It was late on the afternoon of a sultry day in April, which had been
passed amid active preparations, when a dark column of smoke, streaming
over the tall shipping in the crowded harbour of Bombay, proclaimed the
necessity of a hurried adieu to a concourse of friends who still
thronged the deck; and scarcely was the last wish for success expressed
to the parties that had embarked, before the paddles performed their
first revolution, and the Honourable East India Company's steam frigate
"Auckland," bound upon her maiden voyage, shot through the still blue
water.
A turbaned multitude of manifold religions had lined the pier and the
ramparts of the saluting battery, to pay a parting tribute of respect to
their late governor. Sir James Rivett Carnac, who, with his lady and
family, was now returning to his native land. On board also were the
officers and gentlemen composing an Embassy organised under instructions
by the government of India. More than a fortnight had been diligently
passed in the equipment of this mission; but its objects, no less than
the destination of its innumerable bales and boxes, still served as
puzzles to public curiosity; and many a sapient conjecture on the
subject was doubtless launched after the bounding frigate as she
disappeared amid the haze of the closing day.
Immortal Watt! sordid is the man who places his foot behind the Titanic
engines which owe their birth to thee, and who would withhold, as an
offering to the altar of thy memory, a mite, according to his worldly
means, wherewith to erect a fabric colossal as the power enthralled by
thy transcendent genius! Strange are the revolutions undergone in
affairs nautical since the introduction of the marine steam-engine upon
the Indian seas. The creaking of yards has given place to the coughing
and sobbing of machinery, as it heaves in convulsive throes. Tacking
and wearing have become terms obsolete, and through the clang of the
fire-doors, and the ceaseless stroke of paddle-wheels, the voice of the
pilot is rarely heard, save in conjunction with "Stop her," or "Turn
a-head."
Marked by a broad ploughed wake, the undeviating course pursued through
the trackless main was demonstrated midway of the voyage by a tall
pillar of smoke from the funnel of the "Cleopatra," rising against the
clear hot horizon, like a genie liberated from his sealed bottle, to
proclaim the advent of the English mails. The deep blue sea was glassy
smooth. Each passing zephyr set from Araby's shores; but, heedless
alike of wind and opposing current, the good ship steadily pursued her
arrow-like flight,--passed the bold outline of Socotra, redolent of
spicy odours,--and before sunset of the ninth day was within sight of
her destined haven, one thousand six hundred and eighty miles from the
port she had left.
Cape Aden was the bold promontory in view, and it had borrowed an aspect
even more sombre and dismal from a canopy of heavy clouds which stole
across the naked and shattered peaks, to invest the castle-capped
mountain with a funereal shroud. Crossed by horizontal ledges, and
seamed with gaps and fissures, Jebel Shemshan rears its turreted crags
nearly eighteen hundred feet above the ocean, into which dip numerous
bare and rugged buttresses, of width only sufficient to afford footing
to a cony, and each terminating in a bluff inaccessible scarp. Sand and
shingle strew the cheerless valleys by which these spurs are divided,
and save where a stunted balsam, or a sallow clump of senna, has
struggled through the gaping fissure, hollow as well as hill is
destitute of even the semblance of vegetation.
"How hideously
Its shapes are heap'd around, rude, bare, and high.
Ghastly, and scarr'd, and riven! Is this the scene
Where the old earthquake's demon taught her young
Ruin? Were these their toys?--or did a sea
Of fire envelope once this dismal cape?"
Rounding the stern peninsula, within stone's cast of the frowning
headlands, the magnificent western bay developed its broad expanse as
the evening closed. Here, with colliers and merchantmen, were riding
the vessels of war composing the Red Sea squadron. Among the isolated
denizens of British Arabia, the unexpected arrival of a steam frigate
created no small sensation. Exiles on a barren and dreary soil, which
is precluded from all intercourse with the fruitful, but barbarous
interior, there is nothing to alleviate a positive imprisonment, save
the periodical flying visits of the packets that pass and repass betwixt
Suez and Bombay. In the dead of night the sudden glare of a blue light
in the offing is answered by the illumination of the blockship,
heretofore veiled behind a curtain of darkness. The double thunder of
artillery next peals from her decks; and as the labouring of
paddle-wheels, at first faint and distant, and heard only at broken
intervals, comes booming more heavily over the still waters, the
spectral lantern at the mast-head is followed by a red glow under the
stem, as the witch, buffeting a cascade of snowy spray, vibrates to
every stroke of the engine, and leaving a phosphoric train to mark her
even course, glides, hissing and boiling, towards her anchorage. Warped
alongside the blockship, the dingy hulls lean over like affectionate
sisters that have been long parted; and, flinging their arms together,
remain fast locked in each other's embrace.
And who are these swart children of the sun, that, like a May-day band
of chimney-sweeps, are springing with wild whoops and yells over the
bulwarks of the new arrival? 'tis a gang of brawny Seedies, enfranchised
negroes from the coast of Zanzibar, whose pleasure consists in the
transhipment of yonder mountain of coal, lying heaped in tons upon the
groaning deck. To the dissonant tones of a rude tambourine, thumped
with the thighbone of a calf, their labour has already commenced.
Increasing the vehemence of their savage dance, they heave the ponderous
sacks like giants busied at pitch and toss, and begrimed from head to
foot, roll at intervals upon the blackened planks, to stanch the
streaming perspiration. Thus stamping and howling with increased fury,
while the harsh notes of the drum peal louder and louder to the
deafening vehemence of the frantic musician, they pursue their task,
night as well as day, amid clamour and fiendish vociferations, such as
might suggest the idea of furies engaged in unearthly orgies. In the
first burst of their revelry, the spectator is happy to escape from the
suffocating atmosphere of impalpable coal-dust; and rarely does it
happen that for every hundred tons of fuel received, fewer than one life
is forfeited by the actors in the wild scene described--some doomed
victim, swollen with copious draughts, and exhausted by the frenzy of
excitement, invariably casting himself down when his Herculean task is
done, to rally and rise up no more.
Volume One, Chapter II.