The Amazing Adventures of Cholly Blake

By Michael W Pieri

A newspaper’s grossly overblown account of a Great Lakes ‘sinking’ dramatically changes a humble sailor’s life in 1879 -- and turns him into a Canadian hero. The fantastical exploits of Cholly Blake include piracy, duels, treasure-hunting, a thrilling raft voyage, terror in a runaway balloon, visits to a vile “sweating den” -- and they nearly trigger an accidental "war" with the United States.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Michael W Pieri
• Release date: Aug 25, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301042449

Michael W Pieri

Michael W. Pieri spent 30 years in the newsroom of The Toronto Star, Canada’s biggest newspaper. His interest in the often tragic lives of immigrants more than a century ago -- and The Star’s battles to help them – resulted in a life-long fascination with his city’s history. In 2005, Michael co-produced a TV documentary on publisher Joseph E. Atkinson – a Canadian hero – who crusaded for a kinder and fairer society for all. Michael is currently researching the early history of The House of Industry, when Canada had its own Oliver Twists.

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Preface

The Amazing Adventures of Cholly Blake is a work of fiction.

Our amiable hero – a Great Lakes sailor whose heart is heavily freighted with goodness and decency – never drew breath. He is imaginary. So are his friends and foes. Even the pugnacious

Evening Mercury – that mighty organ of the civilized world with 3,194 loyal readers – never published a single paper. It, too, is make-believe.

However, Cholly Blake’s fantastical experiences are, at times, all too real. Degrading poverty co-existed with great wealth in Canada in 1879, when the Adventures begin. The rich in Toronto lived like English Lords and Ladies in palatial homes with whole floors of servants. But the wretchedly poor languished in revolting slum hovels. Drunkenness was rife. Hordes of ragged children lived on the streets.

Enter humble Cholly Blake: With crusading journalism taking root – and backed by The Mercury – the meek sailor soon is to become a most unlikely Champion of the People.

I invite you to suspend your disbelief for an hour or two and travel back to early Toronto and several Ontario towns, as seen through the eyes of Cholly Blake and his friends, and diligently reported in The Mercury, the fictional news sheet that cheered those who yearned for better times.

Many people contributed to this work, but a special debt of gratitude is owed Robert Crew, who made valuable editing and structural suggestions. The cover was designed by John Mantha. (It illustrates a stupendously dangerous voyage down Niagara River rapids). The Adventures of Cholly Blake is dedicated to my ever-patient family – and to generations of men, women and children who, since 1892, have helped The Toronto Star in its quest for a kinder and fairer life for all Canadians.

Michael W. Pieri

Toronto, 2013

The Early Years

Little is known about the early years of Cholly Blake other than he was born in Toronto – then known as York – in the summer of 1831. His father, Lucius Rufus Blake, was a steady and cheerful fellow employed as a ship’s carpenter in the British naval shipyards at Kingston during the furious ship-building race that raged between the Americans and British for naval supremacy on Lake Ontario during the War of 1812-14.

Blake senior was present at the launching of the mighty British vessel St. Lawrence – one of the most powerful warships of its day. The black-and-yellow first-rate warship was 194 feet long and about as wide as Yonge St., and carried 112 guns. Between 850 and 900 men were required to sail the monster vessel (some reports said 1,000 men), which was bigger than Lord Nelson’s famous flagship Victory. Lucius Blake was inordinately proud of having helped to build this awesome ship-o’-the-line that briefly dominated Lake Ontario.

British naval intelligence officers were responsible for weeding out would-be American and French spies and saboteurs in Kingston. After the most minute inquiry into his character, British officers gave Cholly’s father security clearance and declared in a confidential report to naval headquarters in Halifax: "The aforementioned Lucius Blake does not partake of Spirituous Liquors; does not consort with unchaste Women of the lower part of Towne; does not Gamble with cards or dice; does not engage in Politickal affrays, and does not appear to suffer from any dark Melancholy or uneasy Reflections that, perchance, might render him vulnerable to overtures from Malevolents seeking to recruit saboteurs and like persons of ill-intent in His Majesty’s naval shipyards. Lucius Blake has no known rebel sympathies, has verifiable letters of reference, and pledges to be entirely loyal to The Crown. God Save the King!"

