l6o CHALLENGER 



head was all that was taken aboard. It was even more difficult to 

 persuade the Engineer Officer to come on these trips after an 

 unfortunate incident which occurred when the skiff had returned 

 one night. He was standing on the gun whale of the boat and 

 holding onto the ship's side; slowly the boat began to leave the 

 ship and slowly the figure of the Engineer became more horizontal 

 and less vertical until the big splash came. All the onlookers were 

 highly amused and Sani Southern's well-known smile spread across 

 his face until it was realised that his cherished fishing rod had been 

 in the Engineer's grasp and it had sunk beyond recovery. 



The ship's Medical Officer, Surgeon-Lieutenant P. T. Ruther- 

 ford, R.N.V.R., tall, athletic and red haired, was also a great 

 sportsman and was in on all the fishing trips to the Hat Islands. 

 He specialised in making his own lures, which lay about his cabin 

 in differing states of completion together with his home-made 

 tools for their construction; here and there hung a bird's wing 

 which had been collected for making lures but now lay rotting 

 and forgotten. His desk, which was stained from much use and 

 spillage of photographic materials, was piled with the wardroom 

 wine accounts, of which he was the custodian. Fishing rods and 

 gun tackle were slung up here and there and stowed in the corners 

 of the cabin. In his washbasin lived two small turtles. 



One day when the Medical Officer was sitting in this crowded 

 compartment busy at his lures the Petty Officer Steward brought 

 onboard some peculiar looking domestic ducks which he had 

 bought in the souk (market) at Doha and he was busy despatching 

 them on the forecastle. One of these was taken down to the doctor 

 freshly killed and he was told that there were hundreds of such 

 birds passing over the ship. He seized his shotgun and forcing two 

 cartridges into the barrels as he ran up the ladder, he raced here 

 and there about the decks searching the skies in vain for a 'right 

 and left' . 



Ship's sports were organized to take place one week-end on a 

 sandy expanse ashore and Rutherford won each event steadily until 

 he decided to cancel his entry for the later events so that some of 

 the others should have a chance. Tug-of-war, that most barbarous 

 of all sports, was on the programme and the Wardroom team 

 struggled and heaved their way into the final against the stokers. 

 They might even have won this, but whenever they looked like 



