A drink at a running stream

We were debating one day at the club what was the best drink. One said vermouth because it was good for the liver, another said gin because it was good for the lights, and almost every drink was mentioned in turn, till one wondered how human organs kept working at all, where alcohol was not to be had in abundance.

And then Jorkens joined in with the remark: "The best drink I ever had in my life was out of a running stream."

We said "Was it really?" or "Yes, I suppose it was," and turned quickly to other topics. But Malden, who never will let Jorkens alone, probably welcomed the idea of letting him make a fool of himself; he consequently leaned forward, all politeness, and begged Jorkens to tell us the story. After that, of course, there was no stopping it, and we had to sit and listen.

"Yes," said Jorkens, "a drink out of a running stream."

"And muddy water, I suppose," said Malden.

"No," said Jorkens. "No, it wasn't muddy. Clear, clear as crystal. It was when i was in Canada, just after the war, in the Fall of 1919. It's gorgeous there in the Fall; the leaves of the oak trees glow like embers, and the maple standing amongst them, or out in the fields by itself, shines like a lonely flame. I know nothing in nature more like a flame than a maple. I was there looking for a job of some sort, being slightly low in funds; and 1 knew nobody, except Jiggers, Lord Ludd's Dun as he is now; it's the old spelling of London, of course. And he was no good to me then; he was as broke as myself. He had some trifling job with one of the biggest Canadian distillers, but it only barely kept body and soul together. Well, he and I were out for a walk one day along the American border, and I said that something ought to be able to be done to get a few bottles of whisky over. And he looked at the frontier with the gaze of a man seeing farther than me, and said nothing. And somehow or other I never fathomed that mind at the time: and I said to him, 'Surely a frontier like that, four thousand miles without a fort, ought to have its uses.' And I remember his words to this day. 'Uses!' he said. 'Why, it's sent by Heaven.'

LORD DUNSANY

" 'Well,' I said, 'you can get a few bottles of pink-and-blue (that's the silly name they called their whisky), and I don't mind Irving to get it across to the States. They want it over there. And we'll go fifty fifty.'

"I'll never forget his quiet look of contempt. He was almost starving, and yet he didn't want to handle anything like a dozen of whisky. In those days, just as now, he seemed only able to see things if they ran into hundreds of millions.

"'Well, why not?' I said to him.

" 'Oh, yes,' he said in a tired voice, as though the price of a dinner every day for a fortnight were so trifling a matter that he'd sooner go without dinner; as he very often did.

"Well, then 1 began to explain my theories to him. What I said was that we'd think of various ways of concealing the whisky, but that we wouldn't act on the first bright idea that came into our heads, like common smugglers; we'd smuggle water first, or milk; and whatever got through most easily and often, we would try again with the whisky. But he just listened moodily and said "All right.'

"Well, he got the dozen of pink-and-blue, and T got lots of bright ideas, and tried them out with water. The American preventive people seemed to have been doing some thinking too. But they couldn't do anything to me for smuggling water. And one or two quite simple little devices got through as easily as possible.

"Well I got my dozen of whisky through quite comfortably, and came back for some more, and gave Jiggers his half share. 1 didn't know what a great man he was in those days, but I couldn't help being awed by the look that I often saw on his face.

"Well, he took his share of the money, and got me another dozen; but In; wouldn't say thank you for what I'd done, or talk about what 1 was going to do. lb; was moodier than ever, and his mind was far away from my whisky.

"So I went back through the border with my pink-and-blue as soon as Jiggers was able to let me have it. I won't say how I got it through, for that's not in the private interest: some other man is working my scheme now, and I won't give him away. It's sufficient to say that filling all Continued from page 49

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the hollow parts of the frame of a bicycle with whisky won't do at all: they found it out as soon as I tried it with water. 'What's that?' they asked. "That's a Canadian Hydraulic,' I said.

"When you have to talk nonsense for any reason, you must talk the kind of nonsense they are accustomed to, and they'll accept it as they accept an advertisement.

"Well, I got my whisky through, and I was wandering about in the woods on the way back, suffering from thirst, for J couldn't afford to drink any of the whisky. I came upon a rocky stream in the wood, only that the stream was dry.

"1 climbed down into the watercourse and made myself comfortable against a good smooth boulder under the shade of the bank that was on the side of the sun. And there I sat thinking about the Prohibition Law, trying to make out whether it was good or not, and wondering if I could utilize it further, so as to earn a steady livelihood. My thoughts took a hopeful turn in this direction, and they and the rest in the shade were so gently soothing that I must have almost fallen asleep, when I suddenly heard a murmur. I may have been quite asleep, but I was on my feet at once. No one that has traveled about the world a bit, as I have done, can mistake that murmur. It's not difficult to recognize, but you must recognize it at once, if you're sitting as I was in the bed of a dried watercourse. It is death to stop and wonder if it is really the sound that you thought it was. It was the sound of a torrent coming round the corner, a little way off in the wood. The banks were singularly steep and regular and it was not as easy to get out of the watercourse as it had *heen to get down, but I did it, and just in time; and the torrent went by me like a tiger. And all of a sudden I realized that I was wasting moments of opportunity that in all my life were unlikely to come again. Very unlikely. And I ran to a place from where I could reach it easily, and got down on my hands and knees and had a drink. And from the moment my lips touched it I could tell that it was pre-war."

"Pre-war water?" said Malden.

"Whisky," said Jorkens. "If you underrate the abilities of Ludd's Dun you'll be making a great mistake. That was probably his first scheme; the first we know about, anyway; planned by him, worked out by him, and carried through by him in every detail. Of the whole scheme he spoke to never a soul. The distiller knew that he wanted an incredible amount of whisky for the States, and compelled by the giant size of the man's personality he relied upon him to get it through, and supplied it. But he never knew how it was to be done.

"Others dammed the stream inside the Canadian border, but they never knew what they were working for, except treble wages, to be paid in a week.

"Another man scooped the water out of the rock-hollows, for fear of contaminating the whisky, but he never knew what was to come down that watercourse when all the water was safely out of the way. And further down in the wood there were tanks all ready and thousands of casks.

"Yet, after all, I got the drink of a life-time.

"Thanks, I will."