Chapter XIII (2)

"The province of Oran, in 1841, was far from tranquil; a stout heart and a strong arm had then abundant opportunities of distinction. Mohamed-Ould-Caïd-Osman, inscribed under this Arab name on the muster-roll of the Spahis, and Siquot, who enlisted at the same period, did not miss such opportunities. Soon afterwards, Siquot was wounded, the Caïd had his horse killed under him, and their names appeared in the orders of the army. Heroes, whether illustrious or unknown, always find enviers; take as an example Sergeant Froidefond, a grumbling old trooper, who thought proper to tell the Caïd he was good for nothing but cleaning his nails. On their return to Mascara, they fought at twelve paces: Froidefond fired first, and the Caïd fell, shot through the buttock. The seconds ran forward to pick him up. 'Stop!' he cried, 'it is my turn to fire;' and raising himself on his elbow, he shot Froidefond dead. He himself was then carried to the hospital, where he found Siquot, who was getting cured of a wound. On hearing what had happened, the Chica--who had then been about a year mixed up in his existence, without very well knowing why, like the dogs who attach themselves to a squadron--hastened to the hospital to nurse him, and in three months he was on his legs again."

The Caïd had returned to his duty when, in 1813, M. de Castellane's regiment entered Mascara with trumpets sounding, escorting Marshal Bugeaud. Abd-el-Kader was at no great distance, and Generals Lamoricière and Tempoure had been operating against him until the cavalry of the province had great need of repose to recruit and remount. One night a Spanish deserter came over from the Emir, and gave Marshal Bugeaud important information, fully confirming the reports of the spies. An hour later, orders were given for an expedition in pursuit of Abd-el-Kader's battalions of regulars, of whom Sidi-Embarek had just taken the command. General Tempoure had charge of the column, which consisted of two battalions of infantry, four hundred and fifty French dragoons, fifty Spahis, including Siquot and the Caïd Osman, and a few irregular horse.

"If the official reports in the _Moniteur_ were not there to confirm its truth, the narrative of this expedition would risk being deemed a fable. Cavalry and infantry marched three days and three nights: in the morning they halted for one hour and a half--at night, from six o'clock till midnight. From the moment when the trail of the enemy was first struck, the drum was not once beaten. They followed the scent, like dogs pursuing their prey. Thirty Spahis, with some horsemen belonging to the Arab office at Mascara, preceded the column; they _read the earth_ during the night. What all exciting time that was! We came to bivouacs whose fires were still burning; the enemy had left them only that morning, and in all haste we resumed our march. At last, after forty-eight hours, our Arab scouts, hovering round the flanks of the column, captured two Arabs of the tribe of Djaffra. These refused at first to speak; but a musket-muzzle, applied to their heads, untied their tongues, and we learned that the regulars were at Taouira on the previous evening. We were on the right road, therefore, and should end by overtaking them. The march was resumed, the Spahis still leading. Not a pipe was alight; profound silence was observed, broken only by the noise of a fall, when some sleepy foot-soldier stumbled over an obstacle. Day broke, and a slight smoke was seen; the fires had just expired, the regulars were gone. The hope which had hitherto sustained the soldiers' strength suddenly abandoned them; nothing was heard but cries and maledictions. Everyone grumbled at the general. The morning halt was called in a hollow, and whilst the soldiers ate, the scouts reported that the traces of the enemy were quite fresh. For a second General Tempoure hesitated; then his decision was taken, and the order for instant march given. A great clamour arose in the bivouac. 'He wants to kill us all!' cried the soldiers, who during seventy hours had had but a few moments of repose. They obeyed, however, and the march was resumed. In an hour's time, the track turned southwards. In that direction there was no certainty of water. No matter, advance we must. But the traces grew fresher and fresher: here a horse had been abandoned; a little farther, a jackass. 'We have got the rascals!' said the soldiers, and their strength revived. At last, towards eleven o'clock, whilst the column was passing through a deep ravine, a thick smoke was seen behind a hill. This time the enemy was assuredly there. Fatigue vanished as by enchantment. In an instant cloaks were rolled, priming renewed, horses girthed up; all was ready, and the troops formed for the attack. Three hundred infantry supported three columns of cavalry; the centre was commanded by Colonel Tartas of the 4th Chasseurs. The advance began; just then there was the report of a musket; it was a vedette whom our scouts had been unable to surprise. The Arab galloped up the hill, waving his _burnous_. At the same moment, the drums of the regulars beat to arms; there was a stir in our ranks. The cavalry broke into a trot; the infantry, forgetting forced marches, followed at a run, and from the top of the hill we saw the two battalions of regulars, who had been unable to reach the opposite summit, halt half way up. Away went the cavalry, sabre in hand, horses at a gallop, Colonel Tartas at their head. They were met by a volley of musketry; some fell, but the avalanche broke through the obstacle, and the Arabs were cut down on all sides. Their horsemen try to escape--some flying to the left, others straight forward. They are pursued by all whose horses are not yet knocked up; and the Caïd Osman rolls over with his charger, which is hit in the head. M. de Caulaincourt, admirably mounted, continues the race; he kills one of the Emir's horsemen; but, separated by a ridge of ground from his soldiers, whom he has outstripped, he is surrounded by enemies. Without losing his presence of mind, he spurred his horse and broke through the circle, sabre in hand; when, just as he was about to rejoin his men, an Arab, issuing from a glade, shot him with a pistol, close to the eye. The horse galloped on, and carried back the wounded officer to his troop. The blood streamed, the flesh hung in shreds; M. do Caulaincourt, however, was still conscious. Lifted from his horse, a soldier took him on his back and carried him to the surgeon, traversing the scene of the combat, a true field of the dead. In a narrow space lay five hundred corpses, nearly all frightfully mutilated by the sabres of our chasseurs.

