“Rum! isn’t it, Hans?” said one of the sailors to a messmate.
“I take it it’s ballast; but, anyhow, they must have been hard up for shingle where they came from, to put such sludge in her, and in bags, too!”
Observing the chagrin and disappointment of the middy—who evidently could not make up his mind what course to take, and, perhaps, felt more than half-ashamed of himself—I endeavored to explain to him the uses of the nests; but, alas for himself! he was more unbelieving than ever.
“Eat these things!” he said, with disgust. “It is a lie, youngster; pigs couldn’t do it.”
“Aye, your honor,” interposed one of his men; “it’s a yarn’d be unbelieved by the marines, and in my opinion it’s a blind.”
“Aye, aye, Hans, a blind it is, no doubt; still there is no proof on board that they are pirates.” Then to Prabu he said, “You are lucky this cruise, my fine fellow, and we have lost our prize-money. We shall, however, catch you yet;” and having, I suppose, become tired of his visit, he left the prahu—politely, however, intimating to us that, if we spread sail until he had returned and made his report to the captain, he would sink us. Accordingly, we waited, but the boat-party had not long been on board again before a signal was hoisted, telling us we might continue our voyage; so I suppose the captain must have known more about birds’-nesting and its commerce in the Indian Archipelago than his young officer. And a pretty quizzing the whole boat-party must have got from their shipmates!—and as I thought of this, I regarded the whole affair as a good joke, but not so Martin, who more than once said:
“If ever I meet that little cockatoo in uniform ashore, I’ll just pull his ears till they are as hot as a couple of furnaces.”
By the way, a good story is told of a similar incident that happened during the last war between England and Spain—so good that I will repeat it. A certain English captain, as ignorant of the nature and value of the edible-nest as our midshipman, and who was keeping an eager lookout for prizes in the Indian seas, fell in with a Spanish ship. Boarding her, they found her laden with the filthy-looking things, which the Spanish commander affirmed to be birds’-nests. The Englishman was at first indignant that a trading captain should attempt to play off such a joke upon him, and, believing that there was treasure of some kind hidden beneath the bags, he caused a narrow search to be made; yet, although nothing could be found, he still believed the Spaniard to have been playing a joke with him—in fact, to have been trying the extent of his credulity. Thus, by way of turning the tables, he seized the ship, to sell her for the value of her hull only. The rest of the story shall be given in the words of its relater:—
“He then gave orders that a midshipman and three or four of his worst men should take charge of her, and run her into the nearest port. One rational thing he did was to remove the Spanish prisoners to his own brig, or they would have soon retaken her. Thus he left her, and it was not until he himself had put into a Chinese port, and accidentally mentioned the occurrence as a joke against the Spaniards, that he learnt the value of the prize.
“The edible birds’-nests were, at the time, selling in the Chinese market at thirty-two Spanish dollars a kattie, so that, on a computation of the quantity in the vessel, she was worth from four hundred thousand to five hundred thousand dollars; and he, poor fellow!—that had served twenty years without clearing twenty pounds prize-money—could have made a fortune. He raged and stormed, and went to sea again to look after her. He offered up prayers, for the first time in his life, for her safe arrival in port. But it was decreed otherwise: the few lubberly fellows he had put on board were not sufficient to work her, and she was wrecked on the coast of China.