At that moment the wind lulled for an instant, and I was just able to
make a slash with the sharp edge of my knife across the rope, severing
it instanter, and thus saving poor bungling Bouncer all further trouble;
when, a terrific gust came, this time right astern, carrying sail and
mast and all, the latter snapping off like a carrot close to the thwart
where it was stepped, over the heads of all in the boat forwards, high
in air--just as if the lot were the remnants of a big kite that had
parted its supporting string, the sail ultimately disappearing in the
distance, swallowed up by the angry waves.
These latter were now boiling up round the cutter on every side, our
little pigmy of a craft seeming lost in the seething caldron of broken
water; but, she was buoyant as a cork, and, although half rilled,
breasted the billows in fine style and running before wind and sea at a
tearing rate with not a rag of sail on her now, nor an oar, save one Mr
Chisholm and I rigged out over the stern by Draper's direction, this
being better to steer her by than the rudder, which we then unshipped.
It was a good job for us that our old coxswain had got wounded, and that
Draper had taken his place just then temporarily while Hoskins was on
the sick-list; for, though Draper was the oldest petty officer on board
the ship--his promotion to a higher grade having been delayed, I
believe, through his natural crustiness of temper, which he really could
not help--there was no doubt that he knew the East Coast of Africa well,
and the management of a boat the better of the two, especially in a
stormy sea.
Ay, and it was stormy now!
Far as the eye could reach, the mad waves dashed and clashed against
each other as they raced along, borne onward before the blast; throwing
up their white crests, all lashed into foam, in showers of spray and
spindrift that fell back over us in the boat, wetting us to the skin and
blinding those that had to face it.
The horizon, too--what we could see of it, that is, through the spray--
was covered with a mass of inky clouds, almost blue-black in hue, that
covered by degrees the whole of the heavens, with the exception of a
round spot right overhead that looked like a gigantic eye.
Mr Chisholm, who, young though he was, had the sight of a hawk, spotted
this at once.
"Hullo, Draper!" he cried, pointing aloft. "What's that up there--
anything more brewing up for us, d'ye think?"
The coxswain, who had all his work cut out to keep the boat from being
swamped by the heavy following seas that came rolling up astern of us,
threatening every minute to engulf the cutter and carry her down bodily
below, gave an uneasy squint in the direction whither the young officer
pointed his finger.
"Lord-sakes, sir," he exclaimed, shaking his head in a very grave way,
"that be a h'ox-eye!"
"Ox-eye!" Mr Chisholm repeated after him in a quizzing tone, with a
grin on his face. "I've heard of ox-tongues before--those tinned ones
ain't bad eating sometimes for lunch on a pinch; but an ox-eye--what is
that, Draper?"
"Nothin' to larf about," grunted out our crusty coxswain, bracing his
body against the loom of the oar with which he was steering and slewing
the boat's head aside to avoid a cross sea that nearly broke at that
very moment over our bows. "If ye'd be'n as long on this coast as me,
sir, ye'd know when ye seed one o' them things up there--it means, `Look
out!' Ay, by the Lord too, we must look out now! Stand by there--all
hands lie down in the bottom of the boat; it's yer only chance, if ye
values yer lives!"
"Down, men!" Mr Chisholm cried, endorsing Draper's words of warning
with his command. "Do as the coxswain tells you--down for your lives!"
Our chaps who were seated on the thwarts forwards and amidships at once
scrambled down on the bottom boards, while we in the sternsheets,
including Mr Chisholm himself, squatted on the grating, only old Draper
sitting up still at his post aft with both hands holding the loom of the
steering oar in a firm grip.
"Bend yer heads," muttered this worthy the next moment; "it's a-comin'
now!"
As the words passed his lips and we all bowed down below the level of
the gunwale, the roar of the sea seemed hushed in the dead stillness
that ensued; and then, with a wild shriek that sounded like the moaning
of some lost soul from the bottomless pit, the wind, which had been
gathering up all its strength in the interim, burst upon us, burying the
cutter's bows as it struck her right under water.
Bouncer, frightened out of his life, made a movement to rise as he lay
alongside me on the stern grating; but old Draper gave him a kick in the
ribs with the toe of his heavy boot.
"Lie still, you beggar!" he cried, bringing, with a tremendous pull of
his arms, the oar-rudder hard over. "The boat's rightin' all right.
We've seed the wust on it if yer'll only bide still!"
