Chapter Twenty Two.An Old Acquaintance.“Hullo!” exclaimed a voice that seemed very familiar to me, on my getting down to the mess-deck below with my bag, when I had got my number, and been told off to my watch and division. “Who’d ha’ thought o’ meeting yer here?”The speaker was a broad-shouldered chap, with a lot of hair all over his face, and I did not recognise him for the moment.“You’ve got the advantage of me, mate,” said I civilly, not wishing to hurt his feelings if he had made a mistake in addressing me, as I believed he had. “I can’t place you.”“Lor’, carn’t yer?” replied the chap, with a broad grin stealing over his face. “I fancies, Tom Bowlin’, I hed th’ adwantage on yer onst, an’ placed yer too, that time I cut yer down in yer hammick aboard theSaint Vincent, hey, old ship?”It was Larrikins.Needless to say how glad I was to meet him again, or what yarns we had to tell each other of what had happened to us respectively since last we met.He was the same frolicsome, good-tempered chap that he had been on board the training-ship, I found, after a very few minutes’ talk; but his love of practical-joking had been sobered down a bit within due bounds, and, on the whole, he was very much improved in every way.“I s’pose ye’ve never bin aboard a hooker like this afore,” he said to me presently, after we had made an end of exchanging reminiscences, noticing that I was all at loggerheads in finding my way below. “It’s them bloomin’ watertight compartments as does it; but come along o’ me, Tom, and I’ll show yez the ropes.”So saying, he took me over the ship, pointing out how theMermaidhad a steel-protected deck running fore and aft, that sheltered her engines and boilers beneath; the space in beneath this and the bottom of the vessel being subdivided by a series of vertical iron bulkheads, completely shutting off the various ‘flats,’ or lower decks, from each other.An arrangement so complex naturally necessitated a fellow having to climb up one hatchway and go down another before he could speak to his chum in the next flat, thus causing one to go through ‘sich a getting upstairs’ like that mentioned in the celebrated negro ballad. The difference of the deck plan of a modern cruiser, as compared with that of my old ship theActive, was not the only thing I had to learn on being drafted to theMermaid; for the drills were quite as strange to me at first as her complicated build inboard.The stokers, of course, had to see to driving her through the water, that being their special duty, under the superintendence of the engineers; so, as this job was taken out of the hands of us bluejackets, and there was nothing for us to do in the way of setting and taking in sail, the executive officers managed to find other work for us to keep our minds from mischief when we were aboard.One of these tasks was ‘collision mat’ drill; when we would be tumbled up on deck to rig out a roll of oakum that was plaited into the semblance of a gigantic doormat, right over the side, dragging it by means of guys and springs under our forefoot, to fill up some imaginary hole that had been knocked into us by too friendly a craft passing by and running athwart our hawse!Another favourite drill in vogue with the johnnies of our new regime was that of ‘closing watertight doors.’The signal for this being about to be carried out was the blowing of a particularly excruciating sort of foghorn at some unexpected hour of the day or night—it used to be in every watch on theMermaid; and at the sound of this melodious instrument, which was most likely selected by the authorities in recollection of the story of Joshua and his trumpet, the ‘walls,’ or, rather, bulkheads, of the ship did not ‘come down,’ but were run up!By this means every compartment throughout the ship was isolated and all communication cut off between the various flats.The officers were shut into their wardroom; the engineers and stokers in their own special domain; and the men forward, perhaps, on their mess-deck; until the officer of the watch had made the rounds and those in charge of the respective watertight doors had affirmed the fact, from personal supervision, that all these were closed, when, this gratifying intelligence was communicated to the captain, and he gave the order to open them again.In addition to these exercises, there was the old ‘fire quarters’ drill, to which I was accustomed; and ‘man and arm ship,’ when all of us hurried to our stations on the main-deck batteries—those who formed part, that is, of the crews of the several guns of different types we had aboard; while the rest of us lined the sides of the upper deck, prepared to pepper away with our rifles at any approaching foe, and repel, with our sword-bayonets at the ‘charge,’ all possible boarders.We had about a week’s cruising in the Channel, to knock us into shape as well as test our machinery, theMermaidbeing a new vessel and not long delivered over from the contractors; but, Captain Hankey being a smart officer, besides being ably seconded by his subordinates, this was so satisfactorily achieved, as regards both ship and men, that ere we reached old Gib, whose couching lion-head facing out to sea reminded me strongly of the more familiar Bill of Portland, any one inspecting us would really have thought theMermaidan old stager and that our raw company had been working together for months, instead of only a week or two!‘Old Hankey Pankey,’ though, as he was called on the lower deck—sailors having always a nickname for their officers, whether they like them or dislike them—possessed the rare art of managing those under his command to such a degree that he would have turned out a likely enough crew from much worse material; while he ‘got to win’ard’ of the engineers so cleverly that they never grumbled at any orders he gave—unlike those gentry in general—thus enabling us to pile on steam and make the passage out from England in far less time than we expected, there being no complaints from the stokehold of ‘leaking tubes’ and ‘priming’ boilers necessitating our having to ‘slow down.’After passing through the Gut of Gibraltar, we made for Malta; which place seems to have such a magnetic attraction for our men-of-war, both homeward and outward bound, that none by any chance ever gives it the go-by, there being always some little defect to ‘make good,’ or despatches to wait for, or letters to post, or something that obliges them to cast anchor in Valetta harbour, if they are only allowed to remain an hour or two!We fortunately stopped here for three days; and, though the men generally were not given leave ashore, Larrikins and I, being both in the first cutter, we had the chance of landing more than once.We had a bit of fun, too, on one of these occasions when going up the Nix Mangiare stairs, leading up from the place where the men-of-war boats put in to the town above.These stairs are so named, it may be explained for the benefit of those who have not been there, from being the haunt of a number of beggars who frequent the steep ascent, demanding alms of all bluejackets and others that may chance to pass up or down, their whining plea being that they have nothing to eat— “Nix mangiare, buono Johnny, nix mangiare!”We had already been accosted by three or four of these chaps, to each of whom we had given a trifle, moved by their poverty-stricken appearance and Maltese whine; when, on reaching the top of the steps, an old fellow, who from his venerable look seemed above that sort of thing, repeated a like request to his compeers lower down the stairs, holding out the palm of a lean clawlike hand resembling one of Jocko’s paws.“No, no, that won’t wash,” said Larrikins, in a chaffy way, catching hold of a fine-looking malacca cane the old fellow was leaning on, and which seemed more fit for a grand seignior than a beggar. “None of your bono johnnies with me, you old reprobate. Yer oughter be ashamed on yerself, yer ought, axing fur charity from poor sailors like we—you with this fine walkin’-stick here, good enough for ‘old Hankey Pankey’ hisself!”With that, Larrikins, wrenching the malacca from the unwilling hands of the old fellow, gave it a shake in the air as if he were going to apply it to the shoulders of its owner.“By jingo,” I cried out, “there’s something chinking in it that sounds like money, Larry!”“Lor’, it is money, Tom,” exclaimed Larrikins, at once giving the stick a good bash against the side of the wall. “The thunderin’ old cheat of a Maltese scoundrel is a regular take-in, askin’ on us fur to help him and he a-rollin’ in gold all the time, the blessed old miser!”This statement was true enough; for, as the malacca cane came against the stonework, the head of it flew off, and from the hollow cavity within that was then disclosed there rolled out, if you please, a string of gold pieces some twenty at least in number—the result, probably, of this respectable mendicant’s very industrious beggary since he had taken to the trade, the old rascal carrying his horde about with him for safety’s sake.He now burst into tears at his secret wealth being thus brought to light; judging, no doubt, from what he knew of the morals of his own countrymen, that Larrikins and I were going to appropriate it to our own use.But, Larrikins and I were English sailors—not any of your Maltese riffraff; and so, picking up the scattered gold, we gave it back to the old impostor, the suspicious scoundrel counting each piece as we dropped it into his hands to make sure that we did not purloin any.“Take that, yer old joker,” said Larrikins, as we left the scene of the incident, tendering the old gentleman a parting kick. “That’s some interest, old Bono Johnny, to stick inter yer ditty box along o’ yer shiners!”We had no further adventure at Malta, beyond finding out that most of the shopkeepers and other chaps with whom we dealt during our short stay were as great cheats as our beggar friend of the Nix Mangiare stairs.Before leaving the port, however, to proceed up the Levant, we heard a piece of news that gave some of us much satisfaction.This was, that, instead of theMermaidhaving to act for some months as jackal to the eastern division of the fleet, as had been intended when we were commissioned, we were now ordered to pass up the Mediterranean and proceed on through to the Red Sea, the cruiser which we had been hurriedly despatched to relieve on account of her condenser being cracked, having had her damages made good in the dockyard, theMerlinindeed lying out in French Creek all ready to return to her station within forty-eight hours of our arrival at Valetta.So, on the third morning, a lot of signalling went on between our ship and the flagstaff ashore at the naval station, the upshot being that we were ordered to sail early in the afternoon; when, steam being got up and the anchor weighed, we bade adieu to the island, leaving Saint Elmo Point on our port hand and shaping a course eastward.When we were nearing Alexandria, we had a bit of a ‘Levanter,’ which delayed our progress for half a day, during which time we had to slow down our engines and keep under easy steam, head to sea; but, after that, the weather was as fine as we could wish, and we got through the Canal without a hitch, not a single vessel blocking us, even after passing the Bitter Lakes, a very unusual thing at this period of the year, when the China clippers crowd the narrow waterway and cause repeated stoppages as a rule to ships outward bound.On emerging from the Canal, at Suez, we made the best of our way down the Red Sea to Suakin, where we found despatches from the senior officer of the East African station, to which we were attached, directing us to join him off the island of Socotra; and that if we did not come across him there we were to cruise along the coast between Ras Hafim and Obbia, where it was reported the Somali Arabs were getting busy with the advent of the south-west monsoon, and carting cargoes of slaves over to Oman and the Persian Gulf—that is, when they saw a chance and none of our men-of-war were on the spot to stop them!In obedience to these instructions, therefore, we steamed steadily onwards through the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb, and, making a wide stretch across the Gulf of Aden to take advantage of the current, steered straight for our appointed rendezvous.Here, finding no one to meet us, nor hearing any news of import to alter our programme, Captain Hankey hauled up for Cape Guardafui, intending then to beat down the Somali coast as he had been directed.Seeing the funnels of a steamer awash off Binna, we put in nearer to the shore, the steam cutter being piped away to examine the wreck, which was too close in to the rocks for theMermaidto approach her with safety.There was no trace of any one living on board, though she had evidently been only recently abandoned, various articles lying about on the deck aft, which was clear of the water, that would not have remained long aboard had she been stranded for any length of time.She was clean gutted, however, almost every single movable thing of any value having been stripped from her.“Ha!” I heard Captain Hankey say to our first lieutenant, both of them coming in the cutter to inspect the steamer. “Those Somali Arabs have been here, Gresham.”“Not a doubt of it, sir,” replied Mr Gresham. “Those beggars are the biggest thieves, I believe, in the world; and murderous rascals, too. I recollect, sir, when I was out here in the oldVampire, we had many a tussle with them, for they fight like wild cats!”“Aye, they do that,” said the captain. “I shouldn’t be surprised if some of their dhows are knocking about here now!”“Nor I, sir,” agreed the other. “Oliver, of theMagpie, whom I saw at Suakin, told me there was a rumour of the Somalis running cargoes of arms, which they pick up somewhere in the German protectorate, to supply Osman Digna’s forces for a fresh campaign that has been planned by the Arabs against us along the whole coast.”“That may be,” said Captain Hankey; “but the beggars who have been at work here wore only on the lookout for loot, I think—though, perhaps, they may have murdered the crew and passengers of this vessel, too, for all we know. However, to make matters sure, we’ll look out for them!”“Aye, aye, sir, that will prevent any mistakes,” said Mr Gresham, with a laugh. “I don’t think any Arab dhow, whether belonging to the Somalis or otherwise, can escape theMermaid, should one heave in sight!”There being nothing that we could do for the steamer, which would have to be ‘written off as a loss’ by the underwriters at Lloyd’s, the captain gave the signal for the cutter to return to our ship; and then, making a good offing, so as to put the Arabs off their guard, we banked our fires, except under one boiler, keeping the screw just revolving so as to maintain our position abreast of Binna, well out of sight of the land.A strict watch was maintained, though, all the same, lookouts being stationed in our military tops as well as on the forecastle; and, in the early morning, long before sunrise, the steam pinnace and first and second cutters were lowered alongside, and provisioned ready for action.Captain Hankey had kept his eyes open to some purpose when he inspected the steamer, for he had seen a lot of things that had been stripped off the vessel put together in a heap under the bridge, as if her plunderers intended returning for them, not having been able to carry them away at their last trip; and, albeit he did not draw the attention of our first lieutenant to this, to my knowledge, when talking to him, no doubt, from the preparations he made, ‘old Hankey Pankey’ drew his own conclusions.His judgment was not at fault.Hardly had the first flush of dawn tinted the yellow eastern sky with its rosy light, heralding the glowing heat of day, ere one of the men stationed in the tops hailed the deck.“There’s something moving away off on our weather bow,” sang out the man, shoving his head over the side of the top. “I can’t make it out exactly, sir; there’s a haze on the water ahead.”The second lieutenant, who was acting as officer of the watch, being an easy-going sort of chap and rather sleepy from being up pacing to and fro on the bridge since midnight, did not pay much attention to this intelligence.“All right, lookout-man,” he hailed back, after a portentous yawn. “It’s probably the morning breeze blowing the fog off the land that you see. Tell me, a–a–ah! When you are able to make it out more clearly, a–a–ah!”And, he almost yawned himself out of his boots as he gave utterance to the last word.