According to sparse information in ink-blotted papers found in a Toronto bookshop, Cholly’s mother, Polly McKelvie or McGully, was the daughter of dirt-poor settlers from Ireland or Scotland. At aged 12, Polly was engaged as a scullery maid in the Kingston household of a senior naval captain who once served under Sir James Yeo, the commander-in-chief of British naval squadrons on The Great Lakes.

I rem’mer fathur saying he first clapped eyes on muther rowin’ a small boat handsomely* in Navy Bay with a stiff wind abaft**, Cholly told friends in later years. Her oars wuz badly paired and made of barrel staves – but she managed thum with great dex’rity as the breezes luffed*** her black tresses and snapped her pett’coats this away and that away. She’d ship oars and ca’mly bail watter with a wooden buckitt when the wind was wildest, and fathur says ter me he knew right off Polly was the purfect wife fer him. ‘Any lassie who can make headway in a leaky boat with two mismatched oars, and agin’ waves lashed into a foory by gale winds … well, she has ter make a jolly good wifie’.

The couple reportedly married on Polly’s 15th birthday.

Regrettably, even with the luxury of a midwife, laudanum, and the best patent medicines and nostrums that were advertised in the news-sheets, Polly died of complications after giving birth to baby Cholly at her parents’ home in York. No man nivver had a more tender and lovin’ partnur in life, a grief-stricken Lucius sobbed at her funeral. She was an angul frum Heavun!

Lucius never remarried. He returned to the Kingston shipyards where, some years later, he perished in a slipway accident during the launching of a double-masted coasting schooner. Left an orphan at age 11, Cholly was apprenticed by Polly’s benevolent former employer to a kindly young coasting captain, John Hoogan, and happily sailed the Great Inland Seas aboard the small, two-masted schooner Starlight for some 36 years – until the celebrated misadventure outside Cobourg Harbor, which is where our chronicles begin in 1879.

*Handsomely: An old nautical term meaning a careful and gradual progress through water.

**Abaft: From the direction of the stern of the vessel.

***Luffed: A rippling effect in sails when a vessel steers close to the wind.

Chapter 1

Dreadful Calamity in the Roaring Surf

The terrible drama of the schooner Starlight so unsettled the tender heart of Cholly Blake that he vowed never again to sail The Great Inland Seas.

Pure horrur! the sailor feelingly declared one Sunday afternoon while idling on a Toronto wharf. "I tells yer, it was monstrus!"

By chance, the dramatic utterance caught the ear of a fine gentleman as he jauntily swung his cane along the sunny waterfront. Intrigued, the stroller stopped to hear more. He was soon joined by a maid promenading with her beau, a boy running an errand, and two matrons walking a dog. Surprised to have found an audience, the affable sailor sat on a coil of old rope, pulled reflectively on his pipe, and launched into a spellbinding tale.

"It wuz a most desperit struggle … he began. And that’s nut any zig-zaggeration!"

For the next two hours, as playful breezes rippled the water, Cholly Blake relived the supposed horrur that had befallen Starlight near Cobourg the previous month. He spared no detail. Gale winds shrieked, masts snapped, sails shredded and terrified passengers sank beneath white-cap waves, piteously crying Help us … we’re droonin! The images he conjured were so powerful that the horrified listeners – glued to every word – imagined they, too, were aboard the schooner and in the heart of the maelstrom. Finally, the doomed vessel plunged to the lake’s unutterable depths – lost forever! Or so the listeners believed, so mesmerized were they by the sailor’s eloquence. When the story ended; all stared vacantly out to sea. No one spoke. Finally, roused by the whistle of a passing steamboat, the story-teller pulled out a grubby newspaper from a pocket and held it high.

"Editors made a monstrus big thing of the Starlight disaster, yer know, he noted solemnly. P’raps yer read ’bout it. I was a big celibritty." The sailor laconically pointed to the headline. It was in type normally reserved for circus posters, and screamed: DREADFUL CALAMITY IN THE ROARING SURF! Beneath it, a smaller heading roared: ENTIRE CREW FEARED LOST!

Another period of silence followed, broken only by a fish as it jumped for a dragonfly. Slowly, smiles lit up the listeners’ faces.

"What a horrible, horrible tragedy! gasped the enthralled matrons, who finally remembered the sea of ink Toronto papers had devoted to the schooner saga. By thunder! marveled the gentleman, who also recalled the stirring event, and handed over a coin. Gracious me! chimed the maid and her beau. What a hero!" cried the errand boy, who saluted smartly. Then, with heads abuzz, all who heard the tragic fate of Starlight went home to their Sunday teas.

