"Why, boys, and you youngsters," said Captain Talbot, "when I look back
to those dear old times I feel old myself, and that's a fact. As I said
before, we were cruising about the East African coast, making it just as
hot for the slaver Arabs as we knew how to. We had a bit of a fight now
and then, too, both on shore and afloat.
"Well, your man-o'-war's-man likes that, simple and all though he seems
to be. Simplicity, indeed, is one of the chief traits in the character
of the true British sailor. I'm not sure that it might not be said with
some degree of truth, that no one who wasn't a little simple to begin
with, would ever become a sailor at all. Nobody, not even a landsman,
grumbles and growls more at existence afloat than does Jack himself,
whether he be Jack in epaulets or Jack in a jumper, Jack walking the
weather-side of the quarter-deck or Jack mending a main-sail. But for
all that, when Jack has a spell on shore, especially if it be of a few
months' duration, he forgets all the asperities of the old sea life, and
remembers only its jollities and pleasantnesses, and the queer
adventures he had--of which, probably, he boasts in a mitigated kind of
way--and by and by he gets tired of the dull shore, and maybe sings with
Proctor:
'I never was on the dull, tame shore,
But I loved the great sea more and more'.
And then he goes back again. Another proof of Jack's simplicity.
"Well, but some of the very bravest men or officers I have met with
were, or are, as simple in their natures as little children--simple but
brave.
"Gallant and good--how well the two adjectives sound together when
applied to a sailor. Did not our Nelson himself apply them in one of
his despatches to Captain Riou, mentioned by Thomas Campbell in his
grand old song 'The Battle of the Baltic':
'Brave hearts! to Britain's pride
Once so faithful and so true,
On the deck of fame that died
With the gallant, good Riou,
Soft sigh the winds of heaven o'er their grave!
While the billow mournful rolls,
And the mermaid's song condoles--
Singing glory to the souls
Of the brave!'
"There never was a more simple-looking sailor than Assistant-Paymaster
Mair (let us call him Mair). He was round-faced, fat, and somewhat
pale, but always merry, and on good terms with himself and everybody
else. He had the least bit in the world of a squint in his starboard
eye. This ocular aberration was more apparent, when he sat down and
commenced playing an asthmatical old flute he possessed. I don't think
anybody liked this flute except Mair himself, and no wonder it was
asthmatical, for we were constantly playing tricks on it. We have
tarred it and feathered it ere now, and once we filled it with boiling
lard, and left it on Mair's desk to cool. But Mair didn't care; our
practical joking found him in employment, so he was happy.
"Mair had never been in an engagement, though some members of our mess
had; and, when talking of their sensations when under fire, Mair used
frankly to confess himself 'the funkiest fellow out'.
"It came to pass that the old _T----_ had to engage a fort, and
preparations were made for a hot morning. The captain was full of spirit
and go--one of those sort of men who, when both legs are shot away,
fight on their stumps.
"Mair had his orders the night before, given verbally, in an easy,
off-hand kind of way. He was to stand by the captain on the bridge or
quarter-deck, and take notes during the engagement or battle. Poor
Mair! he didn't sleep much, and didn't eat much breakfast. We met just
outside the ward-room door, Mair and I. We were both going to duty, only
Mair was going up, while I was bound for the orlop deck. With the noise
of hammering, and stamping, and shouting, I couldn't catch what Mair
said, but it was something like--'Lucky dog, you'.
"Though stationed below--safe, except from the danger of smothering in
horrid smoke--I soon had evidence enough we were getting badly hammered.
I wasn't sorry when "Cease firing" sounded, and I could crawl up and
breathe.
"But how about simple Mair? Why, this only--he had done his duty nobly,
coolly, manfully; he had gained admiration from his fire-eating captain,
and got specially mentioned in a despatch. Mair looked red and excited
all the afternoon, but the flute never sounded half so cheerily before
as it did that same evening after dinner.
"Talking about simplicity brings poor Nat Wildman of ours before my
mind's eye.
"There wasn't a pluckier sailor in the service than Nat, nor a greater
favourite with his mess-mates, nor a simpler-souled or kindlier-hearted.
He was very tall and powerful--quite an athlete in fact. Once when a
company or two of marines and blue-jackets were sent to enact punishment
of some native tribes on the West African coast, for the murder of a
white merchant, and for having fired on Her Majesty's boats, they
encountered a strongly-palisaded village. Our fellows had no ladders
nor axes, and the dark-skins were firing through. The village must be
carried, and reduced to terms--and ashes; so the men hoisted each other
over. Nat worked hard at this pitch-and-toss warfare; indeed, he could
have thrown the whole ship's company over. But, lo! he found himself
the last man--left out in the cold--for there was no one to help him
across. When the row was over, Nat was found--simple fellow that he
was--sitting on the ground crying with vexation, or, as one of his
mess-mates phrased it, 'blubbering like a big baby'.
