THE ROCK AND THE CAPE.
THE providential success of Playfair in the Cambridgeshire of ’72 had
released more than one of our clique from the jaws of the usurer, and
Bill Stourton, by the judicious investment of a fiver, was in expectation
of being the proud owner of £300 on the following Monday.
Dashing down to Somersetshire overflowing with filial duty and in
anticipation of our early embarkation for Gibraltar, a considerable scare
was created one morning by a groom running up to the house and reporting
that the sheriff’s carriage and two grimy beaks from Taunton had pulled
up at the “George” and were making tender inquiries as to Mr. William’s
whereabouts.
All this occurred on Monday, when, as it happened, Billy was speeding
towards London to realise at Tattersall’s the result of his sagacity at
Newmarket. And so, when the oleaginous visitors inquired at the
ancestral porch, the reply they received was discouraging in the extreme.
“That is Mr. William’s bedroom,” pointing to a window, was the ingenuous
servitor’s reply; “you can go and examine it if you wish; but I give you
my word he left for London this morning.” And so it came to pass that
the astute “Fitch and Son,” of Southwark, failed to serve the capias, and
the rascally Israelite who had made “affidavit” as to his intention of
“leaving the kingdom” (as embarking with the regiment might certainly be
construed by a quibble) had to pay the cost of the imposing coach that
had been provided for his conveyance to Taunton.
The faithful butler had omitted to add that the young reprobate was
returning the same evening, and that the dog-cart was to meet him at
nine.
But the reprieve was not of long duration, and within a year Bill had
sold his commission and become a full private in the Blues.
Passing into the Horse Guards one day a former brother officer chanced to
inquire of the sentry the way to the military secretary’s, and was
considerably startled by the reply, “First door to the left, Polly.”
The sentry was ex-Lieutenant Stourton.
Gibraltar then—as now—was a favourite winter resort, and the “Club House
Hotel” opposite the main guard did a roaring trade.
Here Lady Herbert of Lea and her youthful son, the present Lord Pembroke,
sojourned for some weeks in the Sixties, and it was to the inquiring turn
of mind of the young nobleman’s tutor that Gibraltar was almost indebted
for a very promising row.
In one room, it appears, a cantankerous Irishman and his wife were
staying, in the next the tutor, and whilst the Irishman positively swore
he had one morning seen the prying tutor’s face glued to the fanlight as
vehemently did the pedagogue swear on a sack of bibles that he had never
glued his nose to a fanlight in his life.
What there was to peep at was not quite clear, for the supposed “object”
in any costume was not fair to look upon, and so after mutual
recriminations and mutual apologies the affair was hushed up, and
expectant Gibraltar was robbed of a lawful excitement.
A fly-leaf that appeared weekly—why, no one could explain—although less
original than one might have wished, yet possessing a symbolism that was
unquestionable, on one occasion appeared with a verbatim extract from a
Spanish paper of the escapades of an adventurer who was exploiting the
neighbourhood of Madrid.
Weeks apparently had elapsed before it had caught the eye of our
lynx-eyed editor, and one day when Ansaldo invited certain of us to
compare a recent resident at his hotel with the description in the very
latest “local intelligence” it became apparent to all that a lately
departed wayfarer was the redoubtable personage referred to. “By Jove! I
lost fifty to him last week at loo, and then gave him a shakedown,”
remarked one; and, “D—d if I didn’t lend him my horse to go as far as
Cadiz, and it’s not to be back till to-morrow,” added another; and then
the local tailor came running down to the Club House, and Ansaldo
remembered he had paid his hotel bill by a cheque, and within a week a
dozen victims realised that they had assisted in one way or another to
make the gentleman’s Mediterranean trip a pleasant one.
But money at the Rock was literally a drug, thanks to the existence of
Sacconi, a Genoese grocer. This extraordinary man was everybody’s
banker; if one lost at the races it was Sacconi who settled the account;
mess bills were paid by Sacconi; fifty—one hundred Isabels—were only to
be asked for to be obtained by initialling the amount at the shop.
