“The funniest thing, too, about these bazaars is to see the different trades or handicraftsmen at work, the goldsmiths making rings by hammering and beating the metal, the jewellers stringing pearls together for necklaces and bracelets, the toy-makers rigging up the queerest curios you ever saw, and the sandal-makers cutting out shoes of leather; but the biggest treat of all is to watch a Parsee school and see how the master instructs the little shavers. The children, to the number of fifty or more, all squat on the floor of the school-room, which is a large open shed on a raised platform, each holding in one hand the blade-bone taken from the shoulder of a camel to serve as a slate, on which they make marks with a pencil-like brush. They are pretty little trots, the children; and are mostly all smartly dressed in little jackets and trousers of various coloured silks, green, yellow, and red, with turbans on top of their heads, just like their fathers, to complete the picture.”
“The end of the rainy season, you say, is the best time for catching the dhows?” I asked now, to bring my friend back to the main point of all my interrogatories.
“Yes, there’s the greatest demand then for the slaves; besides which the south-west monsoon sets in at that time, and is favourable for their crossing from the mainland.”
“Do they ever show fight?” I inquired.
“Bather!” ejaculated my informant; “they’re about as treacherous a lot as you could ever come across, them Arabs; for, I tell you what, they’ll sometimes let a boat’s crew overhaul ’em, and come up alongside as if everything was ship-shape and clear sailing—that is to say, sir, that they have nothing contraband aboard and could show a clean bill o’ lading; when, drat ’em, they’ll turn round on you like a parcel o’ tigers with their sharp knives and spears. It was in this way my poor skipper, Capt’in Brownrigg, was killed in December ’81—just at Christmas time, when I were out there.”
“That was a sad thing,” said I sympathisingly.
“Yes,” replied the pensioner; “but, saddest of all, it was to know his poor wife had just come out from England to join him, and was aboard the London at the very time his body was brought alongside the ship in the steam-pinnace in which he had met his death. Ah! he was a fine officer was Capt’in Brownrigg, and liked by everybody—not only by his brother officers and equals, but by the men under him. Bless you, they’d a’ gone anywheres to win a smile from his cheery face. Hullo, though, sir, look there, they’re shutting up the dockyard gate!”
Such indeed was the case, showing that the afternoon was pretty nearly “expended,” as they say in the service.
“Ah! that comes along o’ yarning with you and not minding the business that brought me down here, for now I’m too late.”
“Well, in that case,” said I, seeing my chance now for getting the oft-evaded yarn of my friend’s long service, “suppose you come home to my place and have a cup of tea, when you can tell me the story of your shipwreck off Madagascar, eh?”