drafted off to one of the cruisers on the station. Beastly unhealthy
place that Zanzibar--all fevers and agues and malaria in the wet season,
and as hot as a place you've heard of, sir, when the sou'-west monsoon
blows off the African shore. I was there when Sir Bartle Frere came to
interview the old sultan to try and make him sign a treaty to put down
the slave-trade; but it was all no go--the old sultan was too wide-awake
for that, and, indeed, treaty or no treaty, we can never quite stop the
dealing in slaves between the Arabs on the one hand and the clove-
growers on the other."
"No?" said I interrogatively, wondering what the harmless clove, which
forms such an important unit in the "sugar and spice and all things
nice" combination of culinary seasoning, could possibly have to do with
the slave-trade of East Africa.
"No, sir," he answered emphatically, with the air of a man who well knew
what he was talking about and was certain of his facts, "it can't be
done. You see, at certain times of the year, about a month after the
rainy season ends, in September, the cloves ripen, and it takes a good
many hands to pick 'em all and gather them in. Did you ever see them
growing, sir?"
"I can't say I ever have," I responded, "although, of course, I've read
about them."
"Well, sir, the cloves grow on tall, biggish-sized trees--"
"Dear me!" I said, interrupting him, "why, I thought they were the
fruit of some little shrub like currants and capers."
"Oh, no! They grow on trees, and some of a goodish height too. The
cloves are the bud or blossom of the tree before the flower comes; and
they must be picked early in time, or else they're not fit for anything.
Their name, `cloves'--I don't know whether you are aware on it, sir--is
from the little things resembling a small nail--_clavo_, as it's called
in the Spanish."
"I didn't know that," I said.
"That's it, then," he replied, proceeding with his explanation. "Now,
of course you can see that the cloves must be got off the trees before
the blossom ripens too much, but as the sun is so terribly hot and such
a miasma comes up from the places where the trees grow only niggers can
stand the exposure; and so it is that slave labour is wanted, for no
whites could undertake the job, and the Arab merchants, you may be sure,
wouldn't do it themselves, in spite of the large demand for cloves in
the European markets--that is, so long as they can get slaves to do it
for 'em."
"How do they gather them?" I asked.
"Why, they have queer-shaped ladders, just of the same sort as those
little things they put in pots of garden musk to train the plants on,
broad at one end and narrow at the other--something like a triangular
grating--so that a lot of the niggers can stand on it at a time and pick
away from the same tree, on which, perhaps, there are millions of buds
to be taken off in less than no time. When they are all gathered
they're spread out in the sun and dried, and then sent off in bags to
whoever wants 'em."
"And where are they principally grown?" said I.
"Why, Pemba. That's an island up above Zanzibar, about sixty miles from
the coast, though they're very good cloves grown on Zanzibar Island too;
but Pemba is the chief place, and it is to there that the chief runs of
slaves are made by the Arab dhows. That is why the _London_ was so long
stationed thereabouts: it was in order to intercept these craft and stop
the traffic."
"I suppose you've seen some service chasing the dhows yourself, eh?" I
said, thinking this a good opening for getting him back to his yarn, as
he seemed inclined to end the conversation at this point, hinting that
he had an appointment "in the yard"--meaning Portsmouth dockyard--and
that it was getting on late, and they would soon be closing up.
"Oh yes, sir! I served my time dhow-chasing when I was in the _London_;
and saw a few sights, too, in the different craft we overhauled that
would ha' made your blood boil against slavery. One dhow, I remember,
we captured with nearly a hundred on board, all crammed into a space
that you couldn't have thought would have held half that number of human
beings, for it was a small dhow, of probably not more than forty tons at
the outside. On the ballast at the bottom of the vessel were huddled up
twenty-three women, some with infants in their arms. They were
literally doubled up, sir, as they could not stand from the position
they were in, as right over them was placed a bamboo deck not three feet
above the keel of the boat, on which forty men were jammed together in
the same way. This was not all, either, for, right above the men, right
on to their heads almost as they squatted down, was another deck of
bamboo, on which were over fifty children of all ages. The whole lot,
too, when we boarded the dhow, were in the last stages of starvation and
dysentery, not to speak of what they must have suffered from the cramped
position in which they were confined and the want of air. They smelled
something awful when we unkiverd them; it was enough to knock down a
horse."
