The obstacle course terminated at the brackish fast-flowing, green-black waters of the Nerang River. There they had built a thirty foot tower with a platform atop extending out over the river. At the end of the run, saturated in sweat and mud, bloody nicks and bruises all over your body, utterly exhausted, you had to climb the ladder to the platform where a sergeant waited.
“Swimmer or non-swimmer,” he would ask, and then bellow the reply to the two life-guards waiting in a rubber dinghy down below.
In fact, as I staggered by the sergeant, I truly did not know the answer to the question, even if I had possessed sufficient air in my lungs to speak it. I hate water. I can swim, I suppose, but only enough to stay alive in the shallow waters on a day at the beach. But the sergeant knew me.
“Non-swimmer!” he yelled and the life-guards dived into the water. I did not dive myself, nor even jump, I just simply kept straight on walking and tumbled off the edge. Drowning, it seemed right then to my drained, exhausted, over-heated body, would be a lovely way to die. The water would be cool, it had no sharp edges, it didn’t yell at anyone, a rare moment of comfort at Canungra.
But when I hit the water, my overwhelming horror at all things wet consumed me with panic. My arms and legs immediately began to flail wildly and in such fashion I burst through the surface and was propelled at great speed across the river and up the bank, arms and legs still going crazily, like a crocodile on the attack.
The life guards didn’t even nearly reach me.
“Just as bloody well,” one of them said. “Mad bastard would have drowned us both if we’d caught him.”
It was a jubilant day, the one when I officially became a swimmer.
In 1927, Arthur Conan Doyle was required to resurrect his great detective once more in The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes.
“I am sorry,” said Holmes. “I am accustomed to have a mystery at one end of my cases, but to have a mystery at both ends is too confusing..” The Illustrious Client.
“Exactly,” said Holmes. “What rugged common sense, None the less, I should be curious to see it.” The Three Gables.
“The faculty of deduction is certainly contagious, Watson…” The Thor Bridge.
“… The ways of Fate are indeed hard to understand. If there is not some compensation hereafter, then the world is a cruel jest…” The Veiled Lodger.
Poor old Conan Doyle had already been pressured into resurrecting Holmes a second time in 1915 with The Valley of Fear, a full length novel that was inferior in every way. Both Holmes and Watson lacked their usual energy. The story was recycled from the original idea from A Study in Scarlet, substituting Masons for Mormons, and again Holmes investigates in the first half, in the long second part the long American story is told, and finally it all gets dobbed on the evil Moriaty (the story being set prior to that monster’s death). A sorry business all the way around.
By the third revival, the old dog’s day was more than done—Agatha Christie had been writing her imitations with great success for five years at that stage and, perhaps aware that Holmes was beyond his age, Doyle was wise enough to set all of the stories well in the past—those ones which Watson had not published at the time for some reason or other. Both Holmes and Doyle showed serious signs of weariness, but weak Holmes is still better than most of his rivals. In his introduction to the work, Doyle wrote of the several revivals of the character, adding:
“I have never regretted it, for I have not in actual practice found that these lighter sketches have prevented me from exploring and finding my limitations in such varied branches of literature as history, poetry, historical novels, psychic research, and the drama. Had Holmes never existed I could not have done more, though he may perhaps stood a little in the way of recognition of my more serious literary work...”
In fact, apart from the even lighter (although wonderful) dinosaur yarn The Lost World, Holmes has overshadowed all Doyle’s other work to the point of obliteration. The writer is always the last person you should ask to judge his own work.
“Pray continue,” I said. “Your problem presents some unusual features.”… The Blanched Soldier
“In that case, my dear sir, I shall be under the painful necessity of advising your arrest.” The Mazarin Stone.
“Rubbish, Watson, rubbish! What have we to do with walking corpses who can only be held in their graves by stakes driven through their hearts? It’s pure lunacy.” The Sussex Vampire.
“Patience! Patience, Mr. Garrideb!” said my friend in a soothing voice. “Dr Watson would tell you that these little digressions of mine sometimes prove in the end to have some bearing on the matter…” The Three Garridebs
“The same old Watson!” said he. “You never learn that the gravest issues may depend upon the smallest things…” The Creeping Man.
“… And you, Inspector, come along! We will see if we cannot deliver this murderer into your hands,” The Lion’s Mane.
“…It is true that though in your mission you have missed everything of importance, yet even those things which have obtruded themselves upon your notice give rise to serious thought.” The Retired Colourman.
“ ...Watson and I are famous fishermen—are we not, Watson?…” Shoscombe Old Place.
