph in navigation. That was in the later sixties, when Togo was still in the womb of futurity.
In those long-ago days, Yokohama had not attained its present respectable civilisation; top hats were sought after as the daintiest of fashionable attainments; every battered specimen on board fetched its weight in gold; open baths for mixed bathing were to be met with in the public thoroughfares; British regimental guards disarmed fanatics before allowing them to enter the town; inlaid bronzes, miniature trees, and genuine curios were procurable; massive Birmingham products had not become an industry wherewith to catch the unwary; public crucifixions by transfixing with bamboo stakes (such as I witnessed in the case of the murder of a British officer) were still in full blast, and the sweetest little girls were to be bought for domestic service, and sent to be dealt with by the nearest magistrate on the breath of a suspicion of breach of fidelity. To go a mile beyond the Treaty Port was to court certain death, whilst to remain peacefully within the town and visit the various day and night entertainments was as delightful an existence as the most blasé reprobate could desire.
CHAPTER XXI.
THE GUILLOTINE AND MADAME RACHEL.
On one of my numerous visits to Paris a notorious poisoner—Le-Pommerais—was awaiting execution by the guillotine.
I am not of a cruel disposition, but I confess that certain sights afford me a morbid gratification, the more so as I know that one witness more or less can in no way affect the victim, who, in nine cases out of ten, is dazed, despite the bravado that is sometimes assumed.
I had seen Müller and the pirates hanged in London, and a man “garrotted” at Barcelona; I had seen two soldiers shot at Bregenz on the Lake Constance, and now for the first time in my life I was within measurable distance of the Place de la Grève, where the most hideous drama, accompanied by all the pomp that a dramatic nation can introduce, was to be enacted one morning. But what morning? There was the rub, for the French are nothing if not original, and whilst permitting the unhappy victim to drink and smoke and play cards till 2 a.m. ruthlessly rouse him a couple of hours later, and roughly proceed to prepare his toilette.
Inquire as I did, nobody could give me the day, and although on more than one occasion I had driven to the accursed spot and waylaid officials likely to know, their replies were invariably the same; nobody knew, nobody cared, it would be time enough when the fateful morning arrived, and then voilà; a rush of two powerful men on a defenceless, trussed fellow-creature; a shove with unnecessary violence on to a plank, a strap or two unnecessarily tight to secure the unresisting wretch; a jerk and a flash of burnished steel; a quivering trunk, and a head squirting blood yards high, and the handful of sawdust, and the roar of a delighted multitude as “Monsieur de Paris” leisurely proceeds to light a cigarette, and within five minutes the whole ghastly paraphernalia has disappeared within the gloomy parallelograms of La Roquette.