Now … at this juncture it must be confessed the calamitous shipwreck described by Cholly Blake – and reprinted by nearly every newspaper – was a tad overstated! Put more accurately, it was a wild and almost criminal exaggeration.

The true facts were these: While turning to enter Cobourg harbour on a blissful May afternoon in 1879, the schooner Starlight nudged a sandbar and, after rubbing along for a bit, gently grounded. At the helm was jovial Captain John Hoogan, the worse for having consumed a bottle of rum while voyaging from Kingston, farther up the coast. (The skipper later insisted he was blinded by the sun, and did not notice seven clanging bell-buoys with red flags that marked shallow water.)

The only losses in the trifling affair were a small barrel of potatoes and an old teapot. When the amused passengers – a farmer’s wife and two labourers – saw they were on a sandbar, they had merrily waded ashore in knee-deep water without suffering so much as a stubbed toe. Thus lightened, Starlight gently refloated herself and, after frolicking in the soft breezes for an hour or so, the vessel drifted into Cobourg harbour, and was tied up by a girl in a pinafore.

This trifling affair might have gone unnoticed but for the resourceful editor of The Cobourg Quill and Patriot. Faced with his weekly deadline, and without a scrap of news to fill his paper (except for usual disparaging remarks about nearby Port Hope), the editor hungrily seized upon the mishap and, after several vigorous rewrites that by degrees stiffened the story, (a well-established practice in old newspapering days) he artfully frothed the trivial incident into the infamous DREADFUL CALAMITY! saga.

The fluffed-up report practically filled the Quill and Patriot. It famously began:

"So unspeakably awful was the tempest that shrieked off our coast this week that the schooner Starlight was reportedly overwhelmed by bursting seas and driven onto a treacherous sandbar near our fair harbour. It was on this notorious sandbank that the poor vessel faced the gravest danger of being torn asunder, a reliable eye-witness avers.

"But despite devilishly heavy seas, Captain John Hoogan heroically refused to abandon his stricken vessel. He blasphemed! He shook his fists! He threw his hat in to the violent air! He laughed in Death’s face – Ha! Ha! Ha! His contempt for the storm knew no bounds. He scornfully hurled a teapot at a gull, shoved a barrel of potatoes into the seas – and danced a jig. But, as every Cobourgian knows, Lake Ontario cannot be denied her sacrificial due when storms blow. Oh, dear me, no! Lake Ontario is like Hecate when in a blind fury, and demands the lives of sailors and passengers every year, as our obituary columns attest.

(Coincidentally, six classifieds offering cheap life insurance for lake travellers were clustered near this paragraph). The enflamed report went on:

"Alas, despite his heroic struggle to save Starlight, the master was forced to leap into the wild seas to save himself, following the example of three passengers – a distraught farmer’s wife and two terrified day labourers. Mercifully, all reached safely/ But poor Captain Hoogan was not so fortunate. Upon reaching land, the master was glassy-eyed, unable to speak coherently, and of the deranged opinion he was en route to China! It was no surprise when he fell senseless on the foreshore."

Several paragraphs deeper in the thrilling report, the editor revealed that Cholly Blake – generously described as the ship’s entire crew – had vanished. Wrote the editor:

"As we go to press, we must accept that, in all likelihood, the miserable fate of the entire crew is a watery grave."

A further 7,618 words followed in this melodramatic vein, after which the editor concluded:

"Any attempt to describe the Hellish ordeal of those aboard Starlight is beyond this writer’s meager capacity. It is suffice to say that a dented teapot, a stunned seagull, and the remains of a barrel of potatoes – regurgitated from the depths in the late afternoon – will long be a distressing reminder of the ‘DREADFUL CALAMITY IN THE ROARING SURF.’

Since it had taken several rewrites to hone the story to his satisfaction (with many stiffenings of facts along the way), the editor was understandably dismayed when the half-blind beggar, from whose testimony the entire drama was recreated, later stumbled upon Cholly Blake – Starlight’s entire crew – singing a robust sea shanty in a nearby inn. The editor was no less dismayed when the farmer’s wife was heard to declare in the snuggery that the trivial mishap was a rollicking good laugh, a real scream! And the editor became positively incensed when told a fickle wind, after blowing Starlight out to sea, had capriciously changed direction and blown the vessel unscathed into the harbour. But with a pressing deadline, and unable to face another vexatious rewrite, the editor let the ninth version of the DREADFUL CALAMITY report stand as written – and went home for his supper. I’ll clarify details next week, he told himself, and left the fate of Starlight and crew hanging in the wind.