“Hullo!” exclaimed a voice that seemed very familiar to me, on my getting down to the mess-deck below with my bag, when I had got my number, and been told off to my watch and division. “Who’d ha’ thought o’ meeting yer here?”
The speaker was a broad-shouldered chap, with a lot of hair all over his face, and I did not recognise him for the moment.
“You’ve got the advantage of me, mate,” said I civilly, not wishing to hurt his feelings if he had made a mistake in addressing me, as I believed he had. “I can’t place you.”
“Lor’, carn’t yer?” replied the chap, with a broad grin stealing over his face. “I fancies, Tom Bowlin’, I hed th’ adwantage on yer onst, an’ placed yer too, that time I cut yer down in yer hammick aboard theSaint Vincent, hey, old ship?”
It was Larrikins.
Needless to say how glad I was to meet him again, or what yarns we had to tell each other of what had happened to us respectively since last we met.
He was the same frolicsome, good-tempered chap that he had been on board the training-ship, I found, after a very few minutes’ talk; but his love of practical-joking had been sobered down a bit within due bounds, and, on the whole, he was very much improved in every way.
“I s’pose ye’ve never bin aboard a hooker like this afore,” he said to me presently, after we had made an end of exchanging reminiscences, noticing that I was all at loggerheads in finding my way below. “It’s them bloomin’ watertight compartments as does it; but come along o’ me, Tom, and I’ll show yez the ropes.”
So saying, he took me over the ship, pointing out how theMermaidhad a steel-protected deck running fore and aft, that sheltered her engines and boilers beneath; the space in beneath this and the bottom of the vessel being subdivided by a series of vertical iron bulkheads, completely shutting off the various ‘flats,’ or lower decks, from each other.
An arrangement so complex naturally necessitated a fellow having to climb up one hatchway and go down another before he could speak to his chum in the next flat, thus causing one to go through ‘sich a getting upstairs’ like that mentioned in the celebrated negro ballad. The difference of the deck plan of a modern cruiser, as compared with that of my old ship theActive, was not the only thing I had to learn on being drafted to theMermaid; for the drills were quite as strange to me at first as her complicated build inboard.
The stokers, of course, had to see to driving her through the water, that being their special duty, under the superintendence of the engineers; so, as this job was taken out of the hands of us bluejackets, and there was nothing for us to do in the way of setting and taking in sail, the executive officers managed to find other work for us to keep our minds from mischief when we were aboard.
One of these tasks was ‘collision mat’ drill; when we would be tumbled up on deck to rig out a roll of oakum that was plaited into the semblance of a gigantic doormat, right over the side, dragging it by means of guys and springs under our forefoot, to fill up some imaginary hole that had been knocked into us by too friendly a craft passing by and running athwart our hawse!
Another favourite drill in vogue with the johnnies of our new regime was that of ‘closing watertight doors.’
The signal for this being about to be carried out was the blowing of a particularly excruciating sort of foghorn at some unexpected hour of the day or night—it used to be in every watch on theMermaid; and at the sound of this melodious instrument, which was most likely selected by the authorities in recollection of the story of Joshua and his trumpet, the ‘walls,’ or, rather, bulkheads, of the ship did not ‘come down,’ but were run up!
By this means every compartment throughout the ship was isolated and all communication cut off between the various flats.
The officers were shut into their wardroom; the engineers and stokers in their own special domain; and the men forward, perhaps, on their mess-deck; until the officer of the watch had made the rounds and those in charge of the respective watertight doors had affirmed the fact, from personal supervision, that all these were closed, when, this gratifying intelligence was communicated to the captain, and he gave the order to open them again.
In addition to these exercises, there was the old ‘fire quarters’ drill, to which I was accustomed; and ‘man and arm ship,’ when all of us hurried to our stations on the main-deck batteries—those who formed part, that is, of the crews of the several guns of different types we had aboard; while the rest of us lined the sides of the upper deck, prepared to pepper away with our rifles at any approaching foe, and repel, with our sword-bayonets at the ‘charge,’ all possible boarders.
We had about a week’s cruising in the Channel, to knock us into shape as well as test our machinery, theMermaidbeing a new vessel and not long delivered over from the contractors; but, Captain Hankey being a smart officer, besides being ably seconded by his subordinates, this was so satisfactorily achieved, as regards both ship and men, that ere we reached old Gib, whose couching lion-head facing out to sea reminded me strongly of the more familiar Bill of Portland, any one inspecting us would really have thought theMermaidan old stager and that our raw company had been working together for months, instead of only a week or two!
‘Old Hankey Pankey,’ though, as he was called on the lower deck—sailors having always a nickname for their officers, whether they like them or dislike them—possessed the rare art of managing those under his command to such a degree that he would have turned out a likely enough crew from much worse material; while he ‘got to win’ard’ of the engineers so cleverly that they never grumbled at any orders he gave—unlike those gentry in general—thus enabling us to pile on steam and make the passage out from England in far less time than we expected, there being no complaints from the stokehold of ‘leaking tubes’ and ‘priming’ boilers necessitating our having to ‘slow down.’
After passing through the Gut of Gibraltar, we made for Malta; which place seems to have such a magnetic attraction for our men-of-war, both homeward and outward bound, that none by any chance ever gives it the go-by, there being always some little defect to ‘make good,’ or despatches to wait for, or letters to post, or something that obliges them to cast anchor in Valetta harbour, if they are only allowed to remain an hour or two!
We fortunately stopped here for three days; and, though the men generally were not given leave ashore, Larrikins and I, being both in the first cutter, we had the chance of landing more than once.
We had a bit of fun, too, on one of these occasions when going up the Nix Mangiare stairs, leading up from the place where the men-of-war boats put in to the town above.
These stairs are so named, it may be explained for the benefit of those who have not been there, from being the haunt of a number of beggars who frequent the steep ascent, demanding alms of all bluejackets and others that may chance to pass up or down, their whining plea being that they have nothing to eat— “Nix mangiare, buono Johnny, nix mangiare!”
We had already been accosted by three or four of these chaps, to each of whom we had given a trifle, moved by their poverty-stricken appearance and Maltese whine; when, on reaching the top of the steps, an old fellow, who from his venerable look seemed above that sort of thing, repeated a like request to his compeers lower down the stairs, holding out the palm of a lean clawlike hand resembling one of Jocko’s paws.
“No, no, that won’t wash,” said Larrikins, in a chaffy way, catching hold of a fine-looking malacca cane the old fellow was leaning on, and which seemed more fit for a grand seignior than a beggar. “None of your bono johnnies with me, you old reprobate. Yer oughter be ashamed on yerself, yer ought, axing fur charity from poor sailors like we—you with this fine walkin’-stick here, good enough for ‘old Hankey Pankey’ hisself!”
With that, Larrikins, wrenching the malacca from the unwilling hands of the old fellow, gave it a shake in the air as if he were going to apply it to the shoulders of its owner.
“By jingo,” I cried out, “there’s something chinking in it that sounds like money, Larry!”
“Lor’, it is money, Tom,” exclaimed Larrikins, at once giving the stick a good bash against the side of the wall. “The thunderin’ old cheat of a Maltese scoundrel is a regular take-in, askin’ on us fur to help him and he a-rollin’ in gold all the time, the blessed old miser!”
This statement was true enough; for, as the malacca cane came against the stonework, the head of it flew off, and from the hollow cavity within that was then disclosed there rolled out, if you please, a string of gold pieces some twenty at least in number—the result, probably, of this respectable mendicant’s very industrious beggary since he had taken to the trade, the old rascal carrying his horde about with him for safety’s sake.
He now burst into tears at his secret wealth being thus brought to light; judging, no doubt, from what he knew of the morals of his own countrymen, that Larrikins and I were going to appropriate it to our own use.
But, Larrikins and I were English sailors—not any of your Maltese riffraff; and so, picking up the scattered gold, we gave it back to the old impostor, the suspicious scoundrel counting each piece as we dropped it into his hands to make sure that we did not purloin any.
