Chapter Twenty Five.

Chapter Twenty Five.The Arab Stronghold.At that moment the wind lulled for an instant, and I was just able to make a slash with the sharp edge of my knife across the rope, severing it instanter, and thus saving poor bungling Bouncer all further trouble; when, a terrific gust came, this time right astern, carrying sail and mast and all, the latter snapping off like a carrot close to the thwart where it was stepped, over the heads of all in the boat forwards, high in air—just as if the lot were the remnants of a big kite that had parted its supporting string, the sail ultimately disappearing in the distance, swallowed up by the angry waves.These latter were now boiling up round the cutter on every side, our little pigmy of a craft seeming lost in the seething caldron of broken water; but, she was buoyant as a cork, and, although half rilled, breasted the billows in fine style and running before wind and sea at a tearing rate with not a rag of sail on her now, nor an oar, save one Mr Chisholm and I rigged out over the stern by Draper’s direction, this being better to steer her by than the rudder, which we then unshipped.It was a good job for us that our old coxswain had got wounded, and that Draper had taken his place just then temporarily while Hoskins was on the sick-list; for, though Draper was the oldest petty officer on board the ship—his promotion to a higher grade having been delayed, I believe, through his natural crustiness of temper, which he really could not help—there was no doubt that he knew the East Coast of Africa well, and the management of a boat the better of the two, especially in a stormy sea.Ay, and it was stormy now!Far as the eye could reach, the mad waves dashed and clashed against each other as they raced along, borne onward before the blast; throwing up their white crests, all lashed into foam, in showers of spray and spindrift that fell back over us in the boat, wetting us to the skin and blinding those that had to face it.The horizon, too—what we could see of it, that is, through the spray—was covered with a mass of inky clouds, almost blue-black in hue, that covered by degrees the whole of the heavens, with the exception of a round spot right overhead that looked like a gigantic eye.Mr Chisholm, who, young though he was, had the sight of a hawk, spotted this at once.“Hullo, Draper!” he cried, pointing aloft. “What’s that up there—anything more brewing up for us, d’ye think?”The coxswain, who had all his work cut out to keep the boat from being swamped by the heavy following seas that came rolling up astern of us, threatening every minute to engulf the cutter and carry her down bodily below, gave an uneasy squint in the direction whither the young officer pointed his finger.“Lord-sakes, sir,” he exclaimed, shaking his head in a very grave way, “that be a h’ox-eye!”“Ox-eye!” Mr Chisholm repeated after him in a quizzing tone, with a grin on his face. “I’ve heard of ox-tongues before—those tinned ones ain’t bad eating sometimes for lunch on a pinch; but an ox-eye—what is that, Draper?”“Nothin’ to larf about,” grunted out our crusty coxswain, bracing his body against the loom of the oar with which he was steering and slewing the boat’s head aside to avoid a cross sea that nearly broke at that very moment over our bows. “If ye’d be’n as long on this coast as me, sir, ye’d know when ye seed one o’ them things up there—it means, ‘Look out!’ Ay, by the Lord too, we must look out now! Stand by there—all hands lie down in the bottom of the boat; it’s yer only chance, if ye values yer lives!”“Down, men!” Mr Chisholm cried, endorsing Draper’s words of warning with his command. “Do as the coxswain tells you—down for your lives!”Our chaps who were seated on the thwarts forwards and amidships at once scrambled down on the bottom boards, while we in the sternsheets, including Mr Chisholm himself, squatted on the grating, only old Draper sitting up still at his post aft with both hands holding the loom of the steering oar in a firm grip.“Bend yer heads,” muttered this worthy the next moment; “it’s a-comin’ now!”As the words passed his lips and we all bowed down below the level of the gunwale, the roar of the sea seemed hushed in the dead stillness that ensued; and then, with a wild shriek that sounded like the moaning of some lost soul from the bottomless pit, the wind, which had been gathering up all its strength in the interim, burst upon us, burying the cutter’s bows as it struck her right under water.Bouncer, frightened out of his life, made a movement to rise as he lay alongside me on the stern grating; but old Draper gave him a kick in the ribs with the toe of his heavy boot.“Lie still, you beggar!” he cried, bringing, with a tremendous pull of his arms, the oar-rudder hard over. “The boat’s rightin’ all right. We’ve seed the wust on it if yer’ll only bide still!”Fortunately, we had a weather cloth over the bow, which prevented the sea from pouring in and swamping us when the cutter dipped under; while, as all of us remained quiet and our dead weight was more towards the stern than forwards, the boat’s natural buoyancy prevailed and she rose up like a cork.The worst might have been over, as Draper had said; still, we were not ‘out of the wood’ yet, gust after gust assailing us, and the waves racing up madly astern, when, dividing, they would tower up on either side of our frail craft, threatening destruction for the moment ere they rolled onward again—we, all the while, fleeing before the fury of the storm we knew not whither, powerless alike to shape a course or guide our boat.All that our skilful coxswain could do was to prevent the cutter from shipping a sea, no matter how the wind took us, or whether we ran with the billows or athwart them, as sometimes happened from the sudden shift of the gale, at whose beck and call we were; for, one moment going north or west into the open sea, the next recklessly careering eastwards, right in upon the rocks of the mainland, or dashing south amongst the mazy little islands and islets round and about Zanzibar, where our plight would be as perilous.We had been boxing the compass like this for some four or five hours, without the weather showing any signs of a mend, it being now late in the afternoon; and our head turned towards Bagamoyo again for about the fifth time that day since we began our circling experiences, when, just as it was beginning to grow darker, though there had not been much light about since noon, a ship hove in sight.She was dead ahead of us, riding out the gale under steam.The smoke of her funnels was trailing away to leeward and so mixing up with the clouds that were banked on the horizon that old Draper, who was looking out as well as steering, for he would not allow any of us to sit on the thwarts, said he could not tell ‘t’other from which.’Presently, however, as we surged onwards, carried down upon her at the rate of twelve knots or more, Draper could distinguish the smoke from the clouds; ay, and the ship herself.“By the Lord!” he cried, looking at Mr Chisholm, his face all aglow and his voice heartier than I ever heard him speak before, “it’s theMermaid, sir.”“TheMermaid, coxswain!” ejaculated Mr Chisholm, at once jumping to his feet and taking a sight himself, shading his eyes with his hand. “Yes, it is theMermaid, hurrah!”“Steady there, sir,” said Draper, warningly putting his hand on the young officer’s arm; “we ain’t aboard her yet, sir; and if yer don’t keep cool, sir, beggin’ yer pardon, sir, it’s precious little we’ll see of her this night, or ever ag’en, fur that matter!”“But, how shall we get alongside?”“Keep cool, sir. I’ll tell ’ee when the time comes,” rejoined the coxswain, in a soothing tone that took off the impertinence of his thus speaking to his officer. “You leave it to me, sir, and I’ll find a way, if man can do it, to get alongside our old hooker; ’sides them aboard ’ll be on the lookout, too, and between the pair on us we ought fur to manage it comf’ably!”While ‘old crusty’ was laying down the law in this fashion, though continuing to mind his steering as smartly as he had done all along, the cutter was nearing the cruiser every instant, the wind taking her along in a series of mad leaps and bounds through the water and over the water, jumping from the top of one wave to that of another, and sometimes almost in mid-air, until we seemed about to hop on board theMermaid, all standing like some of those flying-fish I have seen in the tropics, or else smash ourselves all to pieces against her iron hull.But, in the nick of time, when only some twenty or thirty yards off her sharp ram bow, which would have cut into the cutter as easily as a knife goes into butter in summer-time, Draper gave a tug to his steering oar; and, Captain Hankey ‘making a lee’ for us by porting his helm, we glided into comparatively calm water under the cruiser’s starboard counter.A dozen ropes were thrown to us from men already stationed in the rigging for the purpose, a dozen hands and more held out to help us up the side; and almost before any of us well knew where we were, there we stood, safe and sound on the deck of our old ship again, the cutter being then hoisted up to the davits.Draper, who had saved her and us, was the last man to leave her, when the falls were secured and the gripes put round the boat again.After this exciting episode, nothing very notable occurred during our stay on this part of the coast for the next twelve months, beyond my being made ‘able seaman.’I passed for this grade very satisfactorily, I am glad to say; but, it would not be fair for me to omit mentioning that it was mainly through my old friend Larrikins that I was able to get off with flying colours. My old chum coached me up in the knotting and splicing of wire rope, of which art he was a proficient, his father being a working smith, and Larrikins himself having been intended originally for that trade, before the superior attractions of the sea weaned him from the paternal handicraft.In the following year, however, matters became a trifle livelier on the East coast.The Somali, from the constant blockade we kept up along their territory with our boats and cruisers, from Cape Guardafui down to the Equator, thus putting a stop to their slave-dealings, capturing as we did all their dhows and blocking all outlets from the coast, determined on retaliatory measures; so, mustering all their forces and calling up the assistance of the slave-dealers of the interior, they began to attack various points of the British protectorate.Possibly, had the Arabs only us to deal with, things might not have got to this pass; but, very unluckily for this country, the Germans, who have long been jealous of our colonial enterprise and commercial success in Africa as elsewhere, took it into their heads, not long since, to extend their trade on the eastern seaboard.The ideas of Meinherr Von Sourkrout and his warlike Kaiser in respect of the colonisation of this part of the Dark Continent, like those of our French cousins on the West Coast, differ much from the more peaceful plan pursued by England for several generations past—a plan that has worked wonderfully well in the building up of our Empire, and the spread of our manufactures over every land and sea!Meinherr Sourkrout’s method for extending trade, that is, according to the experience of us bluejackets of the British Navy who have served on the East African station, has been to shoot down the natives wherever the flag of his Fatherland has ever been stuck up; and, when the men of the negro tribes, objecting to such friendly advances, have bolted into the bush, Meinherr, imitating the example of his great countryman Marshal Haynau, took to flogging their wives and womenfolk in order to coax the black gentlemen back.The darkeys, somehow or other, didn’t tackle to this treatment; and, the Germans having thus roused them up to the south of our protectorate, where, unfortunately for us, Meinherr Von Sourkrout and his domineering compatriots have a territory far too close to our own, the natives, being of the opinion that we were in sympathy with their oppressors, joined hands with the Somalis in their advance on our trading posts along the coast—they did not touch those belonging to the Germans, for the very good reason that these have none!I heard Mr Gresham explaining all this one day to Dabby when they were both sitting in the captain’s gig, to which I had been shifted since my promotion to able seaman; for I was pulling stroke at the time, the boat taking them ashore to a grand dinner-party given by the British Consul to the Sultan or some other ‘big pot’ at Zanzibar, off which port theMermaidwas then lying.I wondered what led to this queer talk, as none of us on board had heard anything on the lower deck about any row being imminent; for, of course, sick of our stagnant life for the last few months, as all of us were, the inkling of any fight being in the air would have been as welcome to us as the ‘flowers of May.’Still I kept my ears open all the same; and when, the next morning, I met the captain’s steward returning from the galley with a cup of early cocoa for ‘old Hankey Pankey,’ and he told me that he thought we were going to be busy soon, the ‘old man’ having directed him to take out his sword and pistols, and give them to his marine servant to be cleaned up, I began, as ‘Gyp’ did that time on board theSaint Vincent, ‘to smell a rat.’A little later on, my impressions became confirmed; for, just as we were piped down to breakfast after ‘wash and scrub decks,’ and I was telling Larrikins, who sat alongside me at the mess-table, what I had heard, the engine-room gong sounded, and the word was passed to get up steam as quickly as possible.‘Old Hankey Pankey’ did not waste time when he had once got his orders; and some couple of hours after we had weighed anchor and were rapidly leaving Zanzibar, with its rows of square stone houses, built with flat roofs in the eastern style, that front the beautiful curving bay, whose white sandy beach is washed by water so clear that you can see the bottom at six fathoms, and which is backed, beyond the warehouses and mansions of the merchants, by the bright greenery of palm trees and dates and other rich tropical growths, the beautiful foliage of which contrasts vividly with the intense whiteness of the buildings and adjacent shore, offering quite a relief to the eye from the glaring sun and coppery sky overhead.“Say, Tom,” said Larrikins to me presently, as the two of us, with a lot of the other hands, were polishing up the brasswork of the machine-guns on the upper deck, “d’yer know where we’re bound in such a hurry?”“No, Larry,” I replied. “Somewhere up the coast, though, I ’spect from what I told you down below.”Larrikins chuckled to himself.“Ye’r a fine chap, Tom, to give a fellow h’infumation,” he said with a snigger. “I could ’a told you as much meself. Why, carn’t I see with ’arf a h’eye we’re steerin’ to the north’ard up the coast, with the munsoon a-blowin’ right in our teeth and the sun on our starb’rd ’and!”I laughed, too, at the sharp wag’s rejoinder.“Well, Larry,” I said at last, after polishing up the ratchet of the Nordenfeldt I was working at to my personal satisfaction, hoping to have the aiming of it bye-and-bye, “I can’t tell you any more than that we are bound up the coast, and are likely to have a brush with the Arabs along there somewhere; but where that somewhere is, my joker, I’m hanged if I know!”“I can tell you, mate,” put in a man who was rubbing up the gun at the end of the bridge hard by where we were standing. “We’re off for Mombassa again. I heard ‘old Square toes,’ the navigator, tell Mr Chisholm just now. He said we were agoin’ to meet theMerlinthere, and purseed further up the coast together.”“Oh!” said Larry, “that means business, Tom.”“Ay,” said I, “it does, my hearty, and to tell the truth, Larry, I’m jolly glad of it.”So were all hands on board, when the news spread through the ship; and, on our reaching Mombassa late in the afternoon of the same day, steaming fifteen knots all the way, pretty nearly our full speed when the stokehold was not ‘closed up,’ we found theMerlinthere before us, as the man on deck had told Larry and me in the morning.This made assurance a certainty, every man-jack of the crew being cock-a-hoop with excitement, when, after a lot of signalling between the two cruisers, and theMerlin’sgig bringing her captain alongside, he being junior to ‘old Hankey Pankey,’ the two of us sailed off in company just before sunset.Our destination was Malindi, at the mouth of the Sabaki river, where it was reported the Somalis had made an inroad into the British protectorate, and burnt one of the out stations of the East African Company, slaughtering all the whites and natives employed by the traders.This place was only some sixty miles to the northward of Mombassa; and all the arrangements for our landing having been completed, and ‘old Hankey Pankey’ settled his plan of operations with Captain Oliver of theMerlin, we did not hurry on the passage to Malindi, timing ourselves to arrive about daybreak, casting anchor in front of the town, as near in as we could get without shoaling our water, at Six Bells in the morning watch to the minute.During our run up the coast from Mombassa, the first lieutenant and Mr Dabchick saw to our boats being got ready, and the bluejackets and marines, who were detailed for service with the expedition, mustered on deck in all their ‘war paint,’ and told off to the respective craft in which they were to go ashore; and by Eight Bells, after a hurried breakfast, which none of us much cared to eat, we were all so full of enthusiasm at the prospect of action, we shoved off from theMermaid—all in dead silence, though, so that no inkling of our coming might reach the ears of the Arabs before we were upon them.The boats of theMerlinleft their ship at the same time as we did ours; the two lots making for the land in two columns abreast, ‘old Hankey Pankey’ leading our line in the launch, with the first and second cutters and the whaler trailing on behind, while Captain Oliver led those of theMerlin.On reaching the shore, the sea being fortunately very quiet, though the north-east monsoon was now blowing, we waded up the sandy beach without any difficulty; and, leaving our flotilla under charge of the boat-keepers, a couple of hands in each craft to look after them so as to prevent their grounding in the event of the wind getting up, when the surf might be dangerous, we united our forces and marched in a body inland.Avoiding the town of Malindi, our object being to surprise a stockade, where the Somalis were reported to have established themselves, some five miles off in the bush, in the rear of the outposts of the settlers, we shaped a course south by west under the guidance of one of the natives, who had been sent to us by one of the principal merchants of the place on hearing of our landing, so as to make our way easy for us, steering by compass in the jungle ashore being very different to what it is on the open sea.The rascal, who was evidently a Somali spy sent by his astute comrades to watch our movements, made our way very easy indeed; for he took us directly in front of the stockade we had intended surprising, instead of showing us a by-path leading to the rear of the fortification, from which we could have outflanked the defence.‘Old Hankey Pankey,’ who led our fighting force of bluejackets and marines, which mustered in officers and men altogether some two hundred strong, was flabbergasted as he gaily marched in front of the column on our being received by a hail of bullets and buckshot, which decimated our ranks as we suddenly debouched from a rough, tangled undergrowth of scrub and dwarf plantain trees.Amidst these we could hardly see an inch before us; and then, we found ourselves in front of a high palisade, made of the trunks of heavy trees lashed together with lianas and rattan creepers that were as strong as wire rope. This was loopholed for musketry, and from thence a murderous fire of innumerable weapons was directed at our devoted heads.Plucky as a lion, however, the captain rallied us; and, dividing the column into three portions, taking command of the middle division himself, while Captain Oliver of theMerlin, and Lieutenant Dabchick of our ship, headed the two others, we advanced with a cheer to storm the stockade, ‘old Hankey Pankey’ aiming for its front face, and the other sections of our force for the flanks of the fortification.Talk of fighting, it was a case of ‘pull baker, pull devil!’ then!We numbered two hundred, as I have said, but the Somalis must have mustered two thousand at least, if they had a man there.Twice we advanced to the attack, twice we were forced to fall back before the withering flight of bullets that met us face to face from every hole and corner of that infernal stockade; though Captain Hankey bravely walked right up to the timber work till he almost touched it, a revolver in either hand, which he fired alternately at the beggars!But, the captain got a big matchlock ball through both his legs, the missile having been discharged at him as he turned sideways, with a “Follow me, lads!” to cheer us on.He was not licked yet, though; for, as Larrikins stooped over him to lift him up, ‘old Hankey Pankey’ got his arm round his neck and climbed up on to him pick-a-back, Larry highly delighted at the job, he and the captain then advancing again to the assault.In the meantime, Mr Dabchick had brought up one of our little nine-pounder boat-guns which had stuck in the rear and blew in part of the palisading on the left of the stockade, when he and a lot of us made a desperate charge to storm the entrenchment.Poor little Dabby, though, was shot dead while entering the breach the shell of our nine-pounder had made in the outer palisade that protected the Arab defences; and then, finding a second fence composed of similar baulks of timber in front of us, as strong as that we had surmounted, and that the fire of the Somalis increased the nearer we got to them, our chaps, staggered by the fall of poor Dabby, I must confess it, all at once began to cut and run!