Apparently indifferent to risk, the astute Italian was, however, working
on a certainty. Immediately a regiment was under orders for the Rock, a
list of every officer’s “length of tether” was transmitted by Perkins,
his London agent, a city knight; whilst, in addition to the value of
one’s commission, the impossibility of leaving the Rock without his
knowledge, and the “Moorish Castle” frowning on the heights, enabled
Sacconi to amass a huge fortune, to marry his daughters to officers of
the garrison, and be an honoured guest in after years at the “Convent,”
the Governor’s official residence.
But all this was in the days of purchase.
Meeting the ex-Governor, Sir William Codrington, one day in Bond Street
on the point of being run over, he jocosely remarked, as I went to his
assistance, “Different from Gibraltar, eh?”
To any but enthusiasts of riding, Gibraltar was (and probably is) a most
overrated station, with nothing to recommend it but its proximity to
London. Every afternoon was devoted to couples riding to the Cork woods,
and returning from its shaded glades just before gun-fire.
No one ever dreamt of riding with his own wife; indeed, so accepted was
this custom that on one occasion a couple having been seen riding
together, an excited newsmonger rushed about inquiring, “What’s up?
Holroyd has been seen riding with his own wife!”
But the advent of Fitzroy Somerset gave an immense fillip to sport, and
when, later, six couples of cast hounds came direct from Badminton every
jack-pudding purchased a screw and became an ardent fox-hunter.
A German apothecary, who had not straddled a quadruped since he left the
Vaterland, became an enthusiastic rider, and thrilled the less daring
horsemen by descriptions of runs, and how “der ’orse svearved to him
right, and I ’it ’im on the ’ead to his left, and den he svearved to the
left, and I ’it ’im on the ’ead to his right,” till everybody became more
or less horsy, and not to keep a crock with four legs, or three, was
tantamount to an admission that one was literally past praying for.
Every youngster purchased a quadruped—some vicious and young, others
blind and in the last stage of senile decay—and Staines, an assistant
surgeon, was so frequently sent whirling into space that his animal was
christened “Benzine-Collas,” because it was “warranted to remove
Staines.”
Here, too, was a fox-hunting chaplain known as “Tally-ho Jonah,” who
ended his days as shepherd of a peculiarly desirable flock amidst the
rich pastures of the Midlands.
On his death-bed some years ago, his valet consoled him with the
assurance that he was going to a better land, to which the worthy divine
replied: “John, there’s no place like old England.” R.I.P.
But the mania by no means ended here, and Grant, the Principal Medical
Officer—a bony Scot with the largest feet ever inflicted on man—literally
paralysed a group who one day saw him in the distance leisurely
approaching on horseback.
“Great heavens!” was the universal exclamation as he came nearer, “why,
it’s ‘Benzine-Collas’ going as quiet as a lamb,” and it was agreed that
the fiery little Mogador stallion was being imposed upon by old Grant,
under the impression that he was between the shafts.
Across the bay was Tangier, and many found an inexhaustible store of
delight in visiting that most Oriental of towns.
Within four days of Paris, it seemed incredible that here was a spot that
civilisation had apparently overlooked, and which still retained all the
barbaric pomp of a thousand years ago. Fowls with their throats cut lay
about the streets awaiting preparation for pilau; malefactors for the
most trifling offences had their hands hacked off in the leading
thoroughfares; whilst under the windows of the Sherif of Wazan’s palace
half a dozen naked musicians blew their insides out from morning to
night, and discoursed a series of diabolical sounds that made the
contemplation of anything but their music impossible.
Here Martin—late messman of the _Racoon_—had started the “Royal Hotel,”
and after providing his visitors with an excellent dinner, favoured them
with morceaux on a flute, of which he prided himself on being a virtuoso.
Martin was as black as the blackest hat, and from the suspicious slits in
his ears justified the assumption that he was a liberated West Indian
slave. The music he emitted with eyes closed, possibly the most soulful,
was certainly the most doleful, and had evidently been picked up when
watching the anchor being weighed on H.M.S. _Racoon_.
“Where do you come from, Martin?” on one occasion inquired an inquisitive
officer.
“Devonshire,” was the unexpected reply; “but I left home in my infancy.”
He had made this assertion so often that there is no doubt he believed
it.
