Gloriana! The Don may attack us
Whenever his stomach be fain;
He must reach us before he can rack us...
And where are the galleons of Spain?
Dobson.
One of the many beauties of a democracy is its almost superhuman skill
in developing troubles with other countries and finding its honour
abraded in the process. A true democracy has a large contempt for all
other lands that are governed by Kings and Queens and Emperors, and
knows little and thinks less of their internal affairs. All it regards
is its own dignity, which is its King, Queen, and Knave. So, sooner or
later, an international difference ends in the common people, who have
no dignity, shouting the common abuse of the street, which also has no
dignity, across the seas in order to vindicate their own dignity. The
consequences may or may not be war, but the chances do not favour peace.
An advantage in living in a civilised land which is really governed lies
in the fact that all the Kings and Queens and Emperors of the continent
are closely related by blood or marriage--are, in fact, one large
family. A wise head of them knows that what appears to be a studied
insult may be no more than some man's indigestion or woman's
indisposition to be treated as such, and explained in quiet talk. Again,
a popular demonstration, headed by King and Court, may mean nothing
more than that so-and-so's people are out of hand for the minute. When
a horse falls to kicking in a hunt-crowd at a gate, the rider does not
dismount, but puts his open hand behind him, and the others draw aside.
It is so with the rulers of men. In the old days they cured their own
and their people's bad temper with fire and slaughter; but now that
the fire is so long of range and the slaughter so large, they do other
things, and few among their people guess how much they owe in mere
life and money to what the slang of the minute calls “puppets” and
“luxuries.”
Once upon a time there was a little Power, the half-bankrupt wreck of a
once great empire, that lost its temper with England, the whipping-boy
of all the world, and behaved, as every one knows, most scandalously.
But it is not generally known that that Power fought a pitched battle
with England and won a glorious victory. The trouble began with the
people. Their own misfortunes had been many, and for private rage it
is always refreshing to find a vent in public swearing. Their national
vanity had been deeply injured, and they thought of their ancient
glories and the days when their fleets had first rounded the Cape of
Storms, and their own newspapers called upon Camoens and urged them to
extravagances. It was the gross, smooth, sleek, lying England that was
checking their career of colonial expansion. They assumed at once that
their ruler was in league with that country, and consequently they,
his people, would forthwith become a Republic and colonially expand
themselves as a free people should. This made plain, the people threw
stones at the English Consuls and spat at English ladies, and cut off
drunken sailors of our fleet in their ports and hammered them with
oars, and made things very unpleasant for tourists at their customs, and
threatened awful deaths to the consumptive invalids at Madeira, while
the junior officers of the Army drank fruit-extracts and entered into
blood-curdling conspiracies against their monarch, all with the object
of being a Republic. Now the history of all the South American Republics
shows that it is not good that Southern Europeans should be also
Republicans. They glide too quickly into military despotism; and the
propping of men against walls and shooting them in detachments can be
arranged much more economically and with less effect on the death-rate
by a hide-bound monarchy. Still the performances of the Power as
represented by its people were extremely inconvenient. It was the
kicking horse in the crowd, and probably the rider explained that he
could not check it. The people enjoyed all the glory of war with none
of the risks, and the tourists who were stoned in their travels returned
stolidly to England and told the “Times” that the police arrangements of
foreign towns were defective.
This then was the state of affairs north of the Line. South it was more
strained, for there the Powers were at direct issue: England, unable to
go back because of the pressure of adventurous children behind her,
and the actions of far-away adventurers who would not come to heel,
but offering to buy out her rival; and the other Power, lacking men or
money, stiff in the conviction that three hundred years of slave-holding
and intermingling with the nearest natives gave an inalienable right to
hold slaves and issue half-castes to all eternity. They had built no
roads. Their towns were rotting under their hands; they had no trade
worth the freight of a crazy steamer, and their sovereignty ran almost
one musket-shot inland when things were peaceful. For these very reasons
they raged all the more, and the things that they said and wrote about
the manners and customs of the English would have driven a younger
nation to the guns with a long red bill for wounded honour.
It was then that Fate sent down in a twin-screw shallow-draft gunboat,
designed for the defence of rivers, of some two hundred and seventy
tons' displacement, Lieutenant Harrison Edward Judson, to be known for
the future as Bai-Jove-Judson. His type of craft looked exactly like
a flat-iron with a match stuck up in the middle; it drew five feet of
water or less, carried a four-inch gun forward, which was trained by the
ship, and, on account of its persistent rolling, was to live in three
degrees worse than a torpedo-boat. When Judson was appointed to take
charge of the thing on her little trip of six or seven thousand miles
southward, his first remark as he went to look her over in dock was,
“Bai Jove, that topmast wants staying forward!” The topmast was a stick
about as thick as a clothes-prop, but the flat-iron was Judson's first
command, and he would not have exchanged his position for second post on
the “Anson” or the “Howe”. He navigated her, under convoy, tenderly and
lovingly to the Cape (the story of the topmast came with him), and he
was so absurdly in love with his wallowing wash-tub when he reported
himself, that the Admiral of the station thought it would be a pity to
kill a new man on her, and allowed Judson to continue in his unenvied
rule.