“Take that, yer old joker,” said Larrikins, as we left the scene of the incident, tendering the old gentleman a parting kick. “That’s some interest, old Bono Johnny, to stick inter yer ditty box along o’ yer shiners!”
We had no further adventure at Malta, beyond finding out that most of the shopkeepers and other chaps with whom we dealt during our short stay were as great cheats as our beggar friend of the Nix Mangiare stairs.
Before leaving the port, however, to proceed up the Levant, we heard a piece of news that gave some of us much satisfaction.
This was, that, instead of theMermaidhaving to act for some months as jackal to the eastern division of the fleet, as had been intended when we were commissioned, we were now ordered to pass up the Mediterranean and proceed on through to the Red Sea, the cruiser which we had been hurriedly despatched to relieve on account of her condenser being cracked, having had her damages made good in the dockyard, theMerlinindeed lying out in French Creek all ready to return to her station within forty-eight hours of our arrival at Valetta.
So, on the third morning, a lot of signalling went on between our ship and the flagstaff ashore at the naval station, the upshot being that we were ordered to sail early in the afternoon; when, steam being got up and the anchor weighed, we bade adieu to the island, leaving Saint Elmo Point on our port hand and shaping a course eastward.
When we were nearing Alexandria, we had a bit of a ‘Levanter,’ which delayed our progress for half a day, during which time we had to slow down our engines and keep under easy steam, head to sea; but, after that, the weather was as fine as we could wish, and we got through the Canal without a hitch, not a single vessel blocking us, even after passing the Bitter Lakes, a very unusual thing at this period of the year, when the China clippers crowd the narrow waterway and cause repeated stoppages as a rule to ships outward bound.
On emerging from the Canal, at Suez, we made the best of our way down the Red Sea to Suakin, where we found despatches from the senior officer of the East African station, to which we were attached, directing us to join him off the island of Socotra; and that if we did not come across him there we were to cruise along the coast between Ras Hafim and Obbia, where it was reported the Somali Arabs were getting busy with the advent of the south-west monsoon, and carting cargoes of slaves over to Oman and the Persian Gulf—that is, when they saw a chance and none of our men-of-war were on the spot to stop them!
In obedience to these instructions, therefore, we steamed steadily onwards through the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb, and, making a wide stretch across the Gulf of Aden to take advantage of the current, steered straight for our appointed rendezvous.
Here, finding no one to meet us, nor hearing any news of import to alter our programme, Captain Hankey hauled up for Cape Guardafui, intending then to beat down the Somali coast as he had been directed.
Seeing the funnels of a steamer awash off Binna, we put in nearer to the shore, the steam cutter being piped away to examine the wreck, which was too close in to the rocks for theMermaidto approach her with safety.
There was no trace of any one living on board, though she had evidently been only recently abandoned, various articles lying about on the deck aft, which was clear of the water, that would not have remained long aboard had she been stranded for any length of time.
She was clean gutted, however, almost every single movable thing of any value having been stripped from her.
“Ha!” I heard Captain Hankey say to our first lieutenant, both of them coming in the cutter to inspect the steamer. “Those Somali Arabs have been here, Gresham.”
“Not a doubt of it, sir,” replied Mr Gresham. “Those beggars are the biggest thieves, I believe, in the world; and murderous rascals, too. I recollect, sir, when I was out here in the oldVampire, we had many a tussle with them, for they fight like wild cats!”
“Aye, they do that,” said the captain. “I shouldn’t be surprised if some of their dhows are knocking about here now!”
“Nor I, sir,” agreed the other. “Oliver, of theMagpie, whom I saw at Suakin, told me there was a rumour of the Somalis running cargoes of arms, which they pick up somewhere in the German protectorate, to supply Osman Digna’s forces for a fresh campaign that has been planned by the Arabs against us along the whole coast.”
“That may be,” said Captain Hankey; “but the beggars who have been at work here wore only on the lookout for loot, I think—though, perhaps, they may have murdered the crew and passengers of this vessel, too, for all we know. However, to make matters sure, we’ll look out for them!”
“Aye, aye, sir, that will prevent any mistakes,” said Mr Gresham, with a laugh. “I don’t think any Arab dhow, whether belonging to the Somalis or otherwise, can escape theMermaid, should one heave in sight!”
There being nothing that we could do for the steamer, which would have to be ‘written off as a loss’ by the underwriters at Lloyd’s, the captain gave the signal for the cutter to return to our ship; and then, making a good offing, so as to put the Arabs off their guard, we banked our fires, except under one boiler, keeping the screw just revolving so as to maintain our position abreast of Binna, well out of sight of the land.
A strict watch was maintained, though, all the same, lookouts being stationed in our military tops as well as on the forecastle; and, in the early morning, long before sunrise, the steam pinnace and first and second cutters were lowered alongside, and provisioned ready for action.
Captain Hankey had kept his eyes open to some purpose when he inspected the steamer, for he had seen a lot of things that had been stripped off the vessel put together in a heap under the bridge, as if her plunderers intended returning for them, not having been able to carry them away at their last trip; and, albeit he did not draw the attention of our first lieutenant to this, to my knowledge, when talking to him, no doubt, from the preparations he made, ‘old Hankey Pankey’ drew his own conclusions.
His judgment was not at fault.
Hardly had the first flush of dawn tinted the yellow eastern sky with its rosy light, heralding the glowing heat of day, ere one of the men stationed in the tops hailed the deck.
“There’s something moving away off on our weather bow,” sang out the man, shoving his head over the side of the top. “I can’t make it out exactly, sir; there’s a haze on the water ahead.”
The second lieutenant, who was acting as officer of the watch, being an easy-going sort of chap and rather sleepy from being up pacing to and fro on the bridge since midnight, did not pay much attention to this intelligence.
“All right, lookout-man,” he hailed back, after a portentous yawn. “It’s probably the morning breeze blowing the fog off the land that you see. Tell me, a–a–ah! When you are able to make it out more clearly, a–a–ah!”
And, he almost yawned himself out of his boots as he gave utterance to the last word.
Chapter Twenty Three.Boarding the Slave Dhow.“On deck, there!” shouted out the lookout-man again, almost before the sound of Lieutenant Dabchick’s last yawn had died away in the distance, like a groan or its echo. “There’s a whole fleet o’ dhows a-creeping up under the lee of the land and running before the wind to the north’ard, sir!”This stopped Mr Dabchick’s yawns and made him open his sleepy eyes pretty wide, I can tell you!“A fleet of dhows, lookout-man!” he cried, fully awake at last, not only in his own person, but as regarded the responsibility attaching to him should he unhappily let our prey escape and so foil his captain’s carefully arranged plan. “Are you certain, Adams?”“Not a doubt of it, sir,” replied the captain of the foretop, in an assured tone that expressed his confidence in his own statement. “They’re Arab dhows sure enough, sir. One—two—three; and, ay, there is two more on ’em jist rounding the p’int—that makes five on ’em, sir, all bearing to the north as fast as they can go, with slack sheets and the breeze dead astern, which they are bringing up with them. They’re right off our weather beam, now, sir.”“The devil!” ejaculated Lieutenant Dabchick, in his flurry using a stronger expression than he would probably have done had ‘old Hankey Pankey’ been on the quarter-deck, rushing into the chart-house on the bridge and snatching up a telescope, which he brought to bear on the horizon in the direction indicated by Adams in the foretop above, whose point of vantage, of course, gave him a wider range of view. “On our weather beam, you say?”“Ay, ay, sir,” roared back the lookout; “they’re right abreast of our forrud funnel now, sir.”Mr Dabchick’s hand shook so much from excitement that he could not hold the glass steady; so, propping it up athwart the stanchion at the weather end of the bridge, and sprawling out his legs to give him a good purchase, he worked the telescope about till he at last spotted the objects Adams had seen.“By the Lord Harry!” exclaimed the lieutenant, “you are right, Adams. I must send down and tell the captain at once.”With that, he hailed the midshipman of the watch and despatched him with the news to Captain Hankey’s cabin aft; while at the same time he rang the engine-room gong, and shouted down through the voice-tube to tell them below to ‘stand by,’ as probably we would want steam up in a very short time; directing also the coxswains of the boats alongside to make ready, as well as passing the word forward for the boatswain’s mates and the drummer and bugler to be handy when wanted.This done, all his orders having been issued and executed in less time than I take to tell of it, Mr Dabchick resumed his interrupted, if monotonous, task of walking up and down the bridge; stopping whenever he had to slew round, at the end of his promenade, to take another squint at the dhows, and warning Adams, though that worthy needed no such injunction, to ‘keep his eye on them.’Mr Dabchick had just sung out this for the second time on getting back to the weather end of the bridge, when Captain Hankey, accompanied by Mr Gresham and a lot of the other officers, rushed on deck, some of them half dressed and buckling on their gear as they came hurrying along.‘Old Hankey Pankey’ made straight for the bridge, the first lieutenant close at his heels.“Ha, Mr Dabchick,” cried the captain, as he skated up the iron ladder leading from the deck below to the chart-house, taking three steps at each bound, “so you’ve sighted those beggars at last, eh?”“Yes, sir,” said the second lieutenant, smiling, and rubbing his hands, having put down his telescope on top of the movable slab on the bridge the navigator had for spreading out his charts; Mr Dabchick assuming an air of great complacency, as if it were entirely through his exertions the dhows had been seen or were there at all—“I think you’ll find ’em there to win’ard all right, sir.”‘Old Hankey Pankey’ caught up the telescope that Mr Dabchick had just deposited on the slab, putting it to his eye.“Yes, they are dhows sure enough, Gresham,” he said to the first lieutenant, after a brief inspection of the craft, which were stealing past us under the loom of the land far away to the westward. “No doubt, they are the very rascals who plundered the wreck we saw yesterday, and as likely as not murdered all the people on board! They are making for the same spot again, too, to pick up the rest of the loot they have not yet taken off; but we’ll stop their little game. Bugler, sound the ‘assembly’! Drummer, beat to ‘quarters’!”The blare of bugle and beat of drum rang through the ship, mingled with the hiss and roar of the steam rushing up the funnels; the captain, as he sang out his orders to those on deck, mechanically, from force of habit, putting his hand on the engine-room telegraph to prepare the ‘greasers’ in the flat below, and rapidly shouting down the voice-tube, as soon as the electric bell on the bridge gave a responsive tinkle, that they were to ‘get up steam’ as quickly as possible.But, there was no fear of our alarming the enemy with the noise of our preparations, not even when the boatswain’s mates added their quota to the din after the bugle was sounded. They were too far off, and, besides, we were to leeward, and twice the row we made could not have reached their ears.All of our fellows below belonging to the port watch came tumbling up the hatchways in a jiffy on hearing the ‘assembly,’ clutching up their rifles and sword-bayonets from the arm-racks on the lower deck; while we of the starboard, who were already up from having the middle watch, proceeded at a break-neck pace to fetch ours.Then the gunner took his keys from their appointed place outside the door of the captain’s cabin and went below to open the magazines in the flat appropriated to their combustible contents, in company with a working party to attend to the ammunition hoists; while the marine artillerymen and crews of the main-deck battery and upper-deck machine-guns hurried to their stations under charge of “Gunnery Jack,” the lieutenant whose special function was to see to our little barkers.A minute later, when those whose duties did not take them elsewhere were ranged along the upper deck, Captain Hankey, who had gone down to his cabin in the meantime and buckled on his sword to be in proper fighting rig, came back on the bridge, where he remained in conversation with Mr Gresham until the ‘orderly’ midshipman—I don’t mean to say that the others were disorderly, but only just wish to specify those who were told off to carry messages from the various parts of the ship, when at ‘quarters,’ to the captain, they acting, so to speak, as his aides-de-camp on board—returned to say all was as it should be.