Returning from Tangier on one occasion, I brought with me a quantity of
Kuss-Kuss cloth, which catching the eye of a voracious brother subaltern
he inquired where I had got it.
“Oh,” I said, “the Sherif of Wazan sent it over for distribution in
return for the guard of honour we supplied last month when he was here.”
“Then I’m entitled to some?” he remarked.
“I’m afraid it’s all been claimed,” I replied, and to keep up the
illusion I got half a dozen youngsters to cross and re-cross the square
with a piece under their arms and deposit it somewhere, for another to
fetch it and leave it elsewhere. It seemed, indeed, that the traffic was
never to end, and next morning an official complaint was made by the
aggrieved one, and he discovered he had been the victim of a practical
joke.
Apropos of this class of grumbler, an amusing story was once told me by
the captain of a P. and O. It was in the days that the skipper “messed”
the passengers, and it was this officer’s habit to have a saucerful of
porridge every morning about seven on the bridge.
The feeding on a P. and O. is proverbially liberal, yet not content with
the enormous breakfast provided, certain grumblers complained that
considering the price they paid they surely were entitled to porridge.
Inwardly chuckling, the skipper reluctantly consented, with the result
(as he told me) that instead of devouring two mutton chops, eggs, and
marmalade _ad libitum_ at eight, he was a considerable gainer by the
satisfying effect of two-pennyworth of porridge at seven.
During my two years at Gibraltar cholera appeared, and anything more
terrible than such a visitation in such a circumscribed spot can hardly
be conceived. With a strict “cordon” established, there was no getting
away from it, and men who the night before were in rude health were often
buried at gun-fire.
To be afraid of it was tantamount (so doctors asserted) to courting it,
and so regimental bands were ordered to play daily on the Alameda by way
of diverting the public mind, and not a drum was heard at the numerous
military funerals that wended their way towards the north front.
By night the “corpse-lights” over the burial ground emitted a weird glow,
and many a subaltern visiting the sentries before daylight would shiver
and his teeth rattle as he skirted the unearthly illumination.
To such an extent did downright funk seize upon some that an officer now
living in London—a C.B. of overwhelming interest—asked everybody the best
preventive, and jokes were indulged in at his expense, and he swallowed
tablespoonfuls of salt and raw porpoise liver, as this or the other
prescribed.
Distracted, one afternoon he sought consolation by proceeding to the
house of a fair scorpion (persons born on the Rock) he had known in
happier days, and literally collapsed as he met her coffin emerging from
her door.
Apropos of this terrible scourge, an instance that many can vouch for
occurred some years previously in India.
My regiment was being decimated by cholera, and corpses were hurriedly
placed in an outhouse that was infested with rats.
The sentries had orders to periodically tap with their rifles on the
door, and on one occasion tapping too hard, the door opened, and the
Armourer Sergeant, who had been brought in a few hours previously, was
seen sitting up on the trestle.
Years after I saw the man daily, and he completed his twenty-one years’
service instead of being buried alive, as many a poor wretch has been.
Colonel Zebulon Pike was by way of being a consul representing the United
States in South Africa and the most amusing liar I have ever had the good
fortune to meet.
The embodiment of generosity, no yarn he ever spun could have injured a
fly; that there never was a word of truth in them was an accepted axiom.
“Yes, sir,” as he invariably prefixed his remarks, “it was when I was
commanding my regiment during the rebellion that Captain Crusoe reported
to me he had captured a spy. ‘Bring him before me,’ I said sternly, and
when the rascal appeared I pointed to the sun, saying: ‘Before yon
luminary disappears behind yon hills you die’; and turning to Crusoe, I
added: ‘Remove him, Colonel Crusoe.’ ‘Colonel, sir?’ inquired he. ‘Yes,
sir,’ said I, ‘you’re colonel from this very moment.’”
The Colonel once expressed a desire to attend the Governor’s levée; but
bewailing the fact that he had not brought his uniform, he proceeded to
describe it.
“The pants, sir, are a rich blue, with a broad lace stripe down their
sides; my tunic is also blue, and my breast is covered with medals—I have
a drawerful of them. Around my waist, sir, is a crimson sash, and in my
hat a long ostrich feather sweeps down to my shoulder.”
