at the flat-iron, cutting the trees on the banks into green chips.
Bai-Jove-Judson was at the wheel, and Mr. Davies and the current helped
the boat to an almost respectable degree of speed.
It was an exciting chase, but it did not last for more than five
minutes. The white gunboat fired again, and Mr. Davies in his
engine-room gave a wild shout.
‘What’s the matter? Hit?’ said Bai-Jove-Judson.
‘No, I’ve just seized of your roos-de-gare. Beg y’ pardon, sir.’
‘Right O! Just the half a fraction of a point more.’ The wheel turned
under the steady hand, as Bai-Jove-Judson watched his marks on the bank
falling in line swiftly as troops anxious to aid. The flat-iron smelt
the shoal-water under her, checked for an instant, and went on. ‘Now
we’re over. Come along, you thieves, there!’ said Judson.
The white gunboat, too hurried even to fire, was storming in the wake
of the flat-iron, steering as she steered. This was unfortunate,
because the lighter craft was dead over the missing buoy.
‘What you do here?’ shouted a voice from the bows.
‘I’m going on. Sit tight. Now you’re arranged for.’
There was a crash and a clatter as the white gun-boat’s nose took the
shoal, and the brown mud boiled up in oozy circles under her forefoot.
Then the current caught her stern on the starboard side and drove her
broadside on to the shoal, slowly and gracefully. There she heeled at
an undignified angle, and her crew yelled aloud.
‘Neat! Oh, damn neat!’ quoth Mr. Davies, dancing on the engine-room
plates, while the Kroo stokers beamed.
The flat-iron turned up-stream again, and passed under the hove-up
starboard side of the white gunboat, to be received with howls and
imprecations in a strange tongue. The stranded boat, exposed even to
her lower strakes, was as defenceless as a turtle on its back, without
the advantage of the turtle’s plating. And the one big bluff gun in the
bows of the flat-iron was unpleasantly near.
But the captain was valiant and swore mightily. Bai-Jove-Judson took no
sort of notice. His business was to go up the river.
‘We will come in a flotilla of boats and ecrazer your vile tricks,’
said the captain, with language that need not be published.
Then said Bai-Jove-Judson, who was a linguist: ‘You stayo where you
areo, or I’ll leave a holo in your bottomo that will make you muchos
perforatados.’
There was a great deal of mixed language in reply, but Bai-Jove-Judson
was out of hearing in a few minutes, and Mr. Davies, himself a man of
few words, confided to one of his subordinates that Lieutenant Judson
was ‘a most remarkable prompt officer in a way of putting it.’
For two hours the flat-iron pawed madly through the muddy water, and
that which had been at first a mutter became a distinct rumble.
‘Was war declared?’ said Mr. Davies, and Bai-Jove-Judson laughed.
‘Then, damn his eyes, he might have spoilt my pretty little engines.
There’s war up there, though.’
The next bend brought them full in sight of a small but lively village,
built round a whitewashed mud house of some pretensions. There were
scores and scores of saddle-coloured soldiery in dirty white uniforms
running to and fro and shouting round a man in a litter, and on a
gentle slope that ran inland for four or five miles something like a
brisk battle was raging round a rude stockade. A smell of unburied
carcasses floated through the air and vexed the sensitive nose of Mr.
Davies, who spat over the side.
‘I want to get this gun on that house,’ said Bai-Jove-Judson,
indicating the superior dwelling over whose flat roof floated the blue
and white flag. The little twin screws kicked up the water exactly as
a hen’s legs kick in the dust before she settles down to a bath. The
little boat moved uneasily from left to right, backed, yawed again,
went ahead, and at last the gray, blunt gun’s nose was held as straight
as a rifle-barrel on the mark indicated. Then Mr. Davies allowed the
whistle to speak as it is not allowed to speak in Her Majesty’s service
on account of waste of steam. The soldiery of the village gathered into
knots and groups and bunches, and the firing up the hill ceased, and
every one except the crew of the flat-iron yelled aloud. Something like
an English cheer came down wind.
‘Our chaps in mischief for sure, probably,’ said Mr. Davies. ‘They must
have declared war weeks ago, in a kind of way, seems to me.’
‘Hold her steady, you son of a soldier!’ shouted Bai-Jove-Judson, as
the muzzle fell off the white house.