"I often think, boys, that it must be very hard to have to die at sea,
especially if homeward bound; all the bustle and stir of ship's work
going on around you; the songs of the men, the joking and laughing, and
the din--for silence can seldom be long maintained.
"Jack Wright of ours--captain of the main-top--might have been called a
tar of the real Tom Bowling type. He, too, like Nat Wildman, whom I
mentioned above, was a very great favourite with his mess-mates. He was
always kind and merry, but ever good, obedient, and brave. We were
coming home in the old _T----_. Dirty weather began shortly after we
left Madeira, and while assisting in taking in sail one forenoon, poor
Jack fell from aloft. His injuries were of so serious a nature that his
life was despaired of from the first. He lost much blood, and never
rallied.
"This sailor had a young wife, who was to have met him at Plymouth. She
was in his thoughts in his last hours. I was assisting the doctor just
at that time of my life, a kind of loblolly-boy, and I heard the man
say, as he looked wistfully in the surgeon's face: 'It seems a kind o'
hard, doctor, but I've always done my duty--I've always obeyed orders
without asking questions. I'm ready when the Great Captain calls,
though--yes, it do seem a kind o' hard.'
"He appeared to doze off, and I sat still for an hour. It was well on
in the middle watch, and the ship was under easy sail; there was now and
then a word of command, but no trampling overhead, for even the officers
liked and respected Jack. I sat still for an hour, then took his wrist
in my hand. There was no pulse there. He was gone.
"I covered him up and went on deck, for something was rising and choking
me. It was a heavenly night--bright stars shining, and a round silvery
moon, with the waves all sparkling to leeward of us.
"'It does seem hard,' I couldn't help muttering.
"As the beautiful burial service was being read over poor Jack Wright,
and his body dropped into the sea, many a tear fell that those who shed
them needn't have taken much pains to hide.
"At Plymouth we were in quarantine for some time, and no one was allowed
on board, but there were boats enough with friends and relations in them
hanging around. In one of them was a beautiful young woman and an
elderly dame, probably her mother. The whisper--it was nothing
else--soon passed round: 'Yonder is poor Jack's wife.'
"Long before she came on board she was in tears; her sailor lad was not
even at a port to wave a handkerchief. 'He must be ill,' she would have
thought.
"'The doctor wishes to speak to you in his cabin,' a midshipman said,
when she appeared on deck.
She came tottering in, supported by the old dame.
"'Jack's ill!' she cried.
"The doctor did not reply.
"'Jack is dead!' she moaned. 'My Jack!'
"We did not answer. How could we?
"Heigho! I've seen grief many times since, but I never witnessed
anything to equal that of poor Jack Wright's young wife.
"But I'm saddening you, boys. Here, steward, if there is a dram more
punch left, just send it round.
"And now, lads, I'll tell you one more true yarn, and I think I may just
call it:
"AN ADVENTURE IN SEARCH OF A QUID,
"For, from the very time Dawson and I shoved off in the dinghy boat
until we set foot on Her Majesty's quarter-deck with the 'baccy, it was
all adventure together. Our ship was the saucy _Seamew_, only a
gun-boat, to be sure, but a most bewitching little thing all over; lay
like a duck in the water, and, on a wind, nothing could touch her. Our
cruising-ground was the east coast of Africa, well north, where the
fighting dhows floated in the water, and the savage Somalis on shore
speared each other when they hadn't any white men to practise on. We
never provoked a fight, but when we did show our teeth, and that wasn't
seldom, we peppered away in good earnest I assure you. Now, in such a
ship in such a climate we might have been as happy as the day was long,
but we had just one drawback to general jollity. Our skipper was the
devil. That's putting it plain and straight, but I've no other English
for it. He was one of your sea lawyers, and lawed it and lorded it over
his officers. No matter whether a thing was done rightly or wrongly,
you got growled at all the same. There wasn't an officer he hadn't been
at loggerheads with, and walked to windward of, too; and there wasn't a
man forward he had not punished during the cruise. We had a regular
flogging Friday, a most unlucky day for many a poor fellow on board the
_Seamew_. There was, therefore, no love lost between the ward-room and
the after-cabin, where the skipper lived in solitary grandeur; and the
men would have given him to the sharks, if chance had thrown him in
their way, and if the sharks were hungry. I remember once, at Johanna, a
happy thought struck the skipper and a few of the petty officers at one
and the same time: they thought they would treat themselves to a few
fowls by way of change from the junk. The latter, therefore, asked
permission of the former to make the purchase. 'Certainly not,' was the
curt reply, 'unless you bring them dead on board.' Now, dead they
wouldn't keep a day, so they were not bought; but the skipper's poultry
were brought on board the same evening, and two nicely-filled hen-coops
they were. Well, about the middle of the morning-watch, when the
skipper slumbered peacefully in his cot, two figures might have been
seen stealthily approaching those hen-coops. 'Softly does it,' said
one.