"A steep bank of rock had checked the progress of those horsemen who had fled to the left. Several alighted, and, jerking their horses with the bridle, surmounted the obstacle. Only one of them rode at a walk along the foot of this rocky wall. The whiteness of his garments and beauty of his equipments marked him as a chief. Siquot, a corporal of chasseurs, and Captain Cassaignoles, rode after him. The ground was very bad, full of impediments. The corporal was the first to reach him; just as his horse's nose touched the crupper of the Arab's charger, the horseman, turned round with the utmost coolness, took aim, and laid him dead on the spot. At the same moment Siquot came up and wounded the Arab, but received a pistol-ball through his left arm, the same shot killing the horse of Captain Cassaignoles, who was a little lower down the slope. The tall cavalier then rose in his stirrups, and struck Siquot on the head with his heavy pistol-butt, when Corporal Gerard of the Chasseurs, riding up on the top of the bank, shot him through the breast. The horse was caught; it was a splendid animal, which a wound in the shoulder had alone prevented from saving its master's life. 'See if that Arab is blind of an eye,' cried Captain Cassaignoles. They looked; an eye was wanting. 'It is Sidi-Embarek; let his head be cut off.' And Gerard, with a knife, separated the head from the body, that the Arabs might not have a doubt of his death. Then all obeyed the recall, which was sounding. The chase was over; the regulars were broken and destroyed; cruel fatigue had been rewarded by complete success. General Tempoure returned to Mascara, and a month later each man received, according to the Arab expression, _the testimony of blood_, the cross so glorious to the soldier.

"The chances of war then separated us from the Caïd: I also learned the return of Siquot to France, where, by an odd coincidence, he received from his Paris friends the same surname as from his African comrades. As to the German lansquenet, he marked every corner of the province of Oran by some daring feat, and always fortunate, invariably escaped unhurt. Within three years of service, he was five times named in orders, and passed through the noncommissioned grades to the rank of cornet. When I next met with him in 1846, Tom, the horse, the Chica, formed, as before, his whole family. Poor Chica, who in all her life had never had but one ambition, that of wearing a silk dress! In garrison, Tom was purveyor; he and his master started at daybreak and returned at night, weary but content, and with a well-filled game-bag. The Chica, who had passed the day singing, laid the table, and the three friends supped together.

"Some months later, after an absence of three weeks, one of our squadrons returned to Mascara from the outposts. We were moving down the street that leads to the cavalry barracks, when we saw the officers of the garrison assembled before the Caïd's little house. They advanced to greet and shake hands with us, and they told us that the Chica, the Caïd's companion, the friend of all, was dead.