Something rang as loudly as a ship’s bell on the forward plates of the
flat-iron, something spluttered in the water, and another thing cut a
groove in the deck planking an inch in front of Bai-Jove-Judson’s left
foot. The saddle-coloured soldiery were firing as the mood took them,
and the man in the litter waved a shining sword. The muzzle of the big
gun kicked down a fraction as it was laid on the mud wall at the bottom
of the house garden. Ten pounds of gun-powder shut up in a hundred
pounds of metal was its charge. Three or four yards of the mud wall
jumped up a little, as a man jumps when he is caught in the small of
the back with a knee-cap, and then fell forward, spreading fan-wise in
the fall. The soldiery fired no more that day, and Judson saw an old
black woman climb to the flat roof of the house. She fumbled for a time
with the flag halliards, then, finding that they were jammed, took off
her one garment, which happened to be an Isabella-coloured petticoat,
and waved it impatiently. The man in the litter flourished a white
handkerchief, and Bai-Jove-Judson grinned. ‘Now we’ll give ’em one up
the hill. Round with her, Mr. Davies. Curse the man who invented those
floating gun-platforms! When can I pitch in a notice without slaying
one of those little devils?’
The side of the slope was speckled with men returning in a disorderly
fashion to the river-front. Behind them marched a small but very
compact body of men who had filed out of the stockade. These last
dragged quick-firing guns with them.
‘Bai Jove, it’s a regular army. I wonder whose,’ said Bai-Jove-Judson,
and he waited developments. The descending troops met and mixed with
the troops in the village, and, with the litter in the centre, crowded
down to the river, till the men with the quick-firing guns came up
behind them. Then they divided left and right and the detachment
marched through.
‘Heave these damned things over!’ said the leader of the party, and one
after another ten little gatlings splashed into the muddy water. The
flat-iron lay close to the bank.
‘When you’re _quite_ done,’ said Bai-Jove-Judson politely, ‘would you
mind telling me what’s the matter? I’m in charge here.’
‘We’re the Pioneers of the General Development Company,’ said the
leader. ‘These little bounders have been hammering us in lager for
twelve hours, and we’re getting rid of their gatlings. Had to climb out
and take them; but they’ve snaffled the lock-actions. Glad to see you.’
‘Any one hurt?’
‘No one killed exactly; but we’re very dry.’
‘Can you hold your men?’
The man turned round and looked at his command with a grin. There were
seventy of them, all dusty and unkempt.
‘We shan’t sack this ash-bin, if that’s what you mean. We’re mostly
gentlemen here, though we don’t look it.’
‘All right. Send the head of this post, or fort, or village, or
whatever it is, aboard, and make what arrangements you can for your
men.’
‘We’ll find some barrack accommodation somewhere. Hullo! You in the
litter there, go aboard the gunboat.’ The command wheeled round, pushed
through the dislocated soldiery, and began to search through the
village for spare huts.
The little man in the litter came aboard smiling nervously. He was in
the fullest of full uniform, with many yards of gold lace and dangling
chains. Also he wore very large spurs; the nearest horse being not more
than four hundred miles away. ‘My children,’ said he, facing the silent
soldiery, ‘lay aside your arms.’
Most of the men had dropped them already and were sitting down to
smoke. ‘Let nothing,’ he added in his own tongue, ‘tempt you to kill
these who have sought your protection.’
‘Now,’ said Bai-Jove-Judson, on whom the last remark was lost, ‘will
you have the goodness to explain what the deuce you mean by all this
nonsense?’
‘It was of a necessitate,’ said the little man. ‘The operations of war
are unconformible. I am the Governor and I operate Captain. Be’old my
little sword!’
‘Confound your little sword, sir. I don’t want it. You’ve fired on our
flag. You’ve been firing at our people here for a week, and I’ve been
fired at coming up the river.’
‘Ah! The _Guadala_. She have misconstrued you for a slaver possibly.
How are the _Guadala_?’
‘Mistook a ship of Her Majesty’s navy for a slaver! _You_ mistake _any_
craft for a slaver. Bai Jove, sir, I’ve a good mind to hang you at the
yard-arm!’
There was nothing nearer that terrible spar than the walking-stick in
the rack of Judson’s cabin. The Governor looked at the one mast and
smiled a deprecating smile.
‘The position is embarrassment,’ he said. ‘Captain, do you think those
illustrious traders burn my capital? My people will give them beer.’
‘Never mind the traders, I want an explanation.’
‘Hum! There are popular uprising in Europe, Captain--in my country.’
His eye wandered aimlessly round the horizon.
‘What has that to do with----’
‘Captain, you are very young. There is still uproariment. But I,’--here
he slapped his chest till his epaulets jingled--‘I am loyalist to pits
of _all_ my stomachs.’
‘Go on,’ said Judson, and his mouth quivered.
