Young Tom Bowling / The Boys of the British Navy

by John C. Hutcheson

Poor Mr Doyle died shortly after we effected the capture of the batilla; but, being a quiet, inoffensive sort of man, I don’t think his loss affected any one very much, while Mr Chisholm the middy, who was made an acting sub-lieutenant in his place—such is the fortune of war—was the reverse of sad when he came up to us presently in the whaler, towing the smaller dhow, which he had very pluckily captured to his own cheek.

The rest of the Somali craft had been run ashore on the rocks to escape our clutches, reminding me of my old chum Mick one day, when we were walking along the Gosport ramparts and it was raining, proceeding carefully to take off his clothes and go into the water, to ‘kape himself dhry,’ as he explained to me in his Irish way.

So now the Arabs had knocked their dhows to pieces to save them; but the men who manned them, as well as the poor slaves with which the majority of them had been crammed, we found, on pulling inshore to examine them later on, had all got safely beyond our reach, far away amid the khors of the desert coast of the barren and inhospitable Nogal country.

To make matters certain that they should not be able to get the dhows afloat again in the event of their returning, as well as to revenge ourselves at being prevented from towing these off ourselves, so that we might obtain the usual bounty given by the Zanzibar prize court for their capture, we set fire to every single one of them, burning the lot to the water’s edge.

The whaler assisted us at this job, the second cutter being sent back to the ship by Mr Dabchick to convey all our wounded comrades thither for medical treatment, as well as the body of Mr Doyle, and that of another poor fellow who had not gone overboard; we ourselves not yet returning to the Mermaid, not rejoining her until our task was done, late in the afternoon.

We buried the lieutenant and bluejacket who had fallen, at sunset; after which, hoisting in all our boats, the cruiser put on steam and made for Ras Hafim, picking up, when nearly abreast of the headland, just before dark, the steam pinnace—all the chaps aboard of which, from Mr Gresham downwards, getting quite angry when we told them of the little piece of business we had been engaged on up the coast, our shipmates being riled at having been left out in the cold and not sharing in our fun.

Fun they thought it; but, if they had gone through the job of scrubbing down the thwarts and bottom boards of the cutter after the fray, as Larrikins and I had to do, mopping up the blood and gore, which was more than an inch deep, the fighting would not have seemed so jolly as their imaginations pictured it.

Seeing nothing of our senior officer after picking up the pinnace, we proceeded down the coast in the direction of Zanzibar, running across him at last when near Mombassa.

This was lucky for us; for, as soon as Captain Hankey had communicated with the flagship, he received fresh instructions that he was to keep guard on the district lying between Pemba on the south and Witu on the north; and, as Mombassa was about midway between the two points, we were, so to speak, in the very centre of our cruising ground.

For the next few months, though, our work was not very lively, all of us belonging to the boats being now engaged on patrol duty and separated for weeks sometimes from our comrades on board the ship.