The Admiral visited her once in Simon's Bay, and she was bad, even for
a flat-iron gunboat strictly designed for river and harbour defence. She
sweated clammy drops of dew between decks in spite of a preparation of
powdered cork that was sprinkled over her inside paint. She rolled in
the long Cape swell like a buoy; her foc's'le was a dog-kennel; Judson's
cabin was practically under the water-line; not one of her dead-bights
could ever be opened; and her compasses, thanks to the influence of
the four-inch gun, were a curiosity even among Admiralty compasses. But
Bai-Jove-Judson was radiant and enthusiastic. He had even contrived to
fill Mr. Davies, the second-class engine-room artificer, who was
his chief engineer, with the glow of his passion. The Admiral, who
remembered his own first command, when pride forbade him to slacken off
a single rope on a dewy night, and he had racked his rigging to pieces
in consequence, looked at the flat-iron keenly. Her fenders were done
all over with white sennit which was truly white; her big gun was
varnished with a better composition than the Admiralty allowed; the
spare sights were cased as carefully as the chronometers; the chocks for
spare spars, two of them, were made of four-inch Burma teak carved with
dragons' heads that was one result of Bai-Jove-Judson's experiences
with the Naval Brigade in the Burmese war; the bow-anchor was varnished
instead of being painted, and there were charts more than the Admiralty
scale supplied. The Admiral was well pleased, for he loved a ship's
husband--a man who had a little money of his own and was willing to
spend it on his command. Judson looked at him hopefully. He was only a
Junior Navigating Lieutenant under eight years' standing. He might be
kept in Simon's Bay for six months, and his ship at sea was his delight.
The dream of his heart was to enliven her dismal official gray with
a line of gold-leaf and perhaps a little scroll-work at her blunt
barge-like bows.
“There's nothing like a first command, is there?” said the Admiral,
reading his thoughts. “You seem to have rather queer compasses, though.
Better get them adjusted.”
“It's no use, sir,” said Judson. “The gun would throw out the Pole
itself. But--but I've got the hang of most of their weaknesses.”
“Will you be good enough to lay that gun over thirty degrees, please?”
The gun was put over. Round and round and round went the needle merrily,
and the Admiral whistled.
“You must have kept close to your convoy?”
“Saw her twice between here and Madeira, sir,” said Judson with a flush,
for he resented the slur on his seamanship. “It's--it's a little out of
hand, now, but she'll settle down after a while.”
The Admiral went over the side, according to the rules of the Service,
but the Staff-Captain must have told the other men of the squadron in
Simon's Bay, for they one and all made light of the flat-iron for many
days. “What can you shake out of her, Judson?” said the Lieutenant of
the “Mongoose”, a real white-painted, ram-bow gunboat with quick-firing
guns, as he came into the upper verandah of the little naval Club
overlooking the dockyard one hot afternoon. It is in that Club as the
captains come and go that you hear all the gossip of all the Seven Seas.
“Ten point four,” said Bai-Jove-Judson.
“Ah! That was on her trial trip. She's too deep by the head now. I told
you staying that topmast would throw her out of trim.”
“You leave my top-hamper alone,” said Judson, for the joke was beginning
to pall on him.
“Oh, my soul! Listen to him. Juddy's top-hamper! Keate, have you heard
of the flat-iron's top-hamper? You're to leave it alone. Commodore
Judson's feelings are hurt.”
Keate was the Torpedo Lieutenant of the big “Vortigern”, and he despised
small things. “His top-hamper,” said he slowly. “Oh, ah yes, of course.
Juddy, there's a shoal of mullet in the bay, and I think they're foul of
your screws. Better go down, or they'll carry away something.”
“I don't let things carry away as a rule. You see I've no Torpedo
Lieutenant on board, thank God!”
Keate within the past week had so managed to bungle the slinging in of
a small torpedo-boat on the “Vortigern”, that the boat had broken the
crutches in which she rested, and was herself being repaired in the
dockyard under the Club windows.
“One for you, Keate. Never mind, Juddy; you're hereby appointed
dockyard-tender for the next three years, and if you're very good and
there's no sea on, you shall take me round the harbour. Waitabeechee,
Commodore. What'll you take? Vanderhum for the 'Cook and the captain
bold, And the mate o' the Nancy brig, And the bo'sun tight' (Juddy, put
that cue down or I'll put you under arrest for insulting the lieutenant
of the real ship) 'And the midshipmite, And the crew of the captain's
gig.”
By this time Judson had pinned him in a corner, and was prodding him
with the half-butt. The Admiral's Secretary entered, and saw the scuffle
from afar.
“Ouch! Juddy, I apologise. Take that--er topmast of yours away! Here's
the man with the bow-string. I wish I were a staff-captain instead of
a bloody lootenant. Sperril sleeps below every night. That's what makes
Sperril tumble home from the waist uppards. Sperril, I defy you to touch
me. I'm under orders for Zanzibar. Probably I shall annex it!”
“Judson, the Admiral wants to see you!” said the Staff-Captain,
disregarding the scoffer of the “Mongoose”.
“I told you you'd be a dockyard-tender yet, Juddy. A side of fresh
beef to-morrow and three dozen snapper on ice. On ice, you understand,
Juddy?”
Bai-Jove-Judson and the Staff-Captain went out together.
“Now, what does the Admiral want with Judson?” said Keate from the bar.
“Don't know. Juddy's a damned good fellow, though. I wish to goodness he
was on the Mongoose with us.”
The Lieutenant of the “Mongoose” dropped into a chair and read the
mail papers for an hour. Then he saw Bai-Jove-Judson in the street and
shouted to him. Judson's eyes were very bright, and his figure was held
very straight, and he moved joyously. Except for the Lieutenant of the
“Mongoose”, the Club was empty.
“Juddy, there will be a beautiful row,” said that young man when he
had heard the news delivered in an undertone. “You'll probably have to
fight, and yet I can't see what the Admiral's thinking of to--”
“My orders are not to fight under any circumstances,” said Judson.
“Go-look-see? That all? When do you go?”
“To-night if I can. I must go down and see about things. I say, I may
want a few men for the day.”