"The poor little thing had suffered for some time; the evening before, however, she had got up. There was a bright warm sun, and the air was full of perfume. 'Chico,' said she to the Caïd, 'give me your arm, I should like to see the sun once more.' She took a few steps, wept as she gazed on the budding foliage and the beauty of the day: then, as she returned to her arm-chair, 'Ah! Chico,' she exclaimed, 'I am dying!' And in sitting down she expired, without agony or convulsion, still smiling and looking at the Caïd.

"At this moment the Chica's coffin was borne out of the house; all present uncovered their heads, and we joined the officers who followed her to her grave.

"The cemetery of Mascara, planted with olive and forest trees, is situated in the midst of gardens: everything there breathes peace, calm, and repose. The Chica's grave had been dug under a fig-tree. The Spahis who carried her stopped, all present formed a circle; two soldiers of the Engineers took the light bier, and lowered the poor Chica into her final dwelling-place. The Caïd was at the foot of the grave. One of the soldiers presented him with the spadeful of earth: the Spahi's hard hand trembled as he took it; and when the earth, falling on the coffin, made that dull noise so melancholy to hear, a big tear, but half suppressed, glistened in his eyes.

"Thenceforward Tom, whom the Chica loved, was the Caïd's only friend."

Some may suspect M. de Castellane of giving a romantic tint to his African experiences. We do not partake the suspicion. Even in the nineteenth century, generally esteemed prosaic and matter-of-fact, there is far more romance in real life than in books; and the Prussian-Arab Osman is but one of scores, perhaps hundreds, of military adventurers who have fought in various services during the last twenty years, and the events of whose career, truly noted, would in many cases be set down by the supporters of circulating libraries as overstrained and improbable fiction. In that chapter of M. de Castellane's work which consists of the journal of an officer of Zouaves, we find an account of another singular wanderer, who in the year 1840 deserted from the Arabs, (having previously served with the French,) and came into the town of Medeah, where the Zouaves were in garrison. He was a very young man, a Bavarian, of the name of Glockner, son of a former commissary in the service of France, and nephew of a Bavarian officer of the highest rank. "A cadet at the military school at Munich, he was sent, in consequence of some pranks he played, to serve in a regiment of light dragoons; but his ardent imagination and love of adventure led him to fresh follies; he deserted into France. Coldly received, as all deserters are, he was enrolled in the foreign legion. He had hardly reached Africa when he became disgusted with the service, and, yielding to the craving after novelty which constantly tormented him, he deserted to the Arabs. He remained with them three years. Kidnapped at first by the Kabyles, he was taken to a market in the interior, and sold to a chief of the tribe of the Beni-Moussa. After being his servant for a year, he managed to escape from his master's tent, and, with legs bare, a _burnous_ on his shoulders, a camel rope round his waist, and a pilgrim's staff in his hands, he marched at random in a southerly direction. In this manner he reached the Desert, passing his nights with the different tribes he encountered, amongst whom he announced himself by the Mussulman's habitual salutation, 'Eh! the master of the Douar! A guest of God!' Thereupon he was well received; food and shelter were given him, and he departed the next morning unquestioned as to his destination. It concerned no one, and no Arab ever asked the question. He followed his destiny. Thus did Glockner cross a part of the Sahara, and reach the town of Tedjini, Aïn Mhadi; thence he went to Boghar, Taza, Tekedempt, Mascara, Medeali, and Milianah; then, enrolled by force amongst the regulars of El Berkani, he made the campaigns of 1839 and 1840 in their ranks. Decorated by Abd-el-Kader in consequence of a wound received the 31st December 1839--a wound inflicted, as he believes, by a captain of the 2d Light Infantry--he again returned to us, after other adventures, like the prodigal child, lamenting his follies, weeping at thoughts of his family, especially of his father, and entreating as a favour to be received as a French soldier. They talked of sending him back to the foreign legion, but he begged to be admitted into the Zouaves, and was accordingly enlisted as an Arab, under the name of Joussef. He was then but one-and-twenty years old, was fresh as a child, timid as a young girl, and marvellously simple in his bearing and language." The end of this young fellow's history, as far as M. de Castellane became acquainted with it, is on a par with its commencement. "In the Zouaves his conduct was admirable. In every engagement in which he shared, his name deserved mention. Made a corporal, then a sergeant, he was sent to Tlemcen on the formation of a third battalion of Zouaves. Recommended by Colonel Cavaignac to General Bedeau, he rendered great services by his intelligence and knowledge of the Arab tongue. His father, to whom they had written in Bavaria, had confirmed the truth of his story. He was happy, and treated with consideration, when, one fine morning, he took himself off with a political prisoner who had just been set at liberty, and deserted into Morocco. He remained there a long time; then he went to Tangiers, and, denounced by the French consul as a deserter, he was going to be tried by a court-martial, when, in consideration of his former services, they continued to treat him as an Arab. His mania for rambling is really extraordinary; and he declares that he cannot approach a strange country without being seized with a desire to explore it."

