Volume One--Chapter Six.

Volume One--Chapter Six.“All’s well that ends well.”To make a long story short, I may state briefly that in the second part of the action—the second act of a tragedy, it was for the Malays—both the bluejackets and the men of theHankow Lingot off scot-free, not another casualty happening to swell the death-roll, or a fresh wound of any consequence being received by any of those engaged. The surprise to the pirates on finding they had “caught a Tartar,” instead of assailing a defenceless merchant vessel, as they had expected, was so complete, that, in nautical phraseology, they were “taken all aback.”Not expecting any opposition to speak of, and confident that the ship they were attacking carried no guns—for how could even the most astute of the Malays have supposed, with all their prying and peeping, that theHankow Linhad a set of Armstrongs on board her, headed up in hogsheads?—the pirates were stupefied by the first broadside they received; and, after that, their resistance amounted tonil, especially the more as one of the discharges killed their chief, when, of course, they had no one to lead them on or rally their drooping energies on the pinch.The schooner, it was found, was none other than theDiavolo, a pirate craft commanded by a Portuguese renegade, who had already earned for himself a somewhat questionable reputation in Eastern seas; and how Captain Morton got wind of the intentions of the Malay crew to mutiny and bring his ship for destruction may be thus briefly told:—Several large tea-traders having mysteriously disappeared on their voyage home to England, after shipping Malay crews on board, the English admiral on the station had conferred with the Chinese authorities, and from them learned that theDiavolowas suspected, and that a spy had discovered that an attempt would be made on theHankow Lin, which was just loading at the time, and which had, like the other missing ships, shipped some Malay hands, in consequence of the loss of the main portion of her English crew on the voyage out.Accordingly, precautions were taken to counteract the conspiracy of the Malay crew and capture the pirate by putting on board arms and munition—of which they supposed the ship to have none—and concealing in the saloon a force of blue-jackets to combine with the English part of the crew should the contemplated mutiny break out—the result of which precautions proved, as we have seen, to be eminently successful.While the calm lasted, the bodies of the dead pirates were hove overboard, and the three bluejackets and Phillips who had lost their life in the first struggle with the Malays committed carefully to the deep with every solemnity; and then theHankow Lin, as soon as the wind sprang up again, as it did by sundown, was headed towards Singapore in accordance with Lieutenant Meredith’s wish, although it was sorely against Captain Morton’s will to bear off from his direct course to England, which was almost right in front of him, the Straits of Sunda bearing a point or two off the lee beam.However, Captain Morton lost nothing by his compliance with the lieutenant’s wish. TheHankow Linwhen she arrived at Singapore was allotted a half share of the value of the pirate schooner and all she contained; and that craft being pretty nearly crammed full of plunder, which she had accumulated from the different ships that had been captured and scuttled by her in her nefarious career, the sum thus awarded to Captain Morton was more than sufficient to compensate his owners for any delay that had arisen through theHankow Lin’sdetention at the Dutch port, besides swelling the handsome bounty that was paid to each and all of the crew engaged in the affair.This was not all, either.At Singapore, Captain Morton was able to obtain what he could not have very well voyaged home without, and that was a supply of fresh hands to navigate the ship in place of the treacherous scoundrels who had engaged with him at Canton only to plot her destruction, although the captain had ample satisfaction for all this ere he left the place, for, as Bill the boatswain said in mentioning the fact afterwards, he “saw every mother’s son of them hung before he weighed anchor again.”After bidding adieu to their late active comrades the blue-jackets, all went well with the old vessel, from Singapore to the Straits of Sunda, across the Indian Ocean, and round the Cape of Good Hope. Not an untoward event happened on the way home, not a mishap occurred, and, as Snowball said when he stepped ashore in the East India Dock, “All’s well dat ends well.” And so endedThe Voyage of the “Hankow Lin.”

To make a long story short, I may state briefly that in the second part of the action—the second act of a tragedy, it was for the Malays—both the bluejackets and the men of theHankow Lingot off scot-free, not another casualty happening to swell the death-roll, or a fresh wound of any consequence being received by any of those engaged. The surprise to the pirates on finding they had “caught a Tartar,” instead of assailing a defenceless merchant vessel, as they had expected, was so complete, that, in nautical phraseology, they were “taken all aback.”

Not expecting any opposition to speak of, and confident that the ship they were attacking carried no guns—for how could even the most astute of the Malays have supposed, with all their prying and peeping, that theHankow Linhad a set of Armstrongs on board her, headed up in hogsheads?—the pirates were stupefied by the first broadside they received; and, after that, their resistance amounted tonil, especially the more as one of the discharges killed their chief, when, of course, they had no one to lead them on or rally their drooping energies on the pinch.

The schooner, it was found, was none other than theDiavolo, a pirate craft commanded by a Portuguese renegade, who had already earned for himself a somewhat questionable reputation in Eastern seas; and how Captain Morton got wind of the intentions of the Malay crew to mutiny and bring his ship for destruction may be thus briefly told:—

Several large tea-traders having mysteriously disappeared on their voyage home to England, after shipping Malay crews on board, the English admiral on the station had conferred with the Chinese authorities, and from them learned that theDiavolowas suspected, and that a spy had discovered that an attempt would be made on theHankow Lin, which was just loading at the time, and which had, like the other missing ships, shipped some Malay hands, in consequence of the loss of the main portion of her English crew on the voyage out.

Accordingly, precautions were taken to counteract the conspiracy of the Malay crew and capture the pirate by putting on board arms and munition—of which they supposed the ship to have none—and concealing in the saloon a force of blue-jackets to combine with the English part of the crew should the contemplated mutiny break out—the result of which precautions proved, as we have seen, to be eminently successful.

While the calm lasted, the bodies of the dead pirates were hove overboard, and the three bluejackets and Phillips who had lost their life in the first struggle with the Malays committed carefully to the deep with every solemnity; and then theHankow Lin, as soon as the wind sprang up again, as it did by sundown, was headed towards Singapore in accordance with Lieutenant Meredith’s wish, although it was sorely against Captain Morton’s will to bear off from his direct course to England, which was almost right in front of him, the Straits of Sunda bearing a point or two off the lee beam.

However, Captain Morton lost nothing by his compliance with the lieutenant’s wish. TheHankow Linwhen she arrived at Singapore was allotted a half share of the value of the pirate schooner and all she contained; and that craft being pretty nearly crammed full of plunder, which she had accumulated from the different ships that had been captured and scuttled by her in her nefarious career, the sum thus awarded to Captain Morton was more than sufficient to compensate his owners for any delay that had arisen through theHankow Lin’sdetention at the Dutch port, besides swelling the handsome bounty that was paid to each and all of the crew engaged in the affair.

This was not all, either.

At Singapore, Captain Morton was able to obtain what he could not have very well voyaged home without, and that was a supply of fresh hands to navigate the ship in place of the treacherous scoundrels who had engaged with him at Canton only to plot her destruction, although the captain had ample satisfaction for all this ere he left the place, for, as Bill the boatswain said in mentioning the fact afterwards, he “saw every mother’s son of them hung before he weighed anchor again.”

After bidding adieu to their late active comrades the blue-jackets, all went well with the old vessel, from Singapore to the Straits of Sunda, across the Indian Ocean, and round the Cape of Good Hope. Not an untoward event happened on the way home, not a mishap occurred, and, as Snowball said when he stepped ashore in the East India Dock, “All’s well dat ends well.” And so endedThe Voyage of the “Hankow Lin.”