“Anything on the 'Mongoose' is at your service. There's my gig come in
now. I know that coast, dead, drunk, or asleep, and you'll need all the
knowledge you can get. If it had only been us two together! Come over
with me!”
For one whole hour Judson remained closeted in the stern cabin of the
“Mongoose”, listening, poring over chart upon chart and taking notes,
and for an hour the marine at the door heard nothing but things like
these: “Now you'll have to put in here if there's any sea on. That
current is ridiculously under-estimated, and it sets west at this season
of the year, remember. Their boats never come south of this, see? So
it's no good looking out for them.” And so on and so forth, while
Judson lay at length on the locker by the three-pounder, and smoked and
absorbed it all.
Next morning there was no flat-iron in Simon's Bay, only a little smudge
of smoke off Cape Hangklip to show that Mr. Davies, the second-class
engine-room artificer, was giving her all she could carry. At the
Admiral's house, the ancient and retired bo'sun, who had seen many
Admirals come and go, brought out his paint and brushes and gave a new
coat of pure raw pea-green to the two big cannon-balls that stood one
on each side of the Admiral's entrance-gate. He felt dimly that great
events were stirring.
And the flat-iron, constructed, as has been before said, solely for the
defense of rivers, met the great roll off Cape Agulhas and was swept
from end to end and sat upon her twin-screws and leaped as gracefully
as a cow in a bog from one sea to another, till Mr. Davies began to fear
for the safety of his engines, and the Kroo boys that made the majority
of the crew were deathly sick. She ran along a very badly-lighted coast,
past bays that were no bays, where ugly flat-topped rocks lay almost
level with the water, and very many extraordinary things happened that
have nothing to do with the story, but they were all duly logged by
Bai-Jove-Judson.
At last the coast changed and grew green and low and exceedingly muddy,
and there were broad rivers whose bars were little islands standing
three or four miles out at sea, and Bai-Jove-Judson hugged the
shore more closely than ever, remembering what the Lieutenant of the
“Mongoose” had told him. Then he found a river full of the smell of
fever and mud, with green stuff growing far into its waters, and a
current that made the flatiron gasp and grunt.
“We will turn up here,” said Bai-Jove-Judson, and they turned up
accordingly; Mr. Davies wondering what in the world it all meant, and
the Kroo boys grinning. Bai-Jove-Judson went forward to the bows and
meditated, staring through the muddy waters. After six hours of rooting
through this desolation at an average rate of five miles an hour, his
eyes were cheered by the sight of one white buoy in the coffee-hued
mid-stream. The flat-iron crept up to it cautiously, and a leadsman took
soundings all around it from a dinghy, while Bai-Jove-Judson smoked and
thought, with his head on one side.
“About seven feet, isn't there?” said he. “That must be the tail end of
the shoal. There's four fathom in the fairway. Knock that buoy down with
axes. I don't think it's picturesque somehow.” The Kroo men hacked the
wooden sides to pieces in three minutes, and the mooring-chain sank
with the lasst splinters of wood. Bai-Jove Judson laid the flat-iron
carefully over the site, while Mr. Davies watched, biting his nails
nervously.
“Can you back her against this current?” said Bai-Jove-Judson. Mr.
Davies could, inch by inch, but only inch by inch, and Bai-Jove-Judson
sat in the bows and gazed at various things on the bank as they came
into line or opened out. The flatiron dropped down over the tail of
the shoal, exactly where the buoy had been, and backed once before
Bai-Jove-Judson was satisfied. Then they went up stream for half an
hour, put into shoal water by the bank and waited, with a slip-rope on
the anchor.
“Seems to me,” said Mr. Davies deferentially, “like as if I heard some
one a-firing off at intervals, so to say.”
There was beyond doubt a dull mutter in the air. “Seems to me,” said
Bai-Jove-Judson, “as if I heard a screw. Stand by to slip her moorings.”
Another ten minutes passed and the beat of engines grew plainer.
Then round the bend of the river came a remarkably prettily built
white-painted gunboat with a blue and white flag bearing a red boss in
the centre.
“Unshackle abaft the windlass! Stream both buoys! Easy, astern. Let go,
all!” The slip-rope flew out, the two buoys bobbed in the water to mark
where anchor and cable had been left, and the flat-iron waddled out
into midstream with the white ensign at her one mast-head.
“Give her all you can. That thing has the legs of us,” said Judson. “And
down we go!”
“It's war--bloody war. He's going to fire,” said Mr. Davies, looking up
through the engine-room hatch.
The white gunboat without a word of explanation fired three guns at
the flat-iron, cutting the trees on the banks into green chips.
Bai-Jove-Judson was at the wheel, and Mr. Davies and the current helped
the boat to an almost respectable degree of speed.
It was an exciting chase, but it did not last for more than five
minutes. The white gunboat fired again, and Mr. Davies in his
engine-room gave a wild shout.
“What's the matter? Hit?” said Bai-Jove-Judson.
“No, I've just seized of your roos-de-gare. Beg y' pardon, sir.”
“Right O! Just the half a fraction of a point more.” The wheel turned
under the steady hand, as Bai-Jove-Judson watched his marks on the bank
coming in line swiftly as troops anxious to aid. The flat-iron smelt the
shoal water under her, checked for an instant, and went on. “Now we're
over. Come along, you thieves, there!”
The white gunboat, too hurried even to fire, was storming in the wake
of the flat-iron, steering as she steered. This was unfortunate, because
the lighter craft was dead over the missing buoy.
“What you do here?” shouted a voice from the bows.
“I'm going on. Hold tight. Now you're arranged for!”
There was a crash and a clatter as the white gunboat's nose took the
shoal, and the brown mud boiled up in oozy circles under her forefoot.
