“They sail well, you say?” I inquired.
“Don’t they, that’s all! Why, none of our quickest steam-pinnaces can overhaul them when they’re going on a wind, for even with the lightest breeze their sails, being made of twilled calico and light, waft them along as if by magic. There are twenty that escape us for every one we catch, as, in the busy season, the caravans from the interior bring the slaves down to the coast wholesale. The Portuguese and Arabs are the chaps that manage the business; and once the slaves are aboard the dhows, they sneak along the land until night-time, when, if the wind blows fair for them, they’re off and away to Pemba, or further up towards the Arabian coast, where our boats can whistle for them for all the chance they have of overhauling them!”
“What becomes of the slaves that are liberated when the dhows are captured?” said I.
“Oh, the boys are sent to the Boy’s Mission Schools at Zanzibar, and the girls to the Female Mission there also; while the men folk, at least all the able-bodied and strong ones that are not too old, are enlisted into the sultan’s army—the Sultan of Zanzibar, I mean, the Seyyid Burgash that was. When I was there, the commander of his army was a lieutenant of our navy who had been ‘lent’ by government for the purpose for three years, and now he has left the service altogether and is known as ‘General Matthews’ on the east coast. A right smart chap he is too, for he drilled the niggers as well as if he were a born sojer instead of a sailor!”
“Do the slaves like this business?” I asked, thinking that their “freedom” seemed rather questionable; and then, too, consider the cost both in men and money it is to England every year.
“Well, I don’t believe they do,” answered the ex-man-o’-war’s-man—“I’ve heard some of them say that they were quite contented to work on the clove plantations, and preferred that to loafing about the streets of Zanzibar, where hundreds of them are to be seen every day, with nothing to do and very little to eat, unless they take to thieving!”
“What sort of a place is Zanzibar?” said I now.
“Well, sir,” replied the pensioner, “like all them oriental towns I have ever seen in the Levant and elsewhere, it looks ever so much better as seen from the sea than it does at close quarters. Coming into the harbour from the southwards, as I’ve entered it many a time when returning from a trip down to the Mozambique, your vessel has to wind slowly along through numerous little coral islands, which are, however, grown with stunted trees and bush quite close down to the water.”
“That must be lovely!” I remarked.
“Aye, aye, so it is,” said my friend; “but the navigation is awfully difficult, not to say dangerous, even with a man in the chains heaving the lead and singing out the depth every moment, for the soundings shoot from the ‘deep nine’ to the ‘short five,’ and less nor that too, before you know where you are! Howsomdever, once you’ve got inside and cast anchor, it’s as pretty a roadstead as I ever clapped eyes on—as pretty as Rio in South America, which I daresay you’ve heard of?”