It is surprising that the African campaigns have not been more prolific of military sketches and memoirs from the pens of French officers. Although tolerably familiar for many years past with French literature, we can remember but few such works. _La Captivité d'Escoffier_, noticed, in conjunction with an English volume upon an analogous subject, in a former Number,[22] is the only French book of the kind we have met with for a long time; and that was of inferior class, and of less authentic appearance, than M. de Castellane's agreeable _Souvenirs_. We should have thought the war in Africa, the adventurous and often severe marches of the troops, the exploits of the hunting-field, the humours of garrison life, and the tales of the bivouac, would have found innumerable chroniclers amongst the better educated portion of French officers. The French soldier is a good study for painter or humourist; whether as the stolid recruit with the ploughman's slouch and the smell of the furrow still hanging about him, or the smart and wide-awake trooper of four or five years' service, or the weather-beaten old sergeant, all bronze and wrinkles, with his grizzled moustache, his scrap of red ribbon, his tough yarns and his mixture of simplicity and shrewdness, his lingering prejudices against English and Germans, and his religious veneration of Napoleon the Great. We believe M. de Castellane would be successful in portraiture of French military character and eccentricities, and we regret he has been so sparing of it. Here and there we find a characteristic bit of camp-life, or a pleasant sketch by the watch-fire.

"During our marches, we were never weary of admiring the constancy of the infantry-man, so heavily loaded that, in mockery of himself, he has taken the surname of the _Soldat-chameau_. It was really wonderful to see them make those long marches, under a burning sun, across frightful mountains, always gay and cheerful, and amusing themselves with the merest trifle.... It is on their arrival at the bivouac that their industry is displayed to the greatest advantage. Pause beside this little tent, and watch the chief of the squad; they bring him crabs, tortoises, water serpents, all manner of creatures that have no name, but a flavour, and which experience teaches may be eaten without danger. Or they bring a mess-kettle full of bullock's blood. Thrice boiled and suffered to grow cold, bullock's blood forms a sort of black cheese. Spread upon biscuit, with a little salt, this is tolerable food, and a precious resource for famished stomachs." In presence of such messes as these, it is easy to understand the popularity of a general who, like Changarnier, classed a greasy haversack amongst a soldier's first necessaries, and rarely allowed his men to lack mutton, of either Arab or Kabyle growth. For the loss of their flocks and herds the natives retaliated, when opportunity offered, by the theft of French horses. "In the night we had an alarm; we were in a friendly district, but our friends were not the less arrant thieves. Two horses were taken away. According to their custom, some bold fellows, stark naked and well anointed with grease, so as to slip through detaining fingers, glided between the tents, crawling like snakes. On coming to two fine horses, they cut the thongs that shackled them, jumped on their backs, and were off at a gallop, clearing all obstacles and crouched upon the animals' necks to avoid the bullets of the advanced sentries. A few hours later, another of these gentry was less fortunate. The soldier on guard over the piled muskets, remarked, as he perambulated his beat, a bush of dwarf palm. It was upon his right hand. A minute afterwards the bush had changed its place, and stood upon his left. This struck the sentry as looking like mischief. He took no notice, but quietly cocked his musket and continued his walk. The bush continued to change its place, gaining ground little by little; suddenly it made a rapid advance, and a Kabyle, dagger in hand, sprang upon the soldier; but the soldier received him on the point of his bayonet. The thrust was mortal, and the living bush rose no more." The Kabyles might have taken lessons from the Thugs of India and the Red men of North America. On a large scale, as well as in petty details, stratagem was a prominent feature of the war in Africa. Beneath the spacious tent of one of the Arab allies of the French, M. de Castellane listened one evening, in an atmosphere fragrant with the vapours of pipes and coffee, to the extempore stanzas of a native poet. When the improvisatore had come to an end, and had received his tribute of praise, an old sergeant of the Spahis of Orleansville narrated the death of the Aga of Ouarsenis.

