A True Story.
BY J. O. DAVIDSON.
Chapter X.
FIGHTING A WATER-SPOUT.
"Anything wrong below, Smith?"
"Well, sir, she's got a precious list to port, and the water's runnin' into the fire-room like anythin'. Seems to come from under the coals."
"Have them shifted at once, then, and see what's wrong."
"Ay, ay, sir."
Frank had overheard the fireman's report to the first officer, and a thought struck him. Walking aft till he was right over the engine-room, he climbed out under the "guard," and looked keenly along the port quarter. Aha! There, just as he had expected, was a port-hole standing wide open, and letting in water at every plunge of the vessel.
"Well done, my boy! that's twice you've got us all out of a scrape," said Mr. Hawkins, to whom Frank hastily reported what he had seen. "How did you come to think of that port-hole?"
"I'd noticed it when I was shovelling down there, sir, and I thought that must be it."
"Good! I like to see a youngster keep his wits about him. Send up the carpenter to fix it, will you? I won't forget to tell Captain Gray what you've done, depend upon it."
This, of itself, would have been a sufficient "event" for the first day out from Malta; but another was still to come. The next morning Frank noticed two new faces among the firemen, and asked Herrick who they were.
"Stowaways, lad," said the old tar. "We found 'em hid away among the cargo last night, and now we're making 'em work their passage. There was three on 'em altogether, but them two Britishers are all that's any good. The third was a Maltee lubber, who'd never done nothin' but wait at table, and sich; so we jist sent him aft to sarve the officers."
That evening there was a sudden cry of "Fire!" and Frank, to whom the mere thought of a fire at sea had always been a perfect nightmare, was amazed to see how coolly the men got out their hose-pipes and took their appointed stations, without the slightest flurry or confusion. In three minutes all was ready; but happily it proved to be a false alarm.
Ha! what is this long gray band along the southern sky, with one tall white line standing up from it like a mast, and two black bars stretching from its edge far into the bright blue waters? Can it be the coast of Egypt already? It is nothing else. The white streak is Port Said Light-house; the black bars are the walls of its breakwater, running their huge piled-up blocks of "concrete" nearly two miles out to sea.
Frank was greatly amused with the quaint little toy town of 5000 inhabitants, perched between the desert and the sea, where everybody shut up their stores and went to sleep in the middle of the day; where, thanks to the deep soft sand, carriages and horsemen went by as noiselessly as shadows; and where every gust of wind raised a dust-storm that hid people, houses, and everything else. Here, for the first time, he saw a punka, or monster fan, worked by a rope, and hung from the ceiling of a room. He was shown over the light-house by a trim little Arab boy and girl, who, to his great surprise, turned out to be man and wife; and altogether he had plenty of new impressions to think over when he at last found himself fairly afloat upon the Suez Canal.[1]
A narrow ribbon of light green water between two interminable sand-banks, growing gradually higher as they advanced southward; a huge "dredger" every here and there, lying like a castle upon the water, with a clamorous garrison of blue-shirted men and red-capped boys; an occasional tug-boat, disdainfully greeted by Herrick as "Puffing Billy"; a distant caravan, with its endless file of camels and horses and men, melting away in curve after curve, like some mighty serpent, far back into the quivering haze that hovered over the hot brassy desert—such were the main features of the famous passage, begun by Pharaoh-Necho, and finished by Lesseps. The sun was sinking as they cast anchor for the night before Ismailia, and saw the mouth of the Sweetwater Canal, and the docks and houses of the brand-new town which the late sovereign of Egypt built and named after himself, fading into the fast-falling darkness.
Starting again next morning, they passed Suez about noon (fortunately without having to halt at one of the ugliest and dirtiest towns in the world), and headed down the Red Sea. Frank took a good look, in passing, at the bold headland of Ras Attakah, which is said by the best authorities to mark the scene of the Israelite passage, and where, according to a grim Arab legend, the shrieks of Pharaoh's drowning host may still be heard at times mingling with the roar of the storm. Farther on, a break in the sea-board hills gave him one glimpse of the huge square dark gray mass of Sinai,[2] far away to the east; and then they were in the open sea once more.
Keeping well out to sea, they escaped the net-work of coral reefs which beset the Arabian coast for forty-five miles together; but they could not escape the heat, which overpowered not a few even of the old hands. Again and again strong men were carried fainting from the engine-room, to be tended by a surgeon almost as sick as themselves. The stiff breeze that was blowing, instead of refreshing them, seemed to bring with it the heat of all the African deserts at once, and a passing steamer signaled that she had lost sixteen men by it in two days.
"See that lubber of a mountain spoutin' fire, as if 'twarn't hot enough already!" growled Herrick, pointing to the volcanic islet of Jebel Teer. "That other island yonder's where the Arabs think their spirits go when they die; but I guess if I was a spirit, I'd like to have a cooler berth."
But once through the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb (Gate of Tears) into the Indian Ocean, Frank's ideas of a tropical voyage were fully realized. Bright skies, smooth seas, a steady breeze abeam keeping all cool, porpoises frolicking around the ship by hundreds, gay-plumaged birds alighting in the rigging, and a dance on deck every night to the music of fiddle and concertina, with a roaring accompaniment of sea-chorus that might have pleased Captain Marryat himself. Frank's throat was sore for a whole day after his patriotic efforts to "give full mouth" to one of these, which began thus:
"May our good ship Arizona have fair winds to fill her sails!
She can race the King of Sharks, not to say the Prince of Whales;
And she'll laugh at Arab roaches and at crawling British snails,
As she goes sailing on."
The guns were got ready as they ran through the pirate-haunted Straits of Malacca; and though no pirate ventured to attack them, they had to face an enemy quite as dangerous that very afternoon. Frank, who had been looking at the blue Sumatra hills, with here and there a curl of smoke above the trees to show where the sandalwood gatherers were at work, was suddenly startled by the cry of, "A water-spout!"
There it was, sure enough, the long dark pillar, topped by a mass of black cloud, moving swiftly over the sea. Two native fishing-boats were flying before it, one of which was speedily drawn into the swirling foam at the base of the column. The other, more fortunate, got under the lee of the steamer.
SINGAPORE PILOT-BOAT.
"Give him a shot, Herrick," shouted the Captain, and the old quartermaster obeyed. The first shell missed, though so narrowly that the spout was seen to quiver; but the second burst right upon the thinnest part of the column, which broke and fell, with a noise that might have been heard for miles. For a moment the whole air was dark as night with spray and smoke; then a torrent of rain burst upon them, and when it cleared away, not a trace of their terrible enemy was to be seen.
The morning after her water-spout adventure the Arizona sighted the light-ship marking the approach to Singapore; and after an exciting race with an English screw-steamer, ran safely over the bar into the harbor. This was certainly rather hard upon the native pilot-boat, which had put out to her in the hope of a job; and the six black, half-clothed scarecrows who pulled it vented their feelings in a prolonged howl and a clatter of their diamond-shaped oar blades, to which Jack Dewey replied by asking, with an air of deep interest, how much they would take to "come on board and new pitch the boats with the tar off their elegant black hides."