Fortunately, we had a weather cloth over the bow, which prevented the
sea from pouring in and swamping us when the cutter dipped under; while,
as all of us remained quiet and our dead weight was more towards the
stern than forwards, the boat's natural buoyancy prevailed and she rose
up like a cork.
The worst might have been over, as Draper had said; still, we were not
`out of the wood' yet, gust after gust assailing us, and the waves
racing up madly astern, when, dividing, they would tower up on either
side of our frail craft, threatening destruction for the moment ere they
rolled onward again--we, all the while, fleeing before the fury of the
storm we knew not whither, powerless alike to shape a course or guide
our boat.
All that our skilful coxswain could do was to prevent the cutter from
shipping a sea, no matter how the wind took us, or whether we ran with
the billows or athwart them, as sometimes happened from the sudden shift
of the gale, at whose beck and call we were; for, one moment going north
or west into the open sea, the next recklessly careering eastwards,
right in upon the rocks of the mainland, or dashing south amongst the
mazy little islands and islets round and about Zanzibar, where our
plight would be as perilous.
We had been boxing the compass like this for some four or five hours,
without the weather showing any signs of a mend, it being now late in
the afternoon; and our head turned towards Bagamoyo again for about the
fifth time that day since we began our circling experiences, when, just
as it was beginning to grow darker, though there had not been much light
about since noon, a ship hove in sight.
She was dead ahead of us, riding out the gale under steam.
The smoke of her funnels was trailing away to leeward and so mixing up
with the clouds that were banked on the horizon that old Draper, who was
looking out as well as steering, for he would not allow any of us to sit
on the thwarts, said he could not tell `t'other from which.'
Presently, however, as we surged onwards, carried down upon her at the
rate of twelve knots or more, Draper could distinguish the smoke from
the clouds; ay, and the ship herself.
"By the Lord!" he cried, looking at Mr Chisholm, his face all aglow and
his voice heartier than I ever heard him speak before, "it's the
_Mermaid_, sir."
"The _Mermaid_, coxswain!" ejaculated Mr Chisholm, at once jumping to
his feet and taking a sight himself, shading his eyes with his hand.
"Yes, it is the _Mermaid_, hurrah!"
"Steady there, sir," said Draper, warningly putting his hand on the
young officer's arm; "we ain't aboard her yet, sir; and if yer don't
keep cool, sir, beggin' yer pardon, sir, it's precious little we'll see
of her this night, or ever ag'en, fur that matter!"
"But, how shall we get alongside?"
"Keep cool, sir. I'll tell 'ee when the time comes," rejoined the
coxswain, in a soothing tone that took off the impertinence of his thus
speaking to his officer. "You leave it to me, sir, and I'll find a way,
if man can do it, to get alongside our old hooker; 'sides them aboard
'll be on the lookout, too, and between the pair on us we ought fur to
manage it comf'ably!"
While `old crusty' was laying down the law in this fashion, though
continuing to mind his steering as smartly as he had done all along, the
cutter was nearing the cruiser every instant, the wind taking her along
in a series of mad leaps and bounds through the water and over the
water, jumping from the top of one wave to that of another, and
sometimes almost in mid-air, until we seemed about to hop on board the
_Mermaid_, all standing like some of those flying-fish I have seen in
the tropics, or else smash ourselves all to pieces against her iron
hull.
But, in the nick of time, when only some twenty or thirty yards off her
sharp ram bow, which would have cut into the cutter as easily as a knife
goes into butter in summer-time, Draper gave a tug to his steering oar;
and, Captain Hankey `making a lee' for us by porting his helm, we glided
into comparatively calm water under the cruiser's starboard counter.
A dozen ropes were thrown to us from men already stationed in the
rigging for the purpose, a dozen hands and more held out to help us up
the side; and almost before any of us well knew where we were, there we
stood, safe and sound on the deck of our old ship again, the cutter
being then hoisted up to the davits.
Draper, who had saved her and us, was the last man to leave her, when
the falls were secured and the gripes put round the boat again.
After this exciting episode, nothing very notable occurred during our
stay on this part of the coast for the next twelve months, beyond my
being made `able seaman.'
I passed for this grade very satisfactorily, I am glad to say; but, it
would not be fair for me to omit mentioning that it was mainly through
my old friend Larrikins that I was able to get off with flying colours.
My old chum coached me up in the knotting and splicing of wire rope, of
which art he was a proficient, his father being a working smith, and
Larrikins himself having been intended originally for that trade, before
the superior attractions of the sea weaned him from the paternal
handicraft.
