Chapter Twenty Two.
An Old Acquaintance.
“Hullo!” exclaimed a voice that seemed very familiar to me, on my getting down to the mess-deck below with my bag, when I had got my number, and been told off to my watch and division. “Who’d ha’ thought o’ meeting yer here?”
The speaker was a broad-shouldered chap, with a lot of hair all over his face, and I did not recognise him for the moment.
“You’ve got the advantage of me, mate,” said I civilly, not wishing to hurt his feelings if he had made a mistake in addressing me, as I believed he had. “I can’t place you.”
“Lor’, carn’t yer?” replied the chap, with a broad grin stealing over his face. “I fancies, Tom Bowlin’, I hed th’ adwantage on yer onst, an’ placed yer too, that time I cut yer down in yer hammick aboard the Saint Vincent, hey, old ship?”
It was Larrikins.
Needless to say how glad I was to meet him again, or what yarns we had to tell each other of what had happened to us respectively since last we met.
He was the same frolicsome, good-tempered chap that he had been on board the training-ship, I found, after a very few minutes’ talk; but his love of practical-joking had been sobered down a bit within due bounds, and, on the whole, he was very much improved in every way.
“I s’pose ye’ve never bin aboard a hooker like this afore,” he said to me presently, after we had made an end of exchanging reminiscences, noticing that I was all at loggerheads in finding my way below. “It’s them bloomin’ watertight compartments as does it; but come along o’ me, Tom, and I’ll show yez the ropes.”
So saying, he took me over the ship, pointing out how the Mermaid had a steel-protected deck running fore and aft, that sheltered her engines and boilers beneath; the space in beneath this and the bottom of the vessel being subdivided by a series of vertical iron bulkheads, completely shutting off the various ‘flats,’ or lower decks, from each other.
An arrangement so complex naturally necessitated a fellow having to climb up one hatchway and go down another before he could speak to his chum in the next flat, thus causing one to go through ‘sich a getting upstairs’ like that mentioned in the celebrated negro ballad. The difference of the deck plan of a modern cruiser, as compared with that of my old ship the Active, was not the only thing I had to learn on being drafted to the Mermaid; for the drills were quite as strange to me at first as her complicated build inboard.
The stokers, of course, had to see to driving her through the water, that being their special duty, under the superintendence of the engineers; so, as this job was taken out of the hands of us bluejackets, and there was nothing for us to do in the way of setting and taking in sail, the executive officers managed to find other work for us to keep our minds from mischief when we were aboard.
One of these tasks was ‘collision mat’ drill; when we would be tumbled up on deck to rig out a roll of oakum that was plaited into the semblance of a gigantic doormat, right over the side, dragging it by means of guys and springs under our forefoot, to fill up some imaginary hole that had been knocked into us by too friendly a craft passing by and running athwart our hawse!
Another favourite drill in vogue with the johnnies of our new regime was that of ‘closing watertight doors.’
The signal for this being about to be carried out was the blowing of a particularly excruciating sort of foghorn at some unexpected hour of the day or night—it used to be in every watch on the Mermaid; and at the sound of this melodious instrument, which was most likely selected by the authorities in recollection of the story of Joshua and his trumpet, the ‘walls,’ or, rather, bulkheads, of the ship did not ‘come down,’ but were run up!
By this means every compartment throughout the ship was isolated and all communication cut off between the various flats.
The officers were shut into their wardroom; the engineers and stokers in their own special domain; and the men forward, perhaps, on their mess-deck; until the officer of the watch had made the rounds and those in charge of the respective watertight doors had affirmed the fact, from personal supervision, that all these were closed, when, this gratifying intelligence was communicated to the captain, and he gave the order to open them again.
In addition to these exercises, there was the old ‘fire quarters’ drill, to which I was accustomed; and ‘man and arm ship,’ when all of us hurried to our stations on the main-deck batteries—those who formed part, that is, of the crews of the several guns of different types we had aboard; while the rest of us lined the sides of the upper deck, prepared to pepper away with our rifles at any approaching foe, and repel, with our sword-bayonets at the ‘charge,’ all possible boarders.
We had about a week’s cruising in the Channel, to knock us into shape as well as test our machinery, the Mermaid being a new vessel and not long delivered over from the contractors; but, Captain Hankey being a smart officer, besides being ably seconded by his subordinates, this was so satisfactorily achieved, as regards both ship and men, that ere we reached old Gib, whose couching lion-head facing out to sea reminded me strongly of the more familiar Bill of Portland, any one inspecting us would really have thought the Mermaid an old stager and that our raw company had been working together for months, instead of only a week or two!