"It was on the 20th July of this year," he said; "Hadj Hamet had gone, with his _goum_[23] and twenty Spahis, to seek at Mazouna the betrothed of his son. His heart was joyful, and happiness reigned around him, when the young girl was delivered to him. After a night of rejoicing, the escort set out. On arriving at Oued-Meroui, we saw at a distance a _goum_ of Arabs. Hadj Hamet thought it was the Aga of the Sbehas, advancing with his horsemen to perform the _fantasia_ before the bride, and at a sign from him his followers formed in two lines, to give the strangers free passage. The troop came up at a gallop, dashed in between the double row of horsemen, and then, turning right and left, sent a volley into their faces. It was Bon Maza in person. Thus unexpectedly attacked, the _goum_ broke and fled; the Spahis alone stood by old Hadj Hamet, who defended his daughter until loss of blood, which already flowed from several wounds, left him no longer strength. At last he fell dead. Of the twenty Spahis, ten had fallen; all was over; the other ten cut their way through, and reached Orleansville."

Formidable as many of the Arabs are--owing to their excellent horsemanship and skill in arms--in single-handed conflicts, in large bodies they rarely await the charge even of far inferior numbers of disciplined cavalry. Near the confluence of the Cheliff and the Mina, on an October day in 1845, two squadrons of dragoons, under Colonel Tartas, were in quest of the aforesaid Bou Maza, who had been committing razzias upon tribes friendly to the French. Reinforced by a native ally, Sidi-el-Aribi, with a handful of horsemen, and notwithstanding the heavy load of four days' rations for man and horse, they pressed on at a rapid pace, and on surmounting a ridge of ground, beheld, "numerous as the sands on the sea-shore, the hostile Arabs firmly waiting our attack. In the centre floated an immense green banner, and the wings, forming a horse shoe, seemed ready to enclose us. "Walk!" cried Colonel Tartas, and we advanced at a walk, sabre in scabbard. In his loud parade-voice, the colonel then gave his orders, and the squadrons formed front, each keeping a division in reserve. Between the two squadrons marched the colonel and his standard; at his side was Sidi-el-Aribi; behind him a little escort; on our flanks, the handful of Arab horse. "Where is the rallying place?" asked the adjutant. "Behind the enemy, round my standard," replied the colonel; and then, connected as by a chain, the squadrons broke into a trot, with sabres still sheathed. At musket-shot distance, "Draw swords!" shouted the colonel; and the two hundred and fifty sabres were drawn as by one hand. A hundred paces further we changed to a gallop, still in line like a wall. Suddenly, on beholding this hurricane of iron, so calm and so strong, advancing towards them, our innumerable foe hesitated; a dull noise, like the sound of the waves in a storm, arose in the midst of the multitude. They crowded together, wavered to and fro, and suddenly disappeared like dust before the gale. In a quarter of an hour we drew bridle. A hundred of the enemy were on the ground; and our Arab allies, pursuing the fugitives, secured much spoil. As for us, without hospital train, without troops to support us, at three leagues and a half from all assistance, the least hesitation would have been perdition. Coolness and audacity had saved us; and there, where our only hope was a glorious death, we obtained a triumph.

"Pressing round Colonel Tartas, near his standard, which two balls had rent, all these men of _great tent_,[24] all these bronze-complexioned Arab chiefs, their eyes lighted up by the excitement of the fight, thanked him as their saviour. At their head, Sidi-el-Aribi, with that majestic dignity which never deserted him, lavished expressions of gratitude upon the colonel; whilst around them, like a frame to the picture, the foaming horses, the dragoons leaning on their saddles, the arms and floating garments of the Arabs, the heads which some of them had fastened to their saddle-bows, and a nameless something in the air which told of victory, combined to give to the scene somewhat of the noble and savage grandeur of primitive times."