Then the current caught her stem by the starboard side and drove her
broadside on to the shoal, slowly and gracefully. There she heeled at an
undignified angle, and her crew yelled aloud.
“Neat! Oh, damn neat!” quoth Mr. Davies, dancing on the engine-room
plates, while the Kroo stokers grinned.
The flat-iron turned up-stream again, and passed under the hove-up
starboard side of the white gunboat, to be received with howls and
imprecations in a strange tongue. The stranded boat, exposed even to her
lower strakes, was as defence-less as a turtle on its back, without the
advantage of the turtle's plating. And the one big blunt gun in the bows
of the flat-iron was unpleasantly near.
But the captain was valiant and swore mightily. Bai-Jove-Judson took no
sort of notice. His business was to go up the river.
“We will come in a flotilla of boats and ecrazer your vile tricks,” said
the captain with language that need not be published.
Then said Bai-Jove-Judson, who was a linguist: “You stay o where you are
o, or I'll leave a hole-o in your bottom o that will make you much os
perforatados.”
There was a great deal of mixed language in reply, but Bai-Jove-Judson
was out of hearing in a few minutes, and Mr. Davies, himself a man of
few words, confided to one of his subordinates that Lieutenant Judson
was “a most remarkable prompt officer in a way of putting it.”
For two hours the flat-iron pawed madly through the muddy water, and
that which had been at first a mutter became a distinct rumble.
“Was war declared?” said Mr. Davies, and Bai-Jove-Judson laughed. “Then,
damn his eyes, he might have spoilt my pretty little engines. There's
war up there, though.”
The next bend brought them full in sight of a small but lively village,
built round a whitewashed mud house of some pretensions. There were
scores and scores of saddle-coloured soldiery on duty, white uniforms
running to and fro and shouting round a man in a litter, and on a gentle
slope that ran inland for four or five miles something like a brisk
battle was raging round a rude stockade. A smell of unburied carcasses
floated through the air and vexed the sensitive nose of Mr. Davies, who
spat over the side.
“I want to get this gun on that house,” said Bai-Jove-Judson, indicating
the superior dwelling over whose flat roof floated the blue and white
flag. The little twin screws kicked up the water exactly as a hen's
legs kick in the dust before she settles down to a bath. The little boat
moved un easily from left to right, backed, yawed again, went ahead, and
at last the gray blunt gun's nose was held as straight as a rifle-barrel
on the mark indicated. Then Mr. Davies allowed the whistle to speak as
it is not allowed to speak in Her Majesty's service on account of waste
of steam. The soldiery of the village gathered into knots and groups
and bunches, and the firing up the hill ceased, and every one except the
crew of the flatiron yelled aloud. Something like an English cheer came
down wind.
“Our chaps in mischief for sure, probably,” said Mr. Davies. “They must
have declared war weeks ago, in a kind of way, seems to me.”
“Hold her steady, you son of a soldier!” shouted Bai-Jove-Judson, as the
muzzle fell off the white house.
Something rang as loudly as a ship's bell on the forward plates of the
flat-iron, something spluttered in the water, and another thing cut a
groove in the deck planking an inch in front of Bai-Jove-Judson's left
foot. The saddle-coloured soldiery were firing as the mood took them,
and the man in the litter waved a shining sword. The muzzle of the big
gun kicked down a fraction as it was laid on the mud wall at the bottom
of the house garden. Ten pounds of gunpowder shut up in a hundred pounds
of metal was its charge. Three or four yards of the mud wall jumped up a
little, as a man jumps when he is caught in the small of the back with
a knee-cap, and then fell forward, spreading fan-wise in the fall. The
soldiery fired no more that day, and Judson saw an old black woman climb
to the flat roof of the house. She fumbled for a time with the flag
halliards, then finding that they were jammed, took off her one garment,
which happened to be an Isabella-coloured petticoat, and waved it
impatiently. The man in the litter flourished a white handkerchief, and
Bai-Jove-Judson grinned. “Now we'll give 'em one up the hill. Round
with her, Mr. Davies. Curse the man who invented those floating gun
platforms. Where can I pitch in a notice without slaying one of those
little devils?”
The side of the slope was speckled with men returning in a disorderly
fashion to the river front. Behind them marched a small but very compact
body of men who had filed out of the stockade. These last dragged
quick-firing guns with them.
“Bai Jove, it's a regular army. I wonder whose,” said Bai-Jove-Judson,
and he waited developments. The descending troops met and mixed with the
troops in the village, and, with the litter in the centre, crowded down
to the river, till the men with the quick-firing guns came up behind
them. Then they divided left and right and the detachment marched
through.
“Heave these damned things over!” said the leader of the party, and one
after another ten little gatlings splashed into the muddy water. The
flatiron lay close to the bank.
“When you're quite done,” said Bai-Jove-Judson politely, “would you mind
telling me what's the matter? I'm in charge here.”
“We're the Pioneers of the General Development Company,” said the
leader. “These little bounders have been hammering us in lager for
twelve hours, and we're getting rid of their gatlings. Had to climb out
and take them; but they've snaffled the lock-actions. Glad to see you.”
“Any one hurt?”
“No one killed exactly, but we're very dry.”
“Can you hold your men?”
The man turned round and looked at his command with a grin. There were
seventy of them, all dusty and unkempt.
“We sha'n't sack this ash-bin, if that's what you mean. We're mostly
gentlemen here, though we don't look it.”
“All right. Send the head of this post, or fort, or village, or whatever
it is, aboard, and make what arrangements you can for your men.”
“We'll find some barrack accommodation somewhere. Hullo! You in the
litter there, go aboard the gunboat.” The command wheeled round, pushed
through the dislocated soldiery, and began to search through the village
for spare huts.
