their possession, and the consequence was everyone was dividing up the syllables at his own sweet will. It was neither harmonious nor jubilant.”
“I should think not,” assented Wagram emphatically. “Now, there is hardly an outdoor function I have been present at which hasn’t represented to my mind everything that outdoor singing ought not to be. Unaccompanied singing is too apt to sound thin, and if backed up with brass instruments it sounds thinner still. So we dispense with them here, and our oft-repeated and especially final injunction to all hands is: ‘Sing up!’ ”
“Well, it certainly was effective with your singers, Wagram,” pronounced Monsignor Culham, “and I shall cite it as an instance whenever opportunity offers.”
“That’s good, Monsignor,” returned Wagram. “We want all round to make everything as solemn and dignified and attractive as possible, as far as our opportunities here allow, especially to those outside; and we have reason to know that good results have followed.”
“In conversions?”
“Yes. We throw open the grounds to all comers on these occasions, and in the result some who come merely to see a picturesque pageant are impressed, and—inquire further.”
“I wonder what proportion of the said ‘all comers’ confine their sense of the picturesque to the tables in the marquee,” remarked Haldane, who was of a cynical bent.
“Well, you know the old saying, Haldane—that one of the ways to reach a man’s soul is through his stomach,” laughed the Squire. “Anything in that paper, by the way?”
“N-no,” answered Haldane, who had been skimming the local morning paper, while keeping one ear open for the general conversation. “Wait, though—yes, this is rather interesting—if only that it reminds me of a bad quarter of an hour once owing to a similar cause. Listen to this: ‘The R.M.S. Rhodesian, which arrived at Southampton yesterday evening, reports passing a derelict in latitude 10 degrees 5 minutes north, longitude 16 degrees 36 minutes West. The hull was a dull rusty red, and apparently of about 900 or 1000 tons burthen. The vessel was partly submerged, the forecastle and poop being above water. About eight feet of iron foremast was standing, and rather more of mizzen-mast, with some rigging trailing from it. No name was visible, and the hulk, which had apparently been a long time in the water, was lying dangerously in the track of steamers to and from the Cape.’ I should think so indeed,” continued Haldane with some warmth. “It was just such a derelict that scraped past us one black night when I was coming home in the Manchurian on that very line. It was about midnight, and everybody had turned in, but the skipper and I were having a parting yarn on the hurricane deck. We were so close to the thing that the flare of our lights showed it up barely ten yards from us; then it was gone. I asked the skipper what would have happened if we’d hit it straight and square, and he said he was no good at conundrums, but would almost rather have run full speed on against the face of a cliff.”
“I suppose there was great excitement in the morning?” said the Squire.
“Not any; for the simple reason that nobody knew anything about it. The occurrence was logged, of course, but the skipper asked me not to blab, and I didn’t. Most of the passengers were scary enough over the risks they knew about, he said, and if you told them a lot more that they didn’t many of them would die.”
“They oughtn’t to leave a thing like that,” said Wagram. “Why didn’t your captain stop and blow it up, Haldane?”
“I asked him, and he said his company didn’t contract for hulk-hunting on dark nights; it contracted to carry Her Majesty’s mails. Probably the skipper of the Rhodesian reasoned in exactly the same way about this one.”
“It’s as bad as an infernal machine.”
“It is an infernal machine,” said Haldane.
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