“But that’s all easily arranged, Colonel,” we explained, and on the
eventful day we proceeded to truss him.
Never was a more imposing sight, and as the guard of honour marched down
to Government House the Colonel stood on the pavement, immovable as a
rock, with hand to his feathered billycock. And the men (as had been
arranged) came to the “carry,” and passed him with all the “honours of
war.”
“My God, sir, it brought tears to my eyes,” he afterwards told us in his
pride, “to see yon fine fellows swinging past; it reminded me of my own
regiment. I thank you, gentlemen, for the compliment you paid a
comrade.”
These colonial levées of the past were often held of an evening to enable
the introduction of refreshments, without which the attendance would
certainly have been meagre.
The local grandees liberally prepared for the coming feast, and having
eaten to repletion proceeded to fill their pockets.
“You may as well have the sauce,” once interposed an irate A.D.C. as he
saw a native pocketing a fowl, and he deliberately poured the contents of
a tureen into his lap.
At these “go-as-you-please” functions, speeches more or less impromptu
invariably took place, and it was then that the “Colonel” was literally
in his element.
Panting for his opportunity, it was only after some wag had proposed his
health, and described how we had “one amongst us who had seen the mighty
buffalo on its native prairie” (which he assuredly never had), etc., that
the Colonel rose and delighted his hearers with a string of most amusing
lies.
Lady Shand, the wife of the Chief Justice, once sitting near him, after
one of his flowery orations, began to tell him of her own native home in
Scotland, and of the loch that stretched for miles before the ancestral
hall, and was considerably surprised by the Colonel’s rejoinder: “Aye,
and the swans; I can see them now.”
“But there were no swans, Colonel,” she gently corrected; but henceforth
held her peace when the staggering retort was given: “Oh, yes there were;
at least, in my time.”
No function was considered complete without “the Colonel,” and he was a
frequent guest at one place or another. Apparently capable of dispensing
with sleep, no matter how late the night’s orgy daylight found him on the
verandah with a green cigar, after which he proceeded towards the Grand
river ostensibly to bathe.
“Can’t do without my morning swim,” he once told a man who met him with a
bath-towel over his arm; but the towel showed no signs of having been
used, and it was recognised that the Colonel never stripped, and that his
ablutions were primitive to a degree.
But the Cape Town of to-day has undergone quite as much change as our
modern Babylon, and where a railway station as big as St. Pancras now
exists, a wooden shanty with a single line fifty miles long was all that
represented railway enterprise in the long-ago sixties.
It was by the courtesy of Captain Mills, the Assistant Colonial
Secretary—afterwards Sir Charles Mills, agent general in London—that a
delightful party was organised for the shooting of the “Sicker Vlei,” a
vast expanse of water in the vicinity of Wellington.
This magnificent lake is the resort of every kind of wild beast and bird.
Strings of flamingoes wade leisurely about it, whilst wild geese and
swans of enormous proportions float lazily over one’s head; antelopes and
buck of every description come down to water, and the Cape leopard—the
most treacherous and cowardly of four-footed creatures—is to be met with
in considerable numbers as day begins to break. The procedure that
obtains is similar to that in all ordinary mountain loch shooting, with
the solitary exception that it necessitates a start about 3 a.m., so that
every one is posted amongst the rushes at two hundred yards’ intervals an
hour before daybreak. The excitement, the delight, the profound silence
of that hour when Nature seems to rouse itself for its daily routine of
activity, requires an abler pen than mine to describe.
With a rifle in hand and a shot gun at one’s side, there is, however,
nothing for it but to wait for daybreak, wondering whether buck or
antelope, cheetah or wild fowl will be the first to come within range.
“Trekking” with our span of oxen to a farmhouse, where only two cots were
available, it was our nightly custom to play “nap” as to who should
occupy the beds and who the kitchen table and dresser, and the excitement
ran just as high as it did in the days when fifties and hundreds were at
stake in the card room of the old Raleigh.
But the losers did not lose much, for almost before one was asleep it was
time to be up for our usual 3 a.m. start.