At that moment the wind lulled for an instant, and I was just able to make a slash with the sharp edge of my knife across the rope, severing it instanter, and thus saving poor bungling Bouncer all further trouble; when, a terrific gust came, this time right astern, carrying sail and mast and all, the latter snapping off like a carrot close to the thwart where it was stepped, over the heads of all in the boat forwards, high in air—just as if the lot were the remnants of a big kite that had parted its supporting string, the sail ultimately disappearing in the distance, swallowed up by the angry waves.

These latter were now boiling up round the cutter on every side, our little pigmy of a craft seeming lost in the seething caldron of broken water; but, she was buoyant as a cork, and, although half rilled, breasted the billows in fine style and running before wind and sea at a tearing rate with not a rag of sail on her now, nor an oar, save one Mr Chisholm and I rigged out over the stern by Draper’s direction, this being better to steer her by than the rudder, which we then unshipped.

It was a good job for us that our old coxswain had got wounded, and that Draper had taken his place just then temporarily while Hoskins was on the sick-list; for, though Draper was the oldest petty officer on board the ship—his promotion to a higher grade having been delayed, I believe, through his natural crustiness of temper, which he really could not help—there was no doubt that he knew the East Coast of Africa well, and the management of a boat the better of the two, especially in a stormy sea.

Ay, and it was stormy now!

Far as the eye could reach, the mad waves dashed and clashed against each other as they raced along, borne onward before the blast; throwing up their white crests, all lashed into foam, in showers of spray and spindrift that fell back over us in the boat, wetting us to the skin and blinding those that had to face it.

The horizon, too—what we could see of it, that is, through the spray—was covered with a mass of inky clouds, almost blue-black in hue, that covered by degrees the whole of the heavens, with the exception of a round spot right overhead that looked like a gigantic eye.

Mr Chisholm, who, young though he was, had the sight of a hawk, spotted this at once.

“Hullo, Draper!” he cried, pointing aloft. “What’s that up there—anything more brewing up for us, d’ye think?”

The coxswain, who had all his work cut out to keep the boat from being swamped by the heavy following seas that came rolling up astern of us, threatening every minute to engulf the cutter and carry her down bodily below, gave an uneasy squint in the direction whither the young officer pointed his finger.

“Lord-sakes, sir,” he exclaimed, shaking his head in a very grave way, “that be a h’ox-eye!”

“Ox-eye!” Mr Chisholm repeated after him in a quizzing tone, with a grin on his face. “I’ve heard of ox-tongues before—those tinned ones ain’t bad eating sometimes for lunch on a pinch; but an ox-eye—what is that, Draper?”

“Nothin’ to larf about,” grunted out our crusty coxswain, bracing his body against the loom of the oar with which he was steering and slewing the boat’s head aside to avoid a cross sea that nearly broke at that very moment over our bows. “If ye’d be’n as long on this coast as me, sir, ye’d know when ye seed one o’ them things up there—it means, ‘Look out!’ Ay, by the Lord too, we must look out now! Stand by there—all hands lie down in the bottom of the boat; it’s yer only chance, if ye values yer lives!”

“Down, men!” Mr Chisholm cried, endorsing Draper’s words of warning with his command. “Do as the coxswain tells you—down for your lives!”

Our chaps who were seated on the thwarts forwards and amidships at once scrambled down on the bottom boards, while we in the sternsheets, including Mr Chisholm himself, squatted on the grating, only old Draper sitting up still at his post aft with both hands holding the loom of the steering oar in a firm grip.

“Bend yer heads,” muttered this worthy the next moment; “it’s a-comin’ now!”

As the words passed his lips and we all bowed down below the level of the gunwale, the roar of the sea seemed hushed in the dead stillness that ensued; and then, with a wild shriek that sounded like the moaning of some lost soul from the bottomless pit, the wind, which had been gathering up all its strength in the interim, burst upon us, burying the cutter’s bows as it struck her right under water.

Bouncer, frightened out of his life, made a movement to rise as he lay alongside me on the stern grating; but old Draper gave him a kick in the ribs with the toe of his heavy boot.

“Lie still, you beggar!” he cried, bringing, with a tremendous pull of his arms, the oar-rudder hard over. “The boat’s rightin’ all right. We’ve seed the wust on it if yer’ll only bide still!”

Fortunately, we had a weather cloth over the bow, which prevented the sea from pouring in and swamping us when the cutter dipped under; while, as all of us remained quiet and our dead weight was more towards the stern than forwards, the boat’s natural buoyancy prevailed and she rose up like a cork.

The worst might have been over, as Draper had said; still, we were not ‘out of the wood’ yet, gust after gust assailing us, and the waves racing up madly astern, when, dividing, they would tower up on either side of our frail craft, threatening destruction for the moment ere they rolled onward again—we, all the while, fleeing before the fury of the storm we knew not whither, powerless alike to shape a course or guide our boat.

All that our skilful coxswain could do was to prevent the cutter from shipping a sea, no matter how the wind took us, or whether we ran with the billows or athwart them, as sometimes happened from the sudden shift of the gale, at whose beck and call we were; for, one moment going north or west into the open sea, the next recklessly careering eastwards, right in upon the rocks of the mainland, or dashing south amongst the mazy little islands and islets round and about Zanzibar, where our plight would be as perilous.

We had been boxing the compass like this for some four or five hours, without the weather showing any signs of a mend, it being now late in the afternoon; and our head turned towards Bagamoyo again for about the fifth time that day since we began our circling experiences, when, just as it was beginning to grow darker, though there had not been much light about since noon, a ship hove in sight.

She was dead ahead of us, riding out the gale under steam.

The smoke of her funnels was trailing away to leeward and so mixing up with the clouds that were banked on the horizon that old Draper, who was looking out as well as steering, for he would not allow any of us to sit on the thwarts, said he could not tell ‘t’other from which.’

Presently, however, as we surged onwards, carried down upon her at the rate of twelve knots or more, Draper could distinguish the smoke from the clouds; ay, and the ship herself.

“By the Lord!” he cried, looking at Mr Chisholm, his face all aglow and his voice heartier than I ever heard him speak before, “it’s theMermaid, sir.”

“TheMermaid, coxswain!” ejaculated Mr Chisholm, at once jumping to his feet and taking a sight himself, shading his eyes with his hand. “Yes, it is theMermaid, hurrah!”

“Steady there, sir,” said Draper, warningly putting his hand on the young officer’s arm; “we ain’t aboard her yet, sir; and if yer don’t keep cool, sir, beggin’ yer pardon, sir, it’s precious little we’ll see of her this night, or ever ag’en, fur that matter!”

