The brave ship Niobe (this word is pronounced as if spelt “Ni-o-bee”) slowly rose and slowly fell, and gently rocked and rolled on this heaving tide, and sometimes her great sails flapped with the vessel’s motion, but, alas! not with the rising wind.
No, not with the rising wind, but whenever they moved, the officer who paced up and down the white-scoured quarter-deck, would glance above as if in hope; then he would gaze seawards, and anon shorewards, wistfully, wishfully, uneasily.
Uneasy, indeed, was the feeling on the minds of all on board.
The vessel was far too near the shore, the wind had been dead for hours, but it had died away suddenly, and the glass had gone tumbling down. That it would come on to blow again, and that before long, everyone from the captain to the dark-skinned Kroo-boy was well aware. But from what direction would the wind come? If from the east, strong though the Niobe was, close to the wind though she could sail, well-officered and manned though she was, there was more than a probability she would be dashed to pieces on that sandy beach.
And small mercy could the survivors, if any, expect from the savage Somali Indians, and the still more cruel Arabs, who dwelt in the wretched little towns and villages on the coast. For the ship was here in the Indian Ocean for the avowed purpose of putting down slavery and piracy, and by slavery and piracy those Arabs lived.
It was in the days before steam-power was generally adopted by our navy, when sailors were sailors in reality, and not merely in name.
The crew of the Niobe numbered about seventy, all told fore—and—aft. She carried ten good guns, and an unlimited supply of small arms, cutlasses, and boarding pikes. The timbers of this brave craft were of the toughest teak, ay, and her men were hearts of oak. They feared nothing, they hated nothing, save uncertainty and inaction. All that they longed for was to be accomplishing the object of their cruise.
Had you been on board the Niobe when the wind was blowing half a gale, and the ship ripping through the waves with, maybe, green seas hitting her awful thuds at times, and the foam dashing high over the main or fore-tops, you would have found the men as merry and jolly as boys at cricket. Had you been on board when the battle raged, and the cannon roared, and balls crashed through her sides or rigging, when splinters flew and men dropped bleeding to the deck, you would have found nought save courage and daring in every eye, and calmness in every hand.