The little man in the litter came aboard smiling nervously. He was in
the fullest of full uniform, with many yards of gold lace and dangling
chains. Also he wore very large spurs; the nearest horse being not more
than four hundred miles away. “My children,” said he, facing the silent
soldiery, “lay aside your arms.”
Most of the men had dropped them already and were sitting down to smoke.
“Let nothing,” he added in his own tongue, “tempt you to kill these who
have sought your protection.”
“Now,” said Bai-Jove-Judson, on whom the last remark was lost, “will
you have the goodness to explain what the deuce you mean by all this
nonsense?”
“It was of a necessitate,” said the little man. “The operations of war
are unconformible. I am the Governor and I operate Captain. Be'old my
little sword.”
“Confound your little sword, sir. I don't want it. You've fired on our
flag. You've been firing at our people here for a week, and I've been
fired at coming up the river.”
“Ah! The 'Guadala'. She have misconstrued you for a slaver possibly. How
are the 'Guadala'?”
“Mistook a ship of Her Majesty's navy for a slaver! You mistake any
craft for a slaver! Bai Jove, sir, I've a good mind to hang you at the
yard-arm!”
There was nothing nearer that terrible spar than the walking-stick in
the rack of Judson's cabin. The Governor looked at the one mast and
smiled a deprecating smile.
“The position is embarrassment,” he said. “Captain, do you think those
illustrious traders burn my capital? My people will give them beer.”
“Never mind the traders, I want an explanation.”
“Hum! There are popular uprising in Europe, Captain--in my country.” His
eye wandered aimlessly round the horizon.
“What has that to do with--”
“Captain, you are very young. There is still uproariment. But!”--here
he slapped his chest till his epaulets jingled--“I am loyalist to pits
of all my stomachs.”
“Go on,” said Judson, and his mouth quivered.
“An order arrive to me to establish a custom-houses here, and to collect
of the taximent from the traders when she are come here necessarily.
That was on account of political understandings with your country and
mine. But on that arrangement there was no money also. Not one damn
little cowrie. I desire damnably to extend all commercial things, and
why? I am loyalist and there is rebellion--yes, I tell you--Republics
in my country for to just begin. You do not believe? See some time how
it exist. I cannot make this custom-houses and pay the so high-paid
officials. The people too in my country they say the king she has
no regardance into Honour of her nation. He throw away
everything--Gladstone her all, you say, pay?”
“Yes, that's what we say,” said Judson with a grin.
“Therefore they say, let us be Republics on hot cakes. But I--I am
loyalist to all my hands' ends. Captain, once I was attache at Mexico.
I say the Republics are no good. The peoples have her stomach high. They
desire--they desire--a course for the bills.”
“What on earth is that?”
“The cock-fight for pay at the gate. You give something, pay for see
bloody row. Do I make its comprehension?”
“A run for their money--is that what you mean? Gad, you're sporting,
Governor.”
“So I say. I am loyalist, too.” He smiled more easily. “Now how can
anything do herself for the customs-houses; but when the Company's mens
she arrives, then a cock-fight for pay at gate that is quite correct. My
army he says it will Republic and shoot me off upon walls if I have
not give her blood. An army, Captain, are terrible in her
angries--especialment when she are not paid. I know, too,” here he laid
his hand on Judson's shoulder, “I know too we are old friends. Yes!
Badajos, Almeida, Fuentes d'Onor--time ever since; and a little, little
cock-fight for pay at gate that is good for my king. More sit her tight
on throne behind, you see? Now,” he waved his hand round the decayed
village, “I say to my armies, Fight! Fight the Company's men when she
come, but fight not so very strong that you are any deads. It is all
in the raporta that I send. But you understand, Captain, we are good
friends all the time. Ah! Ciudad Rodrigo, you remember? No? Perhaps your
father, then? So you see no one are deads, and we fight a fight, and
it is all in the raporta, to please the people in our country, and my
armies they do not put me against the walls. You see?”
“Yes; but the 'Guadala'. She fired on us. Was that part of your game, my
joker?”
“The 'Guadala'. Ah! No, I think not. Her captain he is too big fool. But
I think she have gone down the coast. Those your gunboats poke her nose
and shove her oar in every place. How is 'Guadala'?”
“On a shoal. Stuck till I take her off.” “There are any deads?”
“No.”
The Governor drew a breath of deep relief. “There are no deads here. So
you see none are deads anywhere, and nothing is done. Captain, you talk
to the Company's mens. I think they are not pleased.”
“Naturally.”
“They have no sense. I thought to go backwards again they would. I leave
her stockade alone all night to let them out, but they stay and come
facewards to me, not backwards. They did not know we must conquer much
in all these battles, or the king, he is kicked off her throne. Now we
have won this battle--this great battle,” he waved his arms abroad,
“and I think you will say so that we have won, Captain. You are loyalist
also. You would not disturb to the peaceful Europe? Captain, I tell you
this. Your Queen she know too. She would not fight her cousins. It is
a--a hand-up thing.”
“What?”
“Hand-up thing. Jobe you put. How you say?”
“Put-up job?”
“Yes. Put-up job. Who is hurt? We win. You lose. All righta?”
Bai-Jove-Judson had been exploding at intervals for the last five
minutes. Here he broke down completely and roared aloud.
“But look here, Governor,” he said at last, “I've got to think of other
things than your riots in Europe. You've fired on our flag.”
“Captain, if you are me, you would have done how? And also, and also,”
he drew himself up to his full height, “we are both brave men of bravest
countries. Our honour is the honour of our King,” here he uncovered,
“and of our Queen,” here he bowed low. “Now, Captain, you shall shell my
palace and I shall be your prisoner.”