We will not contrast with the picture thus vividly painted by M. de Castellane, the less romantic episodes of grubbing for silos, (buried stores of corn,) driving cattle, or smoking unfortunate Arab families out of their caves of refuge. Of all these matters the chasseur speaks, if not altogether admiringly, yet as necessities of that war, and stands forth with plausible sophisms in defence of the barbarities of the razzia system. We did not take up his sketches with disputatious intentions, and are quite content with the interest and amusement we have extracted from them, without attempting to drive their author from positions which, we suspect, he would find it as difficult to defend as the Arabs did to maintain those assailed by the gallant charges of the African Chasseurs.

THE GREEN HAND.

A "SHORT YARN."

A WIND-UP.

"No, Westwood," said I, "it can't be the right one--nor any of these, indeed!" And on looking at the chart, which was one not meant for anything but navigation in open water, with the channels laid down clearly enough, but evidently rather off-hand as to the islands, Jones himself seemed to get uncertain about the matter; partly owing to the short glimpse he'd had of the other chart, and partly to its being, as he thought, an old one made for a purpose, by a hand that knew the islands well. After two or three days' sail, we were getting into the thick of the Maldives, where the reefs and sand-banks stretching out on every side, and beginning to lap in upon each other, made it more and more dangerous work; but at any rate the islands we saw were either very small, or else low and muddy-like, with a few scrubby-looking cocoas upon them, like bulrushes growing out of a marsh. No runaway sailors would ever think of taking up their quarters hereabouts, even if we hadn't caught sight of a smoke now and then, and once of some native craft with a couple of brown mat-sails and an out-rigger, that showed the clusters hereaway to have people about them. Besides there was no pretext any Indiaman could have for steering near enough to such a jungle of mud and water, to give a boat the chance of making towards it with any certainty. I saw at once that the spot in question must lie tolerably for the course of a ship to western India, otherwise they wouldn't have appeared so sure of their mark as Jones said they did. All this, at the same time, kept me the more bent on searching the matter out ere I did aught else, seeing that in fact the Indiaman's attempt to get rid of the schooner was the very thing likely to bring her on this track; fancying, as she would, that we were either in chase of her toward Bombay, or off on our own course again. Now, on the one hand, nothing could fit better for the said runaway scheme of Harry Foster's; and on the other hand, nothing would have pleased me more, and greatly eased my mind too, than to catch him and his chums on their spree ashore. The worst of it was, that I began to have my doubts of Jones again. He was the only man that could put us on the right scent; yet he seemed either to have lost it, or to have something creeping on his mind that made him unwilling to carry it out. "Mr Jones," said I, as the schooner was hove to, and he stood musing gloomily by the binnacle, with a glance now and then in at the compass, and out at the chart again, "if you're at a loss now, sir, just say--and I shall try my own hand for want of better!" "No, Lieutenant Collins!" answered he suddenly, in a husky voice--"no, sir, that's not it, but--God help me! no, there's no use standing against fate, I see. Whatever it costs me, Mr Collins," he went on, firmly, "I'm with you to the end of it; but--there _is_ something horrible about all this!" "How! what do you mean?" said I, startled by the difference in his manner, and the quiver of his lip. "Oh," said he, "as for the present matter, there may be nothing more in it than what I heard on the ship's boom yonder. The truth is, I didn't know at first but this cluster here might have been the one--though I see now there is only _one_ island in the whole chain that can answer the description, and that is not here." With that he pointed to another piece of the chart, showing no more than a few spots upon the paper, not to speak of shades in it standing for reefs and shoals, towards the "Head" of the Maldives; one spot lying away from the rest, with the single name of Minicoy for them all. I asked him hastily enough what it was called, and all about it, for the whole affair made me more and more uneasy; but on this point Jones seemed inclined to keep close, plainly not liking the topic, except that I found it went by several names, one of which I had heard before, myself--White-water Island. About the time I was a boy in a merchantman's forecastle, 'twas a sort of floating yarn amongst some seamen, this White-water Island, I remembered; but I never met with a man that had seen it, every one having had it from a shipmate last voyage, though a terrible place it had been, by all accounts, without one's knowing exactly where it was. One craft of some kind had gone to find out a treasure that was buried in it, and she never was heard of more; a man took a fancy to live ashore in it, like Robinson Crusoe, and he went mad; while the reason there were no "natives" was owing to the dreadful nature of it, though at the same time it was as beautiful as a garden. The right name, however, according to Jones, was Incoo. "There's no good in blinding one's self to it, Mr Collins," he went on--"that's the island the men meant; only their chart set me wrong owing to the greater size of it--you had better beat out of this at once, and keep up for the eight-degrees channel there."