"It was horrible," I said in sympathy.
"No doubt it were all that," replied my friend the pensioner. "But from
what I saw out there I do believe the very attempts our government make
to put down the slave-trade only increases the evils of the poor
wretches we are trying to liberate."
"How is that?" I asked.
"Why, you see, when the traffic used to be permitted, as it was once for
a period of eight months in the year, just as you have at home a set
time for shooting game, the slaves used to be carried in large dhows,
more comfortably, and well supplied with food and water in their passage
from the mainland to Pemba and Zanzibar; but when our cruisers began to
look out for them and stopped the trade, no matter whether it was in the
dry season or not, then the Arabs would pack 'em up in small craft that
could lie hid in the creeks or shallows of the coast and smuggle the
niggers in during the night-time, for these Arabs are just like cats,
and can see in the dark when our men couldn't perceive their hands afore
their face. Once upon a time, when I first went on the station, we used
to capture good big dhows that were of a hundred and eighty tons burden
and upwards; now our men only get hold of little Mtpe dhows that are
hardly worth taking--I suppose you know, sir, as how we get a bounty or
prize-money, according to the size of the vessels and the number of
slaves we liberate?"
"Yes," said I, "I'm aware of that, as I have noticed advertisements in
the _London Gazette_ about the distribution of the bounty for such and
such slave-dhows `captured by the boats of HMS _London_' or some other
cruiser named. How are these dhows built?"
"Of a sort of close hard wood like African oak, but harder than our
English timber of the same nature. The planks of the small Mtpe dhows
are sewn together with a thread-like stuff they get from the reeds in
the lagoons. They are built broad and shallow, with a keel deepening
towards the stern, almost like a wedge, so that they can turn quickly.
They're good sea-boats, too, and can sail almost up into the wind's eye,
with their large lateen sails, which are cut something like an old-
fashioned leg of mutton, or short tack lug. The stem of them rises high
out of the water, having a poop on it, which is thatched over with
matting and banana leaves; and altogether they don't look unlike a
Chinese junk. Some of the bigger dhows, which are used as war craft by
the Arab chiefs of Lamoi and Mozambique, are fine craft, and carry six
and twelve brass guns sometimes, like the old carronades of the
service."
"They sail well, you say?" I inquired.
"Don't they, that's all! Why, none of our quickest steam-pinnaces can
overhaul them when they're going on a wind, for even with the lightest
breeze their sails, being made of twilled calico and light, waft them
along as if by magic. There are twenty that escape us for every one we
catch, as, in the busy season, the caravans from the interior bring the
slaves down to the coast wholesale. The Portuguese and Arabs are the
chaps that manage the business; and once the slaves are aboard the
dhows, they sneak along the land until night-time, when, if the wind
blows fair for them, they're off and away to Pemba, or further up
towards the Arabian coast, where our boats can whistle for them for all
the chance they have of overhauling them!"
"What becomes of the slaves that are liberated when the dhows are
captured?" said I.
"Oh, the boys are sent to the Boy's Mission Schools at Zanzibar, and the
girls to the Female Mission there also; while the men folk, at least all
the able-bodied and strong ones that are not too old, are enlisted into
the sultan's army--the Sultan of Zanzibar, I mean, the Seyyid Burgash
that was. When I was there, the commander of his army was a lieutenant
of our navy who had been `lent' by government for the purpose for three
years, and now he has left the service altogether and is known as
`General Matthews' on the east coast. A right smart chap he is too, for
he drilled the niggers as well as if he were a born sojer instead of a
sailor!"
"Do the slaves like this business?" I asked, thinking that their
"freedom" seemed rather questionable; and then, too, consider the cost
both in men and money it is to England every year.
"Well, I don't believe they do," answered the ex-man-o'-war's-man--"I've
heard some of them say that they were quite contented to work on the
clove plantations, and preferred that to loafing about the streets of
Zanzibar, where hundreds of them are to be seen every day, with nothing
to do and very little to eat, unless they take to thieving!"