“But, how shall we get alongside?”

“Keep cool, sir. I’ll tell ’ee when the time comes,” rejoined the coxswain, in a soothing tone that took off the impertinence of his thus speaking to his officer. “You leave it to me, sir, and I’ll find a way, if man can do it, to get alongside our old hooker; ’sides them aboard ’ll be on the lookout, too, and between the pair on us we ought fur to manage it comf’ably!”

While ‘old crusty’ was laying down the law in this fashion, though continuing to mind his steering as smartly as he had done all along, the cutter was nearing the cruiser every instant, the wind taking her along in a series of mad leaps and bounds through the water and over the water, jumping from the top of one wave to that of another, and sometimes almost in mid-air, until we seemed about to hop on board theMermaid, all standing like some of those flying-fish I have seen in the tropics, or else smash ourselves all to pieces against her iron hull.

But, in the nick of time, when only some twenty or thirty yards off her sharp ram bow, which would have cut into the cutter as easily as a knife goes into butter in summer-time, Draper gave a tug to his steering oar; and, Captain Hankey ‘making a lee’ for us by porting his helm, we glided into comparatively calm water under the cruiser’s starboard counter.

A dozen ropes were thrown to us from men already stationed in the rigging for the purpose, a dozen hands and more held out to help us up the side; and almost before any of us well knew where we were, there we stood, safe and sound on the deck of our old ship again, the cutter being then hoisted up to the davits.

Draper, who had saved her and us, was the last man to leave her, when the falls were secured and the gripes put round the boat again.

After this exciting episode, nothing very notable occurred during our stay on this part of the coast for the next twelve months, beyond my being made ‘able seaman.’

I passed for this grade very satisfactorily, I am glad to say; but, it would not be fair for me to omit mentioning that it was mainly through my old friend Larrikins that I was able to get off with flying colours. My old chum coached me up in the knotting and splicing of wire rope, of which art he was a proficient, his father being a working smith, and Larrikins himself having been intended originally for that trade, before the superior attractions of the sea weaned him from the paternal handicraft.

In the following year, however, matters became a trifle livelier on the East coast.

The Somali, from the constant blockade we kept up along their territory with our boats and cruisers, from Cape Guardafui down to the Equator, thus putting a stop to their slave-dealings, capturing as we did all their dhows and blocking all outlets from the coast, determined on retaliatory measures; so, mustering all their forces and calling up the assistance of the slave-dealers of the interior, they began to attack various points of the British protectorate.

Possibly, had the Arabs only us to deal with, things might not have got to this pass; but, very unluckily for this country, the Germans, who have long been jealous of our colonial enterprise and commercial success in Africa as elsewhere, took it into their heads, not long since, to extend their trade on the eastern seaboard.

The ideas of Meinherr Von Sourkrout and his warlike Kaiser in respect of the colonisation of this part of the Dark Continent, like those of our French cousins on the West Coast, differ much from the more peaceful plan pursued by England for several generations past—a plan that has worked wonderfully well in the building up of our Empire, and the spread of our manufactures over every land and sea!

Meinherr Sourkrout’s method for extending trade, that is, according to the experience of us bluejackets of the British Navy who have served on the East African station, has been to shoot down the natives wherever the flag of his Fatherland has ever been stuck up; and, when the men of the negro tribes, objecting to such friendly advances, have bolted into the bush, Meinherr, imitating the example of his great countryman Marshal Haynau, took to flogging their wives and womenfolk in order to coax the black gentlemen back.

The darkeys, somehow or other, didn’t tackle to this treatment; and, the Germans having thus roused them up to the south of our protectorate, where, unfortunately for us, Meinherr Von Sourkrout and his domineering compatriots have a territory far too close to our own, the natives, being of the opinion that we were in sympathy with their oppressors, joined hands with the Somalis in their advance on our trading posts along the coast—they did not touch those belonging to the Germans, for the very good reason that these have none!

I heard Mr Gresham explaining all this one day to Dabby when they were both sitting in the captain’s gig, to which I had been shifted since my promotion to able seaman; for I was pulling stroke at the time, the boat taking them ashore to a grand dinner-party given by the British Consul to the Sultan or some other ‘big pot’ at Zanzibar, off which port theMermaidwas then lying.

I wondered what led to this queer talk, as none of us on board had heard anything on the lower deck about any row being imminent; for, of course, sick of our stagnant life for the last few months, as all of us were, the inkling of any fight being in the air would have been as welcome to us as the ‘flowers of May.’

Still I kept my ears open all the same; and when, the next morning, I met the captain’s steward returning from the galley with a cup of early cocoa for ‘old Hankey Pankey,’ and he told me that he thought we were going to be busy soon, the ‘old man’ having directed him to take out his sword and pistols, and give them to his marine servant to be cleaned up, I began, as ‘Gyp’ did that time on board theSaint Vincent, ‘to smell a rat.’

A little later on, my impressions became confirmed; for, just as we were piped down to breakfast after ‘wash and scrub decks,’ and I was telling Larrikins, who sat alongside me at the mess-table, what I had heard, the engine-room gong sounded, and the word was passed to get up steam as quickly as possible.

‘Old Hankey Pankey’ did not waste time when he had once got his orders; and some couple of hours after we had weighed anchor and were rapidly leaving Zanzibar, with its rows of square stone houses, built with flat roofs in the eastern style, that front the beautiful curving bay, whose white sandy beach is washed by water so clear that you can see the bottom at six fathoms, and which is backed, beyond the warehouses and mansions of the merchants, by the bright greenery of palm trees and dates and other rich tropical growths, the beautiful foliage of which contrasts vividly with the intense whiteness of the buildings and adjacent shore, offering quite a relief to the eye from the glaring sun and coppery sky overhead.

“Say, Tom,” said Larrikins to me presently, as the two of us, with a lot of the other hands, were polishing up the brasswork of the machine-guns on the upper deck, “d’yer know where we’re bound in such a hurry?”

“No, Larry,” I replied. “Somewhere up the coast, though, I ’spect from what I told you down below.”

Larrikins chuckled to himself.

“Ye’r a fine chap, Tom, to give a fellow h’infumation,” he said with a snigger. “I could ’a told you as much meself. Why, carn’t I see with ’arf a h’eye we’re steerin’ to the north’ard up the coast, with the munsoon a-blowin’ right in our teeth and the sun on our starb’rd ’and!”

I laughed, too, at the sharp wag’s rejoinder.

“Well, Larry,” I said at last, after polishing up the ratchet of the Nordenfeldt I was working at to my personal satisfaction, hoping to have the aiming of it bye-and-bye, “I can’t tell you any more than that we are bound up the coast, and are likely to have a brush with the Arabs along there somewhere; but where that somewhere is, my joker, I’m hanged if I know!”

“I can tell you, mate,” put in a man who was rubbing up the gun at the end of the bridge hard by where we were standing. “We’re off for Mombassa again. I heard ‘old Square toes,’ the navigator, tell Mr Chisholm just now. He said we were agoin’ to meet theMerlinthere, and purseed further up the coast together.”

“Oh!” said Larry, “that means business, Tom.”

“Ay,” said I, “it does, my hearty, and to tell the truth, Larry, I’m jolly glad of it.”

So were all hands on board, when the news spread through the ship; and, on our reaching Mombassa late in the afternoon of the same day, steaming fifteen knots all the way, pretty nearly our full speed when the stokehold was not ‘closed up,’ we found theMerlinthere before us, as the man on deck had told Larry and me in the morning.

This made assurance a certainty, every man-jack of the crew being cock-a-hoop with excitement, when, after a lot of signalling between the two cruisers, and theMerlin’sgig bringing her captain alongside, he being junior to ‘old Hankey Pankey,’ the two of us sailed off in company just before sunset.

Our destination was Malindi, at the mouth of the Sabaki river, where it was reported the Somalis had made an inroad into the British protectorate, and burnt one of the out stations of the East African Company, slaughtering all the whites and natives employed by the traders.

This place was only some sixty miles to the northward of Mombassa; and all the arrangements for our landing having been completed, and ‘old Hankey Pankey’ settled his plan of operations with Captain Oliver of theMerlin, we did not hurry on the passage to Malindi, timing ourselves to arrive about daybreak, casting anchor in front of the town, as near in as we could get without shoaling our water, at Six Bells in the morning watch to the minute.

During our run up the coast from Mombassa, the first lieutenant and Mr Dabchick saw to our boats being got ready, and the bluejackets and marines, who were detailed for service with the expedition, mustered on deck in all their ‘war paint,’ and told off to the respective craft in which they were to go ashore; and by Eight Bells, after a hurried breakfast, which none of us much cared to eat, we were all so full of enthusiasm at the prospect of action, we shoved off from theMermaid—all in dead silence, though, so that no inkling of our coming might reach the ears of the Arabs before we were upon them.

The boats of theMerlinleft their ship at the same time as we did ours; the two lots making for the land in two columns abreast, ‘old Hankey Pankey’ leading our line in the launch, with the first and second cutters and the whaler trailing on behind, while Captain Oliver led those of theMerlin.

On reaching the shore, the sea being fortunately very quiet, though the north-east monsoon was now blowing, we waded up the sandy beach without any difficulty; and, leaving our flotilla under charge of the boat-keepers, a couple of hands in each craft to look after them so as to prevent their grounding in the event of the wind getting up, when the surf might be dangerous, we united our forces and marched in a body inland.

Avoiding the town of Malindi, our object being to surprise a stockade, where the Somalis were reported to have established themselves, some five miles off in the bush, in the rear of the outposts of the settlers, we shaped a course south by west under the guidance of one of the natives, who had been sent to us by one of the principal merchants of the place on hearing of our landing, so as to make our way easy for us, steering by compass in the jungle ashore being very different to what it is on the open sea.

The rascal, who was evidently a Somali spy sent by his astute comrades to watch our movements, made our way very easy indeed; for he took us directly in front of the stockade we had intended surprising, instead of showing us a by-path leading to the rear of the fortification, from which we could have outflanked the defence.

‘Old Hankey Pankey,’ who led our fighting force of bluejackets and marines, which mustered in officers and men altogether some two hundred strong, was flabbergasted as he gaily marched in front of the column on our being received by a hail of bullets and buckshot, which decimated our ranks as we suddenly debouched from a rough, tangled undergrowth of scrub and dwarf plantain trees.

Amidst these we could hardly see an inch before us; and then, we found ourselves in front of a high palisade, made of the trunks of heavy trees lashed together with lianas and rattan creepers that were as strong as wire rope. This was loopholed for musketry, and from thence a murderous fire of innumerable weapons was directed at our devoted heads.

Plucky as a lion, however, the captain rallied us; and, dividing the column into three portions, taking command of the middle division himself, while Captain Oliver of theMerlin, and Lieutenant Dabchick of our ship, headed the two others, we advanced with a cheer to storm the stockade, ‘old Hankey Pankey’ aiming for its front face, and the other sections of our force for the flanks of the fortification.

Talk of fighting, it was a case of ‘pull baker, pull devil!’ then!

We numbered two hundred, as I have said, but the Somalis must have mustered two thousand at least, if they had a man there.

Twice we advanced to the attack, twice we were forced to fall back before the withering flight of bullets that met us face to face from every hole and corner of that infernal stockade; though Captain Hankey bravely walked right up to the timber work till he almost touched it, a revolver in either hand, which he fired alternately at the beggars!

But, the captain got a big matchlock ball through both his legs, the missile having been discharged at him as he turned sideways, with a “Follow me, lads!” to cheer us on.

He was not licked yet, though; for, as Larrikins stooped over him to lift him up, ‘old Hankey Pankey’ got his arm round his neck and climbed up on to him pick-a-back, Larry highly delighted at the job, he and the captain then advancing again to the assault.

In the meantime, Mr Dabchick had brought up one of our little nine-pounder boat-guns which had stuck in the rear and blew in part of the palisading on the left of the stockade, when he and a lot of us made a desperate charge to storm the entrenchment.

Poor little Dabby, though, was shot dead while entering the breach the shell of our nine-pounder had made in the outer palisade that protected the Arab defences; and then, finding a second fence composed of similar baulks of timber in front of us, as strong as that we had surmounted, and that the fire of the Somalis increased the nearer we got to them, our chaps, staggered by the fall of poor Dabby, I must confess it, all at once began to cut and run!

