Among the Rainbows [excerpt]

THE TWA DOGS.

     The Captain has a couple of dogs, one of them a large black spaniel, the other a yellow [91][92] Bedlington terrier—the latter had taken a special hatred or liking for moorhens; he was in and out of the water all the time, squeezing himself through impossible bushes and roots in the banks after one of these cunning birds; at length he found one. I saw the poor bird struggling to get out of his grip—he had got hold of her by the tip of one wing, but was prevented by the roots from getting a firmer hold. She eventually got clear of him, and then made very curious contortions, floating on her back with one wing up and the other in the water, pretending, as it seemed to me, to try to entice him after her, and probably away from a nest of young ones. She struggled in this apparently half-dead state some yards down the river, and when she saw him coming out of the bushes she suddenly became quite well, made a plunge into deep water and was gone. The Captain has named these two dogs after two celebrated assassins—and he called them indifferently by either name, to which they answered accordingly. One is named Ravachol (who threw a bomb into the French Assembly), and the other is delighted to be called Czolgosz, in happy ignorance that his namesake shot President McKinley.