I had come in solely for the purpose of refreshing my crew, and for this purpose we remained a week. During this time we became quite friendly with the Johannese—receiving frequent visits from them, and visiting them at their houses in return. We were quite surprised at the intelligence and civilization which characterized them. They nearly all read and write, and the better classes set up some pretensions to literature. They are Mohammedans in faith, and I found some of their priests, who were fond of visiting me, sprightly, well informed, and liberal men, acknowledging both Moses and Christ to have been prophets, and entertaining a respect for the Christian religion; doubtless the result of their intercourse with the English.
I visited the houses of some of my friends with the hope of getting a glimpse at their domestic life, but was disappointed. They received me with all cordiality and respect, but the females of their families were carefully kept out of sight. A female slave would fan me, and hand me my coffee and sherbet, but that was all. Their slavery appeared to be of a mitigated form, the slaves being on easy and even familiar terms with their masters. The houries who fanned me could have been bought for twenty dollars each. The price of a slave fresh from the coast, is not more than half that sum.
I gave my sailors a run on shore, but this sort of “liberty” was awful hard work for Jack. There was no such thing as a glass of grog to be found in the whole town, and as for a fiddle, and Sal for a partner—all of which would have been a matter of course in civilized countries—there were no such luxuries to be thought of. They found it a difficult matter to get through with the day, and were all down at the beach long before sunset—the hour appointed for their coming off—waiting for the approach of the welcome boat. I told Kell to let them go on shore as often as they pleased, but no one made a second application.
On the 15th of February, having received on board a supply of half a dozen live bullocks, and some fruits and vegetables, we got under way, and again turned our head to the south-west. The winds were light, but we were much assisted by the currents; for we were now approaching the Mozambique Channel, and the south-west current, of which I spoke when we left the Cape of Good Hope for our run before the “brave west winds,” to the eastward, was hurrying us forward, sometimes at the rate of forty or fifty miles a day. As we progressed, the wind freshened, and by the time we had entered the narrowest part of the channel between Madagascar and the African coast, which lies in about 15° south latitude, we lost the fine weather and clear skies, which we had brought all the way across the Arabian Sea. We now took several gales of wind. Rain-squalls were of frequent occurrence. As we approached the south-west end of Madagascar, which lies just without the Tropic of Capricorn, we encountered one of the most sublime storms of thunder and lightning I ever witnessed. It occurred at night. Black rain-clouds mustered from every quarter of the compass, and the heavens were soon so densely and darkly overcast, that it was impossible to see across the ship’s deck. Sometimes the most terrific squalls of wind accompany these storms, and we furled most of the sails, and awaited in silence the denouement. The thunder rolled and crashed, as if the skies were falling in pieces; and the lightning—sheet lightning, streaked lightning, forked lightning—kept the firmament almost constantly ablaze. And the rain! I thought I had seen it rain before, but for an hour, Madagascar beat the Ghaut Mountains. It came down almost literally by the bucketfull. Almost a continual stream of lightning ran down our conductors, and hissed as it leaped into the sea. There was not much wind, but all the other meteorological elements were there in perfection. Madagascar is, perhaps, above all other countries, the bantling and the plaything of the storm, and thunder and lightning. Its plains, heated to nearly furnace-heat, by a tropical sun, its ranges of lofty mountains, the currents that sweep along its coasts, and its proximity to equatorial Africa, all point it out as being in a region fertile of meteorological phenomena. Cyclones of small diameter are of frequent occurrence in the Mozambique Channel. They travel usually from south-east to north-west, or straight across the channel. We took one of these short gales, which lasted us the greater part of a day.
Leaving the channel, and pursuing our way toward the Cape of Good Hope, we sounded on the Agulhas Bank on the 7th of March—our latitude being 35° 10′, and longitude 24° 08′. This bank is sometimes the scene of terrible conflicts of the elements in the winter season. Stout ships are literally swamped here, by the huge, wall-like seas; and the frames of others so much shaken and loosened in every knee and joint, as to render them unseaworthy. The cause of these terrible, short, racking seas, is the meeting of the winds and currents. Whilst the awful, wintry gale is howling from the west and north-west, the Mozambique, or Agulhas current, as it is now called, is setting in its teeth, sometimes at the rate of two or three knots per hour. A struggle ensues between the billows lashed into fury by the winds, and the angry current which is opposing them. The ground-swell contributes to the turmoil of the elements, and the stoutest mariner sometimes stands appalled at the spectacle of seas with nearly perpendicular walls, battering his ship like so many battering-rams, and threatening her with instant destruction. Hence the name of the “stormy cape,” applied to the Cape of Good Hope.
Arriving on our old cruising ground off the pitch of the Cape, we held ourselves here a few days, overhauling the various ships that passed. But American commerce, which, as the reader has seen, had fled this beaten track before we left for the East Indies, had not returned to it. The few ships of the enemy that passed, still gave the Cape a wide berth, and winged their flight homeward over the by-ways, instead of the highways of the ocean. We found the coast clear again of the enemy’s cruisers. That huge old coal-box, the Vanderbilt, having thought it useless to pursue us farther, had turned back, and was now probably doing a more profitable business, by picking up blockade-runners on the American coast. This operation paid—the captain might grow rich upon it. Chasing the Alabama did not. Finding that it was useless for us to cruise longer off the Cape, we ran into Cape Town, and came to anchor at half-past four, on the afternoon of the 20th of March. We had gone to sea from Simon’s Town, on our way to the East Indies, on the 24th of the preceding September,—our cruise had thus lasted within a day or two of six months.
CHAPTER LII.
ALABAMA AGAIN IN CAPE TOWN—THE SEIZURE OF THE TUSCALOOSA, AND THE DISCUSSION WHICH GREW OUT OF IT—CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN THE AUTHOR AND ADMIRAL WALKER—FINAL ACTION OF THE HOME GOVERNMENT, AND RELEASE OF THE TUSCALOOSA.