Meinherr Sourkrout’s method for extending trade, that is, according to the experience of us bluejackets of the British Navy who have served on the East African station, has been to shoot down the natives wherever the flag of his Fatherland has ever been stuck up; and, when the men of the negro tribes, objecting to such friendly advances, have bolted into the bush, Meinherr, imitating the example of his great countryman Marshal Haynau, took to flogging their wives and womenfolk in order to coax the black gentlemen back.
The darkeys, somehow or other, didn’t tackle to this treatment; and, the Germans having thus roused them up to the south of our protectorate, where, unfortunately for us, Meinherr Von Sourkrout and his domineering compatriots have a territory far too close to our own, the natives, being of the opinion that we were in sympathy with their oppressors, joined hands with the Somalis in their advance on our trading posts along the coast—they did not touch those belonging to the Germans, for the very good reason that these have none!
I heard Mr Gresham explaining all this one day to Dabby when they were both sitting in the captain’s gig, to which I had been shifted since my promotion to able seaman; for I was pulling stroke at the time, the boat taking them ashore to a grand dinner-party given by the British Consul to the Sultan or some other ‘big pot’ at Zanzibar, off which port the Mermaid was then lying.
I wondered what led to this queer talk, as none of us on board had heard anything on the lower deck about any row being imminent; for, of course, sick of our stagnant life for the last few months, as all of us were, the inkling of any fight being in the air would have been as welcome to us as the ‘flowers of May.’
Still I kept my ears open all the same; and when, the next morning, I met the captain’s steward returning from the galley with a cup of early cocoa for ‘old Hankey Pankey,’ and he told me that he thought we were going to be busy soon, the ‘old man’ having directed him to take out his sword and pistols, and give them to his marine servant to be cleaned up, I began, as ‘Gyp’ did that time on board the Saint Vincent, ‘to smell a rat.’
A little later on, my impressions became confirmed; for, just as we were piped down to breakfast after ‘wash and scrub decks,’ and I was telling Larrikins, who sat alongside me at the mess-table, what I had heard, the engine-room gong sounded, and the word was passed to get up steam as quickly as possible.
‘Old Hankey Pankey’ did not waste time when he had once got his orders; and some couple of hours after we had weighed anchor and were rapidly leaving Zanzibar, with its rows of square stone houses, built with flat roofs in the eastern style, that front the beautiful curving bay, whose white sandy beach is washed by water so clear that you can see the bottom at six fathoms, and which is backed, beyond the warehouses and mansions of the merchants, by the bright greenery of palm trees and dates and other rich tropical growths, the beautiful foliage of which contrasts vividly with the intense whiteness of the buildings and adjacent shore, offering quite a relief to the eye from the glaring sun and coppery sky overhead.
“Say, Tom,” said Larrikins to me presently, as the two of us, with a lot of the other hands, were polishing up the brasswork of the machine-guns on the upper deck, “d’yer know where we’re bound in such a hurry?”
“No, Larry,” I replied. “Somewhere up the coast, though, I ’spect from what I told you down below.”
Larrikins chuckled to himself.