Now it must be admitted that most Cobourg citizens – famous for their sagacity – dismissed the DREADFUL CALAMITY report as nonsensical musings of their antique editor, especially when the ship’s resurrected complement was spotted looking fearfully hung over on King Street next day. But the report in the paper (with 617 paid subscribers) exerted a strange power over Cholly. The opera bouffe version of the misadventure, which our hero read and reread every hour for three days, slowly imprinted itself on his sensitive mind, although Starlight was moored in plain view in the harbour, and without a scratch on her paintwork. Indeed, so powerful was the overblown reportage that it changed Cholly’s life forever!

"The newspaper printed the story – so it must be true," he reasoned, a tad unwisely.

Medical men of deep learning declare mankind’s mental machinery is exceedingly complex. They liken the brain to the delicate workings of a Swiss clock: Cogs and wheels spin and whirr in perfect harmony until their fine balance is upset by a hard jolt, such as our hero had experienced in the supposed tempest. And so it should be no surprise that a month after the DREADFUL CALAMITY! report – reprinted in dozens of papers – Cholly Blake found himself alone on a Toronto wharf, nearly penniless and barely afloat on the current of life. Yet for reasons he could not fathom, the sailor felt an inner peace. For days he simply sat on a coil of old rope, drank in the beauty of the harbour and Island beyond, and sighed.

This is my Gardin of Eden – I’m the richust man in the wurld … And that’s nut any zig-zaggeration, he murmured between puffs on his pipe. And he truly meant every word.

It was on just such an afternoon in late June, while he cut a plug of tobacco and contemplated the mysteries of the universe, that Cholly espied a boy aged about 10 or 11 skip stones across the placid harbour waters. Despite his tattered clothes and bare feet – and obvious want of scrubbing soap – the urchin was as cheerful as a sunbeam. An angelic smile lit his grubby face, which was framed by a mass of curls that spilled from beneath a Dutch cap worn at a rakish angle. A newsboy’s tattered sack hung nearby; it was as commodious as a poacher’s bag, and bore the imprint of that mighty organ of civilized Toronto, The Evening Mercury. Two unsold afternoon papers – and the head of a kitten – protruded from the sack’s folds. Ain’t this jest the grandest day, Crumbs, the youngster crooned to his purring companion, as he artfully skimmed another pebble across the sun-dappled harbour. I reckons we’ll git oursells a treat fer supper tonight …

Aside from two tubwomen who idly chatted on the wharf, the only other people in sight were a dozen grimy coal-heavers who relaxed on a battered scow in the calm water. The muscular young men lay on heaps of glistening coal and drowsily smoked their pipes or snoozed.

Regrettably, the tranquil scene was shattered when, from behind a derrick, three waterfront toughs menacingly sprang into view. One thug rounded on the boy, and demanded: Give uz yer money, newsie – or yer kitty-kat goes a-swimmin’! And the ruffian snatched the boy’s canvas bag, and swung it about his head with dizzying speed until the kitten’s plaintive cries reached Cholly.

Dun’t yer dare hurt my Crumbs, the little newsboy shouted, with fists raised in a hopeless gesture of defiance that made the thugs howl with laughter.

Well, dun’t this beat all, joshed the bully commander in mock fear, before repeating darkly: Now gimme yer money – or we’re gonna chuck kitty-kat and yerself into the watter. And we ain’t jim-jamming, so look lively – or yer might jest git droonded! With that, the ruffian signaled his minions to drag the boy to the water’s edge.

Now Cholly Blake hadn’t a mean bone in his body; nary one. He overflowed with milk of human kindness for man and beast alike, and was hardly ever angry – even when severely provoked. But the drama before his eyes was too much to bear.

Dousing his pipe on a heel, he rose to his feet, ambled along the wharf and politely tapped the banditti leader on his shoulder. Bettur leave the young lad alone … , the sailor said quietly.

Although 47 summers old, Cholly’s muscles were like granite – the result of hoisting sails and anchors from boyhood. It was an important detail of physique that the wharf bully failed to observe. Push off! he growled to Cholly, then added menacingly: Or it’ll be wurser fer you, oldtimer!