"What sort of a place is Zanzibar?" said I now.
"Well, sir," replied the pensioner, "like all them oriental towns I have
ever seen in the Levant and elsewhere, it looks ever so much better as
seen from the sea than it does at close quarters. Coming into the
harbour from the southwards, as I've entered it many a time when
returning from a trip down to the Mozambique, your vessel has to wind
slowly along through numerous little coral islands, which are, however,
grown with stunted trees and bush quite close down to the water."
"That must be lovely!" I remarked.
"Aye, aye, so it is," said my friend; "but the navigation is awfully
difficult, not to say dangerous, even with a man in the chains heaving
the lead and singing out the depth every moment, for the soundings shoot
from the `deep nine' to the `short five,' and less nor that too, before
you know where you are! Howsomdever, once you've got inside and cast
anchor, it's as pretty a roadstead as I ever clapped eyes on--as pretty
as Rio in South America, which I daresay you've heard of?"
"Yes, and seen too," I said in response.
"Have you, sir?" replied the ex-man-o'-war's-man--"then all I can say is
that you've seen the handsomest harbour in the world! But, still,
Zanzibar ain't far behind it. The front of the town, which faces the
anchorage, looks quite imposing like. The water of the bay is clear
too, so that you can see the bottom down to any depth; and the white
sandy beach fringing it round is just like snow against the dark
background of palm-trees and green foliage. Along the beach are the
warehouses and residences of the English-speaking merchants, the grand
mansions of the richer sort of citizens, and the offices of the
different foreign consuls--each with its own national flag fluttering
gaily from the top, the British Union Jack and the Yankee Stars and
Stripes being very prominent; while, in the very centre of the lot, is
the palace of the sultan, a fine concern. From the top of this flies
the red ensign of Arabia, and around it may be seen sentries in a sort
of zouave uniform, selected from that very slave army I told you of just
now."
"What struck you as most peculiar about the place?" I asked.
"Well, I'm hanged if it weren't the niggers, sir!" said my informant.
"You see there the most extraordinary number of little darkies you ever
saw in your life, all with nothing on 'em, no more than Adam--not even a
fig-leaf! The next thing to strike you, if a stranger, would be the
heat, for it is far hotter, strange to say, ashore there than it is
aboard your own ship. Some of the houses are curious to look at, for
they have neither windows nor doors; for the best dwellings are built
round an open court, and the windows, or air-holes as they might more
properly be called, open on to that. Instead of being light and built
of some flimsy stuff, as you might expect, the houses are all put up `on
the heat-resisting principle,' as I heard an engineer describe them--
just like the Irishman that wore his Connemara frieze coat in summer to
keep out the sun, as he said, in the same way as he put it on in winter
to keep out the cold!"
"Indeed!" I said.
"Yes, sir," continued my friend; "the walls of all the large houses at
Zanzibar are many feet thick of solid stone masonry; and even the floors
and partitions dividing the rooms are of several thicknesses too, all
made of wood and stone and lime, the wood being covered over with
mortar. The roof is the best part of them, however. It is made quite
flat, and it is the principal spot for the family to go of an evening
when the sun has gone down and the night-breeze begins to blow. The
Arabs and Parsees go on top in the mornings too, at sunrise, to say
their prayers, spreading out a bit of sacred carpet over the stone
flagging that forms the floor of the roof."
"Are there many shops?" I next inquired.
"Bless you, the town's crammed full of them! but they're only open
sheds, in the centre of which some Hindoo or Banian merchant is to be
seen squatting all day long, chewing hashish or smoking his hubble-
bubble, as if he hadn't a stroke of business to do, and didn't care
about doing it either if he got the chance!"
"I suppose they have goods to sell, though, eh!" I said.
"Oh, yes, shawls and sandals and silks and such like; while in the
eatable line you can get coffee and sherbet, and arrack too, or what
they call English rum, besides pine-apples and mangoes, oranges,
citrons, guavas, green cocoa-nuts, and every fruit you could think of,
as well as cakes and sweetmeats. The streets in the town are very
narrow and are crowded with these sorts of shops or rather stalls, for
they're just like the places you see old apple-women rig up at the
corners in London; but the bazaars are the best spots to look at--
they're just like those in India, and some that I've seen too in
Constantinople. Lor' sakes! why, they're crowded with Arabs and
Hindoos, Persians, Africans, Somali Arabs, and every sort of coloured
native you can imagine, sir, from the lightest coffee-tinted mulatto
down to the jettiest black of the pure nigger brought originally from
the interior as a slave.
