THE RESCUE OF ELIZABETH BENNET.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."]
SIR,—Can any of your readers tell me of a greater compliment to an author than this which has just come to my notice? One of our transports was crossing from Taranto to Port Said with troops for Mesopotamia when, about eight hours out of Taranto, towards 1 a.m. she was accidentally rammed by one of the escort, a Japanese destroyer. At the first moment all on board believed that she had been torpedoed, and all pas- sengers were summoned on deck, the stewards at the hatchways calling to them to make haste, as time was very short. A gallant colonel of my acquaintance, who had seized mackintosh, goloshes, and flask, and was half-way up the ladder, suddenly remembered that he had left his copy of Pride and Prejudice, which he was reading for the first time, in his berth, and forthwith plunged back into the sinking ship to the rescue of Elizabeth Bennet. The only parallel that occurs to me is Scott's story of the escaped Jacobite prisoner, who was retaken hovering round his old prison in the hope of regaining his
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