Volume Two--Chapter One.At Zanzibar.“Have I ever been to Madagascar?” he repeated, with a look of amazement and wonder quaintly combined on his good-natured, ruddy-brown, weather-beaten face. “Is that what you wanted to know, eh?”“Yes,” I replied, “that is, if you’ve no objection to answer my question.”“Why, no! I’ve nothing to keep dark of my doings.”“All right!” said I; “then you can go ahead.”“Well, sir,” he began, drawing a deep breath as if he only just took in the import of my question and was turning over in his mind the matter in all its bearings, “I should rather just think I had been to Madagascar, and there’s precious little chance too of my forgetting it, either, in a hurry. Ah! if you’d once been wrecked on sich a queer, outlandish, wild, desolate sort o’ shore as that there, arterwards havin’ to swim miles upon miles through a heavy rolling sea to get to land, and that under a fierce burning sun the while; besides, when got ashore at last, being forced to tramp for ten long weary days and nights across slimy green marshes filled with alligators, crawling through thick jungles of thorny bushes that tore your flesh to pieces before ever you could ha’ come to a civilised place to get your wants attended—you, that is me, not having a morsel of food or a drop of pure water to drink all the way—why, sir, I fancy as how you’d remember the blessed place to your dying day; and, would recollect all about it in the flash of a moment again when any one just mentioned its name again the same as you have done just now!”The speaker was a fine, robust-looking seaman of middle height, and probably of middle age also, for there was a slight suspicion of grey in the crisp brown beard that covered the lower part of his countenance, while several prominent wrinkles were apparent about the corners of his merry, twinkling, blue eyes.He was dressed respectably in a sober suit of some rough material that fitted easily to his well-proportioned limbs, and, from his civilian costume and nautical look—for he had a sort of briny flavour about him, so to speak—I took him for a petty officer of the Royal Navy who had retired from the active duties of his profession on account of his length of service afloat having entitled him to theotium cum dignitateof a pension ashore for the remainder of his days. Such was my surmise at first sight—an impression subsequently in part confirmed; but be that as it may, he and I had got into conversation one bright summer day not long ago while standing on Portsmouth Hard, watching a white-hulled Indian troopship steaming out of the harbour beyond, with the marines for Egypt on board. I had mentioned Madagascar in casually commenting on the plucky behaviour displayed at Tamatave by Captain Johnstone of HMSDryadin resisting the high-handed proceedings of the French admiral, who appeared to think that he might insult the English flag with impunity from the fact of his being in command of a squadron flying the Tricolour flag while the representative of the Union Jack had only one solitary vessel to oppose to that force.“Aye, I know the East African station well,” continued my friend. “I was invalided home from there, and got my pension three years before my twenty years’ term of service was up in consequence.”“Indeed!” said I, to lead him on, in expectation of the yarn I could perceive looming before me; but playing with my fish gently, as anglers know so well how to do, so that I might not frighten him into silence by any undue display of anxiety on my part.“Yes, I served over a year in theLondonat Zanzibar before being drafted off to one of the cruisers on the station. Beastly unhealthy place that Zanzibar—all fevers and agues and malaria in the wet season, and as hot as a place you’ve heard of, sir, when the sou’-west monsoon blows off the African shore. I was there when Sir Bartle Frere came to interview the old sultan to try and make him sign a treaty to put down the slave-trade; but it was all no go—the old sultan was too wide-awake for that, and, indeed, treaty or no treaty, we can never quite stop the dealing in slaves between the Arabs on the one hand and the clove-growers on the other.”“No?” said I interrogatively, wondering what the harmless clove, which forms such an important unit in the “sugar and spice and all things nice” combination of culinary seasoning, could possibly have to do with the slave-trade of East Africa.“No, sir,” he answered emphatically, with the air of a man who well knew what he was talking about and was certain of his facts, “it can’t be done. You see, at certain times of the year, about a month after the rainy season ends, in September, the cloves ripen, and it takes a good many hands to pick ’em all and gather them in. Did you ever see them growing, sir?”“I can’t say I ever have,” I responded, “although, of course, I’ve read about them.”“Well, sir, the cloves grow on tall, biggish-sized trees—”“Dear me!” I said, interrupting him, “why, I thought they were the fruit of some little shrub like currants and capers.”“Oh, no! They grow on trees, and some of a goodish height too. The cloves are the bud or blossom of the tree before the flower comes; and they must be picked early in time, or else they’re not fit for anything. Their name, ‘cloves’—I don’t know whether you are aware on it, sir—is from the little things resembling a small nail—clavo, as it’s called in the Spanish.”“I didn’t know that,” I said.“That’s it, then,” he replied, proceeding with his explanation. “Now, of course you can see that the cloves must be got off the trees before the blossom ripens too much, but as the sun is so terribly hot and such a miasma comes up from the places where the trees grow only niggers can stand the exposure; and so it is that slave labour is wanted, for no whites could undertake the job, and the Arab merchants, you may be sure, wouldn’t do it themselves, in spite of the large demand for cloves in the European markets—that is, so long as they can get slaves to do it for ’em.”“How do they gather them?” I asked.“Why, they have queer-shaped ladders, just of the same sort as those little things they put in pots of garden musk to train the plants on, broad at one end and narrow at the other—something like a triangular grating—so that a lot of the niggers can stand on it at a time and pick away from the same tree, on which, perhaps, there are millions of buds to be taken off in less than no time. When they are all gathered they’re spread out in the sun and dried, and then sent off in bags to whoever wants ’em.”“And where are they principally grown?” said I.“Why, Pemba. That’s an island up above Zanzibar, about sixty miles from the coast, though they’re very good cloves grown on Zanzibar Island too; but Pemba is the chief place, and it is to there that the chief runs of slaves are made by the Arab dhows. That is why theLondonwas so long stationed thereabouts: it was in order to intercept these craft and stop the traffic.”“I suppose you’ve seen some service chasing the dhows yourself, eh?” I said, thinking this a good opening for getting him back to his yarn, as he seemed inclined to end the conversation at this point, hinting that he had an appointment “in the yard”—meaning Portsmouth dockyard—and that it was getting on late, and they would soon be closing up.“Oh yes, sir! I served my time dhow-chasing when I was in theLondon; and saw a few sights, too, in the different craft we overhauled that would ha’ made your blood boil against slavery. One dhow, I remember, we captured with nearly a hundred on board, all crammed into a space that you couldn’t have thought would have held half that number of human beings, for it was a small dhow, of probably not more than forty tons at the outside. On the ballast at the bottom of the vessel were huddled up twenty-three women, some with infants in their arms. They were literally doubled up, sir, as they could not stand from the position they were in, as right over them was placed a bamboo deck not three feet above the keel of the boat, on which forty men were jammed together in the same way. This was not all, either, for, right above the men, right on to their heads almost as they squatted down, was another deck of bamboo, on which were over fifty children of all ages. The whole lot, too, when we boarded the dhow, were in the last stages of starvation and dysentery, not to speak of what they must have suffered from the cramped position in which they were confined and the want of air. They smelled something awful when we unkiverd them; it was enough to knock down a horse.”“It was horrible,” I said in sympathy.“No doubt it were all that,” replied my friend the pensioner. “But from what I saw out there I do believe the very attempts our government make to put down the slave-trade only increases the evils of the poor wretches we are trying to liberate.”“How is that?” I asked.“Why, you see, when the traffic used to be permitted, as it was once for a period of eight months in the year, just as you have at home a set time for shooting game, the slaves used to be carried in large dhows, more comfortably, and well supplied with food and water in their passage from the mainland to Pemba and Zanzibar; but when our cruisers began to look out for them and stopped the trade, no matter whether it was in the dry season or not, then the Arabs would pack ’em up in small craft that could lie hid in the creeks or shallows of the coast and smuggle the niggers in during the night-time, for these Arabs are just like cats, and can see in the dark when our men couldn’t perceive their hands afore their face. Once upon a time, when I first went on the station, we used to capture good big dhows that were of a hundred and eighty tons burden and upwards; now our men only get hold of little Mtpe dhows that are hardly worth taking—I suppose you know, sir, as how we get a bounty or prize-money, according to the size of the vessels and the number of slaves we liberate?”“Yes,” said I, “I’m aware of that, as I have noticed advertisements in theLondon Gazetteabout the distribution of the bounty for such and such slave-dhows ‘captured by the boats of HMSLondon’ or some other cruiser named. How are these dhows built?”“Of a sort of close hard wood like African oak, but harder than our English timber of the same nature. The planks of the small Mtpe dhows are sewn together with a thread-like stuff they get from the reeds in the lagoons. They are built broad and shallow, with a keel deepening towards the stern, almost like a wedge, so that they can turn quickly. They’re good sea-boats, too, and can sail almost up into the wind’s eye, with their large lateen sails, which are cut something like an old-fashioned leg of mutton, or short tack lug. The stem of them rises high out of the water, having a poop on it, which is thatched over with matting and banana leaves; and altogether they don’t look unlike a Chinese junk. Some of the bigger dhows, which are used as war craft by the Arab chiefs of Lamoi and Mozambique, are fine craft, and carry six and twelve brass guns sometimes, like the old carronades of the service.”“They sail well, you say?” I inquired.“Don’t they, that’s all! Why, none of our quickest steam-pinnaces can overhaul them when they’re going on a wind, for even with the lightest breeze their sails, being made of twilled calico and light, waft them along as if by magic. There are twenty that escape us for every one we catch, as, in the busy season, the caravans from the interior bring the slaves down to the coast wholesale. The Portuguese and Arabs are the chaps that manage the business; and once the slaves are aboard the dhows, they sneak along the land until night-time, when, if the wind blows fair for them, they’re off and away to Pemba, or further up towards the Arabian coast, where our boats can whistle for them for all the chance they have of overhauling them!”“What becomes of the slaves that are liberated when the dhows are captured?” said I.“Oh, the boys are sent to the Boy’s Mission Schools at Zanzibar, and the girls to the Female Mission there also; while the men folk, at least all the able-bodied and strong ones that are not too old, are enlisted into the sultan’s army—the Sultan of Zanzibar, I mean, the Seyyid Burgash that was. When I was there, the commander of his army was a lieutenant of our navy who had been ‘lent’ by government for the purpose for three years, and now he has left the service altogether and is known as ‘General Matthews’ on the east coast. A right smart chap he is too, for he drilled the niggers as well as if he were a born sojer instead of a sailor!”“Do the slaves like this business?” I asked, thinking that their “freedom” seemed rather questionable; and then, too, consider the cost both in men and money it is to England every year.“Well, I don’t believe they do,” answered the ex-man-o’-war’s-man—“I’ve heard some of them say that they were quite contented to work on the clove plantations, and preferred that to loafing about the streets of Zanzibar, where hundreds of them are to be seen every day, with nothing to do and very little to eat, unless they take to thieving!”“What sort of a place is Zanzibar?” said I now.“Well, sir,” replied the pensioner, “like all them oriental towns I have ever seen in the Levant and elsewhere, it looks ever so much better as seen from the sea than it does at close quarters. Coming into the harbour from the southwards, as I’ve entered it many a time when returning from a trip down to the Mozambique, your vessel has to wind slowly along through numerous little coral islands, which are, however, grown with stunted trees and bush quite close down to the water.”“That must be lovely!” I remarked.“Aye, aye, so it is,” said my friend; “but the navigation is awfully difficult, not to say dangerous, even with a man in the chains heaving the lead and singing out the depth every moment, for the soundings shoot from the ‘deep nine’ to the ‘short five,’ and less nor that too, before you know where you are! Howsomdever, once you’ve got inside and cast anchor, it’s as pretty a roadstead as I ever clapped eyes on—as pretty as Rio in South America, which I daresay you’ve heard of?”“Yes, and seen too,” I said in response.“Have you, sir?” replied the ex-man-o’-war’s-man—“then all I can say is that you’ve seen the handsomest harbour in the world! But, still, Zanzibar ain’t far behind it. The front of the town, which faces the anchorage, looks quite imposing like. The water of the bay is clear too, so that you can see the bottom down to any depth; and the white sandy beach fringing it round is just like snow against the dark background of palm-trees and green foliage. Along the beach are the warehouses and residences of the English-speaking merchants, the grand mansions of the richer sort of citizens, and the offices of the different foreign consuls—each with its own national flag fluttering gaily from the top, the British Union Jack and the Yankee Stars and Stripes being very prominent; while, in the very centre of the lot, is the palace of the sultan, a fine concern. From the top of this flies the red ensign of Arabia, and around it may be seen sentries in a sort of zouave uniform, selected from that very slave army I told you of just now.”“What struck you as most peculiar about the place?” I asked.“Well, I’m hanged if it weren’t the niggers, sir!” said my informant. “You see there the most extraordinary number of little darkies you ever saw in your life, all with nothing on ’em, no more than Adam—not even a fig-leaf! The next thing to strike you, if a stranger, would be the heat, for it is far hotter, strange to say, ashore there than it is aboard your own ship. Some of the houses are curious to look at, for they have neither windows nor doors; for the best dwellings are built round an open court, and the windows, or air-holes as they might more properly be called, open on to that. Instead of being light and built of some flimsy stuff, as you might expect, the houses are all put up ‘on the heat-resisting principle,’ as I heard an engineer describe them—just like the Irishman that wore his Connemara frieze coat in summer to keep out the sun, as he said, in the same way as he put it on in winter to keep out the cold!”“Indeed!” I said.“Yes, sir,” continued my friend; “the walls of all the large houses at Zanzibar are many feet thick of solid stone masonry; and even the floors and partitions dividing the rooms are of several thicknesses too, all made of wood and stone and lime, the wood being covered over with mortar. The roof is the best part of them, however. It is made quite flat, and it is the principal spot for the family to go of an evening when the sun has gone down and the night-breeze begins to blow. The Arabs and Parsees go on top in the mornings too, at sunrise, to say their prayers, spreading out a bit of sacred carpet over the stone flagging that forms the floor of the roof.”“Are there many shops?” I next inquired.“Bless you, the town’s crammed full of them! but they’re only open sheds, in the centre of which some Hindoo or Banian merchant is to be seen squatting all day long, chewing hashish or smoking his hubble-bubble, as if he hadn’t a stroke of business to do, and didn’t care about doing it either if he got the chance!”“I suppose they have goods to sell, though, eh!” I said.“Oh, yes, shawls and sandals and silks and such like; while in the eatable line you can get coffee and sherbet, and arrack too, or what they call English rum, besides pine-apples and mangoes, oranges, citrons, guavas, green cocoa-nuts, and every fruit you could think of, as well as cakes and sweetmeats. The streets in the town are very narrow and are crowded with these sorts of shops or rather stalls, for they’re just like the places you see old apple-women rig up at the corners in London; but the bazaars are the best spots to look at—they’re just like those in India, and some that I’ve seen too in Constantinople. Lor’ sakes! why, they’re crowded with Arabs and Hindoos, Persians, Africans, Somali Arabs, and every sort of coloured native you can imagine, sir, from the lightest coffee-tinted mulatto down to the jettiest black of the pure nigger brought originally from the interior as a slave.“The funniest thing, too, about these bazaars is to see the different trades or handicraftsmen at work, the goldsmiths making rings by hammering and beating the metal, the jewellers stringing pearls together for necklaces and bracelets, the toy-makers rigging up the queerest curios you ever saw, and the sandal-makers cutting out shoes of leather; but the biggest treat of all is to watch a Parsee school and see how the master instructs the little shavers. The children, to the number of fifty or more, all squat on the floor of the school-room, which is a large open shed on a raised platform, each holding in one hand the blade-bone taken from the shoulder of a camel to serve as a slate, on which they make marks with a pencil-like brush. They are pretty little trots, the children; and are mostly all smartly dressed in little jackets and trousers of various coloured silks, green, yellow, and red, with turbans on top of their heads, just like their fathers, to complete the picture.”“The end of the rainy season, you say, is the best time for catching the dhows?” I asked now, to bring my friend back to the main point of all my interrogatories.“Yes, there’s the greatest demand then for the slaves; besides which the south-west monsoon sets in at that time, and is favourable for their crossing from the mainland.”“Do they ever show fight?” I inquired.“Bather!” ejaculated my informant; “they’re about as treacherous a lot as you could ever come across, them Arabs; for, I tell you what, they’ll sometimes let a boat’s crew overhaul ’em, and come up alongside as if everything was ship-shape and clear sailing—that is to say, sir, that they have nothing contraband aboard and could show a clean bill o’ lading; when, drat ’em, they’ll turn round on you like a parcel o’ tigers with their sharp knives and spears. It was in this way my poor skipper, Capt’in Brownrigg, was killed in December ’81—just at Christmas time, when I were out there.”“That was a sad thing,” said I sympathisingly.“Yes,” replied the pensioner; “but, saddest of all, it was to know his poor wife had just come out from England to join him, and was aboard theLondonat the very time his body was brought alongside the ship in the steam-pinnace in which he had met his death. Ah! he was a fine officer was Capt’in Brownrigg, and liked by everybody—not only by his brother officers and equals, but by the men under him. Bless you, they’d a’ gone anywheres to win a smile from his cheery face. Hullo, though, sir, look there, they’re shutting up the dockyard gate!”Such indeed was the case, showing that the afternoon was pretty nearly “expended,” as they say in the service.“Ah! that comes along o’ yarning with you and not minding the business that brought me down here, for now I’m too late.”“Well, in that case,” said I, seeing my chance now for getting the oft-evaded yarn of my friend’s long service, “suppose you come home to my place and have a cup of tea, when you can tell me the story of your shipwreck off Madagascar, eh?”He hemmed and hawed for a moment; but seeing that my invitation was cordially given, and I suppose having nothing else particularly to do, he accepted—whence this story.