'Right you are, Bill,' replied the other. Then something dark and
square rose slowly over the bulwarks, and dropped with a dull splash
into the sea; and this happened twice. And next morning when the
skipper arose, happy in the prospect of 'spatch cock for breakfast,
behold! there wasn't cock nor hen on board to spatch. But I should tire
you were I to tell a tithe of the dirty tricks the skipper of the
_Seamew_ played his men and officers, so I will content myself with
relating the one that bears reference to my story. Once, then, we were
in terrible straits for grog and tobacco; we hadn't a drop of the one or
a quid of the other on board--at least not in our mess--and hadn't had
for over a month. Now, nobody liked a glass of rum better than the
skipper, though he didn't smoke; so, as long as his own spirits held
out, he didn't care anything for the dearth in the ward-room. But one
day he rejoiced us all by informing us he would run down to Zanzibar and
take in stores. Well, anyhow, he took us in nicely, for no sooner had
we dropped anchor before the long white town, than he called away his
gig and landed on the sands. He was back again in two hours with the
important intelligence, which we had received, that a three-masted
slave-ship was then cruising in the neighbourhood of the little island
of Chak-Chak. There wasn't a moment to be lost--it was, 'All hands on
deck, up anchor and off.' There wasn't a moment to be lost; but, mark
you this, that beggarly skipper, who drank but did not smoke, came off
with his gig laden to the gunwale with dainties, spirits included, but
not a morsel of the 'baccy our souls were longing to sniff. We never saw
the three-masted slave-ship either.
"Well, as you doubtless know, there is a town on the east coast, pretty
nigh on the equator, called Lamoo, a half, or, rather, wholly savage
kind of place, ruled over by an Arab sultan. It lies not close to the
sea, but about ten miles up a broad-bosomed river. Like all African
rivers, it is belted off from the sea by a sand-bar, on which the water
is shallow, and the green breakers tumble over it houses high. We had
been up this river only once before, but the little _Seamew_ got such a
terrible bumping on the bar that our skipper had resolved never to try
the same experiment again. But, one beautiful, clear-skied, moonlight
night, we found ourselves just outside this bar once more, and, rather
to our astonishment, the order was given to heave the ship to until
morning. Of course we were delighted, thinking that boats might be sent
up stream for fruit, and we might get a chance of the coveted quid; but
we were doomed to disappointment, for the whole of next day was spent in
taking soundings, and in the evening we were told that next morning we
should complete the survey, and then cruise away north once more. So
the ship was hove-to on the second evening. Dawson and I were at the
time on the sick-list, not that there was anything the matter with us,
but the skipper had been bullying us, and this was the method, with the
assistance of the friendly surgeon, which we took to avenge ourselves.
At this time the tobacco mania was at its worst. Our
assistant-paymaster had been heard to mutter that, if the devil tempted
him, he would be inclined to sell his soul for a bundle of whiffs, and
Dawson had openly asserted that he would give ten years of his life for
the sight of a snuff-box. But Dawson looked terribly like a
conspirator, when he came stealthily into the ward-room on the evening
of the first day's surveying.
"'Hush! messmates, hush!' he whispered mysteriously, and we all crowded
round him. 'I have it,' he continued. 'My friend and I are on the
list. We cannot be missed.'
"'Yes, yes; go on,' we cried in a breath.
"'While _he_ dines, we will take a boat and steal up the river to Lamoo,
and bring down 'bacca and grogs.'
"The skipper didn't know the meaning of that 'Hurrah!' that shook the
_Seamew_ from stem to stern. No wilder shout ever rang out as we boarded
a dhow 'mid smoke and blood.
"By seven o'clock the skipper was just mixing his third tumbler. By
seven o'clock everything was in readiness: the oars were muffled and the
rudder so shipped that it wouldn't unship by the under-kick of a breaker
on the bar. Then, from well-greased blocks the boat was lowered, and
silently, but swiftly, glided shorewards to the dreaded bar. We took
with us but two trusty men, and two trusty sacks. Soon the white crests
of the breakers were in view, and we could hear their vicious, sullen
boom. Not easy work this crossing of bars, as you are aware. Presently
we were heading for the only dark gate in this ocean of breakers, I
steering, Dawson with one helping hand on each of the oars. Now we have
entered the gate. "Steady now, men!" A wave catches us up behind and
hurls our tiny boat first heavenward, then, with inconceivable speed,
onwards, through a swirl of surf, and, a few moments afterwards we are
in smooth water, wet but safe.