‘An order arrive to me to establish a custom-houses here, and to
collect of the taximent from the traders when she are come here
necessarily. That was on account of political understandings with your
country and mine. But to that arrangement there was no money also. Not
one damn little cowrie! I desire damnably to extend all commercial
things, and why? I am loyalist and there is rebellion--yes, I tell
you--Republics in my country for to just begin. You do not believe?
See some time how it exist. I cannot make this custom-houses and pay
so the high-paid officials. The people too in my country they say the
King she has no regardance into Honour of her nation. He throw away
everything--Gladstone her all, you say, hey?’
‘Yes, that’s what we say,’ said Judson with a grin.
‘Therefore they say, let us be Republics on hot cakes. But I--I am
loyalist to all my hands’ ends. Captain, once I was attaché at Mexico.
I say the Republics are no good. The peoples have her stomach high.
They desire--they desire--Oh, course for the bills.’
‘What on earth is that?’
‘The cock-fight for pay at the gate. You give something, pay for see
bloody-row. Do I make my comprehension?’
‘A run for their money--is that what you mean? Gad, you’re a sporting
Governor!’
‘So I say. I am loyalist too.’ He smiled more easily. ‘Now how can
anything do herself for the customs-houses; but when the Company’s
mens she arrives, _then_ a cock-fight for pay-at-gate that is quite
correct. My army he says it will Republic and shoot me off upon walls
if I have not give her blood. An army, Captain, are terrible in her
angries--especialment when she are not paid. I know too,’ here he
laid his hand on Judson’s shoulder, ‘I know too we are old friends.
Yes! Badajos, Almeida, Fuentes d’Onor--time ever since; and a little,
little cock-fight for pay-at-gate that is good for my King. More sit
her tight on throne behind, you see? Now,’ he waved his free hand round
the decayed village, ‘I say to my armies, Fight! Fight the Company’s
men when she come, but fight not so very strong that you are any dead.
It is all in the raporta that I send. But you understand, Captain, we
are good friends all the time. Ah! Ciudad Rodrigo, you remember? No?
Perhaps your father then? So you see no one are dead, and we fight
a fight, and it is all in the raporta, to please the people in our
country; and my armies they do not put me against the walls, you see?’
‘Yes; but the _Guadala_. She fired on us. Was that part of your game,
my joker?’
‘The _Guadala_. Ah! No, I think not. Her captain he is too big fool.
But I thought she have gone down the coast. Those your gunboats poke
her nose and shove her oar in every place. How is _Guadala_?’
‘On a shoal. Stuck till I take her off.’
‘There are any deads?’
‘No.’
The Governor drew a breath of deep relief. ‘There are no deads here. So
you see none are deads anywhere, and nothing is done. Captain, you talk
to the Company’s mens. I think they are not pleased.’
‘Naturally.’
‘They have no senses. I thought to go backwards again they would. I
leave her stockade alone all night to let them out, but they stay and
come facewards to me, not backwards. They did not know we must conquer
much in all these battles, or the King, he is kicked off her throne.
Now we have won this battle--this great battle,’ he waved his arms
abroad, ‘and I think you will say so that we have won, Captain. You are
loyalist also? You would not disturb to the peaceful Europe? Captain, I
tell you this. Your Queen she know too. She would not fight her cousin.
It is a--a hand-up thing.’
‘What?’
‘Hand-up thing. Jobe you put. How you say?’
‘Put-up job?’
‘Yes. Put-up job. Who is hurt? We win. You lose. All righta!’
Bai-Jove-Judson had been exploding at intervals for the last five
minutes. Here he broke down completely and roared aloud.
‘But look here, Governor,’ he said at last, ‘I’ve got to think of other
things than your riots in Europe. You’ve fired on our flag.’
‘Captain, if you are me, you would have done how? And also, and
also,’ he drew himself up to his full height, ‘we are both brave men
of bravest countries. Our honour is the honour of our King,’ here he
uncovered, ‘and of our Queen,’ here he bowed low. ‘Now, Captain, you
shall shell my palace and I will be your prisoner.’
‘Skittles!’ said Bai-Jove-Judson. ‘I can’t shell that old hencoop.’
‘Then come to dinner. Madeira, she are still to us, and I have of the
best she manufac.’
He skipped over the side beaming, and Bai-Jove-Judson went into the
cabin to laugh his laugh out. When he had recovered a little he
sent Mr. Davies to the head of the Pioneers, the dusty man with the
gatlings, and the troops who had abandoned the pursuit of arms watched
the disgraceful spectacle of two men reeling with laughter on the
quarter-deck of a gunboat.