“Have I ever been to Madagascar?” he repeated, with a look of amazement and wonder quaintly combined on his good-natured, ruddy-brown, weather-beaten face. “Is that what you wanted to know, eh?”

“Yes,” I replied, “that is, if you’ve no objection to answer my question.”

“Why, no! I’ve nothing to keep dark of my doings.”

“All right!” said I; “then you can go ahead.”

“Well, sir,” he began, drawing a deep breath as if he only just took in the import of my question and was turning over in his mind the matter in all its bearings, “I should rather just think I had been to Madagascar, and there’s precious little chance too of my forgetting it, either, in a hurry. Ah! if you’d once been wrecked on sich a queer, outlandish, wild, desolate sort o’ shore as that there, arterwards havin’ to swim miles upon miles through a heavy rolling sea to get to land, and that under a fierce burning sun the while; besides, when got ashore at last, being forced to tramp for ten long weary days and nights across slimy green marshes filled with alligators, crawling through thick jungles of thorny bushes that tore your flesh to pieces before ever you could ha’ come to a civilised place to get your wants attended—you, that is me, not having a morsel of food or a drop of pure water to drink all the way—why, sir, I fancy as how you’d remember the blessed place to your dying day; and, would recollect all about it in the flash of a moment again when any one just mentioned its name again the same as you have done just now!”

The speaker was a fine, robust-looking seaman of middle height, and probably of middle age also, for there was a slight suspicion of grey in the crisp brown beard that covered the lower part of his countenance, while several prominent wrinkles were apparent about the corners of his merry, twinkling, blue eyes.

He was dressed respectably in a sober suit of some rough material that fitted easily to his well-proportioned limbs, and, from his civilian costume and nautical look—for he had a sort of briny flavour about him, so to speak—I took him for a petty officer of the Royal Navy who had retired from the active duties of his profession on account of his length of service afloat having entitled him to theotium cum dignitateof a pension ashore for the remainder of his days. Such was my surmise at first sight—an impression subsequently in part confirmed; but be that as it may, he and I had got into conversation one bright summer day not long ago while standing on Portsmouth Hard, watching a white-hulled Indian troopship steaming out of the harbour beyond, with the marines for Egypt on board. I had mentioned Madagascar in casually commenting on the plucky behaviour displayed at Tamatave by Captain Johnstone of HMSDryadin resisting the high-handed proceedings of the French admiral, who appeared to think that he might insult the English flag with impunity from the fact of his being in command of a squadron flying the Tricolour flag while the representative of the Union Jack had only one solitary vessel to oppose to that force.

“Aye, I know the East African station well,” continued my friend. “I was invalided home from there, and got my pension three years before my twenty years’ term of service was up in consequence.”

“Indeed!” said I, to lead him on, in expectation of the yarn I could perceive looming before me; but playing with my fish gently, as anglers know so well how to do, so that I might not frighten him into silence by any undue display of anxiety on my part.

“Yes, I served over a year in theLondonat Zanzibar before being drafted off to one of the cruisers on the station. Beastly unhealthy place that Zanzibar—all fevers and agues and malaria in the wet season, and as hot as a place you’ve heard of, sir, when the sou’-west monsoon blows off the African shore. I was there when Sir Bartle Frere came to interview the old sultan to try and make him sign a treaty to put down the slave-trade; but it was all no go—the old sultan was too wide-awake for that, and, indeed, treaty or no treaty, we can never quite stop the dealing in slaves between the Arabs on the one hand and the clove-growers on the other.”

“No?” said I interrogatively, wondering what the harmless clove, which forms such an important unit in the “sugar and spice and all things nice” combination of culinary seasoning, could possibly have to do with the slave-trade of East Africa.

“No, sir,” he answered emphatically, with the air of a man who well knew what he was talking about and was certain of his facts, “it can’t be done. You see, at certain times of the year, about a month after the rainy season ends, in September, the cloves ripen, and it takes a good many hands to pick ’em all and gather them in. Did you ever see them growing, sir?”

“I can’t say I ever have,” I responded, “although, of course, I’ve read about them.”

“Well, sir, the cloves grow on tall, biggish-sized trees—”

“Dear me!” I said, interrupting him, “why, I thought they were the fruit of some little shrub like currants and capers.”

“Oh, no! They grow on trees, and some of a goodish height too. The cloves are the bud or blossom of the tree before the flower comes; and they must be picked early in time, or else they’re not fit for anything. Their name, ‘cloves’—I don’t know whether you are aware on it, sir—is from the little things resembling a small nail—clavo, as it’s called in the Spanish.”

“I didn’t know that,” I said.

“That’s it, then,” he replied, proceeding with his explanation. “Now, of course you can see that the cloves must be got off the trees before the blossom ripens too much, but as the sun is so terribly hot and such a miasma comes up from the places where the trees grow only niggers can stand the exposure; and so it is that slave labour is wanted, for no whites could undertake the job, and the Arab merchants, you may be sure, wouldn’t do it themselves, in spite of the large demand for cloves in the European markets—that is, so long as they can get slaves to do it for ’em.”

“How do they gather them?” I asked.

“Why, they have queer-shaped ladders, just of the same sort as those little things they put in pots of garden musk to train the plants on, broad at one end and narrow at the other—something like a triangular grating—so that a lot of the niggers can stand on it at a time and pick away from the same tree, on which, perhaps, there are millions of buds to be taken off in less than no time. When they are all gathered they’re spread out in the sun and dried, and then sent off in bags to whoever wants ’em.”

“And where are they principally grown?” said I.

“Why, Pemba. That’s an island up above Zanzibar, about sixty miles from the coast, though they’re very good cloves grown on Zanzibar Island too; but Pemba is the chief place, and it is to there that the chief runs of slaves are made by the Arab dhows. That is why theLondonwas so long stationed thereabouts: it was in order to intercept these craft and stop the traffic.”

“I suppose you’ve seen some service chasing the dhows yourself, eh?” I said, thinking this a good opening for getting him back to his yarn, as he seemed inclined to end the conversation at this point, hinting that he had an appointment “in the yard”—meaning Portsmouth dockyard—and that it was getting on late, and they would soon be closing up.

“Oh yes, sir! I served my time dhow-chasing when I was in theLondon; and saw a few sights, too, in the different craft we overhauled that would ha’ made your blood boil against slavery. One dhow, I remember, we captured with nearly a hundred on board, all crammed into a space that you couldn’t have thought would have held half that number of human beings, for it was a small dhow, of probably not more than forty tons at the outside. On the ballast at the bottom of the vessel were huddled up twenty-three women, some with infants in their arms. They were literally doubled up, sir, as they could not stand from the position they were in, as right over them was placed a bamboo deck not three feet above the keel of the boat, on which forty men were jammed together in the same way. This was not all, either, for, right above the men, right on to their heads almost as they squatted down, was another deck of bamboo, on which were over fifty children of all ages. The whole lot, too, when we boarded the dhow, were in the last stages of starvation and dysentery, not to speak of what they must have suffered from the cramped position in which they were confined and the want of air. They smelled something awful when we unkiverd them; it was enough to knock down a horse.”

“It was horrible,” I said in sympathy.

“No doubt it were all that,” replied my friend the pensioner. “But from what I saw out there I do believe the very attempts our government make to put down the slave-trade only increases the evils of the poor wretches we are trying to liberate.”

“How is that?” I asked.

“Why, you see, when the traffic used to be permitted, as it was once for a period of eight months in the year, just as you have at home a set time for shooting game, the slaves used to be carried in large dhows, more comfortably, and well supplied with food and water in their passage from the mainland to Pemba and Zanzibar; but when our cruisers began to look out for them and stopped the trade, no matter whether it was in the dry season or not, then the Arabs would pack ’em up in small craft that could lie hid in the creeks or shallows of the coast and smuggle the niggers in during the night-time, for these Arabs are just like cats, and can see in the dark when our men couldn’t perceive their hands afore their face. Once upon a time, when I first went on the station, we used to capture good big dhows that were of a hundred and eighty tons burden and upwards; now our men only get hold of little Mtpe dhows that are hardly worth taking—I suppose you know, sir, as how we get a bounty or prize-money, according to the size of the vessels and the number of slaves we liberate?”

“Yes,” said I, “I’m aware of that, as I have noticed advertisements in theLondon Gazetteabout the distribution of the bounty for such and such slave-dhows ‘captured by the boats of HMSLondon’ or some other cruiser named. How are these dhows built?”

“Of a sort of close hard wood like African oak, but harder than our English timber of the same nature. The planks of the small Mtpe dhows are sewn together with a thread-like stuff they get from the reeds in the lagoons. They are built broad and shallow, with a keel deepening towards the stern, almost like a wedge, so that they can turn quickly. They’re good sea-boats, too, and can sail almost up into the wind’s eye, with their large lateen sails, which are cut something like an old-fashioned leg of mutton, or short tack lug. The stem of them rises high out of the water, having a poop on it, which is thatched over with matting and banana leaves; and altogether they don’t look unlike a Chinese junk. Some of the bigger dhows, which are used as war craft by the Arab chiefs of Lamoi and Mozambique, are fine craft, and carry six and twelve brass guns sometimes, like the old carronades of the service.”

“They sail well, you say?” I inquired.

“Don’t they, that’s all! Why, none of our quickest steam-pinnaces can overhaul them when they’re going on a wind, for even with the lightest breeze their sails, being made of twilled calico and light, waft them along as if by magic. There are twenty that escape us for every one we catch, as, in the busy season, the caravans from the interior bring the slaves down to the coast wholesale. The Portuguese and Arabs are the chaps that manage the business; and once the slaves are aboard the dhows, they sneak along the land until night-time, when, if the wind blows fair for them, they’re off and away to Pemba, or further up towards the Arabian coast, where our boats can whistle for them for all the chance they have of overhauling them!”