"'Well done,' said Dawson; 'but if we had capsized, the sharks would
have been dining on us at this present moment."
"'Beggin' yer pardons, gentlemen,' said one of the rowers, 'but I'd
rather be three days and three nights in the belly of a shark, like
Jonah was, than one whole blessed month athout tobaccer.'
"'That were a whale, Jim,' said his mate. 'I don't care a dime,' said
the first speaker; 'I knows I likes my pipe, and I likes a quid. Now,
in a night like this, for instance, what a blessing it would be to light
up, and--and--why, it won't abear thinkin' on, hanged if it will.'
"'Now lay on your oars, men,' I said. 'I want to see what is inside a
little bottle of medical comforts the doctor stowed away under here.'
"It was a bottle of sick-mess sherry, which we all shared, and
pronounced the best ever we had tasted, and the doctor 'a brick'.
"Onwards now we sped, as fast as oars could pull us, Dawson and I
occasionally relieving the men and taking a spell at the oars. It was
moonlight, I said, and until we were fairly in the river this was in
favour of us; now, however, it was all against us. None hate the
English more than does your fighting Arab of slave proclivities. At any
moment we might fall in with a slave dhow, and the crew thereof would
certainly not miss such a favourable opportunity of paying off old
scores. We had lots of arms on board, and so we meant, if attacked, to
peg away at the beggars to the bitter end. However, discretion is the
better part of valour, so we kept right in the centre of the stream,
where we could be least seen. This was slow work, but safe.
"It must have been past ten o'clock, and we were well up the river,
when, on rounding a point, we came suddenly in sight of a large-armed
dhow, slowly going down stream. My first intention was to alter our
course. 'No, no,' said Dawson, who is no end of a clever fellow, 'that
will only create suspicion. Let me hail her;' and he did so in good
Arabic. If suspicion was excited on board the strange dhow, it was, I
feel sure, lulled again when Dawson began, in stentorian tones, to sing
a well-known Arab boating chant. The song, I feel sure, saved us, and
so we kept it up nearly all the way to Lamoo.
"About a mile from the town we crept inshore and hid our boat in the
bush, leaving one man in her. Now there is but one or two European
merchants in the town, and one of these we knew, but the way to his
house we were ignorant of; but we knew where Comoro Jack lived in the
outskirts. He had been our guide before, so thither we went, and
happily found Jack at home: a tall young savage, arrayed only in a waist
belt, and an enormous (42nd Highlander's) busby on, and a tall spear in
one hand.
"'Well, you blessed Englishmen, what you want wid Jack?' Such was our
greeting. We hastily told him, and the amount, and--
"'Comoro Jack will go like a shot,' said the savage. The sandy streets
were well-nigh deserted, and Comoro Jack, as he strode on beside us,
thought himself no end of a fine fellow.
"'London is one ver' good place,' he informed us, 'as big as Lamoo, and
streets better pave, and girls better dress. You see it was like this:
the French they take Myotta; poor king ob de island he go to London to
see de British Queen of England, and I go too among de body-guard. But
when the poor king come to de palace, 'Will you fight for me de dam
French?' he say. 'Very sorry,' said the British Queen of England, 'but
I cannot fight de dam French."
"'And who', we asked, 'gave you the bonnet and plumes?'
"'De British Queen ob England,' said Comoro Jack. 'She soon spot me out
among de niggers, and she put it on my head. 'Here, poor chile,' she
say, 'you not catch cold wid that."
"The house Comoro Jack led us to was that of a French merchant, and his
hospitality was unbounded; but we refused all refreshment until we had
first smoked a pipe. Oh, didn't that pipe make men of us. We spent a
very pleasant half-hour with the merchant; then we filled our sacks and
returned to our boat happier, surely, than Joseph's brethren could have
been coming up, corn-laden, from the land of the Pharaohs. We had one or
two little escapades going down stream, caught it wet and nasty on the
bar, but got safely and quietly on board the _Seamew_ one hour before
sunrise, and to witness the joy on our mess-mates' faces when we cracked
a bottle of rum and opened a box of Havanas, more than repaid us for all
we had come through.
"Next morning, to his intense disgust, the skipper found us all smoking,
and looking funny and jolly. But he never knew where we found the
'baccy."