‘I’ll put my men to build him a custom-house,’ said the head of the
Pioneers gasping. ‘We’ll make him one decent road at least. That
Governor ought to be knighted. I’m glad now that we didn’t fight ’em in
the open, or we’d have killed some of them. So he’s won great battles,
has he? Give him the compliments of the victims, and tell him I’m
coming to dinner. You haven’t such a thing as a dress-suit, have you? I
haven’t seen one for six months.’
That evening there was a dinner in the village--a general and
enthusiastic dinner, whose head was in the Governor’s house, and whose
tail threshed at large throughout all the streets. The Madeira was
everything that the Governor had said, and more, and it was tested
against two or three bottles of Bai-Jove-Judson’s best Vanderhum, which
is Cape brandy ten years in the bottle, flavoured with orange-peel and
spices. Before the coffee was removed (by the lady who had made the
flag of truce) the Governor had given the whole of his governorship and
its appurtenances, once to Bai-Jove-Judson for services rendered by
Judson’s grandfather in the Peninsular War, and once to the head of the
Pioneers, in consideration of that gentleman’s good friendship. After
the negotiation he retreated for a while into an inner apartment, and
there evolved a true and complete account of the defeat of the English
arms, which he read with his cocked hat over one eye to Judson and his
companion. It was Judson who suggested the sinking of the flat-iron
with all hands, and the head of the Pioneers who supplied the list of
killed and wounded (not more than two hundred) in his command.
‘Gentlemen,’ said the Governor from under his cocked hat, ‘the peace
of Europe are saved by this raporta. You shall all be Knights of the
Golden Hide. She shall go by the _Guadala_.’
‘Great Heavens!’ said Bai-Jove-Judson, flushed but composed, ‘That
reminds me that I’ve left that boat stuck on her broadside down the
river. I must go down and sooth the commandante. He’ll be blue with
rage. Governor, let us go a sail on the river to cool our heads. A
picnic, you understand.’
‘Ya--as: everything I understand. Ho! A picnica! You are all my
prisoner, but I am a good gaoler. We shall picnic on the river, and we
shall take _all_ the girls. Come on, my prisoners.’
‘I do hope,’ said the head of the Pioneers, staring from the verandah
into the roaring village, ‘that my chaps won’t set the town alight by
accident. Hullo! Hullo! A guard of honour for His Excellency, the most
illustrious Governor!’
Some thirty men answered the call, made a swaying line upon a more
swaying course, and bore the Governor most swayingly of all high in
their arms as they staggered down to the river. And the song that
they sang bade them, ‘Swing, swing together, their body between their
knees’; and they obeyed the words of the song faithfully, except that
they were anything but ‘steady from stroke to bow.’ His Excellency the
Governor slept on his uneasy litter, and did not wake when the chorus
dropped him on the deck of the flat-iron.
‘Good-night and good-bye,’ said the head of the Pioneers to Judson.
‘I’d give you my card if I had it, but I’m so damned drunk I hardly
know my own Club. Oh yes! It’s the Travellers. If ever we meet in town,
remember me. I must stay here and look after my fellows. We’re all
right in the open, now. I s’pose you’ll return the Governor some time.
This is a political crisis. Good-night.’
The flat-iron went down-stream through the dark. The Governor slept on
deck, and Judson took the wheel, but how he steered, and why he did
not run into each bank many times, that officer does not remember.
Mr. Davies did not note anything unusual, for there are two ways of
taking too much, and Judson was only ward-room, not fo’c’s’le drunk.
As the night grew colder the Governor woke up, and expressed a desire
for whisky and soda. When that came they were nearly abreast of the
stranded _Guadala_, and His Excellency saluted the flag that he could
not see with loyal and patriotic strains.
‘They do not see. They do not hear,’ he cried. ‘Ten thousand saints!
They sleep, and I have won battles! Ha!’
He started forward to the gun, which, very naturally, was loaded,
pulled the lanyard, and woke the dead night with the roar of the full
charge behind a common shell. That shell, mercifully, just missed the
stern of the _Guadala_, and burst on the bank. ‘Now you shall salute
your Governor,’ said he, as he heard feet running in all directions
within the iron skin. ‘Why you demand so base a quarter? I am here
with all my prisoners.’
In the hurly-burly and the general shriek for mercy his reassurances
were not heard.
‘Captain,’ said a grave voice from the ship, ‘we have surrendered. Is
it the custom of the English to fire on a helpless ship?’
‘Surrendered! Holy Virgin! I go to cut off all their heads. You shall
be ate by wild ants--flog and drowned! Throw me a balcony. It is I,
the Governor! You shall never surrender. Judson of my soul, ascend her
inside, and send me a bed, for I am sleepy; but, oh, I will multiple
time kill that captain!’
