Chapter Four.
“Still onward, fair the breeze nor rough the surge,
The blue waves sport around the stern they urge;
Far on the horizon’s verge appears a speck,
A spot—a mast—a sail—an armed deck.”
Byron.
“Well, Ben,” I said, “life must have been very pleasant to me then.”
“And isn’t it now, Nie? isn’t it now, lad? Look at the beautiful old place that you have around you—all your own; you ought to be thankful. Listen to the birds on this delightful morning, their songs mingling with the cry o’ the wind through the poplars. And, lad, you cannot draw a breath out on the lawn here, without inhaling the odour of honey, and the perfume of flowers.”
“You are quite poetic, Ben Roberts,” I replied.
“Quite enough to make the barnacliest old tar that ever lived feel poetic, Nie,” quoth Ben.
“Well, fill your pipe again, Ben.”
“Ha! ha!” laughed the old man, “fill my pipe again, eh? That means heave round with another yarn, eh?”
“Something very like it,” I said.
“Well,” said the captain, “an old man is to be forgiven if he does get a little bit gossiping now and then, and wanders from his subject, and I always was fond of a bit o’ pretty scenery, Nie—pretty bits like the old mill by the riverside down yonder.”
“And a bit of fishing and shooting, Ben?”
“Ay, lad. But memory is at this moment taking me back to one of the loveliest bits o’ woodland landscape in the world. What a poem our Robbie Burns could have written there! You were still the Niobe’s pet, but old enough now to be left at times without your sea-dad. Away miles and miles into the wooded interior of Africa, we were a good long distance south the Line, and just sitting down, me and my mates, to a snack o’ lunch on the banks of a roaring tumbling brook, where we’d been bathing. We’d had a smartish week’s shooting, and were thinking of returning to the ship the very next day.
“Our guns were lying carelessly enough at some little distance, when suddenly a branch snapped, and before any of us could have stood up to defend ourselves, had it been an unfriendly Arab, or a savage Somali, a dark skin pushed the branches aside and stood before us.
“It was our faithful Sweeba, the negro who had brought us the news of Zareppa’s intended attack on the night your poor father was killed, Nie.
“‘Sweeba, what on earth brings you here?’ says I.
“‘Commander’s orders,’ said Sweeba, saluting.
“Now Sweeba was always dressed when on board like a British sailor, but here he was almost as naked as the stem of a palm-tree.
“‘What have you done with your clothes, Sweeba?’ I asked.
“‘I expect he has pawned them,’ said little Brown, our purser’s clerk.
“‘I not can run muchee wid English clothes,’ Sweeba said modestly.
“‘And so you hid them in the bush, eh?’
“‘Ah! Massa Roberts,’ replied the negro, smiling; ‘you berry much clebber.’
“‘Well, and what are the commander’s orders?’
“‘You come back plenty much quick.’
“‘Ship on fire?’
“‘No, sah.’
“‘Anything happened to Nie?’
“‘No, sah. Nie and de monkey all right, sah.’
“‘Well, explain.’
“‘Only dis, sah, we goin’ to fight Arab dhow.’
“We were all up quick enough at this intelligence. We didn’t stop to finish our luncheon.
“‘Lead the way, Sweeba,’ I cried.
“And off went Sweeba through the forest, we following in Indian file. We didn’t take more of the game with us than we could easily carry, so the jackals had a good feed that night.
“It was a long and a rough road to travel. You know the style of thing, Nie; the dark dismal woods, the broad swamps, the hills and the wide stony uplands, where never a thing lives or thrives, bar the lizards and a few snakes, and then last of all the mangrove forests. Our anxiety to get back made us hurry all the more. We made forced marches, and burned but two camp fires ere we reached the coast.
“The ship we had left lying at anchor in a little wooded creek. We returned to find it gone.
“‘Massa, massa; we too late,’ cried Sweeba. ‘Now de Arab men come quick and kill us all for true.’
“‘Where is the nearest village, Sweeba?’
“‘Long way, sah; long way, and no good. Dey kill Englishman. No gib mooch time to tink.’
“‘Well, we’re in a fix, I think,’ I said.
“‘Not a bit of it,’ cried a cheery voice close behind us; and looking round there stood little Midshipman Leigh, of the starboard watch. The young rascal had heard us coming, and hidden his boat among the trees, making his men lie close, as he expressed it, to see how we’d look.
“Our orders were to follow the Niobe south, where she had gone to pitch into a whole fleet of piratical slavers, and it was currently reported that our old friend Zareppa was admiral of the pirates, and thirsting for his revenge.
“What a lovely day it was, Nie; the sea as blue and tranquil as the eye of a beautiful child.”
“More poetry, old tar,” I said.