“Skittles!” said Bai-Jove-Judson. “I can't shell that old hencoop.”
“Then come to dinner. Madeira, she are still to us, and I have of the
best she manufac.”
He skipped over the side beaming, and Bai-Jove-Judson went into the
cabin to laugh his laugh out. When he had recovered a little he sent Mr.
Davies to the head of the Pioneers, the dusty man with the gatlings, and
the troops who had abandoned the pursuit of arms watched the disgraceful
spectacle of two men reeling with laughter on the quarter-deck of a
gunboat.
“I'll put my men to build him a custom-house,” said the head of the
Pioneers, gasping. “We'll make him one decent road at least. That
Governor ought to be knighted. I'm glad now that we didn't fight 'em in
the open, or we'd have killed some of them. So he's won great battles,
has he? Give him the compliments of the victims, and tell him I'm coming
to dinner. You haven't such a thing as a dress-suit, have you? I haven't
seen one for six months.”
That evening there was a dinner in the village--a general and
enthusiastic dinner, whose head was in the Governor's house, and whose
tail threshed at large throughout all the streets. The Madeira was
everything that the Governor had said, and more, and it was tested
against two or three bottles of Bai-Jove-Judson's best Vanderhum, which
is Cape brandy ten years in the bottle, flavoured with orange-peel and
spices. Before the coffee was removed (by the lady who had made the flag
of truce) the Governor had sold the whole of his governorship and its
appurtenances, once to Bai-Jove-Judson for services rendered by Judson's
grandfather in the Peninsular War, and once to the head of the Pioneers,
in consideration of that gentleman's good friendship. After the
negotiation he retreated for a while into an inner apartment, and there
evolved a true and complete account of the defeat of the British
arms, which he read with his cocked hat over one eye to Judson and his
companion. It was Judson who suggested the sinking of the flat-iron with
all hands, and the head of the Pioneers who supplied the list of killed
and wounded (not more than two hundred) in his command.
“Gentlemen,” said the Governor from under his cocked hat, “the peace of
Europe are saved by this raporta. You shall all be Knights of the Golden
Hide. She shall go by the 'Guadala'.”
“Great Heavens!” said Bai-Jove Judson, flushed but composed, “that
reminds me I've left that boat stuck on her broadside down the river.
I must go down and soothe the commandante. He'll be blue with rage.
Governor, let us go a sail on the river to cool our heads. A picnic, you
understand.”
“Ya--as, everything I understand. Ho! A picnica! You are all my
prisoner, but I am good gaoler. We shall picnic on the river, and we
shall take all the girls. Come on, my prisoners.”
“I do hope,” said the head of the Pioneers, staring from the verandah
into the roaring village, “that my chaps won't set the town alight by
accident. Hullo! Hullo! A guard of honour for His Excellency the most
illustrious Governor!”
Some thirty men answered the call, made a swaying line upon a more
swaying course, and bore the Governor most swayingly of all high in the
arms as they staggered down to the river. And the song that they sang
bade them, “Swing, swing together their body between their knees”; and
they obeyed the words of the song faithfully, except that they were
anything but “steady from stroke to bow.” His Excellency the Governor
slept on his uneasy litter, and did not wake when the chorus dropped him
on the deck of the flat-iron.
“Good-night and good-bye,” said the head of the Pioneers to Judson; “I'd
give you my card if I had it, but I'm so damned drunk I hardly know
my own club. Oh, yes! It's the Travellers. If ever we meet in Town,
remember me. I must stay here and look after my fellows. We're all right
in the open, now. I s'pose you'll return the Governor some time. This is
a political crisis. Good-night.”
The flat-iron went down stream through the dark. The Governor slept on
deck, and Judson took the wheel, but how he steered, and why he did
not run into each bank many times, that officer does not remember. Mr.
Davies did not note anything unusual, for there are two ways of taking
too much, and Judson was only ward-room, not foc's'le drunk. As the
night grew colder the Governor woke up, and expressed a desire for
whiskey and soda. When that came they were nearly abreast of the
stranded “Guadala”, and His Excellency saluted the flag that he could
not see with loyal and patriotic strains.
“They do not see. They do not hear,” he cried. “Ten thousand saints!
They sleep, and I have won battles! Ha!”
He started forward to the gun, which, very naturally, was loaded, pulled
the lanyard, and woke the dead night with the roar of the full charge
behind a common shell. That shell mercifully just missed the stern
of the “Guadala”, and burst on the bank. “Now you shall salute your
Governor,” said he, as he heard feet running in all directions within
the iron skin. “Why you demand so base a quarter? I am here with all my
prisoners.”
In the hurly-burly and the general shriek for mercy his reassurances
were not heard.
“Captain,” said a grave voice from the ship, “we have surrendered. Is it
the custom of the English to fire on a helpless ship'?”
“Surrendered! Holy Virgin! I go to cut off all their heads. You shall be
ate by wild ants--flogged and drowned. Throw me a balcony. It is I,
the Governor! You shall never surrender. Judson of my soul, ascend her
insides, and send me a bed, for I am sleepy; but, oh, I will multiple
time kill that captain!”
“Oh!” said the voice in the darkness, “I begin to comprehend.” And a
rope-ladder was thrown, up which the Governor scrambled, with Judson at
his heels.
“Now we will enjoy executions,” said the Governor on the deck. “All
these Republicans shall be shot. Little Judson, if I am not drunk, why
are so sloping the boards which do not support?”
The deck, as I have said, was at a very stiff cant. His Excellency sat
down, slid to leeward, and was asleep again.