We were in open sea again, out of sight of land from the mast-head, steering for somewhere about north-north-east, with a very light breeze from nearly the monsoon quarter, and sometimes a flying squall, sometimes no more than a black pour of rain, that left it hotter than before. The clear deep blue of the Indian ocean got to a sickly heavy sort of dead colour towards noon, like the bottoms of old bottles, and still we were standing on without signs of land, when, almost all at once, I noticed the water in the shadow of the schooner had a brown coffee-like tint I had never exactly seen hitherto; indeed, by the afternoon, it was the same hue to the very horizon, with a clean seaboard on all sides. I had the deep-sea lead-line hove at length, and found no soundings with a hundred and fifty fathoms; there was neither land nor river, I knew, for hundreds and hundreds of miles to the coast of Arabia; as for current, no trial I could think of showed any; and there were now and then patches of small glittering sea-jellies and sea-lice to be seen amongst a stalk or two of weed on the soft heave of the water, going the way of the breeze. A dozen or so of Portuguese men-of-war, as they call them, held across our bows one time; little pink blubbers, with their long shining roots seen hanging down in the clear of the surface, and their little blue gauze sails with the light through them, ribbed like leaves of trees, as they kept before the wind. Westwood and I both fancied we could feel a queer sulphury smell as we leant over the side, when a surge came along the bends. Not a single fish was to be seen about us, either, except the long big black-fish that rose one after the other at a distance, as the wind got lighter. One while you heard them groaning and gasping in the half-calm, as if it were the breathing of the sea far and wide every time it swelled; another, one saw them in a cluster of black points against the bright sky-line, like so many different-shaped rocks with the foam round them, or a lot of long-boats floating bottom up, with their back-horns for humps on the keel. As for Jones, he looked graver and graver, till all of a sudden we saw him go below; but after a little he came up with an almanac in his hand, and his finger fixed where the time of the next new moon was given, as I found when I took it from him, for he seemed not inclined to speak. "Why, what has that to do with the thing?" I said; "we are heading fair for the Minicoy cluster, I think." "Yes, sir," said he; "if one needed anything to prove that, he has only to look at the sea--at this season, I _knew_ how it would turn out." "Well, that's what I can't understand, Mr Jones," said I; "the water seems as deep as St Paul's Cathedral thrice over!" "Do you not know then, sir, why that island is called--what it is?" was the answer,--"but wait--wait--till _night_!" and with that Jones turned round to the bulwarks, leaning his arms on the rail. In the mean time, Jacobs and some of the men had drawn a bucket of water, which we noticed them tasting. A pannikin full of it was handed along to the quarterdeck, and the taste struck you at once, owing to the want of the well-known briny twang of real blue-water, and instead of that a smack as it were of iron, though it was as clear as crystal. Every one had a trial of it but Jones himself: indeed, he never once looked round, till it had occurred to me to pour the tin of water into a glass and hold it with my hand over it inside the shade of the binnacle, when I thought I made out little specks and sparks shooting and twisting about in it, as if the water had a motion of itself; then it seemed to sink to the bottom, and all was quiet. Just then I looked up and caught Jones' scared restless sort of glance, as if he were uneasy. There was a strange life in that man's brain, I felt, that none could see into; but owing as it plainly was to something far away from the present matter, I knew it was best to let him alone. In fact, his doing as he did showed well enough he meant fair by ourselves. Nothing on earth ever gave me more the notion of a wreck in a man, than the kind of gaze out of Jones' two eyes, when he'd turn to the light and look at you, half keen, half shrinking, like a man that both felt himself above you, and yet, somehow or other, you'd got him under you. I'm blessed if I didn't trust him more because he had been too desperate a character in his deeds beforehand to turn his mind to little ones now, than for anything good in him; being one of those fellows that work their way from one port to another in ships' forecastles, and get drunk ashore, though, all the time, you'd say there wasn't one aboard with them, from the skipper to the chaplain, knew as much or had flown as high some time. Some day at sea the hands are piped round the grating, hats off, and the prayer-book rigged,--down goes "Jack Jones" with a plash and a bubble to his namesake, old "Davy," and you hear no more of him!