“What becomes of the slaves that are liberated when the dhows are captured?” said I.

“Oh, the boys are sent to the Boy’s Mission Schools at Zanzibar, and the girls to the Female Mission there also; while the men folk, at least all the able-bodied and strong ones that are not too old, are enlisted into the sultan’s army—the Sultan of Zanzibar, I mean, the Seyyid Burgash that was. When I was there, the commander of his army was a lieutenant of our navy who had been ‘lent’ by government for the purpose for three years, and now he has left the service altogether and is known as ‘General Matthews’ on the east coast. A right smart chap he is too, for he drilled the niggers as well as if he were a born sojer instead of a sailor!”

“Do the slaves like this business?” I asked, thinking that their “freedom” seemed rather questionable; and then, too, consider the cost both in men and money it is to England every year.

“Well, I don’t believe they do,” answered the ex-man-o’-war’s-man—“I’ve heard some of them say that they were quite contented to work on the clove plantations, and preferred that to loafing about the streets of Zanzibar, where hundreds of them are to be seen every day, with nothing to do and very little to eat, unless they take to thieving!”

“What sort of a place is Zanzibar?” said I now.

“Well, sir,” replied the pensioner, “like all them oriental towns I have ever seen in the Levant and elsewhere, it looks ever so much better as seen from the sea than it does at close quarters. Coming into the harbour from the southwards, as I’ve entered it many a time when returning from a trip down to the Mozambique, your vessel has to wind slowly along through numerous little coral islands, which are, however, grown with stunted trees and bush quite close down to the water.”

“That must be lovely!” I remarked.

“Aye, aye, so it is,” said my friend; “but the navigation is awfully difficult, not to say dangerous, even with a man in the chains heaving the lead and singing out the depth every moment, for the soundings shoot from the ‘deep nine’ to the ‘short five,’ and less nor that too, before you know where you are! Howsomdever, once you’ve got inside and cast anchor, it’s as pretty a roadstead as I ever clapped eyes on—as pretty as Rio in South America, which I daresay you’ve heard of?”

“Yes, and seen too,” I said in response.

“Have you, sir?” replied the ex-man-o’-war’s-man—“then all I can say is that you’ve seen the handsomest harbour in the world! But, still, Zanzibar ain’t far behind it. The front of the town, which faces the anchorage, looks quite imposing like. The water of the bay is clear too, so that you can see the bottom down to any depth; and the white sandy beach fringing it round is just like snow against the dark background of palm-trees and green foliage. Along the beach are the warehouses and residences of the English-speaking merchants, the grand mansions of the richer sort of citizens, and the offices of the different foreign consuls—each with its own national flag fluttering gaily from the top, the British Union Jack and the Yankee Stars and Stripes being very prominent; while, in the very centre of the lot, is the palace of the sultan, a fine concern. From the top of this flies the red ensign of Arabia, and around it may be seen sentries in a sort of zouave uniform, selected from that very slave army I told you of just now.”

“What struck you as most peculiar about the place?” I asked.

“Well, I’m hanged if it weren’t the niggers, sir!” said my informant. “You see there the most extraordinary number of little darkies you ever saw in your life, all with nothing on ’em, no more than Adam—not even a fig-leaf! The next thing to strike you, if a stranger, would be the heat, for it is far hotter, strange to say, ashore there than it is aboard your own ship. Some of the houses are curious to look at, for they have neither windows nor doors; for the best dwellings are built round an open court, and the windows, or air-holes as they might more properly be called, open on to that. Instead of being light and built of some flimsy stuff, as you might expect, the houses are all put up ‘on the heat-resisting principle,’ as I heard an engineer describe them—just like the Irishman that wore his Connemara frieze coat in summer to keep out the sun, as he said, in the same way as he put it on in winter to keep out the cold!”

“Indeed!” I said.

“Yes, sir,” continued my friend; “the walls of all the large houses at Zanzibar are many feet thick of solid stone masonry; and even the floors and partitions dividing the rooms are of several thicknesses too, all made of wood and stone and lime, the wood being covered over with mortar. The roof is the best part of them, however. It is made quite flat, and it is the principal spot for the family to go of an evening when the sun has gone down and the night-breeze begins to blow. The Arabs and Parsees go on top in the mornings too, at sunrise, to say their prayers, spreading out a bit of sacred carpet over the stone flagging that forms the floor of the roof.”

“Are there many shops?” I next inquired.

“Bless you, the town’s crammed full of them! but they’re only open sheds, in the centre of which some Hindoo or Banian merchant is to be seen squatting all day long, chewing hashish or smoking his hubble-bubble, as if he hadn’t a stroke of business to do, and didn’t care about doing it either if he got the chance!”

“I suppose they have goods to sell, though, eh!” I said.

“Oh, yes, shawls and sandals and silks and such like; while in the eatable line you can get coffee and sherbet, and arrack too, or what they call English rum, besides pine-apples and mangoes, oranges, citrons, guavas, green cocoa-nuts, and every fruit you could think of, as well as cakes and sweetmeats. The streets in the town are very narrow and are crowded with these sorts of shops or rather stalls, for they’re just like the places you see old apple-women rig up at the corners in London; but the bazaars are the best spots to look at—they’re just like those in India, and some that I’ve seen too in Constantinople. Lor’ sakes! why, they’re crowded with Arabs and Hindoos, Persians, Africans, Somali Arabs, and every sort of coloured native you can imagine, sir, from the lightest coffee-tinted mulatto down to the jettiest black of the pure nigger brought originally from the interior as a slave.

“The funniest thing, too, about these bazaars is to see the different trades or handicraftsmen at work, the goldsmiths making rings by hammering and beating the metal, the jewellers stringing pearls together for necklaces and bracelets, the toy-makers rigging up the queerest curios you ever saw, and the sandal-makers cutting out shoes of leather; but the biggest treat of all is to watch a Parsee school and see how the master instructs the little shavers. The children, to the number of fifty or more, all squat on the floor of the school-room, which is a large open shed on a raised platform, each holding in one hand the blade-bone taken from the shoulder of a camel to serve as a slate, on which they make marks with a pencil-like brush. They are pretty little trots, the children; and are mostly all smartly dressed in little jackets and trousers of various coloured silks, green, yellow, and red, with turbans on top of their heads, just like their fathers, to complete the picture.”

“The end of the rainy season, you say, is the best time for catching the dhows?” I asked now, to bring my friend back to the main point of all my interrogatories.

“Yes, there’s the greatest demand then for the slaves; besides which the south-west monsoon sets in at that time, and is favourable for their crossing from the mainland.”

“Do they ever show fight?” I inquired.

“Bather!” ejaculated my informant; “they’re about as treacherous a lot as you could ever come across, them Arabs; for, I tell you what, they’ll sometimes let a boat’s crew overhaul ’em, and come up alongside as if everything was ship-shape and clear sailing—that is to say, sir, that they have nothing contraband aboard and could show a clean bill o’ lading; when, drat ’em, they’ll turn round on you like a parcel o’ tigers with their sharp knives and spears. It was in this way my poor skipper, Capt’in Brownrigg, was killed in December ’81—just at Christmas time, when I were out there.”

“That was a sad thing,” said I sympathisingly.

“Yes,” replied the pensioner; “but, saddest of all, it was to know his poor wife had just come out from England to join him, and was aboard theLondonat the very time his body was brought alongside the ship in the steam-pinnace in which he had met his death. Ah! he was a fine officer was Capt’in Brownrigg, and liked by everybody—not only by his brother officers and equals, but by the men under him. Bless you, they’d a’ gone anywheres to win a smile from his cheery face. Hullo, though, sir, look there, they’re shutting up the dockyard gate!”

Such indeed was the case, showing that the afternoon was pretty nearly “expended,” as they say in the service.

“Ah! that comes along o’ yarning with you and not minding the business that brought me down here, for now I’m too late.”

“Well, in that case,” said I, seeing my chance now for getting the oft-evaded yarn of my friend’s long service, “suppose you come home to my place and have a cup of tea, when you can tell me the story of your shipwreck off Madagascar, eh?”

He hemmed and hawed for a moment; but seeing that my invitation was cordially given, and I suppose having nothing else particularly to do, he accepted—whence this story.