Chapter Twenty Six.Baboon Valley.“Stand by!” roared ‘old Hankey Pankey’ from his perch on the top of Larry’s shoulders, noticing our hasty retreat from the left of the stockade, our fellows indeed rushing back in their scurrying flight into the midst of the centre column and mixing it up into irretrievable confusion. “Steady there! Face round, my men, stand firm!”Just at that moment, though, when starting forwards again, with the captain still pick-a-back on his shoulders, Larrikins stumbled over a dead Arab that lay in front of him, and down came he with ‘old Hankey Pankey’ all in a heap together, with a couple of Somalis, at whom they were going full butt.This second catastrophe broke up our ranks, some of the chaps—only a few, though, I am proud to say—bolting into the bush; but Mr Chisholm, who was leading the rear division, waved his sword in the air, and cried out for volunteers to rescue our captain.At once, the whole lot of us that were left followed him up to the front, where Larrikins and ‘old Hankey Pankey’—the latter of whom of course could not rise of his own accord, by reason of the injury to his legs—were fighting as only Englishmen can fight amidst a perfect horde of Arabs, who had poured out from the stockade on seeing us retreat.“Hurrah, boys!” cried Larry, as we came up at the double, firing away with our rifles right and left, and digging our sword-bayonets, till they were dyed red with blood, into the body of every Somali who barred our onward progress to the help of our comrade and the captain. “Give it to the bloomin’ beggars hot!”We did not need the advice, however, as the Arabs themselves could have borne testimony to, for with a wild rush, that carried everything and everybody before it, we drove our foe back into their stronghold, and recovered ‘old Hankey Pankey,’ who was at once hoisted triumphantly up by a couple of marines. These gallant fellows, I should add, to give all honour to the corps, stood stauncher even than we bluejackets did that day; for, not a man turned his back on the foe until the captain gave the word.This ‘old Hankey Pankey’ was forced to do, much against the grain, a moment or two later on, Captain Oliver having been driven off from the right attack, thus leaving both our flanks now exposed as well as our front to the fire of the Somalis, who once more rushed out from the stockade upon us.“We must retire, my lads,” cried the captain in a hoarse voice, the words coming out with almost a sob. “But no hurry! Fall back by sections, each wheeling and firing in turn. The company will now retire! Quick march! Halt! Front!—fire!”He suited the action to the word himself as he said this, discharging both his revolvers point-blank at two of the Arabs, who were leading on the gang in hot pursuit of us, tumbling them over like ninepins.We had retreated in this fashion for about a mile or so, changing front continually and facing the Somalis, who pressed us hard every inch of the way; until, coming to an open space on the main road that had been cut in a sort of zigzag through the bush from Malindi up to Uganda, the captain determined to make a stand here and teach our pursuers a lesson, the more particularly as we now had with us all our little nine-pounder boat-guns.These, with the exception of one, that only got up at the last moment when too late, we had been unable to drag along with us for the attack on the stockade, the path we had traversed through the bush in the first instance under the leadership of our treacherous guide having almost been impassable for ourselves, let alone guns.Accordingly, with a rapid order to Mr Shrapnell, or ‘Gunnery Jack,’ who had accompanied the column from the ship, but had remained behind with his little battery of field-pieces on their becoming bogged in the bush, trying all he could to extricate them so as to get up with the column, he being anxious, of course, to take his part in the fighting, we formed square in the open.The thirty odd marines we had with us were drawn up two deep in front, they being the oldest and most seasoned men of our force; while we bluejackets were quickly echeloned along the sides and rear of the square, at each corner of which was stationed one of the nine-pounders.Our Maxim gun, which had become jammed at its first discharge when using it against the stockade but had now been made serviceable again, was placed right in the centre of our front line, so as to fire over the heads of the rank kneeling.“Now, men,” shouted out Captain Hankey, who had dismounted from the shoulders of the ‘jollies’ who had been carrying him in the place of Larrikins since the latter’s tumble, and was now seated on the stump of an old tree in the middle of the clearing, surrounded by us all and commanding a view of every part of the square, “aim low, and don’t waste a shot; but, wait till I give the word!”The Arabs, who had checked their advance on seeing us halt, hesitating as if waiting to learn what we were up to, now began to press forward again, their ugly bronze faces, of a Jewish cut, peering at us out of the bush on either side; while a large number came out into the open with a rush, making for the front of the square and firing their queer long muskets, as well as hurling their jereeds, or short spears, right into our faces as they charged.Every one of us, I can tell you, gripped his Martini rifle as if he would dig his nails into its steel barrel, sighting it for point-blank range and aiming low, as the captain had told us, to catch the beggars full in the bread-basket as they came up, yelling and waving their weapons about, thinking, no doubt, to frighten us.But, though we might have faltered after our third repulse at the stockade, we were not frightened now; nor did a man of us wish to fall back, even if he had the chance.We were only waiting for ‘old Hankey Pankey’ to give the word.He did not delay this long.“Steady, my lads!” he cried, in a warning voice, after a quick glance round the square to see that we had made all proper preparations to give our friends the Somalis a hospitable reception. “Are you ready, Mr Shrapnell?”“Aye, aye, sir,” replied ‘Gunnery Jack’ instanter, “all ready!”“Then, we’ll blaze away and let the beggars have it all together,” yelled out ‘old Hankey Pankey,’ raising himself up in some wonderful sort of way on the top of the tree stump, for he could not stand on his legs; and, taking off his cap and waving it round his head thrice, he gave out the words, “One—two—three, Fire!”Like a thunderclap, sharp, sudden, and rolling through the air with a concussion that shook the very ground under our feet, a murderous volley belched forth from our square, mowing down the Arabs as with the swath of a mower’s scythe, the mass of on-rushing, howling, swarthy Somalis sinking down to the ground, overborne by the avalanche of shot and shell we hurled at them; for, the rifles of us men, the guns of Mr Shrapnell’s battery, the revolvers of the officers, and the Maxim, all spoke at once and together.Aye, so they did; and, though varied in tone, from the musical ‘Ping!’ of our Martinis to the crackling grunt of the quick-firing weapon, whose irritable cough could be heard above the deep boom of the nine-pounders which echoed through the woods, all spoke the same word—Death!We had no need to give them a second volley, the fearful effects of our first having so intimidated the few survivors we could see in the distance, that these incontinently fled back into the bush, leaving us now to pursue our retreat to the coast without any further molestation on their part.But, albeit conquerors in this our last stand, the victory came too late to cheer us; and it was with greatly saddened hearts and drooping faces, thus offering a strongly marked contrast to the bright enthusiasm with which we all had started up country in the morning, we now slowly retraced our way to the shore, to the south of Malindi.Out of the two hundred bluejackets and marines who had landed from theMermaidandMerlinat break of day, but half that number returned on board their respective ships at nightfall, when the sun sank over the hills to the westward like a ball of fire, crimsoning the heavens to the hue of the blood that had been spilt!On reaching theMermaidthe surgeon had Captain Hankey carried down to his cabin at once, as he was now becoming faint with exhaustion; though, I believe, the mortification he felt at the Arabs having licked us gave him more pain than the damage done to his legs by the ball of the matchlock, which had taken him athwartship through the fleshy part of his understandings—breaking no bones, but crippling him all the same.The surgeon, however, could not keep him quiet long below; for no sooner had his wounds been dressed than he insisted on being brought up on deck again, when he had the hands all mustered aft and spoke a few sympathising words to us anent the events of the day. He expressed his sorrow at the loss of so many good men and true, and added that, though defeated for the time, we would shortly have ‘a go at the Arabs’ again, and nail the Union Jack of old England yet on top of the Somali stronghold.“Three cheers now, my lads!” he called out at the end of his harangue, which was interspersed with a lot of ‘ahem’-ing and ‘haw’-ing, ‘old Hankey Pankey’ not being much of a speaker—“three cheers for the old flag that has never been licked yet in the long-run!”If you could have only heard the shout that went up from the lusty throats of the chaps standing round me and Larrikins, you would not have thought we had just been beaten off by those black devils nor had to mourn so many jolly shipmates whom we would never see again in this life!But, sailors can’t afford to waste any time in ‘crying over spilt milk’; it would be a poor lookout for them, aye, and for our country too, if they did!‘Old Hankey Pankey’ was of a like opinion.So no sooner had the echo of our ringing cheer died away amidst the hills beyond Malindi, now purpling with the shades of evening, ere, turning round as well as he could with his bandaged limbs, still sitting in the easy-chair in which he had been brought up from below, he hailed the signalman and told him to make theMerlin’snumber, calling Mr Gresham at the same time to his side, the two of them confabulating together.Presently, in response to another signal from us, Captain Oliver came on board, when he joined in the talk going on between ‘old Hankey Pankey’ and Mr Gresham for a bit and then returned to his own ship; theMerlinshortly afterwards slipping her moorings and making off at full speed to the southwards.“I tell ’ee wot, Tom,” said Larrikins to me on our going down to the lower deck just then, the ‘disperse’ having sounded, and it being our watch below, “she’s gone h’off fur to tell the h’admiral o’ the bloomin’ mess we’ve made on it!”This we found was the case next morning when the captain’s steward came forwards as usual; this worthy being better than a newspaper to all of us, for he used to tell us of things before they occurred, and truly enough too, instead of waiting for events to happen and then garbling them, as some prints I have seen do!Two or three days later theMerlin, which reported having had a long chase after the senior officer, going almost as far as Zanzibar and back to Mombassa before she picked him up, returned to Malindi, in company with theBullfinch, another small cruiser attached to the East African squadron.Captain Oliver also brought orders from our chief, that parties of bluejackets were to be landed to protect Malindi from any hostile attack of the Arabs, while he with the admiral and all the force on the station were busy preparing an expedition on a grand scale, to drive the Somalis altogether out of the British protectorate, and so prevent any further attempt on their part to invade the country for some time to come.These instructions were acted on immediately by ‘old Hankey Pankey’ to the letter, parties of seamen and marines from each ship in turn landing and patrolling the outskirts of the settlement, in front of which our little fleet of three vessels was anchored; and so we ‘marked time,’ so to speak, for the next few months, waiting for the ships belonging to the West African squadron to come up with the admiral himself, as not until then would we be able to resume active operations against the foe, whose defeat of us before their stockade at Wooromoloo we were burning to avenge.“Lor’, Tom,” said Larrikins to me, expressing the current feeling of all on board theMermaid, “I’d die happy, s’help me, if I could only pot that there bloomin’ Arab thief Abdalah, him we see’d shoot poor little Dabby. They told us, Tom, you reck’lect t’other day over in the nigger town there when we was on sentry go, him were the chief of the gang, and were boastin’ o’ killin’ our h’officers and makin’ all on us cut and run. Lor’, I’d give a year’s pay to settle that there beggar’s hash!”At last one morning, when we were pretty well tired of this forced inaction, a despatch boat came up from Mombassa, bringing orders from the admiral, who had arrived there in his flagship, accompanied by several gunboats and other vessels, nearly all the crews of which had been landed.The admiral informed our captain that he was about to proceed inland through the province of Teita with this formidable column; and that he, ‘old Hankey Pankey,’ was to assemble as strong a force as he could muster from the ships under his command and with a second column thus formed he was to start from Malindi and work in a south-westerly direction, when the two bodies would meet, completely hemming in the Arabs.‘Old Hankey Pankey’ got us all ashore the same afternoon the admiral’s orders came; and, early the next morning, nearly four hundred strong now, just double our former strength, we marched off up country towards the scene of our defeat at the hands of the Somali chieftain Abdalah, on the occasion of our previous trip inland.When we got near his stockade, though, which, it need hardly be stated, we approached with considerable caution this time, the old bird had flown, having crossed the Sabaki River before our approach and gone to join the rest of the Somalis at Teita, whom the admiral was now busy encompassing.Our way, therefore, so far, was clear; and, breasting the hills manfully, we proceeded along the route marked out for us, our hopes high and our spirits buoyant at the chance of now turning the tables on the old miscreant who had previously beguiled us.The country a little way from the coast began to get beautifully wooded: while a series of undulating plateaus were planted by the natives with plantains and sugar-canes, besides various vegetables whose names none of us knew.Farther up the mountains some of the trees were tall and spreading, unlike anything, I thought, that ever grew in Africa; for I recognised a mountain-ash and a sort of oak, while the juniper-tree perfumed the air with its aromatic smell.I have good cause to remember these same junipers! On our way up the heights, Larrikins and I, who were scouting in advance, on either side of the front of the column, met a native, who told us in the bastard jargon of the coast called the Swahili language that some big animals, which he said were bigger than us and covered with long hair, were in a valley on our right; and that, if we valued our lives, so at least Larrikins told me, he having picked up some of the lingo from a negro woman at Malindi, we had better make a détour so as to avoid this place.“Nonsense,” said I. “The rascal, perhaps, is another spy like that chap who led us into the stockade trap! I ain’t going out of the straight road the cap’en laid down for us to steer. He said the column was to go west sou’-west by compass, and west sou’-west, Larry, I’m going!”So saying, off I bore in the direction I had indicated, keeping to the right of the main column, which was following the bank of the Sabaki River.Trudging along steadily, Larry just keeping in sight of me, so as to hold touch with the column, I came, a little way farther on, upon a most beautiful grove of camphor and juniper-trees, that seemed cut out of a gorge in the Kilima-Njaro mountains.The smell was so overpoweringly sweet and delicious, after the toil of our long march and the arid wastes through which we had drearily toiled, knee-deep in hot sand that had burnt the soles of our feet through our boots, that I really could not help halting for a moment to inhale the soft perfumed air, which seemed to me like a breath from the portals of Paradise!Leaning against one of the trees, a fine juniper it was, I had just taken off my cap to wipe the perspiration that was rolling down my face like rain, it having been a stiff climb upwards from the undulating country below, besides having to battle, too, with the brushwood most of the way, and the creepers that hung down from the branches, making some of the places through which we passed perfect jungles of massed vegetation, when, all of a sudden, a big hairy hand clutched me round the throat and I felt myself drawn up into the tree.