“Now then, Gresham,” said ‘old Hankey Pankey,’ drawing himself up to his full height, and looking every inch what he was, an officer and a gentleman—ay, and a sailor too, as plucky as they make them—“I think we’d better begin, or those beggars will get too far ahead, and a stern chase, you know, is a long chase. Bugler, sound ‘man and arm boats’!”The boy, a young marine, who did this part of our musical business, puffed out his cheeks, inflating his lungs the while, and blew a blast that seemed to make the air shake; the boatswain’s mates, who always act on such occasions like the chorus at the opera, screeching with their whistles fore and aft up and down the hatchways, repeating with an exasperating repetition the same order little Joey the bugler had already given; while, all the officers who had charge of the respective boats stood up at the gangways to inspect the crews of these as they went down the side to take their places on the thwarts, so as to see they were all properly equipped.“Mr Gresham,” said Captain Hankey to the first lieutenant, “I should like you to go in the steam pinnace and work away to win’ard towards Ras Hafim—you know the place we marked on the chart last night above Binna?”“Very good, sir,” replied Mr Gresham, taking up a revolver and box of cartridges he had brought on deck with him, and going towards the after gangway, abreast of which the steam pinnace was lying, buzzing away like a little wasp alongside; the intimation on the part of our captain that he would ‘like’ a thing being done being quite equivalent to a command to do it! “You mean, sir, that queer-shaped headland some twenty miles down the coast?”“Yes, we passed it when we came back from the wreck,” replied ‘old Hankey Pankey,’ pointing with his hand away to windward. “You will then cut off the retreat of the dhows, while we head them off farther up the coast.”“Very good, sir,” said Mr Gresham, accepting this as a final dismissal. “I will attend to your orders, sir. By George, those Arabs will have to be precious sharp if they manage to steal back past us to their haunts!”So saying, Mr Gresham went down the side, without any further palaver; and, when he was seated in the sternsheets, the pinnace went off in a bee-line to the sou’-west in the teeth of the monsoon, which was beginning to blow now pretty briskly.The first cutter was then piped away, Larrikins and I being the two first to jump aboard her when the bowman laid hold of her painter and drew her up alongside.Lieutenant Dabchick came with us in command, as soon as she was fully manned and armed, an ammunition-chest being lowered down with a supply of ‘pills and pepper’ for the little nine-pounder boat-gun we carried in our bows; when, we sheered away from the ship’s side and lay on our oars, and the second cutter hauled up alongside to receive her crew and equipment like ourselves.This did not take long in doing—the whaler being also manned and the senior midshipman sent in charge of her, with the boatswain to check his rashness; and then, the three of us, first cutter, second cutter and whaler, were all taken in tow by theMermaid, which went off full speed ahead after the Arab dhows that were now only some five miles off us, the cruiser shaping a slanting course so as to prevent them from making for the wide stretch of open water that lay to the north’ard, should they try to escape in that way.Their retreat to the port whence they had sailed was cut off by the pinnace; and, as their only refuge now when we overhauled them would be the rock-bound coast lying between Binna and Ras Hafim, they were, as I heard Mr Dabchick say to the coxswain, ‘between the devil and the deep sea!’The reckless beggars, too, were so busy looking out in the direction of the stranded steamer for which they were making, that somehow or other they did not catch sight of us until they were nearly within easy range of our six-inch breechloaders; the leading dhow, which was what the Arabs call a ‘batilla,’ and carried two large lugs or lateen sails on wide yards, besides a sort of square jib forwards, rigged out on a bowsprit like a spritsail boom, caught sight of us as we luffed up to let fly at her.For a second or two they seemed all of a heap, like a covey of frightened partridges; and then, getting their tacks aboard as smartly as if they were English seamen and not rascally Somali Arabs, they hauled their wind and made in for the shore, thinking, no doubt, ‘Old Nick’ was after them.They were not far out in this surmise, if such should have crossed their minds, as they very quickly found out.TheMermaidyawed off her course, swirling us round in her wake as our tow-rope slackened and then grew taut again, all in an instant; and, then, bang belched out one of our big hundred-pounder quick-firing guns that we carried on the upper deck fore and aft, pitching a shell that burst right over the rearmost dhow.This made them quicken their movements if possible; while ‘old Hankey Pankey,’ seeing we were a trifle short in our range, steamed on after them so that they might have the full benefit of all our battery—the water now churning up over the gunwale of the cutter as she dragged us on astern of her, the bow of the boat high in air, while we were all the more depressed aft from having the other boats behind us.On flew the dhows, on raced theMermaid, flopping her tail as represented by the boats in tow, for we did wag about pretty considerably, as one of our men who was half a Yankee said; until, presently, on the water showing signs of shoaling, theMermaidbrought up broadside on and began pitching shot and shell as fast as the men could work her batteries at the dhows, which were now well inshore and almost on the rocks—which latter seemed to jut out from this coast in the most shapeless, uncanny fashion, like the solitary tusk or two still possessed by some nearly toothless old hag.‘Bang, smash, boom!’ went our guns, the fire bursting forth from the ship’s side in the centre of puff-balls of smoke, accompanied by the hurtling sound of the shot through the air, and the dull intonation the shell gave out after the first report, when these missiles discharged their contents around their target. ‘Bang, smash, boom!’It must have been pretty lively for the Arabs: too warm after a bit to be pleasant!So ‘old Hankey Pankey’ appeared to think; and, when our guns had fired about a couple of rounds each all round, the bugle sounded the ‘cease fire,’ and he came aft and hailed us.“Mr Dabchick,” he called out, “I’m going to cast you off, and you will pull straight for the shore and capture those dhows as best you can, while I will cover your advance with the guns of the ship. Recollect, you are in command of the expedition and that Mr Doyle in the cutter, and Mr Chisholm in the whaler, are under your orders; so, you can do as you think best when you get alongside them. I would divide my forces, Dabchick, if I were you; but, you must exercise your own judgment when the time comes!”“Aye, aye, sir,” replied the lieutenant, as heartily as if he had just been told he was made ‘first luff’ of the flagship—for, though sleepy sometimes when on watch of a night, he was a plucky little chap, with a lot of go in him; and then, as our painter was sent adrift and the slack hauled in by the bowmen, he sang out to us, “Oars! Off we go, my lads!”This was the signal for a ringing cheer from all hands in our boat, as well as from those in the second cutter and whaler, which had been likewise cast off from the tow-rope; while ‘old Hankey Pankey’ himself jumped up into the rigging of theMermaidas we started away, and led a return cheer from the ship as the three of us raced in line abreast towards the dhows inshore.The sun was now well up in the sky, and it was blazing hot over our heads, but I don’t think a man of us minded this, as we pulled away, like Britons, and as lightheartedly as some of us used to do in the old days when we belonged to theSaint Vincent, and were struggling our best to be the first boat at our summer breaking-up sports so as to win the Admiralty medal!But, there was something more than a medal at stake now, aye, or a money prize either; for we were battling, as we all well knew, mere lads though most of us were, for our Queen—God bless her!—and that country whose flag waves over every sea, and on whose dominions, stretching from east to west all round the globe, the sun never sets!Nearer and nearer we got into the coast, all hands pulling with a will; Larrikins, who was stroke, giving the fellows a touch of his old style when he rowed in the captain’s gig of the training-ship; the whaler, with the middy in command, running us hard, though, and the second cutter labouring up astern.As we approached the dhows, however, Mr Dabchick ordered us to pull easy, singing out to the other boats to spread out to leeward and make for the batilla, which had remained behind like a watchdog guarding the smaller craft, while we attacked her in the bows.The breeze was now dying away, the wind blowing off shore; and the Somalis, seeing this, triced up their lateen sails, turning round like rats driven up into a corner and facing us, at bay.Captain Hankey, who had been pitching shot and shell into them from the moment of our casting off from theMermaid, some of the missiles describing beautiful curves over our heads as we pulled in, now ceased firing, for fear of hitting us as well as the foe; and so, the Arabs were able to concentrate all their energies towards resisting us, the batilla sending some round shot in our direction from an old brass carronade she had mounted on her high forecastle, one of which, skipping along the water as if it were playing ducks and drakes, shaved off three of our oar-blades on the starboard side.This did not stop us, though.“Shift over, bow and the next man,” shouted out Mr Dabchick. “Now, all together, pull away, my lads, and let us go for them!”The cheer that we gave on starting away from theMermaidwas nothing to what our chaps roared out now from their lusty throats; as, making the water boil with the blades of our oars, we rowed hand over fist right at the batilla’s bows, the second cutter making for her stern while the whaler, by Mr Dabchick’s directions, pulled athwart the hawse of a smaller dhow that had stayed her flight landwards and was coming back, apparently, to the assistance of her big consort.‘Crash!’ came the stem of our boat against the side of the batilla at the same time that her old carronade, which had been loaded this time with bullets and scrap iron like a shell, and having its muzzle depressed, went off, right in our faces, with a ‘Bang!’One of the fellows forward, the bowman on the port side of the cutter, poor chap, tumbled backward overboard, uttering a wild shriek as he fell; but otherwise the discharge did not do us much damage, and in another second we seemed all scrambling up into the dhow and were at it hammer and tongs.It was my first fight and I can’t forget it.Every single incident that occurred stands out as clearly before me now as if I were going over it all again!We had, of course, all loaded up with ball-cartridge and fixed the sword-bayonets to our rifles before we got up to the Arabs; and, by the orders of our commander, we gave them a volley at close quarters as we boarded.But, after this, I don’t think any one thought of loading or firing again, save one or two of the fellows astern and the coxswain of the boat, being too busy guarding the slashes the Somalis made at us with their long scimitar-like swords that were curved like reaping-hooks, and the blows they dealt us with their unwieldy matchlocks, which they used in club fashion.It was a terrible struggle trying to climb the high overhanging sides of the batilla in the face of such tooth and nail opposition, the beggars fighting, as Mr Gresham had said, like veritable wild cats!We were beaten back into the cutter twice, after some half a dozen of us had been wounded, some desperately; and then the second cutter, which could not manage to board her astern, coming up to our help and sheering in alongside us, our gallant leader Mr Dabchick determined on one grand final rush.