The captain of the “Guadala” bit his moustache furiously, and muttered
in his own tongue: “This land is the father of great villains and
the stepfather of honest men. You see our material, Captain. It is so
everywhere with us. You have killed some of the rats, I hope?”
“Not a rat,” said Judson genially.
“That is a pity. If they were dead, our country might send us men; but
our country is dead too, and I am dishonoured on a mud-bank through your
English treachery.”
“Well, it seems to me that firing on a little tub of our size without
a word of warning, when you know that the countries were at peace, is
treachery enough in a small way.”
“If one of my guns had touched you, you would have gone to the bottom,
all of you. I would have taken the risk with my Government. By that time
it would have been--”
“A Republic? So you really did mean fighting on your own hook? You're
rather a dangerous officer to cut loose in a navy like yours. Well, what
are you going to do now?”
“Stay here. Go away in boats. What does it matter? That drunken cat”--he
pointed to the shadow in which the Governor slept--“is here. I must
take him back to his hole.”
“Very good. I'll tow you off at daylight if you get steam ready.”
“Captain, I warn you that as soon as she floats again I will fight you.”
“Humbug! You'll have lunch with me, and then you'll take the Governor up
the river.”
The captain was silent for some time. Then he said: “Let us drink. What
must be, must be; and after all we have not forgotten the Peninsula.
You will admit, Captain, that it is bad to be run upon a shoal like a
mud-dredger?”
“Oh, we'll pull you off before you can say knife. Take care of His
Excellency. I shall try to get a little sleep now.”
They slept on both ships till the morning, and then the work of towing
off the “Guadala” began. With the help of her own engines, and the
tugging and puffing of the flat-iron, she slid off the mud-bank sideways
into the deep water, the flatiron immediately under her stern, and the
big eye of the four-inch gun almost peering through the window of the
captain's cabin.
Remorse in the shape of a violent headache had overtaken the Governor.
He was uneasily conscious that he might, perhaps, have exceeded his
powers; and the captain of the “Guadala”, in spite of all his patriotic
sentiments, remembered distinctly that no war had been declared between
the two countries. He did not need the Governor's repeated reminders
that war, serious war, meant a Republic at home, possible supersession
in his command, and much shooting of living men against dead walls.
“We have satisfied our honour,” said the Governor in confidence. “Our
army is appeased, and the raporta that you take home will show that we
were loyal and brave. That other captain? Bah! he is a boy. He will call
this a--a-. Judson of my soul, how you say this is--all this affairs
which have transpirated between us?”
Judson was watching the last hawser slipping through the fairlead.
“Call it? Oh, I should call it rather a lark. Now your boat's all right,
Captain. When will you come to lunch?”
“I told you,” said the Governor, “it would be a larque to him.”
“Mother of the Saints! then what is his seriousness?” said the captain.
“We shall be happy to come when you please. Indeed, we have no other
choice,” he added bitterly.
“Not at all,” said Judson, and as he looked at the three or four
shot-blisters on the bows of his boat a brilliant idea took him. “It
is we who are at your mercy. See how His Excellency's guns knocked us
about.”
“Senior Captain,” said the Governor pityingly, “that is very sad. You
are most injured, and your deck too, it is all shot over. We shall not
be too severe on a beat man, shall we, Captain?”
“You couldn't spare us a little paint, could you? I'd like to patch up a
little after the--action,” said Judson meditatively, fingering his upper
lip to hide a smile.
“Our store-room is at your disposition,” said the captain of the
“Guadala”, and his eye brightened; for a few lead splashes on gray paint
make a big show.
“Mr. Davies, go aboard and see what they have to spare--to spare,
remember. Their spar-colour with a little working up should be just our
freeboard tint.”
“Oh, yes. I'll spare them,” said Mr. Davies savagely. “I don't
understand this how-d'you-do and damn-your-eyes business coming one atop
of the other in a manner o' speaking. By all rights, they're our lawful
prize.”
The Governor and the captain came to lunch in the absence of Mr. Davies.
Bai-Jove-Judson had not much to offer, but what he had was given as by
a beaten foeman to a generous conqueror. When they were a little
warmed--the Governor genial and the captain almost effusive--he
explained, quite casually, over the opening of a bottle that it would
not be to his interest to report the affair seriously, and it was in the
highest degree improbable that the Admiral would treat it in any grave
fashion.
“When my decks are cut up” (there was one groove across four planks),
“and my plates buckled” (there were five lead patches on three plates),
“and I meet such a boat as the 'Guadala', and a mere accident saves me
from being blown out of the water--”
“Yes. A mere accident, Captain. The shoal-buoy has been lost,” said the
captain of the 'Guadala'.
“Ah? I do not know this river. That was very sad. But as I was saying,
when an accident saves me from being sunk, what can I do but go away--if
that is possible? But I fear that I have no coal for the sea voyage.
It is very sad.” Judson had compromised on what he knew of the French
tongue as a working language.
“It is enough,” said the Governor, waving a generous hand. “Judson of
my soul, the coal is yours, and you shall be repaired--yes, repaired all
over of your battle's wounds. You shall go with all the honours of all
the wars. Your flag shall fly. Your drum shall beat. Your, ah!--jolly
boys shall spoke their bayonets. Is it not so, Captain?”
“As you say, Excellency. But the traders in the town. What of them?”
The Governor looked puzzled for an instant. He could not quite remember
what had happened to those jovial men who had cheered him over night.
Judson interrupted swiftly: “His Excellency has set them to forced works
on barracks and magazines, and, I think, a custom-house. When that is
done they will be released, I hope, Excellency.”
“Yes, they shall be released for your sake, little Judson of my heart.”
Then they drank the health of their respective sovereigns, while Mr.
Davies superintended the removal of the scarred plank and the shot-marks
on the deck and the bow-plates.