Volume Two--Chapter Two.Wind and Steam.When I had made the pensioner as comfortable as I could at my little place—attending carefully to the wants of his inner man before appearing to have any curiosity regarding the matter that had made me invite him home—and the tea-things were cleared away, I gave a sort of inquiring cough, which he immediately took as my signal for him to begin his yarn.“After serving a year in theLondon, as I told you before, sir,” he commenced, without any preliminary beating about the bush, as many a landsman would have done, “I was drafted on to an old cruiser called theDolphin. She’s been broken up now, like the oldLondon, though I hear they’ve got a rare smart despatch-boat just building called by the same name; but theDolphinas I’m speaking of is quite different and not the same vessel—remember that, sir, please, in case anybody should try to throw doubts on my yarn, as some of them sea-lawyers will.”“I assure you,” said I to encourage him, “that I am quite satisfied as to the truth of your story.”“Well, then,” he resumed, “theDolphinI am speaking of to you, sir, was a pretty fast boat for a paddle-steamer, and had already made some tidy captures of slave-dhows—that is, since she had been commissioned and sent out from England, about six months before, to replace an old sailing brig that formerly did duty on the station as tender to the oldLondon; so I fully expected when I jined her to have some smart work afore me—and I warn’t disapinted neither!”“No?” said I questioningly to lead him on, settling myself cosily in my chair.“You’re right, sir, I warn’t,” replied my friend Ben. “The very first day I shipped aboard theDolphinwe took two Mtpe dhows close inshore near Pemba. That brought me in a niceish bit of prize-money for a start; and, just a week arter that exactly, when we had got down to our proper cruising ground—that was, sir, just atween Zanzibar and the Mozambique Channel, which, as I daresay you know, sir, is about two hundred and fifty miles wide and runs between Madagascar and the mainland of Africa—why, we came upon the biggest haul that had been made on the coast for years; but we had to work for it, I tell you. That was a chase and no mistake!”“Was it?” I asked, glad of Ben’s coming now to an actual yarn concerning some of the stirring events of his life; for he had previously only been “beating about the bush,” so to speak.“Yes, sir; and not only a chase that was something to boast of, but a fight as well at the end of it—one of the smartest scrimmages I ever had all the time I was out there. If you don’t mind my lighting a pipe, for I allers, sir, can tell a yarn better when I’m smoking, I’ll just haul my jaw-tackle aboard and give you a full account of the whole adventure.”“Do,” I said.“There!” exclaimed he with a grunt of satisfaction, carefully filling a briar-root pipe with some dark tobacco, which he produced from out of a little round brass box that he carried in his waistcoat pocket, telling me it was “the right sort,” and proceeding to light it—“now, we can go on serenely.”“Fire away!” said I, to encourage him, “I’m all attention.”He did not waste any more time; but at once began his story.“TheDolphinhad run down south with the fag-end of the north-east monsoon, economising her coals as much as possible, as all the men-of-war have to do nowadays, worse luck—sometimes when it’s a question between saving a few pounds or sacrificing a ship! We had passed Mazemba island, and had just weathered Cape Delgado, which is some ten degrees south of the equator, when—it was close on sunset at the time, and it grows dark all at once after that, you know, in the tropics—the look-out man sang out, ‘sail-ho!’ This was just as we were piped down to tea. Bless you, we didn’t think no more of going below, I can tell you!”“I suppose not,” I put in, to show I was listening attentively to what he was saying, for he paused at this juncture, as if waiting for me to say something.“No, sir. Of course, although we were running down under easy sail the engine-fires were ready banked up, so that it didn’t take us long to get up steam; and we were soon round like a shot, and retracing our way, right in the face of the wind, after a large dhow which we could see stealing up along-shore and hugging the land. She was what the Arabs called a batilla, and had two large lugs, or lateen sails set, besides a sort of square-cut jib forwards on her high-peaked bowsprit, by the aid of which she was sailing close-hauled, almost in the very teeth of the nor’-easter that was blowing pretty stiffly at the time, making it risky work for a vessel to approach so near a lee-shore as she was doing. However, I suppose her captain thought he would be able to slip by us in the darkness, when he might have got under the shelter of the island we had passed only a short while previously in our downward passage to the Mozambique; and, once he was out of sight of theDolphin, of course he could have put out to sea again at his leisure, making his way north as soon as the coast seemed clear, and thus escaping us altogether.”“But he reckoned without his host that time, eh?” said I.“Aye, that he did,” responded the ex-man-o’-war’s-man, warming up to his subject as he proceeded. “He made a great mistake, did that there Arab slave skipper when he thought he’d hoodwink us aboard theDolphinthis evening I’m a-talking of—a mistake, sir, as I’ll soon show you, that cost him not only his vessel, but his life as well!”“Indeed?” I interposed, beginning to get interested in Ben’s yarn now that he had actually got under weigh with it in earnest.“Yes, that it did,” replied Ben Campion, striking another match to relight his pipe, which had gone out in the interval, and puffing away vigorously for a few seconds in order to get it in full blast.—“He was a ’cute chap, though, that skipper,” continued Ben presently when he had got the pipe to go to his satisfaction;—“for no sooner had he perceived that we had observed him and were in chase, than he threw off all pretence of attempting to deceive us by passing off as a simple trader. Abandoning his design of beating up to Cape Delgado, he wore the dhow round as sharp as lightning and made off down along the coast, right before the full strength of the monsoon; where, with the wind in his favour, he would have a better chance of getting away from us, those dhows, as I’ve told you, sometimes walking away from a steam-pinnace as if she were standing still. This time, however, he had no cockle-shell of a pinnace after him, but a smart paddle-steamer, and one, too, that could go along well also before the wind, carrying square sails as did theDolphinon her foremast and a huge spanker aft. A stern-chase, of course, is a long chase all the world over, as everybody knows, and ours was no exception. Still, all the time we gradually overhauled the dhow; and just about sunset we got within range of a long seven-inch gun, which we carried forwards. This, Mr Shrapnel, our gunner, trained right across the slaver’s bows, and at the word of command, ‘Fire!’ let drive with a bang that shook the steamer right down to her kelson and seemed to stop her way for the moment, sending her back, as it were, with the recoil.“The gun was well aimed, the shot pitching up the water some fifty yards in front of her, but it didn’t seem to make any difference to the dhow a bit, her captain keeping right on with every stitch of his canvas set, the wide lateen sails bellying out to their full, as we could see, and the queer-looking craft burying herself in the foam that she churned up as she dived down into the waves every moment with a plunge, as if she were going headlong down to the bottom, taking in huge seas over her cat-heads; for it was blowing more than half a gale at the time, and even we in our bigger craft found it hard work carrying on as we did with both wind and steam. And I tell you we were going too! Our engines were revolving full speed ahead, and our canvas must have helped us full another five knots, with the wind dead astern as it was, and we running before it, while, to aid us, there was the usual inshore current—that runs down the coast of the Mozambique from Cape Delgado to right opposite Madagascar, where it turns off more in an easterly direction—carrying us along like a mill-race, some rate of three knots more. It made theDolphinquiver and tremble through every timber as she seemed literally to fly through the water, but it didn’t make us approach the dhow any closer, although we held our own. As the wind got up more and more, for it was the tail-end of the north-east monsoon, as I told you, and those blessed monsoons always die out with a brush when they’ve got to the end of their tether, the slaver appeared to rise bodily out of the water and skim along the surface from the top of one rolling wave on to another—just as you see an albatross does off the Cape of Good Hope when it has taken its first dart downwards after its prey, and has then to pursue it over the sea, the large sheets of the triangular sails of the dhow standing out on either side of her low dark keel in the same way as the pinions of the albatross touch the water in its flight.“Mr Shrapnel was told to fire another gun; but it had no greater effect than the first one, and our skipper hardly seemed to know what to do; for the dhow was now heading more towards the land, and theDolphinwould soon be in shoal water, as there are lots of reefs about them parts. It would never do, either, to fire right into her, although we were well within range now, as we might probably damage some of the poor slaves aboard, who were no doubt packed as tightly as herrings in a barrel; and yet, it was growing dark, the sun being just on the point of setting over the highlands of the great African continent on our starboard hand. If we didn’t do something pretty soon Mr Arab dhow would be able to cry, ‘Walker!’ and laugh at us for the wild-goose chase he had led us!”“You must have been pretty anxious as the moments flew by, the sun setting, and the darkness creeping up, without your being able to overhaul her?” I said.“We were all that,” replied Ben, knocking the ashes out of his pipe viciously as if he were giving the slave captain a rap on the head;—“and as we stood grouped around the deck amidships close by the engine-room hatch, fixing on our cutlasses and getting ready for the scrimmage, should luck enable us to have one, I don’t know what we said we wouldn’t do to the impudent beggars when we got aboard!“The land was looming well on our beam, some six miles distant, and those breakers visible between us and it. The situation was a ‘tight’ one, if there ever was such, for it looked uncommon like as if the captain of the dhow intended running ashore and risking her breaking to pieces on the rocks, if he couldn’t find an opening in the coast into some lagoon where he could with his light draught beach the craft in safety. He was evidently determined to escape us, run what risk he might!“I was standing alongside our skipper on the bridge; and I could see that he, too, was bound not to be licked, for he had screwed up his mouth in a way that he had when he had made up his mind to something, and then the admiral himself wouldn’t have turned him from it!—He was a bold, courageous officer, was Captain Wilson, and every inch a sailor. Poor chap! he afterwards fell a victim to the fatal coast fever at Zanzibar.“Well, I could see from the look on his face now, that if the Arab skipper was a determined fellow, and had resolved to circumvent us, why, Captain Wilson was equally determined, too, that he shouldn’t, and that it was a case of ‘pull baker, pull devil’ atween the two!“‘Campion,’ say he to me, ‘pass the word forra’d for Mr Shrapnel to come here to me for a moment.’“Of course I did as he told me; and soon the gunner arrives on the bridge, where, as I still stopped, it being my station there for the time, I heard all that was said between the skipper and him.“‘Mr Shrapnel,’ says Captain Wilson, ‘we’ll have to fire at the fellow in earnest now, or else he’ll escape us; but I don’t want to hurt any of those poor creatures, who are on board against their will. Can’t you manage to shoot away a spar so as to cripple his wings a bit, so that we can manage to get alongside before he gets too close inshore?’”“‘I’ll try, sir,’ says the gunner, turning to go away.“‘Do,’ replies our skipper, ‘and look sharp about it, too, or else it will be too late. Mind, though, and aim high. I wouldn’t have the slaves hurt for anything. As for the Arab crew, we’ll give ’em a taste of cold steel when we come across them, and that will be better than all the shot and shell we can send after them now!’“‘Aye, aye, sir,’ said Mr, Shrapnel, going forwards again without any delay; and the gun detachment being all ready, our seven-inch spoke out again to the slaver, with more purpose than it had done before.“The first shot went wide of the mark, and so did the second; but the third carried away her main halliards apparently, for the big sail came down all at once by the run, making the dhow broach-to as it fell over the side to leeward. Our men gave a tremendous cheer at this, but the slaver captain was a smart chap, as you might have noticed before, and would not give in yet; as before you could say ‘Jack Robinson,’ he had the halliards spliced again, and the sail hoisted, bearing away straight for the land now, and not edging along it as he had previously done. He was evidently determined to destroy the vessel rather than give in.“‘Silence, men!’ shouted out Captain Wilson to stop our fellows cheering, which, as you know, sir, is against the rules of the service, although winked at sometimes in the enthusiasm of the moment. ‘We haven’t got the slaver yet, and it will be time to cheer when we’ve captured him! Mr Shrapnel,’ he added then, as soon as all was quiet, the men being as mum as a mouse fore and aft—‘you must send another messenger after, my joker; try if you can’t do him a little more damage this time!’“‘Aye, aye, sir,’ sang out the gunner; and he set to work again with a will, for the brief time during which the dhow’s big main lug had been down had enabled us to get within half a mile of her, and Mr Shrapnel was better able to see what he was shooting at. He was a knowing hand, was the gunner! Watching his opportunity when theDolphinrose on the top of the heavy rolling swell that set in towards the land, and when the dhow was right down in the hollow of the combers, he pulled the lanyard of the trigger, and with a bang and a belch of flame and smoke a heavy conical shot went rotating through the air, making as much noise as a railroad train as it hurtled forwards at the chase, whose hull was hidden from view, but whose masts seemed quite close to us.“He didn’t require to fire a second shot this time.“No sooner had the report sounded and the roaring rumbling thunder of the discharge died away in the distance, rolling in towards the coast—the smoke being blown away, too, as quickly by the wind—than we could see the dhow dismasted before us, swaying about in the trough of the sea.“She was a hopeless wreck, for both her masts had been snapped off short by the shot, and the yards to which the sails had been attached were lying athwart the deck. TheDolphinnow ranged up alongside her on the leeward bow, and the captain hailed her to know if she surrendered, when one of the Arabs on board, who must have been the skipper, waved a red handkerchief or cloth of some kind in token of truce. He was a tall, swarthy chap, with a turban instead of a fez, which the others wore, on his head; and the belt round his body, as we could see from looking down on to the deck of the dhow, which was much below the level of our vessel, was filled choke-full with long-barrelled pistols and dirks, and a round-shaped scimitar-like sword without a sheath that seemed as if it could give a fellow a very tidy cut.“The sea was rough and both the dhow and theDolphinwere rolling about terribly, we dipping our foreyard-arms as we lay-to; but Captain Wilson at once ordered the first cutter to be piped away, with one of the lieutenants in charge; while nothing would suit him also but to have his own gig manned. He said he mistrusted the slaver and would board her also himself, as she had a number of Arab rascals on her deck who would probably show fight.“The boats were soon in the water, under our lee, the men shinning down into them by the falls, each chap with his cutlass tucked into his waistband; and, in another moment, rounding under the stem of theDolphin, and getting nearly swamped as we breasted the sea, we made for the dhow, that now lay about half a cable’s-length from our vessel, which had drifted a bit astern.“‘Put your backs into the stroke!’ sang out Captain Wilson from his gig—for I was in the cutter; and with grim earnestness we stretched out as hard as we could, gripping the water firmly and then pulling with all our strength. It was hard work against such a sea as was then running and in the face of the wind, which was still rising and more gusty than before; but we were soon alongside the chase, both the boats boarding her of course to leeward, although the captain in his gig dashed at the high poop astern, while we in the cutter made for her bows, which lay lower in the water and would thus enable us to get more easily on board.“Captain Wilson was right in his suspicions about the Arab skipper’s surrender. Although he had waved that red rag of his to make-believe that he had given in, so that we might not give him a broadside as he probably expected—for of course he didn’t know that we would not fire the big guns for fear of killing the poor slaves in the hold—no sooner had we got alongside than the beggars showed fight.“I and another chap managed to grab hold of the bowsprit gear to haul ourselves up by into the fo’c’sle of the dhow, when chop came a cut that severed the ropes we had clutched, causing us to let go and drop back again into the bottom of the cutter with a thump that nearly knocked the bottom out of her, while another Arab shoved out the muzzle of a long matchlock right amongst us and fired it off so closely that the charge singed my whiskers. That did one good job, however, for it made us pretty angry, as you might imagine, and the whole cutter’s crew tumbled aboard in a way that astonished them, I can tell you. They fought pluckily though, but they were more like mad cats than men, screaming and tearing us with their nails when we had knocked their long knives out of their hands and disarmed them. As for the skipper of the dhow, he was a perfect demon, and would have settled Captain Wilson had it not been for the coxswain of the gig giving him a drive through with his cutlass just as he had got our captain down and, kneeling on his chest, was preparing coolly to cut his throat with the keen curving scimitar that we had seen in his belt. Captain Wilson looked, sir, as pale as a ghost when he got on his feet again; for although he was as brave an officer as ever stepped, it does give a fellow a bit of a turn sometimes to be face to face with death, as he was then, and know that nothing, probably, can save you!“When we had got the better hand of the slave crew, in which we did not quite get off scot-free, five of our men being killed outright and several wounded with ugly gashes from the sharp knives of the Arabs, we set about opening the hatches to release the slaves, who had all this while been kicking up a thundering row below, yelling and hollering as if they were all being murdered.“Well, bless you! why, there were no less than three hundred and fifty crammed in the hold fore and aft on the two decks that were underneath the main one, and which had not four feet of space between them; the people, men, women, and children, being packed together so close that you couldn’t have got a sheet of paper edgeways between them. As for the smell; well, sir, I think you’d prefer that of a gas main just opened, or the foulest scent you could think of, to what we all smelt in the hold of that there dhow; for it seemed to smother us and make the strongest men aboard turn faint just like a girl does when she cuts her finger and sees the blood.“After releasing half of them and bringing them up on the upper deck of the dhow, for there was not space to let the whole of them out of the hold at once, we had to rig up the masts of the craft again so that she could make sail, the weather being too ticklish for theDolphinto take her in tow; although she did so for awhile, just in order to get a little further away from the coast, which was not too pleasant a neighbour with a north-east monsoon blowing and a heavy sea setting in towards the land.“By the time we had rigged up jury-masts on the dhow it was dark, so, warning the prize-crew that was on board, of which I was one, to keep a sharp look-out and mind that our tow-rope didn’t part, Captain Wilson went back to his own vessel—he wouldn’t leave us till everything was ship-shape again with the slaver and everybody seemed comfortable-like; taking with him the majority of the Arabs who had been uninjured in the scuffle, and who might have tried perhaps to recapture the dhow from the small lot of men whom our captain was able only to spare to man her. Of course, there was very little chance of their attempting this now that their skipper was dead, the coxswain’s thrust with his cutlass having lost the dark gentleman the ‘number of his mess’; but still, after the treachery they had already shown, it was best to take all proper precautions to spoil any little game they might try on.“During the night, theDolphinkept under easy steam head to sea, only just preventing us from drifting ashore, as our tow-rope was hardly ever taut the whole time, for the wind blew so strongly still from the northward and eastward, the very direction we had to make for to reach Zanzibar with our prize, that it was impossible for the steamer to make any way against it, especially with the dhow in tow. The sea, too, was also very rough, breaking over the frail craft so frequently that we had to pack down all the slaves again below to prevent their being washed overboard.“Towards morning, the wind gradually lessened, showing signs of shifting, which was to be expected at the season, being near the end of March. The sea, too, calmed down a bit, but there was still a heavy ground-swell, and from all appearances it looked as if there was going to be a squall, the more especially as it began to rain heavily. I had been left by Captain Wilson in charge of the prize-crew, and this change in the weather made me feel somewhat uneasy of the tow-rope breaking from the increased strain there was now on it through the labouring of the dhow; for I thought it would be better for both theDolphinand ourselves that we should cast loose and each sail on her own account, as at this time of the year the south-west monsoon, which takes the place of the north-eastern ‘kizkasi,’ as it is cabled, or Indian trade-wind, generally sets in with a violent tornado blowing from off the land.“Accordingly, as soon as daylight I hailed the steamer to send a boat aboard for me as I wished to speak to the captain. I had something more to tell him, however, than about my fears concerning the weather; for, while I was keeping watch during the night, I had heard some words dropped from the Arab prisoners on the foc’s’le which I thought it best for him to know.”“Did you?” I said.“Yes,” said Ben, continuing his story. “While I was at Zanzibar I made it a point to study the lingo of the natives there, and had learned a good many words of the Kisawahili tongue, which is thelingua Francaof the coast; and hearing these half-caste Arabs talking together I listened to what they said, for being a Feringhee in their eyes they did not think I could understand them. Of course I couldn’t manage to stumble to everything I heard, some of their words being incomprehensible to me; but I gathered enough to learn that the dhow we had captured was in company with another one equally as large, loaded with slaves, that had got off clear and was now probably making its way towards the Persian Gulf out of reach of theDolphin.“This would be good news, I knew, for Captain Wilson; for, although the Arabs believed that this dhow had escaped us, if theDolphinat once went in pursuit of her in the right direction there was not the slightest doubt of her being able to overhaul her before she reached her destination, which was, I learned through the chatter of the prisoners, first to Mafiyah, as a sort of hiding-place until we should be reported out of the way, and then on to Muscat on the Arabian coast.“I had no sooner got on board theDolphinin the dinghy sent for me, than, the skipper confirmed my own opinion as to the importance of the information I had obtained, although he said something which slightly damped my enthusiasm, in giving me a job I had not bargained for.“‘You’ve done quite right, Campion, my man,’ said he, ‘in not losing time. I am glad you hailed me when you did, for every hour is precious in getting up with a chase that has got such a good start. I shall take care to mention you in my despatches for your prompt assistance in giving me news of this vessel, as well as for your gallantry in the capture of theFatima,’—that was the name of the one we had already taken, sir, and now had in tow.“So far Captain Wilson quite flabbergasted me with his compliments and made me feel as proud as Punch; but his next words lowered me down a peg, I can tell you!“‘I’m sorry, however, I sha’n’t be able to take you with me, Campion,’ he went on, ‘to see the end of this other affair; for now that I have to start off in chase of the other slaver, which will take me off the station, where some of the little Mtpe dhows will be trying to make runs from the mainland, thinking the coast unguarded, I intend leaving the pinnace behind to cruise about the Comoro Islands until I get back with theDolphin, and, as you are the only responsible man I could trust to take charge of the boat and crew, you must remain here. Pass the word at once for the boatswain to pipe away the pinnace and see that she is properly stowed and provisioned.’“This was a good deal more than I had bargained for. I thought I should have been allowed to remain as prize-master of theFatimaand sail her up to Zanzibar, as that was what the captain had hinted the night before. However, of course I put the best face I could on the matter, and contented myself with seeing that the water barricoes and stores were properly put on board the pinnace, while all the other men who had not to remain behind with me and the boat were in high glee getting ready for the fresh chase, the news being already whispered about in the messes—hoping that they would have just such another scrimmage again as they had had the day before at the capture of theFatima.“Captain Wilson did not ‘let the grass grow under his feet,’ as the saying goes—though it’s rather a queer one for a seaman to use—in carrying out what he had decided on.“Before the blazing African sun was an hour old, by which time too the rain had stopped falling, the second lieutenant of theDolphinwas transferred to the command of the captured dhow, our ‘First Swab’ having been wounded, taking with him all the prisoners that had been previously removed to our vessel for safety, although they were now bound securely with ropes and had a guard set over them to prevent their doing mischief, besides some additional hands to navigate theFatima—which, hoisting her big lugs on the jury-masts we had rigged up the previous evening, and casting off theDolphin’stow-rope, was soon standing up the coast on her way to Zanzibar, keeping well inshore now, as that course was safest since the wind had changed.“Hardly had the dhow got well off than the pinnace was lowered into the water alongside the steamer, her crew dropping in one by one, and I, of course, descending last. We had provisions and water on board to last us for six weeks, the usual time that boats are sent away from the vessels to which they belong on the east coast when cruising independently, as they all take it in turn to do; and Captain Wilson told me I was to hover about between Madagascar and the mainland in the Mozambique Channel until we might expect him back, which would be a month at farthest, even making allowances for his being detained at Zanzibar about the condemning of the slave-dhows which we had already captured and the one which he now hoped to get hold of.“TheDolphinthen took us in tow till we were abreast of the Comoro Isles, when she cast us adrift, starting off up the channel full speed and steering north-east and by north, so as to get well out to sea before stretching in to the land towards Mafiyah, where she expected to pick up the slaver; while we, hoisting the sails of the pinnace, and taking it easy under the boat’s awning that was spread fore and aft, bore away for Madagascar. Ah! sir, that was the commencement of an unfortunate voyage, for it was months before some of those that formed the pinnace’s crew ever met their old shipmates again on board theDolphin; the majority of those with me in the boat never met the hands we left on board the steamer again at all, nor will they till that great last day of all when the sea gives up its dead!”“I suppose you refer to that time when you said you were capsized off the coast of Madagascar, eh?” said I, noticing that Ben Campion paused at this point.“Aye,” he replied; “but I’m afraid it’ll take a precious long time to reel off the yarn concerning that period of the story!”“Never mind, please go on,” I replied. “Now you’ve begun and got so far, I’m sure I should like to hear the end of it.”“All right, then,” he replied; but, before proceeding, he had to load up a fresh pipe, and while performing this interesting little operation he informed me,en passant, that theDolphinhe afterwards heard had succeeded in capturing the second dhow, and her first prize theFatimahad safely reached Zanzibar; and, consequently, that his prize-money for both seizures was safe, the sum accrueing to him amounting to over £50, being subsequently paid over to him when he rejoined his ship some time afterwards—“and spent, too, long since,” as he said.These little matters, relevant and irrelevant, being thus disposed of, Ben continued his narrative as follows.