“Stand by!” roared ‘old Hankey Pankey’ from his perch on the top of Larry’s shoulders, noticing our hasty retreat from the left of the stockade, our fellows indeed rushing back in their scurrying flight into the midst of the centre column and mixing it up into irretrievable confusion. “Steady there! Face round, my men, stand firm!”

Just at that moment, though, when starting forwards again, with the captain still pick-a-back on his shoulders, Larrikins stumbled over a dead Arab that lay in front of him, and down came he with ‘old Hankey Pankey’ all in a heap together, with a couple of Somalis, at whom they were going full butt.

This second catastrophe broke up our ranks, some of the chaps—only a few, though, I am proud to say—bolting into the bush; but Mr Chisholm, who was leading the rear division, waved his sword in the air, and cried out for volunteers to rescue our captain.

At once, the whole lot of us that were left followed him up to the front, where Larrikins and ‘old Hankey Pankey’—the latter of whom of course could not rise of his own accord, by reason of the injury to his legs—were fighting as only Englishmen can fight amidst a perfect horde of Arabs, who had poured out from the stockade on seeing us retreat.

“Hurrah, boys!” cried Larry, as we came up at the double, firing away with our rifles right and left, and digging our sword-bayonets, till they were dyed red with blood, into the body of every Somali who barred our onward progress to the help of our comrade and the captain. “Give it to the bloomin’ beggars hot!”

We did not need the advice, however, as the Arabs themselves could have borne testimony to, for with a wild rush, that carried everything and everybody before it, we drove our foe back into their stronghold, and recovered ‘old Hankey Pankey,’ who was at once hoisted triumphantly up by a couple of marines. These gallant fellows, I should add, to give all honour to the corps, stood stauncher even than we bluejackets did that day; for, not a man turned his back on the foe until the captain gave the word.

This ‘old Hankey Pankey’ was forced to do, much against the grain, a moment or two later on, Captain Oliver having been driven off from the right attack, thus leaving both our flanks now exposed as well as our front to the fire of the Somalis, who once more rushed out from the stockade upon us.

“We must retire, my lads,” cried the captain in a hoarse voice, the words coming out with almost a sob. “But no hurry! Fall back by sections, each wheeling and firing in turn. The company will now retire! Quick march! Halt! Front!—fire!”

He suited the action to the word himself as he said this, discharging both his revolvers point-blank at two of the Arabs, who were leading on the gang in hot pursuit of us, tumbling them over like ninepins.

We had retreated in this fashion for about a mile or so, changing front continually and facing the Somalis, who pressed us hard every inch of the way; until, coming to an open space on the main road that had been cut in a sort of zigzag through the bush from Malindi up to Uganda, the captain determined to make a stand here and teach our pursuers a lesson, the more particularly as we now had with us all our little nine-pounder boat-guns.

These, with the exception of one, that only got up at the last moment when too late, we had been unable to drag along with us for the attack on the stockade, the path we had traversed through the bush in the first instance under the leadership of our treacherous guide having almost been impassable for ourselves, let alone guns.

Accordingly, with a rapid order to Mr Shrapnell, or ‘Gunnery Jack,’ who had accompanied the column from the ship, but had remained behind with his little battery of field-pieces on their becoming bogged in the bush, trying all he could to extricate them so as to get up with the column, he being anxious, of course, to take his part in the fighting, we formed square in the open.

The thirty odd marines we had with us were drawn up two deep in front, they being the oldest and most seasoned men of our force; while we bluejackets were quickly echeloned along the sides and rear of the square, at each corner of which was stationed one of the nine-pounders.

Our Maxim gun, which had become jammed at its first discharge when using it against the stockade but had now been made serviceable again, was placed right in the centre of our front line, so as to fire over the heads of the rank kneeling.

“Now, men,” shouted out Captain Hankey, who had dismounted from the shoulders of the ‘jollies’ who had been carrying him in the place of Larrikins since the latter’s tumble, and was now seated on the stump of an old tree in the middle of the clearing, surrounded by us all and commanding a view of every part of the square, “aim low, and don’t waste a shot; but, wait till I give the word!”

The Arabs, who had checked their advance on seeing us halt, hesitating as if waiting to learn what we were up to, now began to press forward again, their ugly bronze faces, of a Jewish cut, peering at us out of the bush on either side; while a large number came out into the open with a rush, making for the front of the square and firing their queer long muskets, as well as hurling their jereeds, or short spears, right into our faces as they charged.

Every one of us, I can tell you, gripped his Martini rifle as if he would dig his nails into its steel barrel, sighting it for point-blank range and aiming low, as the captain had told us, to catch the beggars full in the bread-basket as they came up, yelling and waving their weapons about, thinking, no doubt, to frighten us.

But, though we might have faltered after our third repulse at the stockade, we were not frightened now; nor did a man of us wish to fall back, even if he had the chance.

We were only waiting for ‘old Hankey Pankey’ to give the word.

He did not delay this long.

“Steady, my lads!” he cried, in a warning voice, after a quick glance round the square to see that we had made all proper preparations to give our friends the Somalis a hospitable reception. “Are you ready, Mr Shrapnell?”

“Aye, aye, sir,” replied ‘Gunnery Jack’ instanter, “all ready!”

“Then, we’ll blaze away and let the beggars have it all together,” yelled out ‘old Hankey Pankey,’ raising himself up in some wonderful sort of way on the top of the tree stump, for he could not stand on his legs; and, taking off his cap and waving it round his head thrice, he gave out the words, “One—two—three, Fire!”

Like a thunderclap, sharp, sudden, and rolling through the air with a concussion that shook the very ground under our feet, a murderous volley belched forth from our square, mowing down the Arabs as with the swath of a mower’s scythe, the mass of on-rushing, howling, swarthy Somalis sinking down to the ground, overborne by the avalanche of shot and shell we hurled at them; for, the rifles of us men, the guns of Mr Shrapnell’s battery, the revolvers of the officers, and the Maxim, all spoke at once and together.

Aye, so they did; and, though varied in tone, from the musical ‘Ping!’ of our Martinis to the crackling grunt of the quick-firing weapon, whose irritable cough could be heard above the deep boom of the nine-pounders which echoed through the woods, all spoke the same word—Death!

We had no need to give them a second volley, the fearful effects of our first having so intimidated the few survivors we could see in the distance, that these incontinently fled back into the bush, leaving us now to pursue our retreat to the coast without any further molestation on their part.

But, albeit conquerors in this our last stand, the victory came too late to cheer us; and it was with greatly saddened hearts and drooping faces, thus offering a strongly marked contrast to the bright enthusiasm with which we all had started up country in the morning, we now slowly retraced our way to the shore, to the south of Malindi.

Out of the two hundred bluejackets and marines who had landed from theMermaidandMerlinat break of day, but half that number returned on board their respective ships at nightfall, when the sun sank over the hills to the westward like a ball of fire, crimsoning the heavens to the hue of the blood that had been spilt!

On reaching theMermaidthe surgeon had Captain Hankey carried down to his cabin at once, as he was now becoming faint with exhaustion; though, I believe, the mortification he felt at the Arabs having licked us gave him more pain than the damage done to his legs by the ball of the matchlock, which had taken him athwartship through the fleshy part of his understandings—breaking no bones, but crippling him all the same.

The surgeon, however, could not keep him quiet long below; for no sooner had his wounds been dressed than he insisted on being brought up on deck again, when he had the hands all mustered aft and spoke a few sympathising words to us anent the events of the day. He expressed his sorrow at the loss of so many good men and true, and added that, though defeated for the time, we would shortly have ‘a go at the Arabs’ again, and nail the Union Jack of old England yet on top of the Somali stronghold.

“Three cheers now, my lads!” he called out at the end of his harangue, which was interspersed with a lot of ‘ahem’-ing and ‘haw’-ing, ‘old Hankey Pankey’ not being much of a speaker—“three cheers for the old flag that has never been licked yet in the long-run!”

If you could have only heard the shout that went up from the lusty throats of the chaps standing round me and Larrikins, you would not have thought we had just been beaten off by those black devils nor had to mourn so many jolly shipmates whom we would never see again in this life!

But, sailors can’t afford to waste any time in ‘crying over spilt milk’; it would be a poor lookout for them, aye, and for our country too, if they did!

‘Old Hankey Pankey’ was of a like opinion.

So no sooner had the echo of our ringing cheer died away amidst the hills beyond Malindi, now purpling with the shades of evening, ere, turning round as well as he could with his bandaged limbs, still sitting in the easy-chair in which he had been brought up from below, he hailed the signalman and told him to make theMerlin’snumber, calling Mr Gresham at the same time to his side, the two of them confabulating together.

Presently, in response to another signal from us, Captain Oliver came on board, when he joined in the talk going on between ‘old Hankey Pankey’ and Mr Gresham for a bit and then returned to his own ship; theMerlinshortly afterwards slipping her moorings and making off at full speed to the southwards.

“I tell ’ee wot, Tom,” said Larrikins to me on our going down to the lower deck just then, the ‘disperse’ having sounded, and it being our watch below, “she’s gone h’off fur to tell the h’admiral o’ the bloomin’ mess we’ve made on it!”

This we found was the case next morning when the captain’s steward came forwards as usual; this worthy being better than a newspaper to all of us, for he used to tell us of things before they occurred, and truly enough too, instead of waiting for events to happen and then garbling them, as some prints I have seen do!

Two or three days later theMerlin, which reported having had a long chase after the senior officer, going almost as far as Zanzibar and back to Mombassa before she picked him up, returned to Malindi, in company with theBullfinch, another small cruiser attached to the East African squadron.

Captain Oliver also brought orders from our chief, that parties of bluejackets were to be landed to protect Malindi from any hostile attack of the Arabs, while he with the admiral and all the force on the station were busy preparing an expedition on a grand scale, to drive the Somalis altogether out of the British protectorate, and so prevent any further attempt on their part to invade the country for some time to come.

These instructions were acted on immediately by ‘old Hankey Pankey’ to the letter, parties of seamen and marines from each ship in turn landing and patrolling the outskirts of the settlement, in front of which our little fleet of three vessels was anchored; and so we ‘marked time,’ so to speak, for the next few months, waiting for the ships belonging to the West African squadron to come up with the admiral himself, as not until then would we be able to resume active operations against the foe, whose defeat of us before their stockade at Wooromoloo we were burning to avenge.

“Lor’, Tom,” said Larrikins to me, expressing the current feeling of all on board theMermaid, “I’d die happy, s’help me, if I could only pot that there bloomin’ Arab thief Abdalah, him we see’d shoot poor little Dabby. They told us, Tom, you reck’lect t’other day over in the nigger town there when we was on sentry go, him were the chief of the gang, and were boastin’ o’ killin’ our h’officers and makin’ all on us cut and run. Lor’, I’d give a year’s pay to settle that there beggar’s hash!”

At last one morning, when we were pretty well tired of this forced inaction, a despatch boat came up from Mombassa, bringing orders from the admiral, who had arrived there in his flagship, accompanied by several gunboats and other vessels, nearly all the crews of which had been landed.

The admiral informed our captain that he was about to proceed inland through the province of Teita with this formidable column; and that he, ‘old Hankey Pankey,’ was to assemble as strong a force as he could muster from the ships under his command and with a second column thus formed he was to start from Malindi and work in a south-westerly direction, when the two bodies would meet, completely hemming in the Arabs.