The remark proved most unfortunate!

Politely assuring the thug he bore no personal animosity, Cholly seized the ruffian with extraordinary quickness, lifted him into the air – and effortlessly hurled him into two fathoms of water, where he landed with a wailing cry and prodigious splash. The lout’s companions gaped in horror at the feat – then wisely fled at full speed.

My wurd, that wuz a monstrus grand dive, remarked Cholly, throwing a rope to the bully who spluttered in the water to the intense amusement of the coal-heavers who watched from their scow. Now the watter has yer brain thinkin’ a wee bit clearer, why dun’t yer come topside – but at yer leisure – and p’raps apol’gize to this young feller and his wee kitty, continued the sailor. Yer hurt their feelin’s, and scairt the wee pussy cat half ter death, poor thing.

Emerging from the harbour dripping and whimpering, the lout fell to his knees and begged forgiveness from the little boy and his kitten. He then slunk off in deep shame – the flame of belligerence having fizzled out.

And this is how the amiable Cholly Blake first met Nipper the Newsboy, the young resident of Toronto’s Frederick Street Lodging For Newsboys and other indigent children.

Did yer ever hear of my dreadful ordeal? the old sailor quietly asked his new friend Nipper as he resumed his seat on a coil of old rope and patiently relit his pipe. "It wuz monstrus! I nat’rally assumed I’d go down with the vessel!"

And as the vermilion sun began to set in the vast reaches of Lake Ontario, Cholly Blake patiently related to the wide-eyed boy the saga of the DREADFUL CALAMITY IN THE ROARING SURF! – with a few extra bits thrown in for greater dramatic effect.

Chapter 2

We Meet on the Field of Combat

A month had passed since Cholly Blake’s romanticized brush with death in the DREADFUL CALAMITY! and, true to his word, the sailor had kept his solemn vow to never again sail The Great Inland Seas, even though his funds were long since exhausted and his jolly landlady, Mrs. Nellie Frobisher, had begun to gently press for money he owed.

Oh Lor’! sighed Cholly one day when Mrs. Frobisher had removed his breakfast plate, and tried to catch his eye by coughing slightly. Whut can I do?

The sailor had reason to feel embarrassed. He had stumbled upon Mrs. Frobisher’s tumbledown home on the eastern end of Toronto’s waterfront weeks earlier. The modest house sat on a spit of land near Buck’s wharf, close to the River Don and within a stone’s throw of Ashbridge’s Marsh. It had not seemed inviting at first glance, when viewed through a forest of schooner masts that crowded the eastern jetties. The green slate roof sagged alarmingly, two twisted chimneys appeared to defy gravity, and the gable ends were bowed, as if ready to collapse. But when the sailor got closer, he noted with surprise that Mother Nature had conspired to soften most other defects by embracing the entire front of the little house with an enormous vine of yellow and white flowers that, as the afternoon wore on, filled the air with intoxicating perfume. (It was just as well since occasional whiffs of foul marsh gas could not be denied.)

Taken by the quaintness of the old house, Cholly sat on a nearby capstan, lit his pipe, and made further observations. Although a railway track and the huge Gooderham and Worts distillery dominated the outlook from the building’s rear, the front of the house boasted a superb view of the harbour and shipping and, as night fell, a lamp-post near the front door cast a warm, orange glow over the blossom-covered home, the wharf, and the anchored schooners that rose and fell in the gentle harbour swell. It was a most picturesque scene, thought the sailor. With his mind made up, Cholly doused his pipe, smoothed his unruly hair, and ambled across the cobblestone wharf to knock on the front door.

The brief chat that followed with Mrs. Frobisher on the doorstep had a happy result. The hospitable widow invited the sailor to become her lodger that same evening, and Cholly instantly was made to feel at home in the little house on the waterfront. That is until his meager savings ran out – and then Cholly’s blissful feelings gave way to mortifying shame each time Mrs. Frobisher broached the awkward subject of his unpaid board.

Cholly, yer a decent man, nae doot aboot it. But, jinks, I’m a puir widda with nine bairns tae feed, and anither six mair when you include ma sister-in-law’s kiddies as weel, bravely declared the widow as she cleared away his breakfast plate, and cast her lodger a pathetic look. I need a few bawbees o’ what ye owe. The puir wee souls need shoes.

