Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 3).djvu/471

 ladies, who were taken on board seated on a chair to which a rope, worked by a pulley, was attached. Two or three of the ladies had reached the deck safely, and another was in mid-air, when suddenly a clear voice rang out, "Let go!" The sailors, thinking it was the boatswain who had given the order, obeyed it instantly, the result being that the lady had a cold bath in the sea. It is scarcely necessary to relate that the order to "Let go" came, not from the boatswain, but from the parrot!

Mr. Wood gives an interesting account supplied to him by a correspondent concerning a ringed parakeet, which, on reaching Plymouth from Trincomalee, "was put into a rickety old cage, with two buns for her nourishment, and sent all by herself in the train to London. On her arrival there, she was forwarded to a person who had formerly been confidential servant to my wife. One morning this person, hearing a great chattering down-stairs, looked in at her back-parlour door, and there, to her infinite surprise, she saw Polly seated upon the cat's back, chattering away, while pussy was majestically marching round the room."

A parrot show was once held in the North of England, at which, among the prizes, there was one to be given to the bird that could talk the best. Several had been produced, and showed off their need accomplishments; and then another was brought forward. The cover was taken off the cage, and thereupon the bird looked around and suddenly exclaimed, "By Jove, what a lot of parrots!" It was awarded the prize at once.

Another parrot we have heard of, which also endeavoured to rise to the occasion, was the property of a publichouse-keeper whose patrons were characteristic for their thirst rather than for their patience and politeness. One day the bird escaped from its cage in the bar. It was discovered shortly afterwards on a tree, surrounded by a flock of rooks who were pecking at it from every side while the parrot was calling out, "One at a time, gentlemen! One at a time!"

Mr. Jesse gives a remarkable account of a parrot which belonged to a resident at Hampton Court, whose sister had supplied him with the narrative. "As you wished me," says the lady,