With me was placed dear old Arthur Barkly, the worst shot and most
passionate of good fellows, last Governor of Heligoland, and long since
gone over to the majority, and it evokes a smile when even now I think of
how, having missed with both barrels two huge wild geese that leisurely
floated twenty yards over his head, he threw a cartridge box and then a
ramrod in his passion at the unoffending birds.
But the shot had scared other denizens of the plain, and bang, bang in
every direction indicated that all our guns were in action as cheetahs
and antelopes might be seen scuttling on all sides. Nothing further
being left for us, we proceeded to count our bag and return to the
farmstead.
After a few days devoted to “braying” the skins and “curing” the antelope
meat for future consumption, we resumed our dreary bumping “trek” into
the interior in the hope of meeting with big game.
Lions are occasionally, but rarely, met with in these parts, and it is
with reference to a dramatic incident that might have ended fatally that
I will confine my present remarks. Returning one evening to our
location, with literally only three ball cartridges amongst us, one of
the Kaffir boys descried in the distance a lion and lioness and three
cubs. With bated breath and excitement running high, a council of war
was hastily convened, and the pros and cons., the direction of the wind,
and the dearth of ammunition having been variously discussed, it was
decided that to attack them would be unwise, if not absolutely foolhardy.
A wounded lion or lioness with its cubs is probably as dangerous as a
man-eating tiger; yet, despite all our entreaties to the contrary, one
daring spirit determined to attempt to stalk them.
Loading both barrels of his rifle with ball, with the other solitary
cartridge placed handily in his pocket, and divested of all other
impediments, he hastily retired to make a circuit and so get within shot
against the wind.
Suddenly we heard the sharp report of his rifle, and then, after a
second, we saw the lion make for the spot whence the smoke had come,
whilst the lioness and the cubs scampered off in the opposite direction.
Again there was a report, and next we saw Fellowes running with all his
might, followed by the lion.
What ensued may best be given in his own words, as narrated to us that
night.
“I had evidently missed my first shot, and whilst putting in my other
cartridge, I saw the brute making for me; again I fired, and I saw it
staggered him, but still he came on, and seeing a small pond a few yards
off I decided to make for that. Barely had I risen to my feet when, with
a roar, the brute was close behind me, and at the very moment I dashed
into the pond he aimed a blow at me which grazed my forehead, and I fell
prostrate into it. On recovering I cautiously peeped, and there the
brute stood on the edge within three yards of me. Again I submerged, but
every time I moved for air he roared, although afraid to enter the water.
This went on for an hour, when conceive my delight at seeing him roll
over from loss of blood.
“Cautiously approaching, I found he was stone dead.”
Fellowes had literally escaped death by a hair’s breadth; but the scar he
carried with him to his grave affected his brain, and he was never the
same man again. Had the lion been one inch nearer his skull would have
been smashed like an egg shell. Years after I saw the lion’s head and
shoulders at a well-known naturalist’s in Piccadilly, depicted life-like
dashing out of the rushes that encircled the African pond.
Our excitement for big game being temporarily satiated after our
comrade’s narrow escape, we decided to direct our steps towards more
peaceful pastures in the neighbourhood of Stellenbosch. Here large
ostrich farms exist, and it was a unique experience to watch drafts of
these huge birds being transferred from one farm to another. The
procedure is original. Two or three mounted Kaffirs with long driving
whips circle round and round the twenty or thirty birds, lashing them
unmercifully on their bare legs till they start into a trot, which
eventually ends in a pace that the riders at full gallop have difficulty
in keeping up with. In my search for information I was assured that the
feathers so much in demand for “matinee hats” were moulted from the
birds; but this I found to be not strictly accurate, and much cruel
“plucking” passed under my own observation. Ostrich egg omelette is
delicious; six of us breakfasted off _one_ egg, and my sensations were as
if I had swallowed an omnibus.
But perhaps the most ridiculous experience to be obtained in South Africa
is associated with the (apparently) inoffensive penguin. Any one looking
at these sedate creatures at the Zoological Gardens would hardly believe
that they can bite and take a piece out of one’s calf with the dexterity
of a bull-terrier. It was shortly after the experience above related
that we turned our steps towards Penguin Island, which lies to the south
of Table Bay. We had been offered a “cast over” in one of the fishing
boats that proceed there periodically in the interests of the lessee who,
renting this valuable island for a few pounds a year, makes an enormous
income by the sale of the guano.