“On deck, there!” shouted out the lookout-man again, almost before the sound of Lieutenant Dabchick’s last yawn had died away in the distance, like a groan or its echo. “There’s a whole fleet o’ dhows a-creeping up under the lee of the land and running before the wind to the north’ard, sir!”
This stopped Mr Dabchick’s yawns and made him open his sleepy eyes pretty wide, I can tell you!
“A fleet of dhows, lookout-man!” he cried, fully awake at last, not only in his own person, but as regarded the responsibility attaching to him should he unhappily let our prey escape and so foil his captain’s carefully arranged plan. “Are you certain, Adams?”
“Not a doubt of it, sir,” replied the captain of the foretop, in an assured tone that expressed his confidence in his own statement. “They’re Arab dhows sure enough, sir. One—two—three; and, ay, there is two more on ’em jist rounding the p’int—that makes five on ’em, sir, all bearing to the north as fast as they can go, with slack sheets and the breeze dead astern, which they are bringing up with them. They’re right off our weather beam, now, sir.”
“The devil!” ejaculated Lieutenant Dabchick, in his flurry using a stronger expression than he would probably have done had ‘old Hankey Pankey’ been on the quarter-deck, rushing into the chart-house on the bridge and snatching up a telescope, which he brought to bear on the horizon in the direction indicated by Adams in the foretop above, whose point of vantage, of course, gave him a wider range of view. “On our weather beam, you say?”
“Ay, ay, sir,” roared back the lookout; “they’re right abreast of our forrud funnel now, sir.”
Mr Dabchick’s hand shook so much from excitement that he could not hold the glass steady; so, propping it up athwart the stanchion at the weather end of the bridge, and sprawling out his legs to give him a good purchase, he worked the telescope about till he at last spotted the objects Adams had seen.
“By the Lord Harry!” exclaimed the lieutenant, “you are right, Adams. I must send down and tell the captain at once.”
With that, he hailed the midshipman of the watch and despatched him with the news to Captain Hankey’s cabin aft; while at the same time he rang the engine-room gong, and shouted down through the voice-tube to tell them below to ‘stand by,’ as probably we would want steam up in a very short time; directing also the coxswains of the boats alongside to make ready, as well as passing the word forward for the boatswain’s mates and the drummer and bugler to be handy when wanted.
This done, all his orders having been issued and executed in less time than I take to tell of it, Mr Dabchick resumed his interrupted, if monotonous, task of walking up and down the bridge; stopping whenever he had to slew round, at the end of his promenade, to take another squint at the dhows, and warning Adams, though that worthy needed no such injunction, to ‘keep his eye on them.’
Mr Dabchick had just sung out this for the second time on getting back to the weather end of the bridge, when Captain Hankey, accompanied by Mr Gresham and a lot of the other officers, rushed on deck, some of them half dressed and buckling on their gear as they came hurrying along.
‘Old Hankey Pankey’ made straight for the bridge, the first lieutenant close at his heels.
“Ha, Mr Dabchick,” cried the captain, as he skated up the iron ladder leading from the deck below to the chart-house, taking three steps at each bound, “so you’ve sighted those beggars at last, eh?”
“Yes, sir,” said the second lieutenant, smiling, and rubbing his hands, having put down his telescope on top of the movable slab on the bridge the navigator had for spreading out his charts; Mr Dabchick assuming an air of great complacency, as if it were entirely through his exertions the dhows had been seen or were there at all—“I think you’ll find ’em there to win’ard all right, sir.”
‘Old Hankey Pankey’ caught up the telescope that Mr Dabchick had just deposited on the slab, putting it to his eye.
“Yes, they are dhows sure enough, Gresham,” he said to the first lieutenant, after a brief inspection of the craft, which were stealing past us under the loom of the land far away to the westward. “No doubt, they are the very rascals who plundered the wreck we saw yesterday, and as likely as not murdered all the people on board! They are making for the same spot again, too, to pick up the rest of the loot they have not yet taken off; but we’ll stop their little game. Bugler, sound the ‘assembly’! Drummer, beat to ‘quarters’!”
The blare of bugle and beat of drum rang through the ship, mingled with the hiss and roar of the steam rushing up the funnels; the captain, as he sang out his orders to those on deck, mechanically, from force of habit, putting his hand on the engine-room telegraph to prepare the ‘greasers’ in the flat below, and rapidly shouting down the voice-tube, as soon as the electric bell on the bridge gave a responsive tinkle, that they were to ‘get up steam’ as quickly as possible.
But, there was no fear of our alarming the enemy with the noise of our preparations, not even when the boatswain’s mates added their quota to the din after the bugle was sounded. They were too far off, and, besides, we were to leeward, and twice the row we made could not have reached their ears.
All of our fellows below belonging to the port watch came tumbling up the hatchways in a jiffy on hearing the ‘assembly,’ clutching up their rifles and sword-bayonets from the arm-racks on the lower deck; while we of the starboard, who were already up from having the middle watch, proceeded at a break-neck pace to fetch ours.
Then the gunner took his keys from their appointed place outside the door of the captain’s cabin and went below to open the magazines in the flat appropriated to their combustible contents, in company with a working party to attend to the ammunition hoists; while the marine artillerymen and crews of the main-deck battery and upper-deck machine-guns hurried to their stations under charge of “Gunnery Jack,” the lieutenant whose special function was to see to our little barkers.
A minute later, when those whose duties did not take them elsewhere were ranged along the upper deck, Captain Hankey, who had gone down to his cabin in the meantime and buckled on his sword to be in proper fighting rig, came back on the bridge, where he remained in conversation with Mr Gresham until the ‘orderly’ midshipman—I don’t mean to say that the others were disorderly, but only just wish to specify those who were told off to carry messages from the various parts of the ship, when at ‘quarters,’ to the captain, they acting, so to speak, as his aides-de-camp on board—returned to say all was as it should be.
“Now then, Gresham,” said ‘old Hankey Pankey,’ drawing himself up to his full height, and looking every inch what he was, an officer and a gentleman—ay, and a sailor too, as plucky as they make them—“I think we’d better begin, or those beggars will get too far ahead, and a stern chase, you know, is a long chase. Bugler, sound ‘man and arm boats’!”
The boy, a young marine, who did this part of our musical business, puffed out his cheeks, inflating his lungs the while, and blew a blast that seemed to make the air shake; the boatswain’s mates, who always act on such occasions like the chorus at the opera, screeching with their whistles fore and aft up and down the hatchways, repeating with an exasperating repetition the same order little Joey the bugler had already given; while, all the officers who had charge of the respective boats stood up at the gangways to inspect the crews of these as they went down the side to take their places on the thwarts, so as to see they were all properly equipped.
“Mr Gresham,” said Captain Hankey to the first lieutenant, “I should like you to go in the steam pinnace and work away to win’ard towards Ras Hafim—you know the place we marked on the chart last night above Binna?”
“Very good, sir,” replied Mr Gresham, taking up a revolver and box of cartridges he had brought on deck with him, and going towards the after gangway, abreast of which the steam pinnace was lying, buzzing away like a little wasp alongside; the intimation on the part of our captain that he would ‘like’ a thing being done being quite equivalent to a command to do it! “You mean, sir, that queer-shaped headland some twenty miles down the coast?”
“Yes, we passed it when we came back from the wreck,” replied ‘old Hankey Pankey,’ pointing with his hand away to windward. “You will then cut off the retreat of the dhows, while we head them off farther up the coast.”
“Very good, sir,” said Mr Gresham, accepting this as a final dismissal. “I will attend to your orders, sir. By George, those Arabs will have to be precious sharp if they manage to steal back past us to their haunts!”
So saying, Mr Gresham went down the side, without any further palaver; and, when he was seated in the sternsheets, the pinnace went off in a bee-line to the sou’-west in the teeth of the monsoon, which was beginning to blow now pretty briskly.
The first cutter was then piped away, Larrikins and I being the two first to jump aboard her when the bowman laid hold of her painter and drew her up alongside.
Lieutenant Dabchick came with us in command, as soon as she was fully manned and armed, an ammunition-chest being lowered down with a supply of ‘pills and pepper’ for the little nine-pounder boat-gun we carried in our bows; when, we sheered away from the ship’s side and lay on our oars, and the second cutter hauled up alongside to receive her crew and equipment like ourselves.
This did not take long in doing—the whaler being also manned and the senior midshipman sent in charge of her, with the boatswain to check his rashness; and then, the three of us, first cutter, second cutter and whaler, were all taken in tow by theMermaid, which went off full speed ahead after the Arab dhows that were now only some five miles off us, the cruiser shaping a slanting course so as to prevent them from making for the wide stretch of open water that lay to the north’ard, should they try to escape in that way.
Their retreat to the port whence they had sailed was cut off by the pinnace; and, as their only refuge now when we overhauled them would be the rock-bound coast lying between Binna and Ras Hafim, they were, as I heard Mr Dabchick say to the coxswain, ‘between the devil and the deep sea!’
The reckless beggars, too, were so busy looking out in the direction of the stranded steamer for which they were making, that somehow or other they did not catch sight of us until they were nearly within easy range of our six-inch breechloaders; the leading dhow, which was what the Arabs call a ‘batilla,’ and carried two large lugs or lateen sails on wide yards, besides a sort of square jib forwards, rigged out on a bowsprit like a spritsail boom, caught sight of us as we luffed up to let fly at her.
For a second or two they seemed all of a heap, like a covey of frightened partridges; and then, getting their tacks aboard as smartly as if they were English seamen and not rascally Somali Arabs, they hauled their wind and made in for the shore, thinking, no doubt, ‘Old Nick’ was after them.
They were not far out in this surmise, if such should have crossed their minds, as they very quickly found out.
TheMermaidyawed off her course, swirling us round in her wake as our tow-rope slackened and then grew taut again, all in an instant; and, then, bang belched out one of our big hundred-pounder quick-firing guns that we carried on the upper deck fore and aft, pitching a shell that burst right over the rearmost dhow.
This made them quicken their movements if possible; while ‘old Hankey Pankey,’ seeing we were a trifle short in our range, steamed on after them so that they might have the full benefit of all our battery—the water now churning up over the gunwale of the cutter as she dragged us on astern of her, the bow of the boat high in air, while we were all the more depressed aft from having the other boats behind us.
On flew the dhows, on raced theMermaid, flopping her tail as represented by the boats in tow, for we did wag about pretty considerably, as one of our men who was half a Yankee said; until, presently, on the water showing signs of shoaling, theMermaidbrought up broadside on and began pitching shot and shell as fast as the men could work her batteries at the dhows, which were now well inshore and almost on the rocks—which latter seemed to jut out from this coast in the most shapeless, uncanny fashion, like the solitary tusk or two still possessed by some nearly toothless old hag.