The plea pierced Cholly’s heart. Everyone, it seemed, had made some sacrifice for his comfort. Mrs. Frobisher’s 15 children had filled every room from cellar to attic, but the widow had managed to reorganize everyone in less than five minutes and had given the best upstairs room (her own bedroom that overlooked the harbour and Island beyond) to her lodger. Painfully conscious of his landlady’s generous heart, and his growing debt to her, the sailor blushed and vaguely promised: I’ll pay yer somethin’ soon Nellie. Cholly then fled the lodgings and strode along the waterfront with uncommon briskness. The sailor felt certain certain he was the most heartless rogue ever to draw breath.

Questions filled his mind as he walked. Why, he wondered, did Mrs. Frobisher let him stay in her crowded home – and in her own vacated room, indeed – with his board unpaid? Why did the good lady still wash, cook and clean for him? And why did the widow sigh and, with doe-like eyes, give him many sidelong-long looks on warm nights as they sat together on the wharf under the lamp-post’s glow and meekly confess that she missed having a guid man aroond the hoose. These were unfathomable mysteries to Cholly who, it must be said, was sadly unschooled in the ways of widows.

The sailor was certain of one thing, though.

Nellie by rights must have sumthin’ for thum poor 15 boys and gurls, he muttered, as he trudged unhappily along the waterfront. But I’m jest a poor sailor without a brass bean. Whut can I do? Lost in black despondency, Cholly made his way to Milloy’s wharf at the foot of Yonge Street. – his favourite idling spot – and there found Nipper the Newsboy busily hawking The Evening Mercury, Toronto’s premier newspaper.

"MONSTER FIGHT IN HARBOUR!" yelled the newsboy as he gravely waved papers about his head. "READ ALL ’BOUT IT …!"

What’s this, young Nipper? inquired the astonished sailor, being careful to avoid the customers who threw down pennies to learn of the new sensation. Is sum fearful creatchur in the watter?

Naw! laughed the impish newsboy. He winked and pointed to a tiny item buried on the back page, and confessed in an aside: It’s jest a pip-squeak story about a fisherman spearing a big carp in an Island lagoon, an’ the fish gitting away after a sharp tussle. It makes a dandy headline, though! And with renewed vigour, the little boy inflated his lungs to bursting point, and let fly with a resounding: EXTRA! EXTRA! MAN LOSES LAKE BATTLE!

Cholly frowned. It had not escaped his notice that many rascally newsboys (and a colourful species of editors, too) occasionally resorted to emotive headlines such as RAGING INFERNO! and FEARFUL TRAGEDY! to sell their journals on dull news days. Only the previous week, the sailor ruefully recalled having parted with a cent he’d found to learn the titillating details of A SCULLERY MAID’S SECRET! – just to discover the woman lightened her hair with lemon juice. For a moment a dark cloud passed over Cholly’s brow, and the sailor wondered if the DREADFUL CALAMITY IN THE ROARING SURF! – the widely reported lake drama that had featured him so dramatically – also fell into the same disreputable class of journalism, but he quickly dismissed such idle speculation as baseless.

All newspapers have principulls. They’d nivver bamboozle their readers, he reasoned, and reproached himself for entertaining such a vulgar suspicion.

Cholly’s musings on the darker arts of newspaperdom were rudely interrupted in that instant by a flash of jagged lightning that ripped across the sky. In seconds, ear-splitting thunder stabbed the motionless air – BOOM! BOOM! – and a storm of hurricane intensity roared in from Lake Ontario, raced across the Island, lashed the harbour into a fury, made landfall on the Esplanade, and deluged the area with torrential rain. Cholly ran blindly to escape the monsoon downpour, but in doing so crashed headlong into Thomas Hardwicke, one of Nipper’s best customers, and knocked the bank clerk into a flooded gutter. So distracted was the meek clerk by personal woes that he hardly knew what had befallen him. He simply sat stupefied in the foaming torrent until Cholly, assisted by Nipper, hauled the poor fellow to his feet with profuse apologies. As sometimes happens in encounters of this sort, Hardwicke began to bare his troubled soul to the kind stranger.

"I simply adore Miss Arabella Napier, but this fairest of orchids is beyond my miserable station in life," the lovesick clerk confessed to Cholly, and promptly burst into tears.

