the top of her palanquin ... and, oh! such a fight I had over each thing which I forbade. You see we had to travel light, and carry no valuables. Furniture she had none besides the two rickety bedsteads I have before described, and an old dilapidated chair. At this point I felt faint, and remembered that I had neither breakfasted nor lunched, nor indeed dined the previous evening! So I betook myself to the little room on the battlements, which the old Ayah had once more swept clean, and I sat on my roll of rugs and nibbled chocolate, and ate a few prunes, and drank some soda-water. I knew this time what to carry. Then, an odious duty, exploring the Fortress to refute certain unkind tales told of the Rani, of concealed furniture and hidden treasure.

'She deceives you: there are rooms and rooms in the Fortress furnished with luxuries,' had said her enemies. 'She pretends poverty to help her case.' I was determined to get to the bottom of the illnatured rumours. So, with the old Brahmin servant for guide, I explored. Oh! the steep and unclean stairs, and the odours; and oh, the bats! A nightmare! Flights of them coming from everywhere. I had disturbed them, you see, as I walked up the narrow staircase, and here they were, wheeling round and round, a-flapping about my head and ears, at my elbow-clouds of them shut in with me, and, ah! the filthiness under foot! I put my draperies over my head, and rushed up blindly! Yes, I own it! No army of dacoits did I fear, nor man, nor beast-but bats! Yet, of course, I had to go through with my inspection of the disused rooms, and after a time the uncanny creatures seemed less frightening; then, too, it comforted me somewhat to disprove at every step the unpleasant lies of the poor Rani's enemies.

After this adventure, a happy chance upset my bottle of lavender water all over me, and I think this somewhat disinfected me. Just then, my Khansama came in with news that our plan (to leave by 5 P.M. and do but one stage that day) had got abroad, and that the dacoits were to await us on the regular cart road at 7 o'clock that evening. I was perturbed, as you may imagine, and went into my little room, and sat with a tired head between rather weary hands, thinking hard, and remembering that kind folk were thinking of me, and willing us well through the little excitement. . . . In a few minutes I had made up my mind. You see, we had no guard. We must out-run the dacoits!-take the shortest route in the opposite direction. I sent for the head palanquin-bearer, and negotiated. At first he absolutely refused to vary our previous programme. Why should he go the shorter way? Why should we start two hours earlier? The men were tired, &c. . . . Finally, however, he consented: 'I will do it for you, Miss Sahib.' I was grateful. Then to the Rani-here was more trouble. Two hours earlier! It could not be done!' Said C. S., 'It must, or I go without you.'

Well, no matter the next hour, it was full of work on my legs, up and down stairs. . . . But finally I got her packed safely into the palanquin, the boy with her, and also a number of etceteras-vessels, clothes, what not! Slops too, and awful messes to eat on the way, to say nothing of a long-necked huqqa!-I should tell you that some of the vessels were inevitable; for being a married woman, yet not a widow, returning to her mother's house, she might not have her food cooked in, or eat out of the same vessels as her mother; moreover, these must be of her own supplying.

Well! the palanquin was at last ready for transport, and we covered it discreetly with a secure extinguisher,' preparatory to admitting, the bearers to the private court-yard. In they rushed, numbering, as I've said, about thirty souls. My plan was that all of them should accompany her down the moat and without the gate, and that I should follow, when I had locked the inner door and given the key to the head warder. I had just made the delivery, when my Chuprasi came hurrying back-the Rani refused to travel in any but her Royal palanquin (such a lumbering thing!). I hurried to her as fast as I could go, and found her hysterical, no hope of teaching her reason; we must yield. But what would the bearers say? And they would be right; the thing was far too cumbrous and heavy for the rate at which we meant to go. And all this time the minutes were tearing past! . . . You will imagine it all! I staked everything on an appeal to the men . . . and, thank God, they consented. You see, we were at their mercy, for not a soul could we get in that wilderness to take their place, and if we spent the night in the Fort, I could not answer for the consequences. But the men consented, and I did not spare my 'well done.' The next difficulty was, however, how to make the change into the other palanquin. We were, you must know, outside the gates, and, including the guard and onlookers, there were now nearly fifty men collected round us, with the chance of more coming-strangers from the village.

I dared not take her back again; the bearers might (would certainly) refuse to travel the difficult sloping moat, with that heavy palanquin, and they might even strike and refuse to move altogether. I was resolved what to do. I sent for the cumbrous thing to be brought out there; and then, before the men could think what was to follow, I turned them, guard and all, inside the fortress and shut the gates on them! Taken by surprise, they made no resistance; my Ayah told me afterwards that the men said it was like the burra Lât Sahib's hukm (the big lord Sahib's order), and that they would do anything for a Miss Sahib who could command, and not be afraid. It was only a fluke that I thought of that mode of procedure, though certainly I was not afraid of them; all my fears had been, you see, expended on-the bats! The Ayah and I

made the change, as soon as possible-no easy matter! We had the doors of the palanquins fixed side by side, and we covered both with a great cloth, while each article, Rani and boy included, was transferred. But it was near 5 o'clock already, when all was done, gates opened, and men carrying us. When they attempted the Rani's palanquin, they nearly cried off altogether, and the only remedy was to put all but eight men on to it, which I did, blessing my own light weight; the Ayah I packed into an ekka, and the two men-servants walked. So we started across country, I first, to meet the brunt of everything, the Rani next, my servants (and later, two Tehsil peons sent after us by the D.S.P.) walking beside her palanquin, and last of all the serving-women in the ekka, flanked by the rough rabble of extra palanquin-bearers. You see, but six men at a time could lift the heavier palanquin; there was not room along the poles for more than three shoulders at each end, and the sense of that multitude of carriers lay in the facility afforded for frequent changes. My palanquin had barely eight, and they did the whole long distance among them! Every minute of that journey was a strain. We went through fields of high corn, which might have concealed anyone; and, moreover, there was the chance that the guard at the gate would declare our route, and send the disappointed dacoits after us.

