“You’re right, sir, I warn’t,” replied my friend Ben. “The very first day I shipped aboard the Dolphin we took two Mtpe dhows close inshore near Pemba. That brought me in a niceish bit of prize-money for a start; and, just a week arter that exactly, when we had got down to our proper cruising ground—that was, sir, just atween Zanzibar and the Mozambique Channel, which, as I daresay you know, sir, is about two hundred and fifty miles wide and runs between Madagascar and the mainland of Africa—why, we came upon the biggest haul that had been made on the coast for years; but we had to work for it, I tell you. That was a chase and no mistake!”
“Was it?” I asked, glad of Ben’s coming now to an actual yarn concerning some of the stirring events of his life; for he had previously only been “beating about the bush,” so to speak.
“Yes, sir; and not only a chase that was something to boast of, but a fight as well at the end of it—one of the smartest scrimmages I ever had all the time I was out there. If you don’t mind my lighting a pipe, for I allers, sir, can tell a yarn better when I’m smoking, I’ll just haul my jaw-tackle aboard and give you a full account of the whole adventure.”
“Do,” I said.
“There!” exclaimed he with a grunt of satisfaction, carefully filling a briar-root pipe with some dark tobacco, which he produced from out of a little round brass box that he carried in his waistcoat pocket, telling me it was “the right sort,” and proceeding to light it—“now, we can go on serenely.”
“Fire away!” said I, to encourage him, “I’m all attention.”
He did not waste any more time; but at once began his story.
“The Dolphin had run down south with the fag-end of the north-east monsoon, economising her coals as much as possible, as all the men-of-war have to do nowadays, worse luck—sometimes when it’s a question between saving a few pounds or sacrificing a ship! We had passed Mazemba island, and had just weathered Cape Delgado, which is some ten degrees south of the equator, when—it was close on sunset at the time, and it grows dark all at once after that, you know, in the tropics—the look-out man sang out, ‘sail-ho!’ This was just as we were piped down to tea. Bless you, we didn’t think no more of going below, I can tell you!”
“I suppose not,” I put in, to show I was listening attentively to what he was saying, for he paused at this juncture, as if waiting for me to say something.
“No, sir. Of course, although we were running down under easy sail the engine-fires were ready banked up, so that it didn’t take us long to get up steam; and we were soon round like a shot, and retracing our way, right in the face of the wind, after a large dhow which we could see stealing up along-shore and hugging the land. She was what the Arabs called a batilla, and had two large lugs, or lateen sails set, besides a sort of square-cut jib forwards on her high-peaked bowsprit, by the aid of which she was sailing close-hauled, almost in the very teeth of the nor’-easter that was blowing pretty stiffly at the time, making it risky work for a vessel to approach so near a lee-shore as she was doing. However, I suppose her captain thought he would be able to slip by us in the darkness, when he might have got under the shelter of the island we had passed only a short while previously in our downward passage to the Mozambique; and, once he was out of sight of the Dolphin, of course he could have put out to sea again at his leisure, making his way north as soon as the coast seemed clear, and thus escaping us altogether.”