"The funniest thing, too, about these bazaars is to see the different
trades or handicraftsmen at work, the goldsmiths making rings by
hammering and beating the metal, the jewellers stringing pearls together
for necklaces and bracelets, the toy-makers rigging up the queerest
curios you ever saw, and the sandal-makers cutting out shoes of leather;
but the biggest treat of all is to watch a Parsee school and see how the
master instructs the little shavers. The children, to the number of
fifty or more, all squat on the floor of the school-room, which is a
large open shed on a raised platform, each holding in one hand the
blade-bone taken from the shoulder of a camel to serve as a slate, on
which they make marks with a pencil-like brush. They are pretty little
trots, the children; and are mostly all smartly dressed in little
jackets and trousers of various coloured silks, green, yellow, and red,
with turbans on top of their heads, just like their fathers, to complete
the picture."
"The end of the rainy season, you say, is the best time for catching the
dhows?" I asked now, to bring my friend back to the main point of all
my interrogatories.
"Yes, there's the greatest demand then for the slaves; besides which the
south-west monsoon sets in at that time, and is favourable for their
crossing from the mainland."
"Do they ever show fight?" I inquired.
"Bather!" ejaculated my informant; "they're about as treacherous a lot
as you could ever come across, them Arabs; for, I tell you what, they'll
sometimes let a boat's crew overhaul 'em, and come up alongside as if
everything was ship-shape and clear sailing--that is to say, sir, that
they have nothing contraband aboard and could show a clean bill o'
lading; when, drat 'em, they'll turn round on you like a parcel o'
tigers with their sharp knives and spears. It was in this way my poor
skipper, Capt'in Brownrigg, was killed in December '81--just at
Christmas time, when I were out there."
"That was a sad thing," said I sympathisingly.
"Yes," replied the pensioner; "but, saddest of all, it was to know his
poor wife had just come out from England to join him, and was aboard the
_London_ at the very time his body was brought alongside the ship in the
steam-pinnace in which he had met his death. Ah! he was a fine officer
was Capt'in Brownrigg, and liked by everybody--not only by his brother
officers and equals, but by the men under him. Bless you, they'd a'
gone anywheres to win a smile from his cheery face. Hullo, though, sir,
look there, they're shutting up the dockyard gate!"
Such indeed was the case, showing that the afternoon was pretty nearly
"expended," as they say in the service.
"Ah! that comes along o' yarning with you and not minding the business
that brought me down here, for now I'm too late."
"Well, in that case," said I, seeing my chance now for getting the oft-
evaded yarn of my friend's long service, "suppose you come home to my
place and have a cup of tea, when you can tell me the story of your
shipwreck off Madagascar, eh?"
He hemmed and hawed for a moment; but seeing that my invitation was
cordially given, and I suppose having nothing else particularly to do,
he accepted--whence this story.
VOLUME TWO, CHAPTER TWO.
WIND AND STEAM.
When I had made the pensioner as comfortable as I could at my little
place--attending carefully to the wants of his inner man before
appearing to have any curiosity regarding the matter that had made me
invite him home--and the tea-things were cleared away, I gave a sort of
inquiring cough, which he immediately took as my signal for him to begin
his yarn.
"After serving a year in the _London_, as I told you before, sir," he
commenced, without any preliminary beating about the bush, as many a
landsman would have done, "I was drafted on to an old cruiser called the
_Dolphin_. She's been broken up now, like the old _London_, though I
hear they've got a rare smart despatch-boat just building called by the
same name; but the _Dolphin_ as I'm speaking of is quite different and
not the same vessel--remember that, sir, please, in case anybody should
try to throw doubts on my yarn, as some of them sea-lawyers will."
"I assure you," said I to encourage him, "that I am quite satisfied as
to the truth of your story."