When I had made the pensioner as comfortable as I could at my little place—attending carefully to the wants of his inner man before appearing to have any curiosity regarding the matter that had made me invite him home—and the tea-things were cleared away, I gave a sort of inquiring cough, which he immediately took as my signal for him to begin his yarn.

“After serving a year in theLondon, as I told you before, sir,” he commenced, without any preliminary beating about the bush, as many a landsman would have done, “I was drafted on to an old cruiser called theDolphin. She’s been broken up now, like the oldLondon, though I hear they’ve got a rare smart despatch-boat just building called by the same name; but theDolphinas I’m speaking of is quite different and not the same vessel—remember that, sir, please, in case anybody should try to throw doubts on my yarn, as some of them sea-lawyers will.”

“I assure you,” said I to encourage him, “that I am quite satisfied as to the truth of your story.”

“Well, then,” he resumed, “theDolphinI am speaking of to you, sir, was a pretty fast boat for a paddle-steamer, and had already made some tidy captures of slave-dhows—that is, since she had been commissioned and sent out from England, about six months before, to replace an old sailing brig that formerly did duty on the station as tender to the oldLondon; so I fully expected when I jined her to have some smart work afore me—and I warn’t disapinted neither!”

“No?” said I questioningly to lead him on, settling myself cosily in my chair.

“You’re right, sir, I warn’t,” replied my friend Ben. “The very first day I shipped aboard theDolphinwe took two Mtpe dhows close inshore near Pemba. That brought me in a niceish bit of prize-money for a start; and, just a week arter that exactly, when we had got down to our proper cruising ground—that was, sir, just atween Zanzibar and the Mozambique Channel, which, as I daresay you know, sir, is about two hundred and fifty miles wide and runs between Madagascar and the mainland of Africa—why, we came upon the biggest haul that had been made on the coast for years; but we had to work for it, I tell you. That was a chase and no mistake!”