‘Old Hankey Pankey’ got us all ashore the same afternoon the admiral’s orders came; and, early the next morning, nearly four hundred strong now, just double our former strength, we marched off up country towards the scene of our defeat at the hands of the Somali chieftain Abdalah, on the occasion of our previous trip inland.

When we got near his stockade, though, which, it need hardly be stated, we approached with considerable caution this time, the old bird had flown, having crossed the Sabaki River before our approach and gone to join the rest of the Somalis at Teita, whom the admiral was now busy encompassing.

Our way, therefore, so far, was clear; and, breasting the hills manfully, we proceeded along the route marked out for us, our hopes high and our spirits buoyant at the chance of now turning the tables on the old miscreant who had previously beguiled us.

The country a little way from the coast began to get beautifully wooded: while a series of undulating plateaus were planted by the natives with plantains and sugar-canes, besides various vegetables whose names none of us knew.

Farther up the mountains some of the trees were tall and spreading, unlike anything, I thought, that ever grew in Africa; for I recognised a mountain-ash and a sort of oak, while the juniper-tree perfumed the air with its aromatic smell.

I have good cause to remember these same junipers! On our way up the heights, Larrikins and I, who were scouting in advance, on either side of the front of the column, met a native, who told us in the bastard jargon of the coast called the Swahili language that some big animals, which he said were bigger than us and covered with long hair, were in a valley on our right; and that, if we valued our lives, so at least Larrikins told me, he having picked up some of the lingo from a negro woman at Malindi, we had better make a détour so as to avoid this place.

“Nonsense,” said I. “The rascal, perhaps, is another spy like that chap who led us into the stockade trap! I ain’t going out of the straight road the cap’en laid down for us to steer. He said the column was to go west sou’-west by compass, and west sou’-west, Larry, I’m going!”

So saying, off I bore in the direction I had indicated, keeping to the right of the main column, which was following the bank of the Sabaki River.

Trudging along steadily, Larry just keeping in sight of me, so as to hold touch with the column, I came, a little way farther on, upon a most beautiful grove of camphor and juniper-trees, that seemed cut out of a gorge in the Kilima-Njaro mountains.

The smell was so overpoweringly sweet and delicious, after the toil of our long march and the arid wastes through which we had drearily toiled, knee-deep in hot sand that had burnt the soles of our feet through our boots, that I really could not help halting for a moment to inhale the soft perfumed air, which seemed to me like a breath from the portals of Paradise!

Leaning against one of the trees, a fine juniper it was, I had just taken off my cap to wipe the perspiration that was rolling down my face like rain, it having been a stiff climb upwards from the undulating country below, besides having to battle, too, with the brushwood most of the way, and the creepers that hung down from the branches, making some of the places through which we passed perfect jungles of massed vegetation, when, all of a sudden, a big hairy hand clutched me round the throat and I felt myself drawn up into the tree.

Chapter Twenty Seven.A Regular Scrimmage!I believe the delicious perfume that permeated the air had almost lulled me to sleep for the moment, when I was rudely roused up by feeling the grip on my throat. “Belay that, Larry,” cried I, fancying that my practical-joking friend had stolen a march on me, thinking to catch me napping, speaking without even taking the trouble to open my eyes. “A lark’s a lark, old chap: but you needn’t squeeze my throat so beastly hard, Larry!”The pressure of his fingers, as I thought, continuing and absolutely causing me considerable pain, as well as throttling me, while I felt myself drawn up, as I have stated, into the lower branches of the tree against which I had been leaning, I quickly opened my eyes.Heavens, I was horrified!The hand that I fancied was the hand of Larry and which he had clasped round my neck in joke, was one of the great hairy paws of a huge baboon, who, with his grinning face shoved close to mine, was trying his best to choke me in grim earnest; while, getting a purchase with the other paw on to a projecting limb of the juniper-tree, he was slowly hoisting me aloft.His grip was so strong that I felt powerless in his grasp; but, all the same, I was not going to give in to a brute of a monkey without making a fight for it!So, feeling for the lanyard of my knife, I drew this out of its sheath and gave Jocko’s elder brother a slash across his wrist that must have tickled him up a bit, the blood from the beast’s paw shooting over my face in a stream, while he let go his hold of me.Hardly had I reached the ground, however, touching mother earth again with a jerk that nearly dislocated my ankles, besides making me fall sideways all a-sprawl, than the baboon, giving vent to a vicious snarl, caught hold of my left leg with both his paws, just as a dog might seize a bone, and bit me savagely with his tusk-like teeth.Fortunately, all of us were in full marching rig with gaiters on, and this protection prevented the baboon’s teeth from penetrating far into my flesh, though he made his mark on my unfortunate calf.Then, on my prodding him in one of his hind legs, which I clutched in my turn, thinking such a procedure only fair play, the beast dropped the gaiter he was busy gnawing up, and made at me with a howl, endeavouring to clutch me again in his hairy hug.But, dropping on one knee, I gave him an upper cut with my doubled fist right under the brute’s chin, which prevented this movement; and the next moment, falling back, when I jumped on top of him, he and I were rolling over and over, locked together, the baboon and I, in each other’s arms, and engaged in one of the biggest rough-and-tumble fights I ever had the pleasure of participating in!The big brute, though, was so strong and muscular that he got the better of me after a bit, tearing all the clothes off me with the long nails he had at the ends of his toes and human-like fingers, besides biting me in the most savage fashion wherever he saw an opening.I thought my last hour had come.But, help was at hand.As I gasped and struggled frantically with the ferocious monster, feeling my strength ebbing away so fast that I had hardly power enough to protect my face from the brute’s cruel claws, I heard a hoarse shout and a rapid footstep near me crunching on the ground.Then.‘Bang!’ came, the report of a rifle close to my ear, and the baboon’s bloody body fell back on top of me, the beast having been shot as dead as a herring.“Lor’, Tom,” exclaimed Larrikins, hauling away the carcass of the baboon, which I subsequently learnt was a species of the mandrill, common in the north-eastern and central parts of Africa, “I wer’ only in the nick o’ time! Why didn’t yer call out, chummy?”“How could I, Larry?” said I, after he had put his water-bottle to my mouth and brought me round a bit, so that I was able to sit up and speak. “The beast had me round the neck and I couldn’t have shouted or even whispered to save my life.”“Well, ye wouldn’t ’a saved it, me joker, if I hadn’t missed yer all of a suddink,” replied Larrikins, grinning; for I believe he could not have helped laughing, his disposition was so humorous, if a fellow had told him his father was dead! “I wer’ a-wondering where yer wer’, Tom, when I see’d a troop of big black monkeys makin’ fur this very grove where we is. Wonderin’ if they was them beasts that Swahili chap told us on, I follered ’em up; and then, all at onst, I see’d ye, Tom, a-strugglin’ with that beast theer, and I comes up at the double and puts my rifle inter his ear and blows his bloomin’ brains out, jest as ye was well-nigh spent, me joker.”“Thank you, Larry,” said I; “you’ve saved my life.”“All right,” he replied jokingly, pulling me up and rubbing me down, helping to arrange my tattered jumper and trousers, which that devil of a baboon had nearly torn to pieces; his bites, luckily for me, not being as bad as they had seemed, now that the blood was rubbed off. “I hopes, Tom, ye’ll remember me in yer will when ye’re dead, me joker!”“I will do better than that,” said I, as we both moved off to join some of the other bluejackets scouting away behind us, who had come up during the stoppage of our march through the wild country. “I will remember you, Larry, as long as I live!”The surgeon accompanying our column presently came up to me and neatly strapped up the cuts which the baboon had inflicted on me with his teeth. He wanted me to retire to the rear and stop with the baggage guard; but, I would have none of that, no, not I!“I would rather go on, sir, if you will allow me,” said I. “Now that I have rested and you have put that stuff on the wounds, I feel all right again, sir; and I don’t want to be left out of the fighting and lose the chance of paying out those Arab beggars for a few scratches like these. Why, sir, chaps that don’t know me would say that I was a coward!”“Very good, my lad,” said the surgeon good-humouredly, for he was a rare good fellow, and a prime favourite with all on board theMermaid; “you can go on with the column if you like. We want such men as you in the battle front; and, I think, we generally have them, too!” I therefore resumed my place in the ranks, though let off scouting duty, as was Larry, the two of us being now relieved by fresh hands from amongst the bluejackets; and so, I now marched along with the column, which pursued its way onward steadily inland, steering the same west south-west course, until we had travelled some fifteen miles away from our base.We halted for the night on a beautiful grassy plain, covered with red and white clover, with thistles and dog-roses and dandelions intermixed, such as one might see on the outskirts of many an English wood in the south; while, there we were in the heart of Africa, so to speak!Shortly after we encamped here, a runner brought news from the admiral to our captain, telling him that the other column had reached the position assigned to it in the original plan of operations and that they were now within good striking distance of the Arabs, who, the chief wrote word, were massed in the vicinity of Arabuku, which after executing our long détour we also were near.All our preparations being thus complete, ‘old Hankey Pankey’ arranged for us to break camp at four o’clock the next morning, and move off to where the Somalis and their allies were said by the natives to be intrenched in strong force, so as to take them in the rear while the admiral made a front attack.No bugle, though, sounded to rouse us when day broke in the African forest and the rosy light of dawn came peeping through the trees, brightening the green sheen of their leaves and making the dewdrops glisten on the clover, the scene reminding me more of home than anything I had seen since I left Spithead.But, neither I nor any one else had much time for such reflections that morning as we silently paraded before ‘old Hankey Pankey’ and the other officers; and, after a careful inspection of our arms, we started in a bee-line for Arabuku, the men massed four deep, with the guns in the centre of our column and flanking parties on the right and left, ‘old Hankey Pankey,’ of course, let him alone for that, leading the van.At five o’clock, just as the old sun appeared in full splendour above the tops of the hills on our left, a halt was ordered by the captain, the word being passed quietly along the ranks from front to rear.I was on the right flank, close to ‘old Hankey Pankey’ as he brought us up in this sudden fashion, so I heard every word he said to Mr Gresham, who marched by his side; though, for that matter, I almost guessed what was coming, from the captain wheeling round abruptly and stopping the sort of half trot at which he had been going along, the poor gentleman never having quite recovered the use of his legs after the matchlock ball had ventilated them.“I think this was about the spot, Gresham, eh?” said he to the first lieutenant. “The admiral said we were to proceed four miles due south from our encampment at Kilili, or whatever else that place was called by our Swahili guide.”“Yes, sir,” replied Mr Gresham. “I think we have about covered that distance by now; and our course has been true by compass, I know.”“Yes, yes,” said ‘old Hankey Pankey,’ as if thinking over the matter—“yes. Got the rockets ready, Mr—ahem—Shrapnell?”“Aye, aye, sir,” replied ‘Gunnery Jack,’ who had come up from his guns, on the halt being cried, to see whether the captain might not have any special orders for him. “They’re close at hand, sir.”“The signal rockets, I mean.”“Yes, sir, I’m speaking of the signal rockets,” replied Mr Shrapnell, with never a movement on his face, but looking grave as a judge. “I thought you’d want them, sir, so I brought them along with me. Adams here, sir, has them in his charge. The other rockets with the tube for firing them are with the guns in the centre of the main column.”“That’s right, Mr Shrapnell; tell Adams to get one of the signals ready for sending up at once, for I expect to see the admiral’s every minute,” said ‘old Hankey Pankey’; adding, as ‘Gunnery Jack’ stepped back to prepare the signal rocket with Adams, “That chap thinks himself very smart with his rocket and tube, as if I didn’t know the real difference between the two! It’s just like those gunnery fellows. They think nobody can be as sharp as themselves; but Mr Shrapnell will find himself too sharp for himself as well as for me some day, if he doesn’t look out!”Almost as he said this, we could hear the ‘whis–s–ish’ of a rocket going up in the distance, the sound seeming to come from a point in the bush about a mile or so ahead of us; and then, the bright blue and red globules of fire that followed the burst of the warning signal were seen the very next moment, high in the air above the trees in front, slowly sinking as their light died away out of sight.“Stand by there!” shouted ‘old Hankey Pankey’ to Adams, who had our return signal rocket all ready, slung on to a handspike for a stick. “Here’s my cigar, set fire to it with that.”He handed him as he thus spoke the manilla which he had been smoking throughout our march, as if he were going to some picnic and probably feeling quite as jovial as if he had been; and, Adams at once setting light to the end of the rocket, it soared aloft like its compeer the moment before, with a whish and a rush that must have scared all the stray baboons within earshot of its flight.Then we heard tom-toms beating close by, and the clash of brass or some other metal that had a ring like cymbals.“They’re waking up,” cried ‘old Hankey Pankey’ to Mr Gresham, with a pleased smile on his face. “The column will now advance. Close your ranks, men. Keep steady. Forward!”We had hardly taken a dozen paces, advancing in the same formation as before, when we heard the roar of guns in front and steady volleys of rifle-fire, whose sound clearly betokened that it emanated from weapons similar to our own.“By George, we’ll be too late!” cried ‘old Hankey Pankey,’ hobbling onwards at a fine rate for a moment, and then slewing round to give some fresh order to those following up behind. “Come on, men—come on at the double. Spread out your flanks, Mr Gresham! Spread out your flanks, d’ye hear? Tell Mr Shrapnell to bring up the guns. Spread out there, men—spread out in skirmishing order, to cover your front! Hang it, come on, my lads—come on, or we’ll be too late!”Captain Oliver of theMerlinwas running us cheek by jowl with his contingent on the left and Commander Jellaby of theBullfinchtrying to outstrip him on our right; so, we had hard work to keep our place in line ahead.But ‘old Hankey Pankey’ was not going to let any one, junior or senior in the service, beat him for first place when fighting was on; and no one who had known how terribly he had been wounded, the muscles of his legs having become shrunk after the holes made by the matchlock ball had closed up, would have dreamt him capable of going the pace he did now.“Forward, men—forward!” he yelled out spasmodically, as he hobbled on like the wind in front, taking long hops at intervals over any obstruction that lay in his path. “Mermaidsto the front! You’re not going to let us be licked, men, by any other ship on the station!”How he got out the words between his leaps, and bounds, and hops, I am sure I cannot tell; but, get them out he did, though he must have been pretty well pumped out already by his exertions, and his breath nearly all spent.But, we hardly needed the stimulus to prompt us to action; for in barely another half minute we burst out of the bush, going at the double and spread out in a half circle, so as to catch all stragglers who might have vainly hoped to escape in our direction, for we were right in the rear of the Arab town.This was already all ablaze from the rockets and bursting shells of the admiral’s brigade, the straw-thatched houses as they looked, though they were really covered with dry plantain and banana leaves, burning up like so many fierce bonfires in our front, and right and left; while the sharp rattle of musketry and loud banging of the guns of the first division was mixed up with the platoon-like reports from the matchlocks of the Somalis, who were urging on their somewhat reluctant allies, the slave-traders of the interior, with hoarse yells and shrill screams, bolstering up their courage likewise by the beating of innumerable gongs and clashing cymbals, the consensus of sound making din enough to have wakened up all the dead dervishes of the desert for generations past, and caused them, had they come to life, to have proclaimed a ‘Jehad’ or holy war against us, and thus roused up all the fanaticism of all those of the Moslem race yet left alive!Such was our grand rush, however, coming as it did on top of the cleverly planned combined attack of the admiral’s columns in front of the town, thus taking the Arabs between two fires, that even Saladin would not have saved them.Hundreds of them were shot down behind their stockades, which I must say they defended gallantly to the last; while those who were not potted by our bullets, were ‘put out of action’ by the bayonets of us bluejackets, who carried their intrenchments by storm.So far, I was only one of the crowd, loading and firing my Martini as I advanced or halted on the word of command being given by ‘old Hankey Pankey’; who, plucky as a lion, was in the forefront all through, his uniform cap tumbled off and his face all blackened with powder, ‘potting’ this chap with the revolver that he held in his left hand, or sticking another Somali through the gizzard with his sword, which was always thrust out straight before him as he went onward, and always ‘at the point.’But, now, I had a little diversion on my own account.“Left turn!” shouted our company leader Mr Chisholm, whose sharp eye detected through the smoke a body of the Arabs attacking an officer and a detached party of our men who had escaladed the fortifications on the right of the town; and seeing that they were hard pressed, though making a gallant stand of it against heavy odds, our officer quickly called out, “Double! Charge, my lads!”By George! We did charge; and then, the bronze-coloured beggars, who had thought to make an easy prey of our before isolated comrades, turned savagely to receive us, a whole horde of them!Larrikins, who was next me, got his right arm transfixed by one of their light spears or jereeds, a lot of which came whistling through the air into our ranks like a flight of sparrows.This made Larry drop his rifle like a hot potato; but, nothing daunted, he kept alongside of me all the same, drawing his cutlass as we raced along together.“Lor’, Tom, that wer’ a nipper, that wer’!” he cried, with a grin on his face, as if the wound were rather a joke than otherwise. “But I’m jiggered if I don’t pay out the joker who skewered me then!”At that moment a couple of the Arabs made at the pair of us; and I had quite enough to do to guard off the shower of cuts one of them delivered round my devoted head, his curved scimitar whirling about me in all directions and the sunlight from above making it flash so that it dazzled my eyes.However, a lucky drive with my sword-bayonet through the rascal’s throat stopped his little game; for the swarthy Arab dropped his scimitar instanter, with a gurgle of rage and an upward roll of his eyes, “like a dying duck in a thunder-storm,” as father used to say, tumbling down all of a heap as dead as mutton.Hardly had I done with him when, strange to say, I heard the bark of a dog.This was very unusual, all Mahometans hating dogs and believing them to be possessed of the Devil.Besides, somehow or other, I seemed to recognise the bark as familiar to me; for, believe me, the voices of dogs and their respective expressions of grief or joy, though sounding the same to alien ears, are as distinct to such as are accustomed to hear them frequently as the voices of human beings of our acquaintance or any individual.Before I had time to think, however, though my senses were all on the alert from hearing the dog’s bark, I saw that the naval officer whom we had rushed up to help at Mr Chisholm’s instigation, was engaged in a fierce hand-to-hand fight with two Arabs, one of whom, a tall, lean Somali, with a peculiar sort of turban round his head, unlike any of those sported by the rest of the gang, I was certain was no less a personage than the man, or ‘sheik’ as he was called, Abdalah, the leader of the Somalis.As I noted this, the officer fell; but, ere the big Arab, who drew back a long spear that he wielded, could give him the fatal thrust he intended, I was upon him.Clubbing my rifle, I dealt a vicious blow at the savage brute’s head which shivered the spear wherewith he tried to guard it.The rascal, though, was not discomfited; for, clutching hold of a tulwar he carried loosely in a sash of the old dressing-gown-like garment he wore, he almost slashed my nose off, the barrel of my Martini only just preventing me from losing all my good looks!The shock sent me on my knees; and then, seeing a sword lying on the ground in front of me, I gripped hold of this more by instinct than anything else, and I rose to my feet again as quick as lightning.Quick as I was, however, the brute of an Arab was quicker; and, aiming a terrible slashing cut at me with the tulwar, which had it landed would have decapitated me as clean as a whistle, and the last word of my history been told for good and all—aye, but for a wonderful interposition just as I thought my end had come.With a piercing yelp, that was succeeded by a deep, savage growl, a white dog bounded up from the ground beside the officer, who had not yet recovered from the effects of the blow that had struck him down.Would you believe it, this dog was ‘Gyp’!Making a jump which no one could have imagined a dog of his size capable of doing, he clutched the Arab chief by the throat as he slashed at me, making him stumble back, thus causing the cut that would otherwise have sliced off my head like a carrot to be wasted in the air.As the big murdering rascal stumbled back, I thrust forth my arm holding the officer’s sword and sent the blade right through the beggar’s stomach up to the hilt.“Be the powers, me joker,” cried a voice behind me, as sheik and ‘Gyp’ and I all fell together on the ground in one batch, “ye did that well, alannah! Begorrah, it wor roight in his bri’d-basket, sure!”“My goodness!” I exclaimed, recognising a voice that sounded as familiar to my ears as the bark of ‘Gyp’ just now. “Who’s that?”