“Wait a bit,” said Captain Roberts. “Well, we cruised along down the coast with just enough sea-breeze to bear us onwards and keep the oars in-board.
“We expected to find our ship at a little island called Chaksee, where she would wait us; or, if absent when we went home, as our middy called it, we could wait till she returned to this rendezvous.
“There wasn’t a sail in sight when we started, nor a speck on the ocean’s breast, except a jumping skip-jack now and then, or a big shark asleep on the surface, with a bird perched upon his protruding fin.
“The breeze held, and very pleasant it was, and most of us, I think, were asleep at the moment the outlook at the bows sang out—
“‘Sail ho!’
“‘Where away?’ cried the midshipman.
“‘Rounding the point yonder, sir.’
“The midshipman scrambled forward, and we were all alert enough now. She wasn’t a dhow, and no one could make anything of her at first, but we soon made her out to be one of those low freeboard one-masted craft that the Portuguese had in those days as coasters, and which they often used as slavers or even pirates.
“‘She seems very low in the water,’ said the midshipman, ‘Is she too big to fight, Mr Roberts?’
“‘A deal too big,’ I replied, ‘We’d better let her alone, I think.’
“We got to windward of her anyhow, so we could have a peep on board. We loaded with ball cartridge, and stood by for whatever might happen.
“The strange craft stood right on her course, and never seemed to heed us, though the lowering glance her captain gave us showed he bore us no good will. She was crowded with a rascally crew of Portuguese and negroes, and many bore ghastly wounds, that showed she had been in a recent fray; and it afterwards turned out that she had had a brush with the Niobe, but escaped.
“On her deck were four or five biggish guns. Discretion in this case was evidently then the better part of valour, for she could easily have blown us out of the water, but she seemed too disheartened for anything else but flight.
“I think we were pleased also to escape an encounter that would certainly have ended in disaster.
“The wind fell about sunset, then oars were got out, and, laden as we were, it was a stiffish pull. All in the dark too, until eight o’clock, when the moon rose, half hidden at first by a bank of greyish clouds, which she soon surmounted, and then shone out with a splendour that you only see in one part of the world.”
“And that,” said I, interrupting him, “is the Indian Ocean.”
“True, Nie, true,” said Roberts.
“We were among islands now, some bare and level, others wooded, a few with lofty cocoa-palms.
“We had just landed on one of the latter, because owing to the cocoa-nut trees there would be, as you know, Nie, a few natives, and we expected a bit of hot supper. We had drawn our boat well up on the sandy beach of a little cove, hidden by some scraggy bushes when—
“‘Look, look!’ cried our purser’s clerk.
“All eyes were directed seaward.
“Two great dhows stealing out to sea! They were off in the same direction that we were going, and from the cut of their sails we could tell they were pirates, that is Arab fighting slavers.
“‘I say, Mr Roberts,’ said the middy, ‘I wouldn’t tackle those, would you?’
“‘We’d never see England again if we did,’ I replied.
“‘Well,’ said the boy, ‘I’m precious hungry, aren’t you, Mr Roberts?’
“‘I could do with a pick,’ I replied.
“Then young Leigh gave his orders like a prince.
“‘Bear a hand, lads,’ he cried, ‘and get supper; gather sticks, light a fire, on with the pot; some of you run to the village and bring half a dozen fowls. Cut up the bacon. Did you bring the onions? Smith, if you’ve forgotten the onions, I’ll have you flogged.’
“‘Then I won’t be flogged,’ said Smith.
“Well, Nie, the remembrance of that stew, that cock-a-leekie soup, made gipsy-fashion in that lonely island of the ocean, makes me truly hungry to think of even now.”
“Shall I get you a ham sandwich, Roberts?” I asked provokingly.
“A ham sandwich!” he cried, “What! sawdust and paint, and the memory of that stew hovering round one like the odours of Araby the Blest? Don’t insult me, Nie. I tell you, boy, that a hungry man might have been content to dine off the steam. There!
“Well, we had a good long rest after supper.”
“You needed it, I should think,” I said, laughing.
“None o’ your sauce,” said the old captain. “We rested, and smoked our pipes, and looked on the sea. Oh! to see the moonlight dancing on the rippling waves!”
“I can easily imagine it, because I’ve often seen the like myself,” I replied.
“It was late that night when we got to Chaksee. The ship was in behind the rocks so snug that we thought at first she wasn’t there.
“All on board were glad to see us, including Nie himself.”
“How old would I be then, Roberts?”
“About five. The Niobe, it seems, was ordered down to the Cape to refit; all her crew were to return to England, but, as you know, I preferred to stop in the old ship with the new crew. I’m like the cats, I don’t like to move.
