ASHORE IN THE STRAITS OF MALACCA.
The corvette Lyre, one of Her Majesty’s vessels, is to be imagined as lying at anchor off the mouth of the river Langhat, in the Straits of Malacca, a long heavy ground-swell rolling her lazily from side to side, as though even the sea found the climate too trying for much exertion. It is a glorious scene which lies before us: a white beach curtained with brilliant foliage, above which rises Parcelar Hill, a cone-shaped mountain, with its steep sides covered with dense jungle; but on board, the pitiless sun is pouring down his cloudless rays, making the pitch bubble out of the seams of the deck even through the double awning which is spread overhead. It is one o’clock in the afternoon, the dinner hour, and the officers, clad in white tunics and helmets, are listlessly lounging in long chairs abaft the mizzen-mast; while on the forecastle, blue-jackets and marines are in little groups smoking, and some who find even that amusement too hot, are stretched about the deck sleeping or reading. Suddenly there is a slight stir among them, and the shrill whistle of a boatswain’s mate is heard, followed by a hoarse bellow at the hatchway: ‘D’ye hear there? A seining-party will leave the ship at four bells [two o’clock]. All you as wish to go give your names to the master-at-arms. Away there, first cutters and dingey boys! Lower your boats!’
While the crews thus named are preparing their boats for the expedition, volunteers in plenty are sending in their names; for a seining, or in other words a fishing-party, which involves a run on shore and a sort of picnic on the beach, is always popular on board a man-of-war. At this time too, we had been nearly a month at sea, and our store of fresh meat in the wardroom having soon been exhausted, we had been living on the ship’s provisions for a fortnight past; and H.M.’s salt beef (generally though disrespectfully known as ‘salt horse’), never very popular at any time, had become extremely distasteful to our palates, though our Chinese cooks had exhausted their science and our patience in inventing new methods of cooking the obnoxious article. I may mention here that the Lyre formed part of a squadron which had assembled in the Straits for the suppression of piracy, for the inhabitants of the Malay states have an interesting custom, handed down from remote ages, of making indiscriminate war on each other. The British government, not taking the view that this was a wise dispensation of Providence for getting rid of a useless race by mutual extermination, instead of leaving them to settle their disputes like the famous Kilkenny cats, resolved to put down this lawless state of affairs with a strong hand; so some of the powers that be, arranged a scheme for sweeping the rivers of the piratical craft which infested them.
The plan was beautifully simple and efficacious in theory: part of the squadron was to ascend a branch of the Salangore River, and drive all the boats they should find there round to the Langhat River, where the remainder, of which the captain of the Lyre had command, was to catch them. It ought to have been a success; but somehow or other the ungrateful pirates declined to come out of their hiding-places and be captured; and after spending a fortnight at anchor without making a single haul, our only duty being to send a detachment occasionally to relieve the guard at a stockade we had taken, we began to get tired of the cruise and the invariable ‘salt horse,’ boiled, fried, or devilled, that formed the ‘standing part’ of every meal; so that any proposal to break the monotony of our daily grind, such as this seining-party promised, was eagerly welcomed both by officers and men.
At two o’clock a heavily laden cutter left the ship, towing the dingey, with the large seine-net which is supplied to every man of war, coiled up in it. Some of the older hands have taken a spare shift of clothes, for a great deal of rough dirty work may be expected, and a wise man likes to be prepared for emergencies; but the majority have been content with putting on the oldest suits they can find. As we have no chart in the boat, we find some difficulty in approaching the shore, as a long reef runs off it, on which the heavy cutter strikes again and again as we pull up and down looking for a passage. ‘Jump out there, half-a-dozen hands, and look for deep water,’ sings out the lieutenant in command of the party; and directly a number of men are overboard, glad to cool themselves from the blazing heat; and they wade and splash about in all directions, till the sudden disappearance of one man, amidst the laughter of the rest, announces that he has found the channel rather suddenly; and pulling in his direction, the boat reaches the shore without difficulty.