In the following year, however, matters became a trifle livelier on the
East coast.
The Somali, from the constant blockade we kept up along their territory
with our boats and cruisers, from Cape Guardafui down to the Equator,
thus putting a stop to their slave-dealings, capturing as we did all
their dhows and blocking all outlets from the coast, determined on
retaliatory measures; so, mustering all their forces and calling up the
assistance of the slave-dealers of the interior, they began to attack
various points of the British protectorate.
Possibly, had the Arabs only us to deal with, things might not have got
to this pass; but, very unluckily for this country, the Germans, who
have long been jealous of our colonial enterprise and commercial success
in Africa as elsewhere, took it into their heads, not long since, to
extend their trade on the eastern seaboard.
The ideas of Meinherr Von Sourkrout and his warlike Kaiser in respect of
the colonisation of this part of the Dark Continent, like those of our
French cousins on the West Coast, differ much from the more peaceful
plan pursued by England for several generations past--a plan that has
worked wonderfully well in the building up of our Empire, and the spread
of our manufactures over every land and sea!
Meinherr Sourkrout's method for extending trade, that is, according to
the experience of us bluejackets of the British Navy who have served on
the East African station, has been to shoot down the natives wherever
the flag of his Fatherland has ever been stuck up; and, when the men of
the negro tribes, objecting to such friendly advances, have bolted into
the bush, Meinherr, imitating the example of his great countryman
Marshal Haynau, took to flogging their wives and womenfolk in order to
coax the black gentlemen back.
The darkeys, somehow or other, didn't tackle to this treatment; and, the
Germans having thus roused them up to the south of our protectorate,
where, unfortunately for us, Meinherr Von Sourkrout and his domineering
compatriots have a territory far too close to our own, the natives,
being of the opinion that we were in sympathy with their oppressors,
joined hands with the Somalis in their advance on our trading posts
along the coast--they did not touch those belonging to the Germans, for
the very good reason that these have none!
I heard Mr Gresham explaining all this one day to Dabby when they were
both sitting in the captain's gig, to which I had been shifted since my
promotion to able seaman; for I was pulling stroke at the time, the boat
taking them ashore to a grand dinner-party given by the British Consul
to the Sultan or some other `big pot' at Zanzibar, off which port the
_Mermaid_ was then lying.
I wondered what led to this queer talk, as none of us on board had heard
anything on the lower deck about any row being imminent; for, of course,
sick of our stagnant life for the last few months, as all of us were,
the inkling of any fight being in the air would have been as welcome to
us as the `flowers of May.'
Still I kept my ears open all the same; and when, the next morning, I
met the captain's steward returning from the galley with a cup of early
cocoa for `old Hankey Pankey,' and he told me that he thought we were
going to be busy soon, the `old man' having directed him to take out his
sword and pistols, and give them to his marine servant to be cleaned up,
I began, as `Gyp' did that time on board the _Saint Vincent_, `to smell
a rat.'
A little later on, my impressions became confirmed; for, just as we were
piped down to breakfast after `wash and scrub decks,' and I was telling
Larrikins, who sat alongside me at the mess-table, what I had heard, the
engine-room gong sounded, and the word was passed to get up steam as
quickly as possible.
`Old Hankey Pankey' did not waste time when he had once got his orders;
and some couple of hours after we had weighed anchor and were rapidly
leaving Zanzibar, with its rows of square stone houses, built with flat
roofs in the eastern style, that front the beautiful curving bay, whose
white sandy beach is washed by water so clear that you can see the
bottom at six fathoms, and which is backed, beyond the warehouses and
mansions of the merchants, by the bright greenery of palm trees and
dates and other rich tropical growths, the beautiful foliage of which
contrasts vividly with the intense whiteness of the buildings and
adjacent shore, offering quite a relief to the eye from the glaring sun
and coppery sky overhead.
"Say, Tom," said Larrikins to me presently, as the two of us, with a lot
of the other hands, were polishing up the brasswork of the machine-guns
on the upper deck, "d'yer know where we're bound in such a hurry?"
"No, Larry," I replied. "Somewhere up the coast, though, I 'spect from
what I told you down below."
Larrikins chuckled to himself.
"Ye'r a fine chap, Tom, to give a fellow h'infumation," he said with a
snigger. "I could 'a told you as much meself. Why, carn't I see with
'arf a h'eye we're steerin' to the north'ard up the coast, with the
munsoon a-blowin' right in our teeth and the sun on our starb'rd 'and!"