“Was it?” I asked, glad of Ben’s coming now to an actual yarn concerning some of the stirring events of his life; for he had previously only been “beating about the bush,” so to speak.

“Yes, sir; and not only a chase that was something to boast of, but a fight as well at the end of it—one of the smartest scrimmages I ever had all the time I was out there. If you don’t mind my lighting a pipe, for I allers, sir, can tell a yarn better when I’m smoking, I’ll just haul my jaw-tackle aboard and give you a full account of the whole adventure.”

“Do,” I said.

“There!” exclaimed he with a grunt of satisfaction, carefully filling a briar-root pipe with some dark tobacco, which he produced from out of a little round brass box that he carried in his waistcoat pocket, telling me it was “the right sort,” and proceeding to light it—“now, we can go on serenely.”

“Fire away!” said I, to encourage him, “I’m all attention.”

He did not waste any more time; but at once began his story.

“TheDolphinhad run down south with the fag-end of the north-east monsoon, economising her coals as much as possible, as all the men-of-war have to do nowadays, worse luck—sometimes when it’s a question between saving a few pounds or sacrificing a ship! We had passed Mazemba island, and had just weathered Cape Delgado, which is some ten degrees south of the equator, when—it was close on sunset at the time, and it grows dark all at once after that, you know, in the tropics—the look-out man sang out, ‘sail-ho!’ This was just as we were piped down to tea. Bless you, we didn’t think no more of going below, I can tell you!”

“I suppose not,” I put in, to show I was listening attentively to what he was saying, for he paused at this juncture, as if waiting for me to say something.

“No, sir. Of course, although we were running down under easy sail the engine-fires were ready banked up, so that it didn’t take us long to get up steam; and we were soon round like a shot, and retracing our way, right in the face of the wind, after a large dhow which we could see stealing up along-shore and hugging the land. She was what the Arabs called a batilla, and had two large lugs, or lateen sails set, besides a sort of square-cut jib forwards on her high-peaked bowsprit, by the aid of which she was sailing close-hauled, almost in the very teeth of the nor’-easter that was blowing pretty stiffly at the time, making it risky work for a vessel to approach so near a lee-shore as she was doing. However, I suppose her captain thought he would be able to slip by us in the darkness, when he might have got under the shelter of the island we had passed only a short while previously in our downward passage to the Mozambique; and, once he was out of sight of theDolphin, of course he could have put out to sea again at his leisure, making his way north as soon as the coast seemed clear, and thus escaping us altogether.”

“But he reckoned without his host that time, eh?” said I.

“Aye, that he did,” responded the ex-man-o’-war’s-man, warming up to his subject as he proceeded. “He made a great mistake, did that there Arab slave skipper when he thought he’d hoodwink us aboard theDolphinthis evening I’m a-talking of—a mistake, sir, as I’ll soon show you, that cost him not only his vessel, but his life as well!”

“Indeed?” I interposed, beginning to get interested in Ben’s yarn now that he had actually got under weigh with it in earnest.

“Yes, that it did,” replied Ben Campion, striking another match to relight his pipe, which had gone out in the interval, and puffing away vigorously for a few seconds in order to get it in full blast.—“He was a ’cute chap, though, that skipper,” continued Ben presently when he had got the pipe to go to his satisfaction;—“for no sooner had he perceived that we had observed him and were in chase, than he threw off all pretence of attempting to deceive us by passing off as a simple trader. Abandoning his design of beating up to Cape Delgado, he wore the dhow round as sharp as lightning and made off down along the coast, right before the full strength of the monsoon; where, with the wind in his favour, he would have a better chance of getting away from us, those dhows, as I’ve told you, sometimes walking away from a steam-pinnace as if she were standing still. This time, however, he had no cockle-shell of a pinnace after him, but a smart paddle-steamer, and one, too, that could go along well also before the wind, carrying square sails as did theDolphinon her foremast and a huge spanker aft. A stern-chase, of course, is a long chase all the world over, as everybody knows, and ours was no exception. Still, all the time we gradually overhauled the dhow; and just about sunset we got within range of a long seven-inch gun, which we carried forwards. This, Mr Shrapnel, our gunner, trained right across the slaver’s bows, and at the word of command, ‘Fire!’ let drive with a bang that shook the steamer right down to her kelson and seemed to stop her way for the moment, sending her back, as it were, with the recoil.

“The gun was well aimed, the shot pitching up the water some fifty yards in front of her, but it didn’t seem to make any difference to the dhow a bit, her captain keeping right on with every stitch of his canvas set, the wide lateen sails bellying out to their full, as we could see, and the queer-looking craft burying herself in the foam that she churned up as she dived down into the waves every moment with a plunge, as if she were going headlong down to the bottom, taking in huge seas over her cat-heads; for it was blowing more than half a gale at the time, and even we in our bigger craft found it hard work carrying on as we did with both wind and steam. And I tell you we were going too! Our engines were revolving full speed ahead, and our canvas must have helped us full another five knots, with the wind dead astern as it was, and we running before it, while, to aid us, there was the usual inshore current—that runs down the coast of the Mozambique from Cape Delgado to right opposite Madagascar, where it turns off more in an easterly direction—carrying us along like a mill-race, some rate of three knots more. It made theDolphinquiver and tremble through every timber as she seemed literally to fly through the water, but it didn’t make us approach the dhow any closer, although we held our own. As the wind got up more and more, for it was the tail-end of the north-east monsoon, as I told you, and those blessed monsoons always die out with a brush when they’ve got to the end of their tether, the slaver appeared to rise bodily out of the water and skim along the surface from the top of one rolling wave on to another—just as you see an albatross does off the Cape of Good Hope when it has taken its first dart downwards after its prey, and has then to pursue it over the sea, the large sheets of the triangular sails of the dhow standing out on either side of her low dark keel in the same way as the pinions of the albatross touch the water in its flight.

“Mr Shrapnel was told to fire another gun; but it had no greater effect than the first one, and our skipper hardly seemed to know what to do; for the dhow was now heading more towards the land, and theDolphinwould soon be in shoal water, as there are lots of reefs about them parts. It would never do, either, to fire right into her, although we were well within range now, as we might probably damage some of the poor slaves aboard, who were no doubt packed as tightly as herrings in a barrel; and yet, it was growing dark, the sun being just on the point of setting over the highlands of the great African continent on our starboard hand. If we didn’t do something pretty soon Mr Arab dhow would be able to cry, ‘Walker!’ and laugh at us for the wild-goose chase he had led us!”

“You must have been pretty anxious as the moments flew by, the sun setting, and the darkness creeping up, without your being able to overhaul her?” I said.

“We were all that,” replied Ben, knocking the ashes out of his pipe viciously as if he were giving the slave captain a rap on the head;—“and as we stood grouped around the deck amidships close by the engine-room hatch, fixing on our cutlasses and getting ready for the scrimmage, should luck enable us to have one, I don’t know what we said we wouldn’t do to the impudent beggars when we got aboard!

“The land was looming well on our beam, some six miles distant, and those breakers visible between us and it. The situation was a ‘tight’ one, if there ever was such, for it looked uncommon like as if the captain of the dhow intended running ashore and risking her breaking to pieces on the rocks, if he couldn’t find an opening in the coast into some lagoon where he could with his light draught beach the craft in safety. He was evidently determined to escape us, run what risk he might!

“I was standing alongside our skipper on the bridge; and I could see that he, too, was bound not to be licked, for he had screwed up his mouth in a way that he had when he had made up his mind to something, and then the admiral himself wouldn’t have turned him from it!—He was a bold, courageous officer, was Captain Wilson, and every inch a sailor. Poor chap! he afterwards fell a victim to the fatal coast fever at Zanzibar.

“Well, I could see from the look on his face now, that if the Arab skipper was a determined fellow, and had resolved to circumvent us, why, Captain Wilson was equally determined, too, that he shouldn’t, and that it was a case of ‘pull baker, pull devil’ atween the two!

“‘Campion,’ say he to me, ‘pass the word forra’d for Mr Shrapnel to come here to me for a moment.’

“Of course I did as he told me; and soon the gunner arrives on the bridge, where, as I still stopped, it being my station there for the time, I heard all that was said between the skipper and him.

“‘Mr Shrapnel,’ says Captain Wilson, ‘we’ll have to fire at the fellow in earnest now, or else he’ll escape us; but I don’t want to hurt any of those poor creatures, who are on board against their will. Can’t you manage to shoot away a spar so as to cripple his wings a bit, so that we can manage to get alongside before he gets too close inshore?’”

“‘I’ll try, sir,’ says the gunner, turning to go away.

“‘Do,’ replies our skipper, ‘and look sharp about it, too, or else it will be too late. Mind, though, and aim high. I wouldn’t have the slaves hurt for anything. As for the Arab crew, we’ll give ’em a taste of cold steel when we come across them, and that will be better than all the shot and shell we can send after them now!’

“‘Aye, aye, sir,’ said Mr, Shrapnel, going forwards again without any delay; and the gun detachment being all ready, our seven-inch spoke out again to the slaver, with more purpose than it had done before.

“The first shot went wide of the mark, and so did the second; but the third carried away her main halliards apparently, for the big sail came down all at once by the run, making the dhow broach-to as it fell over the side to leeward. Our men gave a tremendous cheer at this, but the slaver captain was a smart chap, as you might have noticed before, and would not give in yet; as before you could say ‘Jack Robinson,’ he had the halliards spliced again, and the sail hoisted, bearing away straight for the land now, and not edging along it as he had previously done. He was evidently determined to destroy the vessel rather than give in.

“‘Silence, men!’ shouted out Captain Wilson to stop our fellows cheering, which, as you know, sir, is against the rules of the service, although winked at sometimes in the enthusiasm of the moment. ‘We haven’t got the slaver yet, and it will be time to cheer when we’ve captured him! Mr Shrapnel,’ he added then, as soon as all was quiet, the men being as mum as a mouse fore and aft—‘you must send another messenger after, my joker; try if you can’t do him a little more damage this time!’

“‘Aye, aye, sir,’ sang out the gunner; and he set to work again with a will, for the brief time during which the dhow’s big main lug had been down had enabled us to get within half a mile of her, and Mr Shrapnel was better able to see what he was shooting at. He was a knowing hand, was the gunner! Watching his opportunity when theDolphinrose on the top of the heavy rolling swell that set in towards the land, and when the dhow was right down in the hollow of the combers, he pulled the lanyard of the trigger, and with a bang and a belch of flame and smoke a heavy conical shot went rotating through the air, making as much noise as a railroad train as it hurtled forwards at the chase, whose hull was hidden from view, but whose masts seemed quite close to us.

“He didn’t require to fire a second shot this time.

“No sooner had the report sounded and the roaring rumbling thunder of the discharge died away in the distance, rolling in towards the coast—the smoke being blown away, too, as quickly by the wind—than we could see the dhow dismasted before us, swaying about in the trough of the sea.

“She was a hopeless wreck, for both her masts had been snapped off short by the shot, and the yards to which the sails had been attached were lying athwart the deck. TheDolphinnow ranged up alongside her on the leeward bow, and the captain hailed her to know if she surrendered, when one of the Arabs on board, who must have been the skipper, waved a red handkerchief or cloth of some kind in token of truce. He was a tall, swarthy chap, with a turban instead of a fez, which the others wore, on his head; and the belt round his body, as we could see from looking down on to the deck of the dhow, which was much below the level of our vessel, was filled choke-full with long-barrelled pistols and dirks, and a round-shaped scimitar-like sword without a sheath that seemed as if it could give a fellow a very tidy cut.