I believe the delicious perfume that permeated the air had almost lulled me to sleep for the moment, when I was rudely roused up by feeling the grip on my throat. “Belay that, Larry,” cried I, fancying that my practical-joking friend had stolen a march on me, thinking to catch me napping, speaking without even taking the trouble to open my eyes. “A lark’s a lark, old chap: but you needn’t squeeze my throat so beastly hard, Larry!”

The pressure of his fingers, as I thought, continuing and absolutely causing me considerable pain, as well as throttling me, while I felt myself drawn up, as I have stated, into the lower branches of the tree against which I had been leaning, I quickly opened my eyes.

Heavens, I was horrified!

The hand that I fancied was the hand of Larry and which he had clasped round my neck in joke, was one of the great hairy paws of a huge baboon, who, with his grinning face shoved close to mine, was trying his best to choke me in grim earnest; while, getting a purchase with the other paw on to a projecting limb of the juniper-tree, he was slowly hoisting me aloft.

His grip was so strong that I felt powerless in his grasp; but, all the same, I was not going to give in to a brute of a monkey without making a fight for it!

So, feeling for the lanyard of my knife, I drew this out of its sheath and gave Jocko’s elder brother a slash across his wrist that must have tickled him up a bit, the blood from the beast’s paw shooting over my face in a stream, while he let go his hold of me.

Hardly had I reached the ground, however, touching mother earth again with a jerk that nearly dislocated my ankles, besides making me fall sideways all a-sprawl, than the baboon, giving vent to a vicious snarl, caught hold of my left leg with both his paws, just as a dog might seize a bone, and bit me savagely with his tusk-like teeth.

Fortunately, all of us were in full marching rig with gaiters on, and this protection prevented the baboon’s teeth from penetrating far into my flesh, though he made his mark on my unfortunate calf.

Then, on my prodding him in one of his hind legs, which I clutched in my turn, thinking such a procedure only fair play, the beast dropped the gaiter he was busy gnawing up, and made at me with a howl, endeavouring to clutch me again in his hairy hug.

But, dropping on one knee, I gave him an upper cut with my doubled fist right under the brute’s chin, which prevented this movement; and the next moment, falling back, when I jumped on top of him, he and I were rolling over and over, locked together, the baboon and I, in each other’s arms, and engaged in one of the biggest rough-and-tumble fights I ever had the pleasure of participating in!

The big brute, though, was so strong and muscular that he got the better of me after a bit, tearing all the clothes off me with the long nails he had at the ends of his toes and human-like fingers, besides biting me in the most savage fashion wherever he saw an opening.

I thought my last hour had come.

But, help was at hand.

As I gasped and struggled frantically with the ferocious monster, feeling my strength ebbing away so fast that I had hardly power enough to protect my face from the brute’s cruel claws, I heard a hoarse shout and a rapid footstep near me crunching on the ground.

Then.

‘Bang!’ came, the report of a rifle close to my ear, and the baboon’s bloody body fell back on top of me, the beast having been shot as dead as a herring.

“Lor’, Tom,” exclaimed Larrikins, hauling away the carcass of the baboon, which I subsequently learnt was a species of the mandrill, common in the north-eastern and central parts of Africa, “I wer’ only in the nick o’ time! Why didn’t yer call out, chummy?”

“How could I, Larry?” said I, after he had put his water-bottle to my mouth and brought me round a bit, so that I was able to sit up and speak. “The beast had me round the neck and I couldn’t have shouted or even whispered to save my life.”

“Well, ye wouldn’t ’a saved it, me joker, if I hadn’t missed yer all of a suddink,” replied Larrikins, grinning; for I believe he could not have helped laughing, his disposition was so humorous, if a fellow had told him his father was dead! “I wer’ a-wondering where yer wer’, Tom, when I see’d a troop of big black monkeys makin’ fur this very grove where we is. Wonderin’ if they was them beasts that Swahili chap told us on, I follered ’em up; and then, all at onst, I see’d ye, Tom, a-strugglin’ with that beast theer, and I comes up at the double and puts my rifle inter his ear and blows his bloomin’ brains out, jest as ye was well-nigh spent, me joker.”

“Thank you, Larry,” said I; “you’ve saved my life.”

“All right,” he replied jokingly, pulling me up and rubbing me down, helping to arrange my tattered jumper and trousers, which that devil of a baboon had nearly torn to pieces; his bites, luckily for me, not being as bad as they had seemed, now that the blood was rubbed off. “I hopes, Tom, ye’ll remember me in yer will when ye’re dead, me joker!”

“I will do better than that,” said I, as we both moved off to join some of the other bluejackets scouting away behind us, who had come up during the stoppage of our march through the wild country. “I will remember you, Larry, as long as I live!”

The surgeon accompanying our column presently came up to me and neatly strapped up the cuts which the baboon had inflicted on me with his teeth. He wanted me to retire to the rear and stop with the baggage guard; but, I would have none of that, no, not I!

“I would rather go on, sir, if you will allow me,” said I. “Now that I have rested and you have put that stuff on the wounds, I feel all right again, sir; and I don’t want to be left out of the fighting and lose the chance of paying out those Arab beggars for a few scratches like these. Why, sir, chaps that don’t know me would say that I was a coward!”