I can't think how I went through that night and the next day. Every few minutes the Rani's men would throw down her palanquin, and say they could go no further; and at every well they wanted to smoke and chat, and the Rani was still hysterical . . . and oh! . . But with one long break of an hour or so, to rest the men and give the Rani time to feed, we did the entire distance to the Railway Junction by about 10 o'clock the next night! I tried to arrange for a special truck to be attached to the mail train for the Rani (the idea being that it could carry her in her palanquin), but this could not be managed, the officials said, under forty-eight hours' notice. So I secured a ladies' reserved. It took all my influence to persuade the little woman that her purdah would not be broken when she forsook the palanquin! My anxieties and worries were not, however, over, even then. Till 2 o'clock that night I was busy, every moment, satisfying greedy harpies of palanquin-bearers, and-camp followers, quieting the hysterical Rani, arranging about the deserted Fortress; mystifying the inquisitive. . . . But all was accomplished at last, even the railway journey, with its difficult changes under securely fastened 'covers,' . . . and I breathed freely when I delivered her to her mother.

CORNELIA SORABJI.

THE MEDITERRANEAN TUNNY

THE Mediterranean tunny is a classic and important fish. Like many other important fish, however, his habits and his life history are but little known. In this he much resembles the salmon, though the great attention which has of late years been bestowed upon the salmon has in its case given us a store of information which is at present lacking in the case of the tunny. The tunny is, at any rate, a fish of noble proportions. The most valuable of the mackerel tribe, to which the bonito and the albacore also belong, he frequently attains the weight of 1,000 lb., many of this weight being caught in the fixed nets off the Ægadian Islands; while Cetti, the natural historian of Sardinia, mentions a specimen caught on that coast which weighed 1,800 lb., and I saw one captured this year which weighed 500 lb. less. In Sardinia they classify the tunny according to weight; a tunny of less than 100 lb. is a scampirre, a tunny from 100 lb. to 300 lb. is a mezzotunno, and a tunno properly so called is a fish that weighs over 300 lb.

The natural history of the tunny has from the earliest times been a subject of much dispute. Aristotle, in his History of Animals, devotes some space to it, and seems to have been the earliest writer to attempt any scientific description of it. In his day the tunny was so plentiful in the Black Sea that he was of opinion that it was their one great breeding-ground, though he was well aware that they made their appearance in large numbers at many places along the coasts of the Mediterranean; and he mentions one specimen which measured 'two forearms and a palm' across the fork of the tail, and weighed fifteen talents, or some 1,200 lb. He has, however, failed to convince naturalists who have inquired into the matter since when he laboured to distinguish the male from the female by giving the latter an extra fin. Nor, indeed, has his assertion that the Black Sea was the one breeding-ground of the tunny been received with much greater acquiescence; there is still much controversy as to where the tunny breeds, and where he comes from. One school of naturalists maintains that he is really an Atlantic fish whose home is in the north, and that he migrates annually from the ocean waters down through the Straits of

Gibraltar, when the spring comes round, to breed in the shallow gulfs of the Mediterranean, and that he returns to the Atlantic some months later. There seems to be a good deal to support this view, from the fact that tunnies are seen and caught off the coasts of Scotland and Ireland, sometimes playing sad havoc with herring nets, and they regularly appear in the Mediterranean in the spring, apparently travelling east; while in the autumn they are captured travelling west after having spawned, and, according to this theory, they would then be seeking to return to the ocean to which they properly belonged. Not all, however, during this southern migration pass through the Straits of Gibraltar; they would appear to divide at this point, as they are found in large numbers off the western coast of Northern Africa simultaneously with their annual spring advent in the Mediterranean. Cuvier, however, who is the most distinguished supporter of the other school, contends that, though certain numbers of the fish may migrate annually from the Atlantic, the greater part of those caught in the Mediterranean can never have come from the Atlantic at all, and that their real home is in the deep waters of the great inland sea. These, like the migrating shoals from the Atlantic, seek shallow and warm water during the breeding season, and when that is over retire to the deeper parts of the sea. The question in 1830 became one not merely of natural history but of practical politics, when the question of fixed versus drag nets became a burning one. The opponents of the privileged owners of the fixed net fisheries contended that, as the fish was a migratory one, and regularly travelled over certain well-defined lines of route in their passage from and to the Atlantic, the owners of the fixed nets were taking more than a fair share from the migrating shoals, and were destroying the industry-a complaint which is not unheard-of at the present time with regard to salmon nets. It was, however, denied that there was any proof that the migration of the tunny was confined within any such defined limits, or that any injustice was done to the ordinary fishermen by the setting of fixed nets at particular points, which accordingly remained. The range of the tunny is a very wide one; Dr. Günther, a high authority on the subject, distributes. him from the south coasts of England to the shores of Tasmania. His food consists of herring and pilchard and other small fish, on which he thrives and grows with amazing rapidity. Cuvier records that at his first appearance on the Mediterranean coasts after the hatching season his weight is two ounces, which he doubles in a fortnight, and at two months old he weighs two pounds, and continues to put on weight with a corresponding rapidity, till in some instances he reaches the great size of 1,800 lb. recorded by Cetti.

The industry of catching tunnies is a very ancient as well as lucrative one. Allusions to it run through the classics. Two