“Oh, this is too bad,” said Judson when they went on deck. “That idiot
has exceeded his instructions, but--but yow must let me pay for this!”
Mr. Davies, his legs in the water as he sat on a staging slung over
the bows, was acutely conscious that he was being blamed in a foreign
tongue. He smiled uneasily, and went on with his work.
“What is it?” said the Governor.
“That thick-head has thought that we needed some gold-leaf, and he has
borrowed that from your storeroom, but I must make it good.” Then in
English, “Stand up, Mr. Davies. What the--in--do you mean by taking
their gold-leaf? My--, are we a set of pirates to scrape the guts out
of a Levantine bumboat? Look contrite, you butt-ended, broad-breeched,
bottle-bellied, swivel-eyed son of a tinker, you! My Soul alive, can't
I maintain discipline in my own ship without a blacksmith of a
boiler-riveter putting me to shame before a yellow-nosed picaroon. Get
off the staging, Mr. Davies, and go to the engine-room. Put down that
leaf first, though, and leave the books where they are. I'll send for
you in a minute. Go aft!”
Now, only the upper half of Mr. Davies's round face was above the
bulwarks when this torrent of abuse descended upon him; and it rose inch
by inch as the shower continued: blank amazement, bewilderment, rage,
and injured pride chasing each other across it till he saw his superior
officer's left eyelid flutter on the cheek twice. Then he fled to the
engine-room, and wiping his brow with a handful of cotton-waste, sat
down to overtake circumstances.
“I am desolated,” said Judson to his companions, “but you see the
material that you give us. This leaves me more in your debt than
before. The stuff I can replace” (gold-leaf is never carried on
floating gun-platforms), “but for the insolence of that man how shall I
apologise?”
Mr. Davies's mind moved slowly, but after a while he transferred the
cotton-waste from his forehead to his mouth and bit on it to prevent
laughter. He began a second dance on the engine-room plates. “Neat! Oh,
damned neat!” he chuckled. “I've served with a good few, but there never
was one so neat as him. And I thought he was the new kind that don't
know how to put a few words, as it were!”
“Mr. Davies, you can continue your work,” said Judson down the
engine-room hatch. “These officers have been good enough to speak in
your favour. Make a thorough job of it while you are about it. Slap on
every man you have. Where did you get hold of it?”
“Their storeroom is a regular theatre, sir. You couldn't miss it.
There's enough for two first-rates, and I've scoffed the best half of
it.”
“Look sharp, then. We shall be coaling from her this afternoon. You'll
have to cover it all.”
“Neat! Oh, damned neat!” said Mr. Davies under his breath, as he
gathered his subordinates together, and set about accomplishing the
long-deferred wish of Judson's heart.
It was the “Martin Frobisher”, the flag-ship, a great war-boat when she
was new, in the days when men built for sail as well as for steam. She
could turn twelve knots under full sail, and it was under that that she
stood up the mouth of the river, a pyramid of silver beneath the
moon. The Admiral, fearing that he had given Judson a task beyond his
strength, was coming to look for him, and incidentally to do a little
diplomatic work along the coast. There was hardly wind enough to move
the “Frobisher” a couple of knots an hour, and the silence of the land
closed about her as she entered the fairway. Her yards sighed a little
from time to time, and the ripple under her bows answered the sigh. The
full moon rose over the steaming swamps, and the Admiral, gazing upon
it, thought less of Judson and more of the softer emotions. In answer to
the very mood of his mind, there floated across the silver levels of the
water, mellowed by distance to a most poignant sweetness, the throb of
a mandolin, and the voice of one who called upon a genteel Julia--upon
Julia, and upon love. The song ceased, and the sighing of the yards was
all that broke the silence of the big ship.
Again the mandolin began, and the commander on the lee side of the
quarter-deck grinned a grin that was reflected in the face of the
signal-midshipman. Not a word of the song was lost, and the voice of the
singer was the voice of Judson.
“Last week down our alley came a toff,
Nice old geyser with a nasty cough,
Sees my missus, takes his topper off,
Quite in a gentlemanly way “--
and so on to the end of the verse. The chorus was borne by several
voices, and the signal-midshipman's foot began to tap the deck
furtively.
“'What cheer!' all the neighbours cried.
''Oo are you going to meet, Bill?
'Ave you bought the street, Bill?'
Laugh?--I thought I should ha' died
When I knocked 'em in the old Kent Road.”
It was the Admiral's gig, rowing softly, that came into the midst
of that merry little smoking-concert. It was Judson, the beribboned
mandolin round his neck, who received the Admiral as he came up the side
of the “Guadala”, and it may or may not have been the Admiral who stayed
till two in the morning and delighted the hearts of the Captain and
the Governor. He had come as an unbidden guest, and he departed as an
honoured one, but strictly unofficial throughout. Judson told his tale
next day in the Admiral's cabin as well as he could in the face of the
Admiral's gales of laughter, but the most amazing tale was that told by
Mr. Davies to his friends in the dockyard at Simon's Town from the
point of view of a second-class engine-room artificer, all unversed in
diplomacy.
And if there be no truth either in my tale, which is Judson's tale, or
the tale of Mr. Davies, you will not find in harbour at Simon's Town
to-day a flat-bottomed twin-screw gunboat, designed solely for the
defence of rivers, about two hundred and seventy tons' displacement and
five feet draught, wearing in open defiance of the rules of the
Service a gold line on her gray paint. It follows also that you will
be compelled to credit that version of the fray which, signed by His
Excellency the Governor and despatched in the “Guadala”, satisfied the
self-love of a great and glorious people, and saved a monarchy from the
ill-considered despotism which is called a Republic.