‘Bang, smash, boom!’ went our guns, the fire bursting forth from the ship’s side in the centre of puff-balls of smoke, accompanied by the hurtling sound of the shot through the air, and the dull intonation the shell gave out after the first report, when these missiles discharged their contents around their target. ‘Bang, smash, boom!’
It must have been pretty lively for the Arabs: too warm after a bit to be pleasant!
So ‘old Hankey Pankey’ appeared to think; and, when our guns had fired about a couple of rounds each all round, the bugle sounded the ‘cease fire,’ and he came aft and hailed us.
“Mr Dabchick,” he called out, “I’m going to cast you off, and you will pull straight for the shore and capture those dhows as best you can, while I will cover your advance with the guns of the ship. Recollect, you are in command of the expedition and that Mr Doyle in the cutter, and Mr Chisholm in the whaler, are under your orders; so, you can do as you think best when you get alongside them. I would divide my forces, Dabchick, if I were you; but, you must exercise your own judgment when the time comes!”
“Aye, aye, sir,” replied the lieutenant, as heartily as if he had just been told he was made ‘first luff’ of the flagship—for, though sleepy sometimes when on watch of a night, he was a plucky little chap, with a lot of go in him; and then, as our painter was sent adrift and the slack hauled in by the bowmen, he sang out to us, “Oars! Off we go, my lads!”
This was the signal for a ringing cheer from all hands in our boat, as well as from those in the second cutter and whaler, which had been likewise cast off from the tow-rope; while ‘old Hankey Pankey’ himself jumped up into the rigging of theMermaidas we started away, and led a return cheer from the ship as the three of us raced in line abreast towards the dhows inshore.
The sun was now well up in the sky, and it was blazing hot over our heads, but I don’t think a man of us minded this, as we pulled away, like Britons, and as lightheartedly as some of us used to do in the old days when we belonged to theSaint Vincent, and were struggling our best to be the first boat at our summer breaking-up sports so as to win the Admiralty medal!
But, there was something more than a medal at stake now, aye, or a money prize either; for we were battling, as we all well knew, mere lads though most of us were, for our Queen—God bless her!—and that country whose flag waves over every sea, and on whose dominions, stretching from east to west all round the globe, the sun never sets!
Nearer and nearer we got into the coast, all hands pulling with a will; Larrikins, who was stroke, giving the fellows a touch of his old style when he rowed in the captain’s gig of the training-ship; the whaler, with the middy in command, running us hard, though, and the second cutter labouring up astern.
As we approached the dhows, however, Mr Dabchick ordered us to pull easy, singing out to the other boats to spread out to leeward and make for the batilla, which had remained behind like a watchdog guarding the smaller craft, while we attacked her in the bows.
The breeze was now dying away, the wind blowing off shore; and the Somalis, seeing this, triced up their lateen sails, turning round like rats driven up into a corner and facing us, at bay.
Captain Hankey, who had been pitching shot and shell into them from the moment of our casting off from theMermaid, some of the missiles describing beautiful curves over our heads as we pulled in, now ceased firing, for fear of hitting us as well as the foe; and so, the Arabs were able to concentrate all their energies towards resisting us, the batilla sending some round shot in our direction from an old brass carronade she had mounted on her high forecastle, one of which, skipping along the water as if it were playing ducks and drakes, shaved off three of our oar-blades on the starboard side.
This did not stop us, though.
“Shift over, bow and the next man,” shouted out Mr Dabchick. “Now, all together, pull away, my lads, and let us go for them!”
The cheer that we gave on starting away from theMermaidwas nothing to what our chaps roared out now from their lusty throats; as, making the water boil with the blades of our oars, we rowed hand over fist right at the batilla’s bows, the second cutter making for her stern while the whaler, by Mr Dabchick’s directions, pulled athwart the hawse of a smaller dhow that had stayed her flight landwards and was coming back, apparently, to the assistance of her big consort.
‘Crash!’ came the stem of our boat against the side of the batilla at the same time that her old carronade, which had been loaded this time with bullets and scrap iron like a shell, and having its muzzle depressed, went off, right in our faces, with a ‘Bang!’
One of the fellows forward, the bowman on the port side of the cutter, poor chap, tumbled backward overboard, uttering a wild shriek as he fell; but otherwise the discharge did not do us much damage, and in another second we seemed all scrambling up into the dhow and were at it hammer and tongs.
It was my first fight and I can’t forget it.
Every single incident that occurred stands out as clearly before me now as if I were going over it all again!
We had, of course, all loaded up with ball-cartridge and fixed the sword-bayonets to our rifles before we got up to the Arabs; and, by the orders of our commander, we gave them a volley at close quarters as we boarded.
But, after this, I don’t think any one thought of loading or firing again, save one or two of the fellows astern and the coxswain of the boat, being too busy guarding the slashes the Somalis made at us with their long scimitar-like swords that were curved like reaping-hooks, and the blows they dealt us with their unwieldy matchlocks, which they used in club fashion.
It was a terrible struggle trying to climb the high overhanging sides of the batilla in the face of such tooth and nail opposition, the beggars fighting, as Mr Gresham had said, like veritable wild cats!
We were beaten back into the cutter twice, after some half a dozen of us had been wounded, some desperately; and then the second cutter, which could not manage to board her astern, coming up to our help and sheering in alongside us, our gallant leader Mr Dabchick determined on one grand final rush.
Chapter Twenty Four.We Nearly Lose the Cutter!“Larrikins,” said I, whispering in his ear, as we stood up together just in the rear of Mr Dabchick, balancing myself on one of the thwarts forward, being about to make another spring for the side of the big dhow, while Larry shoved a cartridge hastily into the breech of his rifle, and was in the act of taking a pot shot at a chap who seemed to be the skipper of the batilla and had a nose on him like the beak of a Brazilian parrot, “little Dabby means business!” He did.Hardly had I said this to my chum, making him miss his aim, I am sorry to say, at the Arab beggar, who made a cut at me the next minute and would have sliced off my starboard fin if I had not drawn back rather hurriedly, ere our lieutenant sprang on to the back of Jones, the other bowman, and then jumped right clean amongst the mass of Arabs in the bows of the dhow.“Come on, my lads!” he cried, in the middle of his jump; “follow me!”This was enough for us.Without an instant’s reflection I imitated Dabby, using Jones’s back as a scaling-ladder, as did half a dozen other fellows; until the poor beggar was pretty nearly trodden flat into the bottom of the boat.‘Whiz!’ went the matchlock balls of the Arabs past our ears; ‘whir–r–ir’ sliced away their scimitars right and left in the air, with the regularity of so many flails at work on a barn-floor; but we did not mind them a bit, for the ‘phit—phit—phit!’ of the bullets from our Martini rifles pattered amongst the bronze-coloured rascals like hail, deadening the whiz of their longer-barrelled weapons, while ever and anon the Maxim of the second cutter grunted out a fusillade of grape, making a noise like that of an old man with a bad cough on a winter’s night going up to bed in the cold.“Ship my rowlocks!” as father would have said had he been there, but the Maxim made some of those blessed Arabs cough, I can tell you; ay, and put a goodish few to bed too!“Lor’,” cried Larrikins, who was fighting like a bulldog by my side, “I never did see, blame me Tom, sich a bloomin’ scrimmage in me life as this yere!”It was all that, it being a case of give and take all round, for the Somalis made a rare stand.They went their best for Dabby, seeing that he was our leader; but the plucky little chap, with his sword in one hand and a revolver in the other, stood amongst them as brave as you please, cutting at this one, peppering at that, and guarding in some miraculous way a hundred blows aimed at him from every side.Don’t think, though, that we left our officer to battle against the Arabs single-handed.Not we.I do not say it in any boasting sense, will you please recollect, for I am sure that no one who knows me would accuse me of being a braggart; but, as I am telling of events that really happened, I must speak the truth, and so to do this I am obliged to say that I was one of the first to spring to Mr Dabchick’s side after he boarded the dhow, Larrikins coming next with a mad leap that nearly scrunched my toes off, and then the coxswain of the cutter and the rest of the chaps.Striking out with our cutlasses, we soon cleared a circle round the lieutenant; and then, forming up like a breastwork in front of him, we rushed at the remaining Somalis in the bows, hurling over into the sea, with the impetus of our charge, those whom we did not cut down outright, or settle with a thrust from our straight-edged blades.The crew of our other boat had meanwhile climbed aboard amidships, where they soon despatched the rest of the Arabs holding out there, a well-aimed shot from the rifle of Larrikins potting the green-turbaned chief of the gang.With his fall, all opposition now ceased, and we took possession of our prize; some twenty odd Somalis only remaining in our hands as prisoners, the others having been all slain in open combat, or drowned when they tumbled over the side.We had not escaped scatheless either, for we lost three men in our boat, besides Bartlett the bowman, and had five wounded, the coxswain seriously; while Larrikins had a bullet through the fleshy part of his forearm, and I received a knock on the knee from a friendly Arab which made me limp for more than a month afterwards.The second cutter, however, came off the worst, Mr Doyle, our junior lieutenant, having been shot through the lungs with a jagged matchlock ball in the desperate hand-to-hand fighting that ensued on her first attack, which the Somalis repulsed, twelve more men of her complement, besides, being either killed or wounded.Poor Mr Doyle died shortly after we effected the capture of the batilla; but, being a quiet, inoffensive sort of man, I don’t think his loss affected any one very much, while Mr Chisholm the middy, who was made an acting sub-lieutenant in his place—such is the fortune of war—was the reverse of sad when he came up to us presently in the whaler, towing the smaller dhow, which he had very pluckily captured to his own cheek.The rest of the Somali craft had been run ashore on the rocks to escape our clutches, reminding me of my old chum Mick one day, when we were walking along the Gosport ramparts and it was raining, proceeding carefully to take off his clothes and go into the water, to ‘kape himself dhry,’ as he explained to me in his Irish way.So now the Arabs had knocked their dhows to pieces to save them; but the men who manned them, as well as the poor slaves with which the majority of them had been crammed, we found, on pulling inshore to examine them later on, had all got safely beyond our reach, far away amid the khors of the desert coast of the barren and inhospitable Nogal country.To make matters certain that they should not be able to get the dhows afloat again in the event of their returning, as well as to revenge ourselves at being prevented from towing these off ourselves, so that we might obtain the usual bounty given by the Zanzibar prize court for their capture, we set fire to every single one of them, burning the lot to the water’s edge.The whaler assisted us at this job, the second cutter being sent back to the ship by Mr Dabchick to convey all our wounded comrades thither for medical treatment, as well as the body of Mr Doyle, and that of another poor fellow who had not gone overboard; we ourselves not yet returning to theMermaid, not rejoining her until our task was done, late in the afternoon.We buried the lieutenant and bluejacket