And – Ha! Ha! Ha! – just to make my life more wretched, he sobbed, "I’ve foolishly … stupidly made a mortal enemy of Captain D’Arcy Leatham of the 13th Hussars. This brute intends to kill me! … kill me!" Having said this, the clerk sank into the flooded gutter again, and sobbed piteously.

Shocked by the outburst, Cholly remained silent while the clerk – then consulting a train schedule – sought to compose himself. It was a distressing scene.

From what Cholly and Nipper learned from the delirious clerk, Captain Leatham had lately come to town and, having been introduced to Arabella Napier at a regimental soiree, had decided the banker’s daughter had sufficient birth, wealth and connection to be worthy of his amorous attentions. When Hardwicke, in a fit of jealously, informed the captain that he alone adored Miss Arabella, and rashly declared he was ready to die for the mistress of my heart, the officer apparently had taken the clerk at his word – and challenged him to a duel.

Let pistols decide this matter! were Leatham’s precise words.

So … you see the cause of my misery, wailed Hardwicke. "I’ve lost the woman I adore – and I’m about to lose my life, too! Anyone can see I’m not made for dueling. Besides, it’s strictly against Toronto’s municipal by-laws."

Familiar with the devious ways of some men, Cholly offered the distraught clerk a few comforting words. Mr. Hardwicke, dun’t yer fret yerself. I’ve sailed all The Great Inland Seas (a wee zig-zaggeration), and I knows a thing or two ‘bout this old wurld. Stick with young Nipper and me, and we’ll show this puffed-up popinjay whoose the bettur man – and help yer win milady’s hand. Buck up, my lad. And with that, the sailor gave the clerk a fatherly pat on his sopping wet head and jauntily set off to visit Captain Leatham’s aide-de-camp.

Later that evening, the bewildered Hardwicke found himself in a secluded Toronto park. From a distance, the terrified clerk appeared to lean nonchalantly against a massive oak tree, disdainful of the awful test ahead. But closer scrutiny would have shown the clerk was incapable of much movement since he was strung up like a giant puppet, with ropes invisibly threaded under his jacket, down his trouser legs and up his coat sleeves. These ropes artfully ascended into the tree’s foliage, ran through a ship’s pulley, then looped down into nearby bushes where the ends were held by a concealed sailor and little newsboy in a jaunty Dutch cap.

Yer’ll come to no harm, Mr. Hardwicke, Cholly whispered reassuringly from his hiding place. An’ jest ignore any bullets fired at yer!

The overwrought clerk could only manage a strangled whimper in reply.

At 6 o’clock precisely, Captain Leatham strolled nonchalantly into the park. He was accompanied by an army doctor, two seconds, and his smirking aide-de-camp, who carried a brace of regimental dueling weapons. Attired in a calico shirt, tight breeches and high cavalry boots, Leatham cut a dashing figure in the failing light.

Welcome to the field of mortal combat, the handsome officer boomed when he espied his rival standing against the oak some 30 paces away. Do you retract your deeply offensive remarks to me and abandon your claims upon Miss Arabella – or do you choose to die?

The trussed-up clerk’s reply was inaudible, except to angels above.

When a minute of silence had elapsed, and with no apology forthcoming, Leatham signalled his seconds and the dueling pistols were put into the combatants’ hands. Hardwicke’s legs collapsed, but thanks to the encircling ropes he appeared to stand ramrod straight. Leatham, on the other hand, exhibited marvelous sangfroid. He laconically smoothed his moustache with the muzzle of his weapon, and smiled at everyone. He had reason to be at ease. The dueling pistols were heavily charged with black gunpowder, but contained no lethal bullets – a deception that Leatham’s aide-de-camp had quietly revealed to Cholly earlier in the day. But, by some regrettable oversight, Cholly had forgotten to acquaint Hardwicke with this important detail.

I await your answer, the scurrilous officer called across the glade to Hardwicke, and added darkly: Be warned – I am a crack shot!

Not being in a similar state of combativeness, and unaware the duel was a sham affair, the poor clerk broke down and wept inwardly. He yearned to grovel like a whipped dog at Leatham’s feet – but the throttling ropes made the cowardly impulse impossible.

I still do not hear your reply, cried out Leatham, theatrically squinting down his pistol sights. My patience is wearing thin!

In the bushes, Cholly gritted his teeth and roughly yanked the strangling cords around the terrified