Volume Two--Chapter Three.
In the Mozambique Channel.
“Where was I, sir?”
“You had just been turned adrift from the ship, I think,” said I, “and left to cruise on your own account—wasn’t that so?”
“Ah! yes, I remember now, sir. Well, then, when the Dolphin had got well away from us, leaving us poor chaps to our own resources, we in the pinnace, now well under her canvas, were sailing along on a course almost at right angles to that taken by our old ship, which somewhat took away from the nasty feeling of being sort of left behind, you know; but, we could not help watching her with longing eyes as she sped away northward under full steam and with all her fore-and-aft sails set that could draw, going fourteen knots at the least!
“It was a lovely morning that there—the loveliest I ever saw on the African coast; for there was no mist, and the rain having ceased, the strong sou’-westerly breeze that was blowing right offshore from the mainland tempered down the heat of the broiling sun, which only those who have been on the coast can have an idea of as to how intense it can be, while the pinnace was moving quickly through the water; and it was not long before the Dolphin was hull down on the horizon, the white gleam of her upper canvas vanishing soon after. But, for a long time succeeding that, we could still see the smoke from her funnel spread out in the shape of a fan to leeward, where it was blown by the following wind right across the sky and was clearly apparent in the clear blue air above as well as reflected in the sea below. Then, too, that disappeared at length, and we were left alone in our little boat on the waste of waters!
“I tell you we did feel a bit melancholy and down in the dumps then, especially as all hands knew the errand on which the old ship had gone and felt that we were out of the fun! However, I did not give the men time to think of this too long; for, acting under the directions given me by the skipper, I steered the pinnace towards the coast to windward of the Comoro Islands, intending after dark to creep up under the lee of Saint Juan, where I’d been told the dhows mostly made for when the coast was clear; and, what with trimming the sails and making taut the sheets, as well as stationing a special look-out in the bows and one in the stern behind me at the helm, I soon managed to turn the men’s attention away from the Dolphin, though some of them still seemed chop-fallen, being new to boat cruising and not relishing the work.
“Of course, I knew in what a responsible position I was—almost like that of the captain of a ship; for, I could order the men to do anything I pleased, and if they disobeyed me have them tried for mutiny, while I had the right to attack and capture any native vessels I suspected of having slaves on board—so, soon after noon, when I piped all hands to dinner, I made them a little speech after the grub had been stowed away comfortably, pointing out that their circumstances were considerably better than they themselves appeared to think. In course, I said, our shipmates in the Dolphin had a bit the advantage of us in starting off on another chase, with perhaps the chance of a second scrimmage at the end of it, the same as we had all had together on the previous evening; but then, I says, what we were doing was equally for the good of the service; and, besides, as soon as the steamer had overhauled the slaver she was after she would have to go back to that beastly Zanzibar in the thick of fever time, remaining there probably for weeks, until she got rid of the slaves from the captured dhows, while, on the contrary, we would be down here cruising about on the free open sea and enjoying ourselves!
“We lost nothing by remaining there, I said. If our old ship took the slaver she was now chasing, why, we would share in the prize-money just the same as if we’d been on board her, without running the risk of any hard knocks or having some Arab’s dagger cutting daylight into us; and if she didn’t succeed in hunting down the dhow, which was more than likely, considering the long start the latter had got, why, then we would be well out of a wild-goose chase.
“In addition to such arguments,” continued Ben, who sometimes spoke with a purity of diction that is much more common amongst seamen of the navy of to-day than it was in “the good old days” of our ancestors before education was much in vogue, “I hinted that nobody could say we might not pick up a slave-dhow down there on our own hook quite as good as the other one we could not go after; and if not, well, at all events we would have an easier time of it than if we had been kept on board the ship! There, as they knew, the skipper took jolly good care to serve us out full purser’s allowance of drill if there was nothing else stirring; for it was beating to quarters, or small-arm exercise, or manning the big guns, and playing all such fancy tricks with us when he had no better work to keep us employed with between watches. I can tell you, I never saw such a hand as Cap’en Wilson for that. He used to say that the devil always found something for idle hands; and the way he went about remedying this reminded me of the old poetry lines I once heard a Yankee sailor call the ‘Philadelphia Catechism’—
“‘Six days shalt thou labour and do all thou art able,
And on the seventh,—holystone the decks and scrape the cable!’
“These words of mine had such an effect on the men that I assure you, sir, they grew quite cheerful like, chatting and laughing together as they lolled about on the thwarts under the boat awnings that were spread fore and aft I allowed them to take it easy, with the exception of the hands having charge of the sheets of the sails and those on the look-out, as I don’t think discipline is preserved any the better by keeping fellows continually on the stretch when there’s nothing particular to do, merely to see them slaving their hearts out.