"Well, then," he resumed, "the _Dolphin_ I am speaking of to you, sir,
was a pretty fast boat for a paddle-steamer, and had already made some
tidy captures of slave-dhows--that is, since she had been commissioned
and sent out from England, about six months before, to replace an old
sailing brig that formerly did duty on the station as tender to the old
_London_; so I fully expected when I jined her to have some smart work
afore me--and I warn't disapinted neither!"
"No?" said I questioningly to lead him on, settling myself cosily in my
chair.
"You're right, sir, I warn't," replied my friend Ben. "The very first
day I shipped aboard the _Dolphin_ we took two Mtpe dhows close inshore
near Pemba. That brought me in a niceish bit of prize-money for a
start; and, just a week arter that exactly, when we had got down to our
proper cruising ground--that was, sir, just atween Zanzibar and the
Mozambique Channel, which, as I daresay you know, sir, is about two
hundred and fifty miles wide and runs between Madagascar and the
mainland of Africa--why, we came upon the biggest haul that had been
made on the coast for years; but we had to work for it, I tell you.
That was a chase and no mistake!"
"Was it?" I asked, glad of Ben's coming now to an actual yarn
concerning some of the stirring events of his life; for he had
previously only been "beating about the bush," so to speak.
"Yes, sir; and not only a chase that was something to boast of, but a
fight as well at the end of it--one of the smartest scrimmages I ever
had all the time I was out there. If you don't mind my lighting a pipe,
for I allers, sir, can tell a yarn better when I'm smoking, I'll just
haul my jaw-tackle aboard and give you a full account of the whole
adventure."
"Do," I said.
"There!" exclaimed he with a grunt of satisfaction, carefully filling a
briar-root pipe with some dark tobacco, which he produced from out of a
little round brass box that he carried in his waistcoat pocket, telling
me it was "the right sort," and proceeding to light it--"now, we can go
on serenely."
"Fire away!" said I, to encourage him, "I'm all attention."
He did not waste any more time; but at once began his story.
"The _Dolphin_ had run down south with the fag-end of the north-east
monsoon, economising her coals as much as possible, as all the men-of-
war have to do nowadays, worse luck--sometimes when it's a question
between saving a few pounds or sacrificing a ship! We had passed
Mazemba island, and had just weathered Cape Delgado, which is some ten
degrees south of the equator, when--it was close on sunset at the time,
and it grows dark all at once after that, you know, in the tropics--the
look-out man sang out, `sail-ho!' This was just as we were piped down
to tea. Bless you, we didn't think no more of going below, I can tell
you!"
"I suppose not," I put in, to show I was listening attentively to what
he was saying, for he paused at this juncture, as if waiting for me to
say something.
"No, sir. Of course, although we were running down under easy sail the
engine-fires were ready banked up, so that it didn't take us long to get
up steam; and we were soon round like a shot, and retracing our way,
right in the face of the wind, after a large dhow which we could see
stealing up along-shore and hugging the land. She was what the Arabs
called a batilla, and had two large lugs, or lateen sails set, besides a
sort of square-cut jib forwards on her high-peaked bowsprit, by the aid
of which she was sailing close-hauled, almost in the very teeth of the
nor'-easter that was blowing pretty stiffly at the time, making it risky
work for a vessel to approach so near a lee-shore as she was doing.
However, I suppose her captain thought he would be able to slip by us in
the darkness, when he might have got under the shelter of the island we
had passed only a short while previously in our downward passage to the
Mozambique; and, once he was out of sight of the _Dolphin_, of course he
could have put out to sea again at his leisure, making his way north as
soon as the coast seemed clear, and thus escaping us altogether."
"But he reckoned without his host that time, eh?" said I.
"Aye, that he did," responded the ex-man-o'-war's-man, warming up to his
subject as he proceeded. "He made a great mistake, did that there Arab
slave skipper when he thought he'd hoodwink us aboard the _Dolphin_ this
evening I'm a-talking of--a mistake, sir, as I'll soon show you, that
cost him not only his vessel, but his life as well!"
"Indeed?" I interposed, beginning to get interested in Ben's yarn now
that he had actually got under weigh with it in earnest.