‘Old Hankey Pankey,’ though, as he was called on the lower deck—sailors having always a nickname for their officers, whether they like them or dislike them—possessed the rare art of managing those under his command to such a degree that he would have turned out a likely enough crew from much worse material; while he ‘got to win’ard’ of the engineers so cleverly that they never grumbled at any orders he gave—unlike those gentry in general—thus enabling us to pile on steam and make the passage out from England in far less time than we expected, there being no complaints from the stokehold of ‘leaking tubes’ and ‘priming’ boilers necessitating our having to ‘slow down.’
After passing through the Gut of Gibraltar, we made for Malta; which place seems to have such a magnetic attraction for our men-of-war, both homeward and outward bound, that none by any chance ever gives it the go-by, there being always some little defect to ‘make good,’ or despatches to wait for, or letters to post, or something that obliges them to cast anchor in Valetta harbour, if they are only allowed to remain an hour or two!
We fortunately stopped here for three days; and, though the men generally were not given leave ashore, Larrikins and I, being both in the first cutter, we had the chance of landing more than once.
We had a bit of fun, too, on one of these occasions when going up the Nix Mangiare stairs, leading up from the place where the men-of-war boats put in to the town above.
These stairs are so named, it may be explained for the benefit of those who have not been there, from being the haunt of a number of beggars who frequent the steep ascent, demanding alms of all bluejackets and others that may chance to pass up or down, their whining plea being that they have nothing to eat— “Nix mangiare, buono Johnny, nix mangiare!”
We had already been accosted by three or four of these chaps, to each of whom we had given a trifle, moved by their poverty-stricken appearance and Maltese whine; when, on reaching the top of the steps, an old fellow, who from his venerable look seemed above that sort of thing, repeated a like request to his compeers lower down the stairs, holding out the palm of a lean clawlike hand resembling one of Jocko’s paws.
“No, no, that won’t wash,” said Larrikins, in a chaffy way, catching hold of a fine-looking malacca cane the old fellow was leaning on, and which seemed more fit for a grand seignior than a beggar. “None of your bono johnnies with me, you old reprobate. Yer oughter be ashamed on yerself, yer ought, axing fur charity from poor sailors like we—you with this fine walkin’-stick here, good enough for ‘old Hankey Pankey’ hisself!”
With that, Larrikins, wrenching the malacca from the unwilling hands of the old fellow, gave it a shake in the air as if he were going to apply it to the shoulders of its owner.
“By jingo,” I cried out, “there’s something chinking in it that sounds like money, Larry!”
“Lor’, it is money, Tom,” exclaimed Larrikins, at once giving the stick a good bash against the side of the wall. “The thunderin’ old cheat of a Maltese scoundrel is a regular take-in, askin’ on us fur to help him and he a-rollin’ in gold all the time, the blessed old miser!”
This statement was true enough; for, as the malacca cane came against the stonework, the head of it flew off, and from the hollow cavity within that was then disclosed there rolled out, if you please, a string of gold pieces some twenty at least in number—the result, probably, of this respectable mendicant’s very industrious beggary since he had taken to the trade, the old rascal carrying his horde about with him for safety’s sake.
He now burst into tears at his secret wealth being thus brought to light; judging, no doubt, from what he knew of the morals of his own countrymen, that Larrikins and I were going to appropriate it to our own use.
But, Larrikins and I were English sailors—not any of your Maltese riffraff; and so, picking up the scattered gold, we gave it back to the old impostor, the suspicious scoundrel counting each piece as we dropped it into his hands to make sure that we did not purloin any.
“Take that, yer old joker,” said Larrikins, as we left the scene of the incident, tendering the old gentleman a parting kick. “That’s some interest, old Bono Johnny, to stick inter yer ditty box along o’ yer shiners!”
We had no further adventure at Malta, beyond finding out that most of the shopkeepers and other chaps with whom we dealt during our short stay were as great cheats as our beggar friend of the Nix Mangiare stairs.
Before leaving the port, however, to proceed up the Levant, we heard a piece of news that gave some of us much satisfaction.
This was, that, instead of the Mermaid having to act for some months as jackal to the eastern division of the fleet, as had been intended when we were commissioned, we were now ordered to pass up the Mediterranean and proceed on through to the Red Sea, the cruiser which we had been hurriedly despatched to relieve on account of her condenser being cracked, having had her damages made good in the dockyard, the Merlin indeed lying out in French Creek all ready to return to her station within forty-eight hours of our arrival at Valetta.
So, on the third morning, a lot of signalling went on between our ship and the flagstaff ashore at the naval station, the upshot being that we were ordered to sail early in the afternoon; when, steam being got up and the anchor weighed, we bade adieu to the island, leaving Saint Elmo Point on our port hand and shaping a course eastward.