“Presently, the look-out forward said he thought he saw the white sail of a dhow close in to the island we were beating to windward of; and of course every one immediately must take it for granted that she’s a contraband carrying slaves.”
“I suppose you didn’t undeceive them?” said I.
“Not I,” replied Ben. “I was only too glad of the chance. It banished at once all thoughts of the old Dolphin out of their heads better than all my palaver, for all hands were so anxious to come up with the strange craft that they themselves voted for taking to the oars, which I certainly wouldn’t have ordered their doing in the terrible afternoon heat, as, while we were having our dinner, the wind had been gradually dying until it was now almost a dead calm, and the sails flapping against the masts, with the boat rocking on the heavy rolling swell that you always meet with out there when the sun is at the meridian.”
“I thought you expected a tornado in the early morning?” I here suggested.
“Ah! never you mind about that,” said Ben. “We haven’t yet done with the east-coast weather, as you’ll see presently. Howsomever, as I was saying,” he continued, “I told them to take in the sails, being so minded, and rig out the oars. They didn’t lose any time about it either, for as soon as I gave the order it was all haul down and furl up; and, getting a good grip of the water, they started pulling like madmen, putting their hearts into every stroke—although the day was so hot and sweltry that a fellow seemed to melt away into perspiration, even lying still in the stern-sheets of the boat, as I was, without moving a muscle.
“The craft which had been sighted by the look-out forward was a small Mtpe dhow well under the lee of the island and creeping along-shore, her light sails and the wider spread of canvas which her lateen rig permitted enabling her to take advantage of the slightest puff of air; while our heavy pinnace, with her small-cut sails hardly raised above the surface of the sea, so as to get the full force of the wind, required a strong breeze to move her at all, although then she had pretty fair speed.
“Now that the men had taken to the oars, however, we began to approach the stranger more rapidly; but she was over five miles off, and a pull of that length under a burning sun is no joke, I can assure you. Stroke after stroke, our plucky seamen kept at it in spite of the heat, one minute appearing to gain and then again to lose distance as a whiff of air would waft the dhow along; so that, it was not until nearly sunset that we got within gunshot, and could hail her to see what she was up to.
“‘Now, Adams,’ said I to the man in the bows, who had command of the seven-pounder boat-gun we had fixed there, ‘I think we may invite the stranger gentleman to have a little chat. Fire away, my man, and make her come to.’
“All was ready, so without more ado he fired, the shot ricochetting across the prow of the Arab craft, which had by this time cleared the island and seemed making for Madagascar, that lay east and by south some three hundred miles off. At all events, the dhow was steering in that direction, with whatever wind there was on her beam, and she paid no attention to us at all apparently.
“Still, she didn’t long keep on that course. The first message from our seven-pounder did not bring her to, nor did a second, but when a third went unpleasantly close, right through her broad lug-sail, we could see her come up to the wind sharp, while a fourth shot, which we now sent to show those on board that we meant business and would be obeyed, caused her heavy yard to be dropped by the run in token of surrender.
“We had a long pull yet to come near her; but on getting alongside we found it had been all labour for nothing. There was not the ghost of a slave aboard, nor any signs neither of her having carried any recently. She was only a trading dhow with a lot of Banians taking goods from the mainland to the islands; and so we had had all our chase for nothing. Well, the men were so vexed that they would have liked to have scuttled her. I was glad I hadn’t suggested their taking to the oars, or perhaps they might have turned on me for making them toil so when it wasn’t necessary; but of course I wasn’t to blame, and they knew that.
“Having no authority to stop her, I was obliged to let the dhow proceed on her way, while we lay-to for the night in a sheltered creek under the lee of Saint Juan; for it was now getting dark, and the navigation being rather treacherous with a lot of coral reefs about, I thought it best to wait for daylight before we did any more cruising.
“On the wind rising again, towards midnight, I anchored the pinnace about a cable’s-length off the beach, where we were pretty secure from drifting ashore on account of the tide setting the other way. Towards morning, however, it came on to blow more strongly, and as the boat rocked uneasily I hauled up the kedge again, for it was bad holding ground, the tackle chafing against the coral banks and sawing away in a manner that promised to make it part if it remained down much longer, the boat’s head bobbing down and up every wave with a jerk that must snap our painter in time.
“Setting the mainsail reefed, and a small storm-staysail forwards, we ran before the wind, which had now increased to a gale, blowing stiffly, as it had done in the early part of the day before, from the south-west. It was of no use trying to lay-to in the open sea, for the rollers were too heavy for the boat to ride over, so we bore right away across the channel towards the north part of Madagascar, having a clear space of water in front of us with no chance of running ashore, for the next twenty-four hours or so at all events, if we kept on to the same point of the compass that the wind was now carrying us to. The pinnace being a good sea-boat, we were all right otherwise, that was, unless the gale shifted, when we would be driven back on to the rocky reef which encircled the Comoro Islands, and no doubt go to pieces there.