Not a promising place for a cast where we are landing—the mouth of a deep rapid river, with steep banks of mud, behind which is a narrow belt of sand and bushes and then a dense jungle; but the dingey—a handy little boat—which has been sent to reconnoitre, returns with a report of a shelving sandy beach a few hundred yards away, which will just suit our purpose. So, telling off a few hands with axes to cut down wood and light a fire—a very necessary precaution when men are wet through—the remainder, after anchoring the cutter in the river, march off to the spot where the dingey is paying out the seine so as to inclose a large space of water. Long ropes are fastened to each end of the net, one of which is already held on shore, and the dingey soon brings in the other. Now comes the real hard work, as the heavy net is slowly and laboriously hauled to land, the two ends being gradually brought together by the direction of the experienced fishermen in charge. As the centre part of the net approaches, the excitement becomes great; and some of the men, regardless of sharks and alligators, swim behind, splashing water to frighten back the fish who are endeavouring to leap over the barrier which separates them from freedom. Then, amidst the cheery notes of a fishing chorus, most of us wading up to our waists in water, the purse or bulge of the net is run high and dry on the sand, and we eagerly examine our spoil. A curious collection they are, and many of them no use for cooking or any other purpose that we can tell. There are crabs of all sizes and brilliant colours, with claws out of all proportion to the size of their bodies, which immediately make their presence felt by severely nipping the bare legs and feet of the men nearest to them, of course much to the amusement of the rest of the party.
Another peril to the unwary are the catfish, unpleasant creatures, that have a playful knack of darting their poisonous spines into the flesh of any one incautiously touching them, thereby causing excruciating agony for some little time. Then come some little round fish, that have a very peculiar habit of swelling themselves out when touched, until they actually burst as it were with their own importance. I am not naturalist enough to tell the name of this peculiar fish, but the men used to call them ‘beadles.’ These and many others are thrown back into the sea as unfit for food; but even after this wholesale rejection, we have several buckets of good eatable fish, which are sent off to the fire, which is now blazing brightly on the strip of sand at the mouth of the river. A question now arises as to who shall be cook, and one of the men is promptly chosen by the others, and placed in charge of the fish. There is a joke about selecting this particular individual. Some months previously, in the course of a chaffing-match with the wardroom cook’s mate, he had made a retort so peculiarly cutting that the enraged knight of the gridiron applied an argumentum ad hominem in the shape of a saucepan, which laid him on the deck with a broken head; so whenever there was a question of cooking to be done after this, he was invariably selected for the office, as the others said he must have gone deeply into the subject.
We make cast after cast now, and fill all our spare buckets with fish, getting rather tired ourselves with the exertion of hauling a heavy net, up to our necks in water, till the night comes on apace, and we edge off towards the fire, making a final cast in front of it, as the glare attracts the fish in great numbers. We have become satiated with sport by this time; so the net is coiled up in the dingey, and all hands draw round the blazing fire; those that have taken the precaution to bring dry clothes now donning them; and the others, who have been less prudent, drying themselves in the grateful heat.
It is a strangely picturesque scene; the flickering blaze of the fire lighting up the groups of men stretched on the sand in various attitudes of negligent ease, their bare muscular limbs contrasting in almost startling whiteness with their bearded faces, bronzed almost black with exposure to the tropical sun. Some are drinking the scalding hot tea, which is now passed round in pannikins; while others are toasting fish, spitted on a stick for want of a more elaborate apparatus, and served up on a biscuit; a few grains of powder from the cartridges—which had been brought in case of an attack, supplying the place of salt, which had of course been forgotten. Our hunger is too great after our arduous exertions to notice any little defects in the cooking, and a hearty meal is enjoyed by all. Soon a pleasant odour of tobacco arises, as a circle is formed round a glorious fire, and a measure of grog is handed round by a corporal to each man. This latter luxury is supplied by the officers, who have in turn been indebted to the men for the tea which they had hospitably pressed on them.