“The captain and I had a long talk. He treated me just as if I’d been a commissioned officer. He told me he had found a whole nest of pirates, that he had given one fits a day or two before, and meant to pepper the others soon if he had a chance. They were over there, he said, pointing to the African coast, and he would have them.
“The commander of the Niobe, indeed, was in high glee. He had been ordered home, he said, but he would wait for those piratical scoundrels and old Zareppa if it were a month. Then, surely, if he destroyed him and his ships his country would, in some way or other, requite his good services, and either promote him or give him a better command.
“We lay snug behind the rocks at Chaksee for two whole days. Our top-gallant masts were down, and no one in passing the island could have told there was a vessel there at all.
“On a hill, not far off, two men were kept always on the outlook.
“On the morning of the third day the signalmen left their posts and hurried towards the ship.
“Three large piratical dhows, carrying the blood-red flag of the Arab nation, were bearing down towards the island. They turned out to be the very same we’d seen two nights before, in company with another and much larger one.
“We determined not to frighten them off by coming out too soon. We didn’t know then that these fellows rather courted fight than otherwise.
“All sails were loosened and at last we got clear, took up the boats that had been heading us, lifted sails, and stood out to meet them.
“Every man was at his post. The marines lying down on deck under arms, the bluejackets, stripped to the trousers, standing by the guns on both decks. There was a glorious breeze blowing. Oh! Nie, lad, it was just the morning for a fight. My old blood dances in my veins yet at the very thoughts of it.
“I must say that those Arabs managed their little craft beautifully. The largest one was the first to advance, and the first to receive and return our fire. She had even the daring and pluck to fire at us.”
“Did she succeed?”
“She did, alas! and she poured a broadside into us that made our upper deck like shambles. Meanwhile the other two dhows were at us, on us almost, for we were sometimes fighting gun to gun, and we had to fight on both sides of our vessel at once.
“The commander of the Niobe wanted all his wits about him, for it was a trying time.
“We had one advantage over the pirates, namely, our marines.
“The pirates had muskets, it is true, but either they were very bad ones, or they couldn’t use them properly, one or the other.
“We stationed our marines in the tops and rigging, and every shot told home, every bullet got its billet.
“There were times during the fight when all the combatants seemed to pause. It was as if the ships were taking breath, but in reality we stopped to allow the smoke of battle to clear away, for our ship was surrounded, so to speak, and all our gear was hanging anyhow.
“The impetuosity of the attack of Arabs fighting at sea is very similar to the way in which they charge on terra firma; it is furious while it lasts.
“It lasts as long as hope promises brightly, when it goes it goes at once, and, except in the case of fanatics in a religious war, there is a wild stampede. Victory for a time hung in the balance, then it seemed to sway to the side of the enemy, because the Niobe became for a time unmanageable.
“It was a trying time to the nerves of the bravest of us. There would be small mercy accorded to those among our poor fellows who happened to fall into Zareppa’s bands.
“The commander held a hurried consultation with his first lieutenant, at which I was present. It was over in two minutes; in ten minutes more, during which time the battle raged with unabated fury, we had all the sails set which the few hands that could be spared were able to clap on her, and were clearing sheer away from the scene of action, steering as close to the wind as possible. And the Niobe could luff too, I can tell you.
“Shots tore through our rigging as we fled, or seemed to fly, and derisive jeers and cheers, worse by far than bullets, were fired after us, till we were out of earshot, out of reach. We replied not either by shot or shout. We drew the big dhow after us—and that was all we wanted—as near as she could come. We even let her gain on us, and her shots began to tell again. Then all sail was clapped on, and next—
“‘Ready about,’ was the cry.
“Ah! Nie, my boy, it was a beautiful sight, and a supreme moment.
“We thundered down on that devoted pirate. She never even divined our intention. We might overwhelm her perhaps, she thought. She prepared to out-manoeuvre us. Then all seemed to become confusion on board her. Mind, she was over-manned to begin with, her rigging too was badly damaged, and her decks hampered with her dead and dying.
“In a minute more we had hurtled into her. We actually cut her in two; she sank before our eyes, almost before we could sheer off.”
At this part of his yarn, poor old Captain Roberts stopped. I feel sure he was thinking of that dreadful scene; that, long ago though it was, he saw again that blood-stained ship sinking beneath the waves, with its living freight, many of them innocent slaves.
He filled his pipe before he resumed.
“Ah, well! poor misguided wretches, to do them justice they died bravely, and cheered wildly as they sank beneath the billows.”
“And so,” I said; “Zareppa escaped even yet.”
“Yes, it was a plucky thing. He swum out from the wreck ere she sank, and one of the dhows ran up even under our guns, and picked him out of the water.
“Then both got clear away.”