who had fallen, at sunset; after which, hoisting in all our boats, the cruiser put on steam and made for Ras Hafim, picking up, when nearly abreast of the headland, just before dark, the steam pinnace—all the chaps aboard of which, from Mr Gresham downwards, getting quite angry when we told them of the little piece of business we had been engaged on up the coast, our shipmates being riled at having been left out in the cold and not sharing in our fun.Fun they thought it; but, if they had gone through the job of scrubbing down the thwarts and bottom boards of the cutter after the fray, as Larrikins and I had to do, mopping up the blood and gore, which was more than an inch deep, the fighting would not have seemed so jolly as their imaginations pictured it.Seeing nothing of our senior officer after picking up the pinnace, we proceeded down the coast in the direction of Zanzibar, running across him at last when near Mombassa.This was lucky for us; for, as soon as Captain Hankey had communicated with the flagship, he received fresh instructions that he was to keep guard on the district lying between Pemba on the south and Witu on the north; and, as Mombassa was about midway between the two points, we were, so to speak, in the very centre of our cruising ground.For the next few months, though, our work was not very lively, all of us belonging to the boats being now engaged on patrol duty and separated for weeks sometimes from our comrades on board the ship.The first and second cutters, the launch, and the steam pinnace were each provisioned and sent away to scout along the coast independently of each other, watching for dhows and any suspicious craft we might see making from the mainland for the islands, having orders to capture or destroy such as we found carrying slaves; theMermaid, our foster-mother, giving us a look-up in turn at our respective stations, to see how we were getting on, and supply us with any stores we might need in the grub and water line.It was a dreary task.Sometimes for days we would not sight a sail; and, keeping out to sea, so as to avoid observation from the shore, there was nothing to be seen that could distract one’s attention but the wide-stretching steel-blue surface of the limitless Indian Ocean, and the eternal coppery sky overhead, with never a cloud to shade us from the ever-blazing sun.The south-west monsoon was in full swing, and the weather, consequently, was cooler than usual—that was one comfort; but, the irksomeness of our life was almost unbearable, and we all longed for something to happen, no matter what, to break the monotony of our perpetual patrol.Of course, we did come across some dhows, one in particular, a large ‘bagala,’ a craft with a high square stern, and a prow like a goose-neck; while her poop resembled that of a Chinese junk, being only a trifle clumsier—if possible.We overhauled this hooker between Zanzibar and Pemba; and, as she was making for the latter island, where cloves are grown and a large number of slaves employed in their cultivation, the trade being the most important on the coast, we naturally thought we were going to make a big haul and get no end of bounty for the capture of the dhow.But, as luck would have it, when we boarded her, not a single nigger was aboard, nor was there any sign about her to show that she was fitted out for the contraband business, there being no second bamboo deck betwixt her hold and the upper one, which the slavers always have; and, though we rummaged her fore and aft, we could not tumble upon the special stock of rice and barricoes of water, which are always carried for the accommodation of the ebony passengers, if they have any.No, all was in order; her ‘reis,’ or skipper, a swarthy Arab, with the most diabolical expression I ever saw on human face, showing us his clearance paper, which had the stamp of the British Consulate, and described that he was bound on a trading voyage to Muscat.So we had to let him pass, the old rascal of a ‘reis’ grinning over her stern at us as the bagala made off, running before the wind; the hook-nosed Arab looking as pleased as Punch, and yet having a sort of sly, malicious twinkle in his eye, like that ‘Old Nick’ probably puts on ‘when he catches a churchwarden robbing a till,’ as Larrikins said.No wonder the old slave-dealer sniggered to himself; for we heard afterwards that he put in at Pangani the same night, after we were out of sight, beating down to the southward, and succeeded in running a cargo of the usual sort, the proceeds of the trip enabling him to retire from business and set up as a holy man for the rest of his life.Beyond boarding this dhow, though we saw some others at a distance which we were unable to forereach on, the beggars being too handy on a wind, we did not have a single exciting incident for the three months or more that we were detached from our ship; and all of us, as I have said, were longing for something to wake us up.This ‘something’ came at last.Ay; and in a most unexpected fashion, too!It was getting near the time for theMermaidto come and relieve us, and we were making for our rendezvous at Bagamoyo, to the south of Zanzibar, for her to pick us up.The south-west monsoon having slackened down a good deal within the last few days, though the month of August, when it usually blows with its greatest force, we were able to work well to windward; and we were rapidly closing on Bagamoyo, when the sea began to get up in a very strange manner, and the sky, which had been cloudless, as customary, since the morning, became clouded with masses of fleeting vapour that presently banked themselves on the horizon to the north.“I say, Draper,” said Mr Chisholm, who, since his promotion, had been appointed to the cutter, turning round to our coxswain, “what do you think of the weather?”“Think, sir?” rejoined Draper, who had served on the East African station before joining theMermaid, and ‘knew the ropes,’ as the saying goes. “I don’t think about it at all, sir.”“Well, well,” said Mr Chisholm, who was a jocular sort of young fellow and never hard on a man, besides which he knew Draper’s crusty way, “tell us what you know, then.”“Very good, sir,” replied our old shellback of a coxswain. “Then, I knows, sir, the monsoon’s on the shift, and we’re agoin’ to have a blow from the nor’ard afore dark.”“What do you advise our doing, coxen?”“Adwise, sir?” repeated Draper, as usual, after Mr Chisholm, his habit always when asked a question. “If I was you, sir, I’d up stick and run for it, sir, to the nearest port.”“The nearest port on our lee is Zanzibar,” said Mr Chisholm. “I suppose you mean to loo’ard, Draper?”“Aye, aye, sir, I means to loo’ard.”“Then you advise our putting up the helm and running for Zanzibar?”“Aye.”The cutter was rigged with a dipping lug and a spritsail; so, no sooner had crusty old Draper given his laconic answer to Mr Chisholm, than the latter sang out to Larrikins, who was in the bows.“Look out there forrud!” he cried. “Stand by to dip!”This is considered one of the smartest things in boat-sailing, the men having to be specially stationed for the purpose; but, as we had been living in the cutter now for three months, and had experience of her under any and every change of wind and sail, the operation did not occasion much difficulty to us.Larrikins, who was bowman, pressed out the fore part of the lug as soon as the yard was half lowered, while two other hands gathered the sheet of the sail forwards, and passed it round the mast as soon as Draper had put the helm up; when I and another chap who was aft with me, unhooked the sheet to port and then rehooked it to the starboard side, which was to windward now on the cutter’s head coming round, as she went off on the other tack.Gathering way in a minute or two as we eased off the sheet of the lug, the cutter went ahead at a great pace, making much better weather of it running before the wind, as was the case now, than she had lately, before we came about, when beating up to Bagamoyo; skimming over the broken surface of the sea, her bows and the deadwood of her keel forwards being clean out of the water sometimes as she jumped from wave to wave, and sending the spray she threw up as she came down bash on the top of some billow, right inboard, wetting us to the skin, and leaving a wake behind her like a millrace.We were steering almost due north now; and, looking ahead under the leech of the lugsail, I could see that the clouds we had observed before banked up on the horizon had crept up towards the zenith, spreading out laterally on either side, until half of the heavens was obscured.Then, all of a sudden, the wind dropped, as if done with a turn of the hand.“Look out there for your sheet!” cried old Draper, in a warning tone, assuming the direction of affairs and taking command of the boat unconsciously in the emergency, over the head of his officer, Mr Chisholm. “Let go your sheet, I say!”Bouncer the seaman, who sat on the after thwart and had charge of this, bungled about the job, having taken a turn with the end of the rope round the cleat, instead of holding it in his fist as he should have done; and the coxswain’s harsh repetition of the order in such an imperative tone seemed to flurry him, making him all the slower.“Hang it all, man!” shouted Mr Chisholm, taking up the cry, “let go the sheet at once!”Seeing what a fog Bouncer was in, besides which the sail was just then beginning to bulge back as the wind headed us, the boat rocking for an instant and then canting over as if she was going to capsize, I drew my knife and rushed to where he sat in the bottom of the boat, struggling with the sheet!
“Larrikins,” said I, whispering in his ear, as we stood up together just in the rear of Mr Dabchick, balancing myself on one of the thwarts forward, being about to make another spring for the side of the big dhow, while Larry shoved a cartridge hastily into the breech of his rifle, and was in the act of taking a pot shot at a chap who seemed to be the skipper of the batilla and had a nose on him like the beak of a Brazilian parrot, “little Dabby means business!” He did.
Hardly had I said this to my chum, making him miss his aim, I am sorry to say, at the Arab beggar, who made a cut at me the next minute and would have sliced off my starboard fin if I had not drawn back rather hurriedly, ere our lieutenant sprang on to the back of Jones, the other bowman, and then jumped right clean amongst the mass of Arabs in the bows of the dhow.
“Come on, my lads!” he cried, in the middle of his jump; “follow me!”
This was enough for us.
Without an instant’s reflection I imitated Dabby, using Jones’s back as a scaling-ladder, as did half a dozen other fellows; until the poor beggar was pretty nearly trodden flat into the bottom of the boat.
‘Whiz!’ went the matchlock balls of the Arabs past our ears; ‘whir–r–ir’ sliced away their scimitars right and left in the air, with the regularity of so many flails at work on a barn-floor; but we did not mind them a bit, for the ‘phit—phit—phit!’ of the bullets from our Martini rifles pattered amongst the bronze-coloured rascals like hail, deadening the whiz of their longer-barrelled weapons, while ever and anon the Maxim of the second cutter grunted out a fusillade of grape, making a noise like that of an old man with a bad cough on a winter’s night going up to bed in the cold.
“Ship my rowlocks!” as father would have said had he been there, but the Maxim made some of those blessed Arabs cough, I can tell you; ay, and put a goodish few to bed too!
“Lor’,” cried Larrikins, who was fighting like a bulldog by my side, “I never did see, blame me Tom, sich a bloomin’ scrimmage in me life as this yere!”
It was all that, it being a case of give and take all round, for the Somalis made a rare stand.
They went their best for Dabby, seeing that he was our leader; but the plucky little chap, with his sword in one hand and a revolver in the other, stood amongst them as brave as you please, cutting at this one, peppering at that, and guarding in some miraculous way a hundred blows aimed at him from every side.
Don’t think, though, that we left our officer to battle against the Arabs single-handed.
Not we.
I do not say it in any boasting sense, will you please recollect, for I am sure that no one who knows me would accuse me of being a braggart; but, as I am telling of events that really happened, I must speak the truth, and so to do this I am obliged to say that I was one of the first to spring to Mr Dabchick’s side after he boarded the dhow, Larrikins coming next with a mad leap that nearly scrunched my toes off, and then the coxswain of the cutter and the rest of the chaps.
