“And where are they principally grown?” said I.
“Why, Pemba. That’s an island up above Zanzibar, about sixty miles from the coast, though they’re very good cloves grown on Zanzibar Island too; but Pemba is the chief place, and it is to there that the chief runs of slaves are made by the Arab dhows. That is why the London was so long stationed thereabouts: it was in order to intercept these craft and stop the traffic.”
“I suppose you’ve seen some service chasing the dhows yourself, eh?” I said, thinking this a good opening for getting him back to his yarn, as he seemed inclined to end the conversation at this point, hinting that he had an appointment “in the yard”—meaning Portsmouth dockyard—and that it was getting on late, and they would soon be closing up.
“Oh yes, sir! I served my time dhow-chasing when I was in the London; and saw a few sights, too, in the different craft we overhauled that would ha’ made your blood boil against slavery. One dhow, I remember, we captured with nearly a hundred on board, all crammed into a space that you couldn’t have thought would have held half that number of human beings, for it was a small dhow, of probably not more than forty tons at the outside. On the ballast at the bottom of the vessel were huddled up twenty-three women, some with infants in their arms. They were literally doubled up, sir, as they could not stand from the position they were in, as right over them was placed a bamboo deck not three feet above the keel of the boat, on which forty men were jammed together in the same way. This was not all, either, for, right above the men, right on to their heads almost as they squatted down, was another deck of bamboo, on which were over fifty children of all ages. The whole lot, too, when we boarded the dhow, were in the last stages of starvation and dysentery, not to speak of what they must have suffered from the cramped position in which they were confined and the want of air. They smelled something awful when we unkiverd them; it was enough to knock down a horse.”
“It was horrible,” I said in sympathy.
“No doubt it were all that,” replied my friend the pensioner. “But from what I saw out there I do believe the very attempts our government make to put down the slave-trade only increases the evils of the poor wretches we are trying to liberate.”
“How is that?” I asked.
“Why, you see, when the traffic used to be permitted, as it was once for a period of eight months in the year, just as you have at home a set time for shooting game, the slaves used to be carried in large dhows, more comfortably, and well supplied with food and water in their passage from the mainland to Pemba and Zanzibar; but when our cruisers began to look out for them and stopped the trade, no matter whether it was in the dry season or not, then the Arabs would pack ’em up in small craft that could lie hid in the creeks or shallows of the coast and smuggle the niggers in during the night-time, for these Arabs are just like cats, and can see in the dark when our men couldn’t perceive their hands afore their face. Once upon a time, when I first went on the station, we used to capture good big dhows that were of a hundred and eighty tons burden and upwards; now our men only get hold of little Mtpe dhows that are hardly worth taking—I suppose you know, sir, as how we get a bounty or prize-money, according to the size of the vessels and the number of slaves we liberate?”
“Yes,” said I, “I’m aware of that, as I have noticed advertisements in the London Gazette about the distribution of the bounty for such and such slave-dhows ‘captured by the boats of HMS London’ or some other cruiser named. How are these dhows built?”
“Of a sort of close hard wood like African oak, but harder than our English timber of the same nature. The planks of the small Mtpe dhows are sewn together with a thread-like stuff they get from the reeds in the lagoons. They are built broad and shallow, with a keel deepening towards the stern, almost like a wedge, so that they can turn quickly. They’re good sea-boats, too, and can sail almost up into the wind’s eye, with their large lateen sails, which are cut something like an old-fashioned leg of mutton, or short tack lug. The stem of them rises high out of the water, having a poop on it, which is thatched over with matting and banana leaves; and altogether they don’t look unlike a Chinese junk. Some of the bigger dhows, which are used as war craft by the Arab chiefs of Lamoi and Mozambique, are fine craft, and carry six and twelve brass guns sometimes, like the old carronades of the service.”