“The sea was rough and both the dhow and theDolphinwere rolling about terribly, we dipping our foreyard-arms as we lay-to; but Captain Wilson at once ordered the first cutter to be piped away, with one of the lieutenants in charge; while nothing would suit him also but to have his own gig manned. He said he mistrusted the slaver and would board her also himself, as she had a number of Arab rascals on her deck who would probably show fight.

“The boats were soon in the water, under our lee, the men shinning down into them by the falls, each chap with his cutlass tucked into his waistband; and, in another moment, rounding under the stem of theDolphin, and getting nearly swamped as we breasted the sea, we made for the dhow, that now lay about half a cable’s-length from our vessel, which had drifted a bit astern.

“‘Put your backs into the stroke!’ sang out Captain Wilson from his gig—for I was in the cutter; and with grim earnestness we stretched out as hard as we could, gripping the water firmly and then pulling with all our strength. It was hard work against such a sea as was then running and in the face of the wind, which was still rising and more gusty than before; but we were soon alongside the chase, both the boats boarding her of course to leeward, although the captain in his gig dashed at the high poop astern, while we in the cutter made for her bows, which lay lower in the water and would thus enable us to get more easily on board.

“Captain Wilson was right in his suspicions about the Arab skipper’s surrender. Although he had waved that red rag of his to make-believe that he had given in, so that we might not give him a broadside as he probably expected—for of course he didn’t know that we would not fire the big guns for fear of killing the poor slaves in the hold—no sooner had we got alongside than the beggars showed fight.

“I and another chap managed to grab hold of the bowsprit gear to haul ourselves up by into the fo’c’sle of the dhow, when chop came a cut that severed the ropes we had clutched, causing us to let go and drop back again into the bottom of the cutter with a thump that nearly knocked the bottom out of her, while another Arab shoved out the muzzle of a long matchlock right amongst us and fired it off so closely that the charge singed my whiskers. That did one good job, however, for it made us pretty angry, as you might imagine, and the whole cutter’s crew tumbled aboard in a way that astonished them, I can tell you. They fought pluckily though, but they were more like mad cats than men, screaming and tearing us with their nails when we had knocked their long knives out of their hands and disarmed them. As for the skipper of the dhow, he was a perfect demon, and would have settled Captain Wilson had it not been for the coxswain of the gig giving him a drive through with his cutlass just as he had got our captain down and, kneeling on his chest, was preparing coolly to cut his throat with the keen curving scimitar that we had seen in his belt. Captain Wilson looked, sir, as pale as a ghost when he got on his feet again; for although he was as brave an officer as ever stepped, it does give a fellow a bit of a turn sometimes to be face to face with death, as he was then, and know that nothing, probably, can save you!

“When we had got the better hand of the slave crew, in which we did not quite get off scot-free, five of our men being killed outright and several wounded with ugly gashes from the sharp knives of the Arabs, we set about opening the hatches to release the slaves, who had all this while been kicking up a thundering row below, yelling and hollering as if they were all being murdered.

“Well, bless you! why, there were no less than three hundred and fifty crammed in the hold fore and aft on the two decks that were underneath the main one, and which had not four feet of space between them; the people, men, women, and children, being packed together so close that you couldn’t have got a sheet of paper edgeways between them. As for the smell; well, sir, I think you’d prefer that of a gas main just opened, or the foulest scent you could think of, to what we all smelt in the hold of that there dhow; for it seemed to smother us and make the strongest men aboard turn faint just like a girl does when she cuts her finger and sees the blood.

“After releasing half of them and bringing them up on the upper deck of the dhow, for there was not space to let the whole of them out of the hold at once, we had to rig up the masts of the craft again so that she could make sail, the weather being too ticklish for theDolphinto take her in tow; although she did so for awhile, just in order to get a little further away from the coast, which was not too pleasant a neighbour with a north-east monsoon blowing and a heavy sea setting in towards the land.

“By the time we had rigged up jury-masts on the dhow it was dark, so, warning the prize-crew that was on board, of which I was one, to keep a sharp look-out and mind that our tow-rope didn’t part, Captain Wilson went back to his own vessel—he wouldn’t leave us till everything was ship-shape again with the slaver and everybody seemed comfortable-like; taking with him the majority of the Arabs who had been uninjured in the scuffle, and who might have tried perhaps to recapture the dhow from the small lot of men whom our captain was able only to spare to man her. Of course, there was very little chance of their attempting this now that their skipper was dead, the coxswain’s thrust with his cutlass having lost the dark gentleman the ‘number of his mess’; but still, after the treachery they had already shown, it was best to take all proper precautions to spoil any little game they might try on.

“During the night, theDolphinkept under easy steam head to sea, only just preventing us from drifting ashore, as our tow-rope was hardly ever taut the whole time, for the wind blew so strongly still from the northward and eastward, the very direction we had to make for to reach Zanzibar with our prize, that it was impossible for the steamer to make any way against it, especially with the dhow in tow. The sea, too, was also very rough, breaking over the frail craft so frequently that we had to pack down all the slaves again below to prevent their being washed overboard.

“Towards morning, the wind gradually lessened, showing signs of shifting, which was to be expected at the season, being near the end of March. The sea, too, calmed down a bit, but there was still a heavy ground-swell, and from all appearances it looked as if there was going to be a squall, the more especially as it began to rain heavily. I had been left by Captain Wilson in charge of the prize-crew, and this change in the weather made me feel somewhat uneasy of the tow-rope breaking from the increased strain there was now on it through the labouring of the dhow; for I thought it would be better for both theDolphinand ourselves that we should cast loose and each sail on her own account, as at this time of the year the south-west monsoon, which takes the place of the north-eastern ‘kizkasi,’ as it is cabled, or Indian trade-wind, generally sets in with a violent tornado blowing from off the land.

“Accordingly, as soon as daylight I hailed the steamer to send a boat aboard for me as I wished to speak to the captain. I had something more to tell him, however, than about my fears concerning the weather; for, while I was keeping watch during the night, I had heard some words dropped from the Arab prisoners on the foc’s’le which I thought it best for him to know.”

“Did you?” I said.

“Yes,” said Ben, continuing his story. “While I was at Zanzibar I made it a point to study the lingo of the natives there, and had learned a good many words of the Kisawahili tongue, which is thelingua Francaof the coast; and hearing these half-caste Arabs talking together I listened to what they said, for being a Feringhee in their eyes they did not think I could understand them. Of course I couldn’t manage to stumble to everything I heard, some of their words being incomprehensible to me; but I gathered enough to learn that the dhow we had captured was in company with another one equally as large, loaded with slaves, that had got off clear and was now probably making its way towards the Persian Gulf out of reach of theDolphin.

“This would be good news, I knew, for Captain Wilson; for, although the Arabs believed that this dhow had escaped us, if theDolphinat once went in pursuit of her in the right direction there was not the slightest doubt of her being able to overhaul her before she reached her destination, which was, I learned through the chatter of the prisoners, first to Mafiyah, as a sort of hiding-place until we should be reported out of the way, and then on to Muscat on the Arabian coast.

“I had no sooner got on board theDolphinin the dinghy sent for me, than, the skipper confirmed my own opinion as to the importance of the information I had obtained, although he said something which slightly damped my enthusiasm, in giving me a job I had not bargained for.

“‘You’ve done quite right, Campion, my man,’ said he, ‘in not losing time. I am glad you hailed me when you did, for every hour is precious in getting up with a chase that has got such a good start. I shall take care to mention you in my despatches for your prompt assistance in giving me news of this vessel, as well as for your gallantry in the capture of theFatima,’—that was the name of the one we had already taken, sir, and now had in tow.

“So far Captain Wilson quite flabbergasted me with his compliments and made me feel as proud as Punch; but his next words lowered me down a peg, I can tell you!

“‘I’m sorry, however, I sha’n’t be able to take you with me, Campion,’ he went on, ‘to see the end of this other affair; for now that I have to start off in chase of the other slaver, which will take me off the station, where some of the little Mtpe dhows will be trying to make runs from the mainland, thinking the coast unguarded, I intend leaving the pinnace behind to cruise about the Comoro Islands until I get back with theDolphin, and, as you are the only responsible man I could trust to take charge of the boat and crew, you must remain here. Pass the word at once for the boatswain to pipe away the pinnace and see that she is properly stowed and provisioned.’

“This was a good deal more than I had bargained for. I thought I should have been allowed to remain as prize-master of theFatimaand sail her up to Zanzibar, as that was what the captain had hinted the night before. However, of course I put the best face I could on the matter, and contented myself with seeing that the water barricoes and stores were properly put on board the pinnace, while all the other men who had not to remain behind with me and the boat were in high glee getting ready for the fresh chase, the news being already whispered about in the messes—hoping that they would have just such another scrimmage again as they had had the day before at the capture of theFatima.

“Captain Wilson did not ‘let the grass grow under his feet,’ as the saying goes—though it’s rather a queer one for a seaman to use—in carrying out what he had decided on.

“Before the blazing African sun was an hour old, by which time too the rain had stopped falling, the second lieutenant of theDolphinwas transferred to the command of the captured dhow, our ‘First Swab’ having been wounded, taking with him all the prisoners that had been previously removed to our vessel for safety, although they were now bound securely with ropes and had a guard set over them to prevent their doing mischief, besides some additional hands to navigate theFatima—which, hoisting her big lugs on the jury-masts we had rigged up the previous evening, and casting off theDolphin’stow-rope, was soon standing up the coast on her way to Zanzibar, keeping well inshore now, as that course was safest since the wind had changed.

“Hardly had the dhow got well off than the pinnace was lowered into the water alongside the steamer, her crew dropping in one by one, and I, of course, descending last. We had provisions and water on board to last us for six weeks, the usual time that boats are sent away from the vessels to which they belong on the east coast when cruising independently, as they all take it in turn to do; and Captain Wilson told me I was to hover about between Madagascar and the mainland in the Mozambique Channel until we might expect him back, which would be a month at farthest, even making allowances for his being detained at Zanzibar about the condemning of the slave-dhows which we had already captured and the one which he now hoped to get hold of.

“TheDolphinthen took us in tow till we were abreast of the Comoro Isles, when she cast us adrift, starting off up the channel full speed and steering north-east and by north, so as to get well out to sea before stretching in to the land towards Mafiyah, where she expected to pick up the slaver; while we, hoisting the sails of the pinnace, and taking it easy under the boat’s awning that was spread fore and aft, bore away for Madagascar. Ah! sir, that was the commencement of an unfortunate voyage, for it was months before some of those that formed the pinnace’s crew ever met their old shipmates again on board theDolphin; the majority of those with me in the boat never met the hands we left on board the steamer again at all, nor will they till that great last day of all when the sea gives up its dead!”

“I suppose you refer to that time when you said you were capsized off the coast of Madagascar, eh?” said I, noticing that Ben Campion paused at this point.

“Aye,” he replied; “but I’m afraid it’ll take a precious long time to reel off the yarn concerning that period of the story!”

“Never mind, please go on,” I replied. “Now you’ve begun and got so far, I’m sure I should like to hear the end of it.”

“All right, then,” he replied; but, before proceeding, he had to load up a fresh pipe, and while performing this interesting little operation he informed me,en passant, that theDolphinhe afterwards heard had succeeded in capturing the second dhow, and her first prize theFatimahad safely reached Zanzibar; and, consequently, that his prize-money for both seizures was safe, the sum accrueing to him amounting to over £50, being subsequently paid over to him when he rejoined his ship some time afterwards—“and spent, too, long since,” as he said.

These little matters, relevant and irrelevant, being thus disposed of, Ben continued his narrative as follows.

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