“Very good, my lad,” said the surgeon good-humouredly, for he was a rare good fellow, and a prime favourite with all on board theMermaid; “you can go on with the column if you like. We want such men as you in the battle front; and, I think, we generally have them, too!” I therefore resumed my place in the ranks, though let off scouting duty, as was Larry, the two of us being now relieved by fresh hands from amongst the bluejackets; and so, I now marched along with the column, which pursued its way onward steadily inland, steering the same west south-west course, until we had travelled some fifteen miles away from our base.

We halted for the night on a beautiful grassy plain, covered with red and white clover, with thistles and dog-roses and dandelions intermixed, such as one might see on the outskirts of many an English wood in the south; while, there we were in the heart of Africa, so to speak!

Shortly after we encamped here, a runner brought news from the admiral to our captain, telling him that the other column had reached the position assigned to it in the original plan of operations and that they were now within good striking distance of the Arabs, who, the chief wrote word, were massed in the vicinity of Arabuku, which after executing our long détour we also were near.

All our preparations being thus complete, ‘old Hankey Pankey’ arranged for us to break camp at four o’clock the next morning, and move off to where the Somalis and their allies were said by the natives to be intrenched in strong force, so as to take them in the rear while the admiral made a front attack.

No bugle, though, sounded to rouse us when day broke in the African forest and the rosy light of dawn came peeping through the trees, brightening the green sheen of their leaves and making the dewdrops glisten on the clover, the scene reminding me more of home than anything I had seen since I left Spithead.

But, neither I nor any one else had much time for such reflections that morning as we silently paraded before ‘old Hankey Pankey’ and the other officers; and, after a careful inspection of our arms, we started in a bee-line for Arabuku, the men massed four deep, with the guns in the centre of our column and flanking parties on the right and left, ‘old Hankey Pankey,’ of course, let him alone for that, leading the van.

At five o’clock, just as the old sun appeared in full splendour above the tops of the hills on our left, a halt was ordered by the captain, the word being passed quietly along the ranks from front to rear.

I was on the right flank, close to ‘old Hankey Pankey’ as he brought us up in this sudden fashion, so I heard every word he said to Mr Gresham, who marched by his side; though, for that matter, I almost guessed what was coming, from the captain wheeling round abruptly and stopping the sort of half trot at which he had been going along, the poor gentleman never having quite recovered the use of his legs after the matchlock ball had ventilated them.

“I think this was about the spot, Gresham, eh?” said he to the first lieutenant. “The admiral said we were to proceed four miles due south from our encampment at Kilili, or whatever else that place was called by our Swahili guide.”

“Yes, sir,” replied Mr Gresham. “I think we have about covered that distance by now; and our course has been true by compass, I know.”

“Yes, yes,” said ‘old Hankey Pankey,’ as if thinking over the matter—“yes. Got the rockets ready, Mr—ahem—Shrapnell?”

“Aye, aye, sir,” replied ‘Gunnery Jack,’ who had come up from his guns, on the halt being cried, to see whether the captain might not have any special orders for him. “They’re close at hand, sir.”

“The signal rockets, I mean.”

“Yes, sir, I’m speaking of the signal rockets,” replied Mr Shrapnell, with never a movement on his face, but looking grave as a judge. “I thought you’d want them, sir, so I brought them along with me. Adams here, sir, has them in his charge. The other rockets with the tube for firing them are with the guns in the centre of the main column.”

“That’s right, Mr Shrapnell; tell Adams to get one of the signals ready for sending up at once, for I expect to see the admiral’s every minute,” said ‘old Hankey Pankey’; adding, as ‘Gunnery Jack’ stepped back to prepare the signal rocket with Adams, “That chap thinks himself very smart with his rocket and tube, as if I didn’t know the real difference between the two! It’s just like those gunnery fellows. They think nobody can be as sharp as themselves; but Mr Shrapnell will find himself too sharp for himself as well as for me some day, if he doesn’t look out!”

Almost as he said this, we could hear the ‘whis–s–ish’ of a rocket going up in the distance, the sound seeming to come from a point in the bush about a mile or so ahead of us; and then, the bright blue and red globules of fire that followed the burst of the warning signal were seen the very next moment, high in the air above the trees in front, slowly sinking as their light died away out of sight.

“Stand by there!” shouted ‘old Hankey Pankey’ to Adams, who had our return signal rocket all ready, slung on to a handspike for a stick. “Here’s my cigar, set fire to it with that.”

He handed him as he thus spoke the manilla which he had been smoking throughout our march, as if he were going to some picnic and probably feeling quite as jovial as if he had been; and, Adams at once setting light to the end of the rocket, it soared aloft like its compeer the moment before, with a whish and a rush that must have scared all the stray baboons within earshot of its flight.

Then we heard tom-toms beating close by, and the clash of brass or some other metal that had a ring like cymbals.

“They’re waking up,” cried ‘old Hankey Pankey’ to Mr Gresham, with a pleased smile on his face. “The column will now advance. Close your ranks, men. Keep steady. Forward!”

We had hardly taken a dozen paces, advancing in the same formation as before, when we heard the roar of guns in front and steady volleys of rifle-fire, whose sound clearly betokened that it emanated from weapons similar to our own.

“By George, we’ll be too late!” cried ‘old Hankey Pankey,’ hobbling onwards at a fine rate for a moment, and then slewing round to give some fresh order to those following up behind. “Come on, men—come on at the double. Spread out your flanks, Mr Gresham! Spread out your flanks, d’ye hear? Tell Mr Shrapnell to bring up the guns. Spread out there, men—spread out in skirmishing order, to cover your front! Hang it, come on, my lads—come on, or we’ll be too late!”

Captain Oliver of theMerlinwas running us cheek by jowl with his contingent on the left and Commander Jellaby of theBullfinchtrying to outstrip him on our right; so, we had hard work to keep our place in line ahead.

But ‘old Hankey Pankey’ was not going to let any one, junior or senior in the service, beat him for first place when fighting was on; and no one who had known how terribly he had been wounded, the muscles of his legs having become shrunk after the holes made by the matchlock ball had closed up, would have dreamt him capable of going the pace he did now.

“Forward, men—forward!” he yelled out spasmodically, as he hobbled on like the wind in front, taking long hops at intervals over any obstruction that lay in his path. “Mermaidsto the front! You’re not going to let us be licked, men, by any other ship on the station!”

How he got out the words between his leaps, and bounds, and hops, I am sure I cannot tell; but, get them out he did, though he must have been pretty well pumped out already by his exertions, and his breath nearly all spent.

But, we hardly needed the stimulus to prompt us to action; for in barely another half minute we burst out of the bush, going at the double and spread out in a half circle, so as to catch all stragglers who might have vainly hoped to escape in our direction, for we were right in the rear of the Arab town.

This was already all ablaze from the rockets and bursting shells of the admiral’s brigade, the straw-thatched houses as they looked, though they were really covered with dry plantain and banana leaves, burning up like so many fierce bonfires in our front, and right and left; while the sharp rattle of musketry and loud banging of the guns of the first division was mixed up with the platoon-like reports from the matchlocks of the Somalis, who were urging on their somewhat reluctant allies, the slave-traders of the interior, with hoarse yells and shrill screams, bolstering up their courage likewise by the beating of innumerable gongs and clashing cymbals, the consensus of sound making din enough to have wakened up all the dead dervishes of the desert for generations past, and caused them, had they come to life, to have proclaimed a ‘Jehad’ or holy war against us, and thus roused up all the fanaticism of all those of the Moslem race yet left alive!

Such was our grand rush, however, coming as it did on top of the cleverly planned combined attack of the admiral’s columns in front of the town, thus taking the Arabs between two fires, that even Saladin would not have saved them.

Hundreds of them were shot down behind their stockades, which I must say they defended gallantly to the last; while those who were not potted by our bullets, were ‘put out of action’ by the bayonets of us bluejackets, who carried their intrenchments by storm.

So far, I was only one of the crowd, loading and firing my Martini as I advanced or halted on the word of command being given by ‘old Hankey Pankey’; who, plucky as a lion, was in the forefront all through, his uniform cap tumbled off and his face all blackened with powder, ‘potting’ this chap with the revolver that he held in his left hand, or sticking another Somali through the gizzard with his sword, which was always thrust out straight before him as he went onward, and always ‘at the point.’

But, now, I had a little diversion on my own account.

“Left turn!” shouted our company leader Mr Chisholm, whose sharp eye detected through the smoke a body of the Arabs attacking an officer and a detached party of our men who had escaladed the fortifications on the right of the town; and seeing that they were hard pressed, though making a gallant stand of it against heavy odds, our officer quickly called out, “Double! Charge, my lads!”

By George! We did charge; and then, the bronze-coloured beggars, who had thought to make an easy prey of our before isolated comrades, turned savagely to receive us, a whole horde of them!

Larrikins, who was next me, got his right arm transfixed by one of their light spears or jereeds, a lot of which came whistling through the air into our ranks like a flight of sparrows.

This made Larry drop his rifle like a hot potato; but, nothing daunted, he kept alongside of me all the same, drawing his cutlass as we raced along together.

“Lor’, Tom, that wer’ a nipper, that wer’!” he cried, with a grin on his face, as if the wound were rather a joke than otherwise. “But I’m jiggered if I don’t pay out the joker who skewered me then!”

At that moment a couple of the Arabs made at the pair of us; and I had quite enough to do to guard off the shower of cuts one of them delivered round my devoted head, his curved scimitar whirling about me in all directions and the sunlight from above making it flash so that it dazzled my eyes.

However, a lucky drive with my sword-bayonet through the rascal’s throat stopped his little game; for the swarthy Arab dropped his scimitar instanter, with a gurgle of rage and an upward roll of his eyes, “like a dying duck in a thunder-storm,” as father used to say, tumbling down all of a heap as dead as mutton.

Hardly had I done with him when, strange to say, I heard the bark of a dog.

This was very unusual, all Mahometans hating dogs and believing them to be possessed of the Devil.

Besides, somehow or other, I seemed to recognise the bark as familiar to me; for, believe me, the voices of dogs and their respective expressions of grief or joy, though sounding the same to alien ears, are as distinct to such as are accustomed to hear them frequently as the voices of human beings of our acquaintance or any individual.

Before I had time to think, however, though my senses were all on the alert from hearing the dog’s bark, I saw that the naval officer whom we had rushed up to help at Mr Chisholm’s instigation, was engaged in a fierce hand-to-hand fight with two Arabs, one of whom, a tall, lean Somali, with a peculiar sort of turban round his head, unlike any of those sported by the rest of the gang, I was certain was no less a personage than the man, or ‘sheik’ as he was called, Abdalah, the leader of the Somalis.

As I noted this, the officer fell; but, ere the big Arab, who drew back a long spear that he wielded, could give him the fatal thrust he intended, I was upon him.

Clubbing my rifle, I dealt a vicious blow at the savage brute’s head which shivered the spear wherewith he tried to guard it.

The rascal, though, was not discomfited; for, clutching hold of a tulwar he carried loosely in a sash of the old dressing-gown-like garment he wore, he almost slashed my nose off, the barrel of my Martini only just preventing me from losing all my good looks!

The shock sent me on my knees; and then, seeing a sword lying on the ground in front of me, I gripped hold of this more by instinct than anything else, and I rose to my feet again as quick as lightning.

Quick as I was, however, the brute of an Arab was quicker; and, aiming a terrible slashing cut at me with the tulwar, which had it landed would have decapitated me as clean as a whistle, and the last word of my history been told for good and all—aye, but for a wonderful interposition just as I thought my end had come.

With a piercing yelp, that was succeeded by a deep, savage growl, a white dog bounded up from the ground beside the officer, who had not yet recovered from the effects of the blow that had struck him down.

Would you believe it, this dog was ‘Gyp’!

Making a jump which no one could have imagined a dog of his size capable of doing, he clutched the Arab chief by the throat as he slashed at me, making him stumble back, thus causing the cut that would otherwise have sliced off my head like a carrot to be wasted in the air.

As the big murdering rascal stumbled back, I thrust forth my arm holding the officer’s sword and sent the blade right through the beggar’s stomach up to the hilt.

“Be the powers, me joker,” cried a voice behind me, as sheik and ‘Gyp’ and I all fell together on the ground in one batch, “ye did that well, alannah! Begorrah, it wor roight in his bri’d-basket, sure!”

“My goodness!” I exclaimed, recognising a voice that sounded as familiar to my ears as the bark of ‘Gyp’ just now. “Who’s that?”

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