A FORLORN QUEST, ETC. 231 



only in catching turtle, and with these failures 

 we henceforth grudgingly associated ourselves. 



The second failure was enacted on very similar 

 lines, only under another captain. Our own 

 vanished after that day the next was Good 

 Friday, and at first we attributed his absence 

 to the Easter Holidays and we saw no more of 

 him until the last week of our stay. Day after 

 day, even when the holidays were past, John 

 reported him at Porto Santo. Several explana- 

 tions were offered of this embarrassing defection 

 of the man retained to look after me. One was 

 that, in view of the departure of the tunny to 

 Porto Santo on the day of my arrival, I was accoun- 

 ted a Jonah (a minor prophet still, for all the ad- 

 vance in nature-teaching, popularly associated with 

 great fishes), to tempt Providence in whose com- 

 pany the daily sovereign was inadequate recom- 

 pense. Another hinted that a market rumour 

 had gained currency to the effect that I was 

 spying out the land, under the guise of sport, 

 with a view to the establishment of a commercial 

 fishery with improved engines. That anyone, 

 however, who had seen the innocent behaviour 

 of our rods that first day could ever again credit 

 us with sinister designs on the fish seemed im- 

 possible, even in a community where piety and 

 suspicion are good comrades. The most obvious 

 explanation of all, the fact of these fishers having 



