“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.