Striking out with our cutlasses, we soon cleared a circle round the lieutenant; and then, forming up like a breastwork in front of him, we rushed at the remaining Somalis in the bows, hurling over into the sea, with the impetus of our charge, those whom we did not cut down outright, or settle with a thrust from our straight-edged blades.
The crew of our other boat had meanwhile climbed aboard amidships, where they soon despatched the rest of the Arabs holding out there, a well-aimed shot from the rifle of Larrikins potting the green-turbaned chief of the gang.
With his fall, all opposition now ceased, and we took possession of our prize; some twenty odd Somalis only remaining in our hands as prisoners, the others having been all slain in open combat, or drowned when they tumbled over the side.
We had not escaped scatheless either, for we lost three men in our boat, besides Bartlett the bowman, and had five wounded, the coxswain seriously; while Larrikins had a bullet through the fleshy part of his forearm, and I received a knock on the knee from a friendly Arab which made me limp for more than a month afterwards.
The second cutter, however, came off the worst, Mr Doyle, our junior lieutenant, having been shot through the lungs with a jagged matchlock ball in the desperate hand-to-hand fighting that ensued on her first attack, which the Somalis repulsed, twelve more men of her complement, besides, being either killed or wounded.
Poor Mr Doyle died shortly after we effected the capture of the batilla; but, being a quiet, inoffensive sort of man, I don’t think his loss affected any one very much, while Mr Chisholm the middy, who was made an acting sub-lieutenant in his place—such is the fortune of war—was the reverse of sad when he came up to us presently in the whaler, towing the smaller dhow, which he had very pluckily captured to his own cheek.
The rest of the Somali craft had been run ashore on the rocks to escape our clutches, reminding me of my old chum Mick one day, when we were walking along the Gosport ramparts and it was raining, proceeding carefully to take off his clothes and go into the water, to ‘kape himself dhry,’ as he explained to me in his Irish way.
So now the Arabs had knocked their dhows to pieces to save them; but the men who manned them, as well as the poor slaves with which the majority of them had been crammed, we found, on pulling inshore to examine them later on, had all got safely beyond our reach, far away amid the khors of the desert coast of the barren and inhospitable Nogal country.
To make matters certain that they should not be able to get the dhows afloat again in the event of their returning, as well as to revenge ourselves at being prevented from towing these off ourselves, so that we might obtain the usual bounty given by the Zanzibar prize court for their capture, we set fire to every single one of them, burning the lot to the water’s edge.
The whaler assisted us at this job, the second cutter being sent back to the ship by Mr Dabchick to convey all our wounded comrades thither for medical treatment, as well as the body of Mr Doyle, and that of another poor fellow who had not gone overboard; we ourselves not yet returning to theMermaid, not rejoining her until our task was done, late in the afternoon.
We buried the lieutenant and bluejacket who had fallen, at sunset; after which, hoisting in all our boats, the cruiser put on steam and made for Ras Hafim, picking up, when nearly abreast of the headland, just before dark, the steam pinnace—all the chaps aboard of which, from Mr Gresham downwards, getting quite angry when we told them of the little piece of business we had been engaged on up the coast, our shipmates being riled at having been left out in the cold and not sharing in our fun.
Fun they thought it; but, if they had gone through the job of scrubbing down the thwarts and bottom boards of the cutter after the fray, as Larrikins and I had to do, mopping up the blood and gore, which was more than an inch deep, the fighting would not have seemed so jolly as their imaginations pictured it.
Seeing nothing of our senior officer after picking up the pinnace, we proceeded down the coast in the direction of Zanzibar, running across him at last when near Mombassa.
This was lucky for us; for, as soon as Captain Hankey had communicated with the flagship, he received fresh instructions that he was to keep guard on the district lying between Pemba on the south and Witu on the north; and, as Mombassa was about midway between the two points, we were, so to speak, in the very centre of our cruising ground.
For the next few months, though, our work was not very lively, all of us belonging to the boats being now engaged on patrol duty and separated for weeks sometimes from our comrades on board the ship.
The first and second cutters, the launch, and the steam pinnace were each provisioned and sent away to scout along the coast independently of each other, watching for dhows and any suspicious craft we might see making from the mainland for the islands, having orders to capture or destroy such as we found carrying slaves; theMermaid, our foster-mother, giving us a look-up in turn at our respective stations, to see how we were getting on, and supply us with any stores we might need in the grub and water line.
It was a dreary task.
Sometimes for days we would not sight a sail; and, keeping out to sea, so as to avoid observation from the shore, there was nothing to be seen that could distract one’s attention but the wide-stretching steel-blue surface of the limitless Indian Ocean, and the eternal coppery sky overhead, with never a cloud to shade us from the ever-blazing sun.
The south-west monsoon was in full swing, and the weather, consequently, was cooler than usual—that was one comfort; but, the irksomeness of our life was almost unbearable, and we all longed for something to happen, no matter what, to break the monotony of our perpetual patrol.
Of course, we did come across some dhows, one in particular, a large ‘bagala,’ a craft with a high square stern, and a prow like a goose-neck; while her poop resembled that of a Chinese junk, being only a trifle clumsier—if possible.
We overhauled this hooker between Zanzibar and Pemba; and, as she was making for the latter island, where cloves are grown and a large number of slaves employed in their cultivation, the trade being the most important on the coast, we naturally thought we were going to make a big haul and get no end of bounty for the capture of the dhow.
But, as luck would have it, when we boarded her, not a single nigger was aboard, nor was there any sign about her to show that she was fitted out for the contraband business, there being no second bamboo deck betwixt her hold and the upper one, which the slavers always have; and, though we rummaged her fore and aft, we could not tumble upon the special stock of rice and barricoes of water, which are always carried for the accommodation of the ebony passengers, if they have any.
No, all was in order; her ‘reis,’ or skipper, a swarthy Arab, with the most diabolical expression I ever saw on human face, showing us his clearance paper, which had the stamp of the British Consulate, and described that he was bound on a trading voyage to Muscat.
So we had to let him pass, the old rascal of a ‘reis’ grinning over her stern at us as the bagala made off, running before the wind; the hook-nosed Arab looking as pleased as Punch, and yet having a sort of sly, malicious twinkle in his eye, like that ‘Old Nick’ probably puts on ‘when he catches a churchwarden robbing a till,’ as Larrikins said.
No wonder the old slave-dealer sniggered to himself; for we heard afterwards that he put in at Pangani the same night, after we were out of sight, beating down to the southward, and succeeded in running a cargo of the usual sort, the proceeds of the trip enabling him to retire from business and set up as a holy man for the rest of his life.
Beyond boarding this dhow, though we saw some others at a distance which we were unable to forereach on, the beggars being too handy on a wind, we did not have a single exciting incident for the three months or more that we were detached from our ship; and all of us, as I have said, were longing for something to wake us up.
This ‘something’ came at last.
Ay; and in a most unexpected fashion, too!
It was getting near the time for theMermaidto come and relieve us, and we were making for our rendezvous at Bagamoyo, to the south of Zanzibar, for her to pick us up.
The south-west monsoon having slackened down a good deal within the last few days, though the month of August, when it usually blows with its greatest force, we were able to work well to windward; and we were rapidly closing on Bagamoyo, when the sea began to get up in a very strange manner, and the sky, which had been cloudless, as customary, since the morning, became clouded with masses of fleeting vapour that presently banked themselves on the horizon to the north.
“I say, Draper,” said Mr Chisholm, who, since his promotion, had been appointed to the cutter, turning round to our coxswain, “what do you think of the weather?”
“Think, sir?” rejoined Draper, who had served on the East African station before joining theMermaid, and ‘knew the ropes,’ as the saying goes. “I don’t think about it at all, sir.”
“Well, well,” said Mr Chisholm, who was a jocular sort of young fellow and never hard on a man, besides which he knew Draper’s crusty way, “tell us what you know, then.”
“Very good, sir,” replied our old shellback of a coxswain. “Then, I knows, sir, the monsoon’s on the shift, and we’re agoin’ to have a blow from the nor’ard afore dark.”
“What do you advise our doing, coxen?”
“Adwise, sir?” repeated Draper, as usual, after Mr Chisholm, his habit always when asked a question. “If I was you, sir, I’d up stick and run for it, sir, to the nearest port.”
“The nearest port on our lee is Zanzibar,” said Mr Chisholm. “I suppose you mean to loo’ard, Draper?”
“Aye, aye, sir, I means to loo’ard.”
“Then you advise our putting up the helm and running for Zanzibar?”
“Aye.”
The cutter was rigged with a dipping lug and a spritsail; so, no sooner had crusty old Draper given his laconic answer to Mr Chisholm, than the latter sang out to Larrikins, who was in the bows.
“Look out there forrud!” he cried. “Stand by to dip!”
This is considered one of the smartest things in boat-sailing, the men having to be specially stationed for the purpose; but, as we had been living in the cutter now for three months, and had experience of her under any and every change of wind and sail, the operation did not occasion much difficulty to us.
Larrikins, who was bowman, pressed out the fore part of the lug as soon as the yard was half lowered, while two other hands gathered the sheet of the sail forwards, and passed it round the mast as soon as Draper had put the helm up; when I and another chap who was aft with me, unhooked the sheet to port and then rehooked it to the starboard side, which was to windward now on the cutter’s head coming round, as she went off on the other tack.
Gathering way in a minute or two as we eased off the sheet of the lug, the cutter went ahead at a great pace, making much better weather of it running before the wind, as was the case now, than she had lately, before we came about, when beating up to Bagamoyo; skimming over the broken surface of the sea, her bows and the deadwood of her keel forwards being clean out of the water sometimes as she jumped from wave to wave, and sending the spray she threw up as she came down bash on the top of some billow, right inboard, wetting us to the skin, and leaving a wake behind her like a millrace.
We were steering almost due north now; and, looking ahead under the leech of the lugsail, I could see that the clouds we had observed before banked up on the horizon had crept up towards the zenith, spreading out laterally on either side, until half of the heavens was obscured.
Then, all of a sudden, the wind dropped, as if done with a turn of the hand.
“Look out there for your sheet!” cried old Draper, in a warning tone, assuming the direction of affairs and taking command of the boat unconsciously in the emergency, over the head of his officer, Mr Chisholm. “Let go your sheet, I say!”
Bouncer the seaman, who sat on the after thwart and had charge of this, bungled about the job, having taken a turn with the end of the rope round the cleat, instead of holding it in his fist as he should have done; and the coxswain’s harsh repetition of the order in such an imperative tone seemed to flurry him, making him all the slower.
“Hang it all, man!” shouted Mr Chisholm, taking up the cry, “let go the sheet at once!”
Seeing what a fog Bouncer was in, besides which the sail was just then beginning to bulge back as the wind headed us, the boat rocking for an instant and then canting over as if she was going to capsize, I drew my knife and rushed to where he sat in the bottom of the boat, struggling with the sheet!