“‘Let her drive,’ said I to the men, whom I kept baling out the occasional seas that came in over the weather gunwale. ‘As long as she keeps on running like this we can come to no harm, but you mustn’t stop baling, for if she once gets waterlogged she’ll founder and then we’ll all be lost.’
“This made them stick to it, although most of them were tired out with the long pull they had had in the afternoon after the dhow, and when morning broke we were still all right and buoyant, although the tornado showed no appearance of slackening, and we were quite out of sight of land, nothing but sky and sea being around us, and the waves rolling that high as they followed in our wake that if we had not scudded on we would have been swamped in an instant.
“All that day we continued driving ahead, for we could not stop, or wear the boat round, or do anything but simply let her go where the wind chose to take her. We could not even lower the mainsail, as if we had done so it might have capsized her, besides which, as long as it held out without being blown away, although it almost made the pinnace bury her nose in the waves in front, it prevented the following rollers behind from coming too close, just keeping way enough on her to be out of their reach. But, it was a perilous run of it, and every big comber that raced after us looked as if it would overtake our tiny craft and swamp her!
“By about four o’clock in the afternoon, as near as we could reckon, we sighted the highlands of Madagascar, for it couldn’t be any other coast from the direction we had been sailing in ever since midnight. The land was right ahead and some distance off yet; but approaching it rapidly as we did, it made us tremble, for unless we could manage to steer inside the reef that lay outside the shore of the island, the same as at Saint Juan, we must be dashed against the cliffs. It was wonderful to think we had run all that distance in less than twenty-four hours.
“How we did it I’m sure I can’t tell, but I believe in addition to the force of the wind, that must have driven us at the rate of twenty knots an hour, more or less, there was a strong easterly current in the Mozambique Channel with the south-west monsoon, and this must have carried us so speedily across from the Comoro Islands. I can’t account for it otherwise.
“Be that as it may, sir, there was Madagascar now before us, with the pinnace closing in with the land every second, seeming as if she were flying towards it rather than sailing; soon, too, we could distinguish the noise of breakers, which grew every minute more distinct. We were rushing rapidly to destruction, and it looked as if no earthly power could save the boat from being dashed to pieces.
“However, there was a power above watching over us.
“Presently I noticed from the contour of the land that we were near Cape Tangan, which I well knew from a coasting voyage I had made round the island in a cruiser the year before when I came out to join the London, and I recollected that this headland ran out into the sea in a north-westerly point, so that, if we could contrive to get the boat to leeward of the cape, we would soon be in comparatively still water and protected alike from the force of the wind and the rolling waves.
“I sang out to the men therefore to get their oars out ready, and, watching my opportunity when we were just almost abreast of Cape Tangan, I told Adams, who was in the centre of the boat now, to lower away the mainsail, directing the others at the same time to pull with a will, as their lives depended on our rounding the promontory, against which it looked as if we were going to be hurled as we came up to it—it was so terribly near and frowning over us!
“This plan fortunately succeeded, for in another minute, during which I held my breath in suspense, we were round the cape and in still water, although close to a coral reef that girdled the land, which was still some three miles off. We really were safe for the time and dropped our anchor, glad enough at our escape; but I saw that the haven could only be of temporary assistance to us, for should the wind shift more to the northwards we would even be in a worse position than when scudding before the gale, as the reef would then be immediately to leeward of us and the gale in our face.
“It would serve no good, however, to meet evil half-way, so as the men were all dead tired out and exhausted with hunger, having eaten nothing since dinner the day before the storm set in, I ordered the provisions to be served out, telling them after that to lie down and have a good sleep in the bottom of the boat while I remained on the watch till morning, having had less exertion than any of them.
“But the poor fellows did not have half so long a rest as that. Towards midnight—it seemed indeed as if all our misfortunes came at that time - the pinnace dragged her anchor and drifted on to the reef, when I had to rouse all hands to jump out in the darkness and shove her off again before she knocked a hole in her bottom. Then, no sooner were we afloat again than the wind veered round, just as I had fancied it would do, without the slightest warning, to the northward.
“This of course rendered it impossible for us to remain any longer under the lee of the cliff, our anchorage there being now untenable; and, putting out to sea again, we bravely endeavoured to ride out the gale in the offing under a close-reefed mainsail and fore-staysail, so as not to be in too close proximity to the reef, which was doubly dangerous to us now.
“Fortune favoured us in the attempt to weather the worst of the storm, until shortly after daybreak; when, the rollers coming rolling in heavier and more heavily each hour, the poor pinnace sank below the surface of the sea in twenty-five fathoms of water, leaving thirteen of us struggling for our lives some seven miles away from shore.”
“That must have been awful!” said I sympathisingly.
“It was awful,” replied Ben gravely. “I can hardly bear to tell of it now.”