‘Oh!’ said the voice in the darkness, ‘I begin to comprehend.’ And a
rope-ladder was thrown, up which the Governor scrambled, with Judson at
his heels.
‘Now we will enjoy executions,’ said the Governor on the deck. ‘All
these Republicans shall be shot. Little Judson, if I am _not_ drunk,
why are so sloping the boards which do not support?’
The deck, as I have said, was at a very stiff cant. His Excellency sat
down, slid to leeward, and fell asleep again.
The captain of the _Guadala_ bit his moustache furiously, and muttered
in his own tongue: ‘“This land is the father of great villains and the
step-father of honest men.” You see our material, Captain. It is so
everywhere with us. You have killed some of the rats, I hope?’
‘Not a rat,’ said Judson genially.
‘That is a pity. If they were dead, our country might send us men, but
our country is dead too, and I am dishonoured on a mud-bank through
your English treachery.’
‘Well, it seems to me that firing on a little tub of our size without
a word of warning when you knew that the countries were at peace is
treachery enough in a small way.’
‘If one of my guns had touched you, you would have gone to the bottom,
all of you. I would have taken the risk with my Government. By that
time it would have been----’
‘A Republic. So you really _did_ mean fighting on your own hook! You’re
rather a dangerous officer to cut loose in a navy like yours. Well,
what are you going to do now?’
‘Stay here. Go away in boats. What does it matter? That drunken
cat’--he pointed to the shadow in which the Governor slept--‘is here. I
must take him back to his hole.’
‘Very good. I’ll tow you off at daylight if you get steam up.’
‘Captain, I warn you that as soon as she floats again I will fight you.’
‘Humbug! You’ll have lunch with me, and then you’ll take the Governor
up the river.’
The captain was silent for some time. Then he said: ‘Let us drink. What
must be, must be, and after all we have not forgotten the Peninsular.
You will admit, Captain, that it is bad to be run upon a shoal like a
mud-dredger?’
‘Oh, we’ll pull you off before you can say knife. Take care of His
Excellency. I shall try to get a little sleep now.’
They slept on both ships till the morning, and then the work of towing
off the _Guadala_ began. With the help of her own engines, and the
tugging and puffing of the flat-iron, she slid off the mud-bank
sideways into deep water, the flat-iron immediately under her stern,
and the big eye of the four-inch gun almost peering through the window
of the captain’s cabin.
Remorse in the shape of a violent headache had overtaken the Governor.
He was uneasily conscious that he might perhaps have exceeded his
powers, and the captain of the _Guadala_, in spite of all his patriotic
sentiments, remembered distinctly that no war had been declared between
the two countries. He did not need the Governor’s repeated reminders
that war, serious war, meant a Republic at home, possible supersession
in his command, and much shooting of living men against dead walls.
‘We have satisfied our honour,’ said the Governor in confidence. ‘Our
army is appeased, and the raporta that you take home will show that
we were loyal and brave. That other captain? Bah! He is a boy. He
will call this a--a--Judson of my soul, how you say this is--all this
affairs which have transpirated between us?’
Judson was watching the last hawser slipping through the fairlead.
‘Call it? Oh, I should call it rather a lark. Now your boat’s all
right, captain. When will you come to lunch?’
‘I told you,’ said the Governor, ‘it would be a larque to him.’
‘Mother of the Saints! then what is his seriousness?’ said the captain.
‘We shall be happy to come when you will. Indeed, we have no other
choice,’ he added bitterly.
‘Not at all,’ said Judson, and as he looked at the three or four shot
blisters on the bows of his boat a brilliant idea took him. ‘It is we
who are at your mercy. See how His Excellency’s guns knocked us about.’
‘Senor Capitan,’ said the Governor pityingly, ‘that is very sad. You
are most injured, and your deck too, it is all shot over. We shall not
be too severe on a beat man, shall we, captain?’
‘You couldn’t spare us a little paint, could you? I’d like to patch up
a little after the--action,’ said Judson meditatively, fingering his
upper lip to hide a smile.
‘Our storeroom is at your disposition,’ said the captain of the
_Guadala_, and his eye brightened; for a few lead splashes on gray
paint make a big show.
‘Mr. Davies, go aboard and see what they have to spare--to spare,
remember. Their spar-colour with a little working up should be just our
free-board tint.’
‘Oh yes. I’ll spare them,’ said Mr. Davies savagely. ‘I don’t
understand this how-d’you-do and damn-your-eyes business coming one
atop of the other, in a manner o’ speaking! By all rights, they’re our
lawful prize, after a manner o’ sayin’.’