The Log of the Flying Fish

The Log of the "Flying Fish"
A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure
By Harry Collingwood
CHAPTER ONE.
PROFESSOR VON SCHALCKENBERG MAKES A STARTLING
SUGGESTION.
The "Migrants'" Club stands on the most delightful site in all London;
and it is, as the few who are intimately acquainted with it know full
well, one of the most cosy and comfortable clubs in the great
metropolis.
It is by no means a famous club; the building itself has a very simple,
unpretentious elevation, with nothing whatever about it to attract the
attention of the passer-by; but its interior is fitted up in such a style of
combined elegance and comfort, and its domestic arrangements are so
perfect, as to leave nothing to be desired.
Its numerous members are essentially wanderers upon the face of the
earth--that is the one distinguishing characteristic wherein they most
widely differ from their fellow-men--they are ceaseless travellers;
mighty hunters in far-off lands; adventurous yachtsmen; eager
explorers; with a small sprinkling of army and navy men. Their visits to
their club are infrequent in the extreme; but, during the brief and widely
separated intervals when they have the opportunity to put in an
appearance there, they like to be made thoroughly comfortable; and no
pains are spared to secure their complete gratification in this respect.
The smoke-room of the "Migrants'" presented an appearance of
especial comfort and attractiveness on a certain cold and stormy
February evening a few years ago. A large fire blazed in the polished

steel grate and roared cheerfully up the chimney, in rivalry of the wind,
which howled and scuffled and rumbled in the flue higher up. An
agreeable temperature pervaded the room, making the lashing of the
fierce rain on the window-panes sound almost pleasant as one basked in
the light and warmth of the apartment and contrasted it with the state of
cold and wet and misery which reigned supreme outside. A dozen
opal-shaded gas- burners brilliantly lighted the room, and revealed the
fact that it was handsomely and liberally furnished with luxurious
divans, capacious easy-chairs, a piano, a table loaded with the papers
and periodicals of the day, an enormous mirror over the black marble
mantel-piece, a clock with a set of silvery chimes for the quarters, and a
deep, mellow-toned gong for the hours, and so many pictures that the
whole available surface of the walls was completely covered with them.
These pictures-- executed in both oil and water-colour--represented
out-of-the-way scenes visited, or incidents participated in by the
members who had executed them, and all possessed a considerable
amount of artistic merit; it being a rule of the club that every picture
should be submitted to a hanging committee of distinctly artistic
members before it could be allowed a place upon the smoke-room
walls.
The occupants of the room on the evening in question were four in
number. One, a German, known as the Professor Heinrich von
Schalckenberg, was half buried in the recesses of a huge arm-chair,
from the depths of which he perused the pages of the Science Monthly,
smoking meanwhile a pipe with a huge elaborately carved meerschaum
bowl and a long cherry-wood stem. From the ferocious manner in
which he glared through his spectacles at the pages of the magazine,
from the impatience with which he from time to time dashed his
disengaged hand through the masses of his iron-grey hair, and from the
frequent ejaculations of "Pish!" "Psha!" "Ach!" and so on which
escaped his lips, accompanied by vast volumes of smoke, it seemed
evident that he was not altogether at one with the author whose article
he was perusing. He was an explorer and a scientist.
Near the Herr Professor there reclined upon a divan the form of Sir
Reginald Elphinstone, sometimes called by his friends "the handsome

baronet," said to be the richest commoner in England. At the age of
thirty-five, having freely exposed himself to all known sources of peril,
except those involved in a trip to the Polar regions, in his eager pursuit
of sport and adventure, Sir Reginald seemed, for the moment, to have
no object left him in life but to shoot as many rings as possible of
cigar-smoke through each other, as he lay there on the divan in an
attitude more easy than elegant.
Square in front of the fire, dreamily puffing at his cigar and apparently
studying the merits of a painting hanging behind him, and on the
reflected image of which in the mirror before him his eyes lazily rested,
sat Cyril Lethbridge, ex-colonel of the Royal Engineers, a successful
gold-seeker, and almost everything else to which a spice of adventure
could possibly attach itself.
And next him again, on the side of the fire-place opposite to the Herr
Professor, lounged Lieutenant Edward Mildmay, R.N.