When we were nearing Alexandria, we had a bit of a ‘Levanter,’ which delayed our progress for half a day, during which time we had to slow down our engines and keep under easy steam, head to sea; but, after that, the weather was as fine as we could wish, and we got through the Canal without a hitch, not a single vessel blocking us, even after passing the Bitter Lakes, a very unusual thing at this period of the year, when the China clippers crowd the narrow waterway and cause repeated stoppages as a rule to ships outward bound.
On emerging from the Canal, at Suez, we made the best of our way down the Red Sea to Suakin, where we found despatches from the senior officer of the East African station, to which we were attached, directing us to join him off the island of Socotra; and that if we did not come across him there we were to cruise along the coast between Ras Hafim and Obbia, where it was reported the Somali Arabs were getting busy with the advent of the south-west monsoon, and carting cargoes of slaves over to Oman and the Persian Gulf—that is, when they saw a chance and none of our men-of-war were on the spot to stop them!
In obedience to these instructions, therefore, we steamed steadily onwards through the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb, and, making a wide stretch across the Gulf of Aden to take advantage of the current, steered straight for our appointed rendezvous.
Here, finding no one to meet us, nor hearing any news of import to alter our programme, Captain Hankey hauled up for Cape Guardafui, intending then to beat down the Somali coast as he had been directed.
Seeing the funnels of a steamer awash off Binna, we put in nearer to the shore, the steam cutter being piped away to examine the wreck, which was too close in to the rocks for the Mermaid to approach her with safety.
There was no trace of any one living on board, though she had evidently been only recently abandoned, various articles lying about on the deck aft, which was clear of the water, that would not have remained long aboard had she been stranded for any length of time.
She was clean gutted, however, almost every single movable thing of any value having been stripped from her.
“Ha!” I heard Captain Hankey say to our first lieutenant, both of them coming in the cutter to inspect the steamer. “Those Somali Arabs have been here, Gresham.”
“Not a doubt of it, sir,” replied Mr Gresham. “Those beggars are the biggest thieves, I believe, in the world; and murderous rascals, too. I recollect, sir, when I was out here in the old Vampire, we had many a tussle with them, for they fight like wild cats!”
“Aye, they do that,” said the captain. “I shouldn’t be surprised if some of their dhows are knocking about here now!”
“Nor I, sir,” agreed the other. “Oliver, of the Magpie, whom I saw at Suakin, told me there was a rumour of the Somalis running cargoes of arms, which they pick up somewhere in the German protectorate, to supply Osman Digna’s forces for a fresh campaign that has been planned by the Arabs against us along the whole coast.”
“That may be,” said Captain Hankey; “but the beggars who have been at work here wore only on the lookout for loot, I think—though, perhaps, they may have murdered the crew and passengers of this vessel, too, for all we know. However, to make matters sure, we’ll look out for them!”
“Aye, aye, sir, that will prevent any mistakes,” said Mr Gresham, with a laugh. “I don’t think any Arab dhow, whether belonging to the Somalis or otherwise, can escape the Mermaid, should one heave in sight!”
There being nothing that we could do for the steamer, which would have to be ‘written off as a loss’ by the underwriters at Lloyd’s, the captain gave the signal for the cutter to return to our ship; and then, making a good offing, so as to put the Arabs off their guard, we banked our fires, except under one boiler, keeping the screw just revolving so as to maintain our position abreast of Binna, well out of sight of the land.
A strict watch was maintained, though, all the same, lookouts being stationed in our military tops as well as on the forecastle; and, in the early morning, long before sunrise, the steam pinnace and first and second cutters were lowered alongside, and provisioned ready for action.
Captain Hankey had kept his eyes open to some purpose when he inspected the steamer, for he had seen a lot of things that had been stripped off the vessel put together in a heap under the bridge, as if her plunderers intended returning for them, not having been able to carry them away at their last trip; and, albeit he did not draw the attention of our first lieutenant to this, to my knowledge, when talking to him, no doubt, from the preparations he made, ‘old Hankey Pankey’ drew his own conclusions.
His judgment was not at fault.
Hardly had the first flush of dawn tinted the yellow eastern sky with its rosy light, heralding the glowing heat of day, ere one of the men stationed in the tops hailed the deck.
“There’s something moving away off on our weather bow,” sang out the man, shoving his head over the side of the top. “I can’t make it out exactly, sir; there’s a haze on the water ahead.”
The second lieutenant, who was acting as officer of the watch, being an easy-going sort of chap and rather sleepy from being up pacing to and fro on the bridge since midnight, did not pay much attention to this intelligence.
“All right, lookout-man,” he hailed back, after a portentous yawn. “It’s probably the morning breeze blowing the fog off the land that you see. Tell me, a–a–ah! When you are able to make it out more clearly, a–a–ah!”
And, he almost yawned himself out of his boots as he gave utterance to the last word.