Page:Punch Vol 148.djvu/441

Voice of Captain (through tube). "There's a submarine about, Mac. Can you whack her up any more?"

Chief Engineer. "Ay, ah'll get anither twa knots, if I ha'e to burn whusky!"

I have seen one at last.

After years of intimacy with the Zoo, during which I have sought in vain for the pickpockets of which so many notices bid us beware, I have had the satisfaction of watching one at work there—as flagrantly as that historic but un-named performer who abstracted a snuffbox from a courtier under the eyes of Charles II., and by his roguish shamelessness made the Merry Monarch an accomplice.

The words "Beware of Pickpockets" had indeed confronted me for so long and in so many places in these otherwise so innocent Gardens that I had come to look upon them as the "Wolf! Wolf" of the fable. Even in the lions' house at feeding time when, tradition has it, the pupils of Fagin are at their very best, I have never detected a practitioner.

But yesterday!

But Yesterday was the first day of blazing sunshine, and having two hours to spare in the afternoon I rushed to Regent's Park, intending to make an exhaustive tour of the whole Zoo. it was so hot and prematurely summery that instead I did a thing I have never done before: I sat on a chair in the path up and down which the elephants slowly parade, bearing loads of excited children and self-conscious adults; and it was there that I found the pickpocket, or, if you like, it was there that he found me. For I was one of his victims.

I had always thought of pickpockets as little chaps capable of slipping away even between men's legs in a crowd; but this fellow was big. I had thought, too, of pickpockets as carrying on their nefarious profession with a certain secrecy and furtiveness; but the Zoo pickpocket, possibly from sheer cynicism, or from sheer advantage of size, making most of the officials look insignificant and weakly, was at few or no pains to cover his depredations. Nor did he, as I supposed was the custom of his kind, devote himself to watches, pocket-books and handkerchiefs, but took whatever he could, and if a bag chanced to have something in it and he could not extract the contents quickly enough he took the bag as well. He was indeed brazen; but scatheless too.

My own loss was trifling—merely a newspaper, which I would have given him had he asked for it. But before I knew anything it was snatched from my hands by this voracious thief. To say that I was astonished would be to state the case with absurd mildness; I was electrified. But when I looked round for the help which any man, and not least a F.Z.S., as I am proud to be able to sign myself, is entitled to expect, judge of my horror when I found that not only all the spectators who had witnessed the outrage, but also the only keeper within sight, were laughing.

Such is the levity which the unwonted sunshine had brought to the Gardens!

And I can swear that the pickpocket was laughing too, for there was an odd light in his wicked little yellow eye as he opened his mouth, lifted his trunk with my poor Evening News firmly held in it, and deposited the paper in that pink cavern his mouth. For my first Zoo pickpocket was the biggest of the elephants, who is both old enough and large enough to know better.

"More for the colours.—This week, three Osbournby lads have enlisted in Kitcheuer's Army, viz., Arthur Bullock, George Bee, and Herbert Bugg."—Grantham Journal.

The Kaiser has threatened to arm every cat and dog in his dominions; but it looks as if our "K." can beat him even at that game.