We had landed cheerily, and were roaring at the absurd attitudes taken up
under every ledge and stone by these pompous old birds, when poor Bobby,
going a little too close, was seized by the leg with the grip of a
rat-trap.
When the guano parties visit the island they combine another industry,
and collect some thousands of eggs, which are considered a delicacy by
the Africander gourmets.
Personally, I found them too strong, although I plead guilty to having
massacred some fifty penguins by knocking them on the head for the sake
of their breasts. The oil that exhales from them for months, despite the
alum and sifted ashes, is incredible; but they will repay the trouble,
and after scientific manipulation by a London furrier are highly
appreciated for muffs and boas.
The albatross that swarm in the vicinity of Table Bay, and which are
caught in large numbers by the Malay fishermen, enabled me to create a
new industry. Finding that the flesh only was used by the Malays, I
offered the handsome price of one penny for every pair of pinion bones
duly delivered at the barracks; these I forthwith filed off at each end,
and tying them into bundles, stuffed them into ants’ nests. Within a
week they were as clear as whistles, and within a month I possessed a
fagot of some hundreds. The recital of an absurd sequel may not be
amiss. Albatross quills of twelve and fifteen inches are a popular
species of pipe stem, which, when encircled with a threepenny silver band
attached to a shilling amber mouthpiece, may be seen in leading
tobacconists’ labelled twenty shillings. Entering a palatial
establishment in Regent Street on my return home, I got the proprietor
into conversation, and was assured that they were very difficult things
to procure, and that he would gladly “pay anything” if only he could get
some more. Having thoroughly compromised him, I returned next day with a
cab full, and although exceptionally long and perfect, I was surprised to
hear they were by no means up to the mark, and in my desperation accepted
a box of cigars in exchange for what he probably cleared £50 on.
Yet another experience—not strictly of a sporting character—was connected
with sticks. On my return home I brought with me some hundreds of the
rarest specimens from Ceylon, Mauritius, and the Cape. Conceive my
disappointment, after an animated barter with Briggs, of St. James’s
Street, to be grateful to accept any three of my own sticks mounted to
order in exchange for what must have supplied half the golden calves of
the West End with sticks varying from two to three guineas a-piece.
The above two incidents exemplify what is described as the encouragement
of British industries.
At the risk of wearying the reader I will give an absurd incident that
once occurred in India. We had organised a party to hunt up a tiger that
had been seen near the village of Dharwar, not far from Belgaum. On our
way to the rendezvous—where the serious search was to commence—one of our
party who had wandered a little out of his course rushed frantically up
to us, exclaiming: “I came suddenly within thirty yards of the brute fast
asleep at the foot of the nullah.”
“Well,” we all asked, “why didn’t you shoot him?”
“’Pon my word, I had half a mind to,” was the heartfelt reply—“but, so
help me bob, I funked it.”
Touching the fringe of these vast hunting grounds will, I hope, be
forgiven me, for although six thousand miles from London, they
nevertheless bring up very happy memories of the long-ago sixties.
Sir John Bissett, afterwards commanding the Infantry Brigade at
Gibraltar, but at the time a resident at Grahamstown, was the Great
Nimrod of the Cape.
It was he that organised the elephant hunts for the Duke of Edinburgh, at
one of which the Prince shot the immense beast whose head confronted one
on entering Clarence House. Although I did not actually see it shot, I
was not far distant at the time.
It was weeks after our party’s return to Cape Town that Colonel Zebulon
Pike brought me two splendid stuffed specimens of the boatswain bird, the
rarest of the gull tribe.
As I admired their mauve and white plumage and the two long scarlet
feathers that constitute their tail, I could not resist remarking: “Why,
Colonel, where did you get these?” To which he replied: “I shot them one
morning after bathing, before you fellows were up.”
There was not a boatswain bird within fifty miles of where we had been,
and the specimens had evidently been cured for years.
It was only a righteous lie, such as the generous “Colonel” could never
resist.