Well, just after sundown, as the dusk came on, Westwood and I left the deck to go down to supper with the Planter, the midshipman being in charge. There was nothing in sight, sail or land; indeed, the queer dark-brown tint of the horizon showed strongly against the sky, as if it had been the mahogany of the capstan-head inside its brass rim; the night was cloudy, with a light breeze, and though the stars came out, I expected it to get pretty dark. As I went down the companion, I heard nothing but the light wash of the water from her bows, and the look-out stepping slowly about betwixt her knightheads on the forecastle: while it struck me the smooth face of the sea seemed to show wonderfully distinct into the dusk, the completer it got, as if a sort of light rose up from off it. Down below we felt her stealing pleasantly through all, and Tom and I sat for I didn't know how long, trying to settle our differences on the main point--about the Seringapatam, of course, and which way she was likely to be gone. Tom plumed himself mightily on his common-sense view of a thing, and having by this time got back a good deal of his cheerfulness, he and Mr Rollock almost laughed me over to his line of thinking.

We agreed that the ship must be at present edging up on one side or other of the Maldives, but both of them thought the less we had to say to her the better. "I say, though," exclaimed the Planter, whose face was turned the opposite way to ours, "I'd no idea it was moonlight!" "Moonlight!--there's no moon till morning," I said. "Look into the stern-cabin there, then!" said Rollock; and I turned round, seeing into the door of the after-cabin, where, to my no small surprise, there was a bright white glare through the little square stern-light, gleaming on the rim of the sill, and seemingly off both the air and the water beyond. Quite confounded, as well as wondering what Snelling could be about, I hurried up the companion, the Planter and Westwood hard at my heels.

For so long as I had kept at sea, and a good many different latitudes I had been into--yet I must say I never in my life before saw such a strange sight as broke on us the instant we put our heads out of the booby-hatch, fresh from the lamp-light in the cabin. Indeed, I can't but own to my first feeling being fright; for what it was I couldn't understand, unless we were got into a quarter of the world where things weren't natural. There were a few stray clouds in the sky, scattered away ahead, and clearing eastward to settle along before the breeze; all aloft of us, high over the sharp dark edge of the sails and gaffs, the air seemed to open away out pale and glimmering like a reflection in the ice; all round you caught a glimpse of the stars weakening and weakening toward the horizon. But the water itself--that was the sight that bewildered one! On every side the whole sea lay spread out smooth, and as white as snow--you couldn't fancy how wide it might stretch away astern or on our lee-beam, for not a mark of horizon was to be seen, save on the northwest, where you made it out, owing to the sky there being actually darker than the sea--but all the time the wide face of it was of a dead ghastly paleness, washing with a swell like milk to our black counter as we forged ahead. It wasn't that it shone in the least like blue water at night in the ordinary tropics--by Jove! that would have been a comfort--but you'd have thought there was a winding-sheet laid over all, or we were standing across a level country covered with snow--only when I stood up, and watched the bows, there was a faint hissing sparkle to be seen in the ripple's edge, that first brought me to myself. The Lascars had woke up where they lay about the caboose, and were cowering together for sheer terror; the men standing, each one in his place, and looking; while Jones, who had relieved the midshipman, leant by himself with his head on the capstan, as if to keep out the sight of it all: the schooner's whole dusky length, in fact, with every black figure on her decks, and her shape up to the lightest stick or rope of her aloft, appearing strange enough, in the midst of the broad white glare, to daunt any one that wasn't acquainted with the thing. "Mr Jones," said I quickly, on going up to him, "what the devil is this? I'll be hanged if I didn't begin to believe in witchcraft or something. Where are we getting to?" "Nothing, nothing, sir," said he, lifting his head; "'tis natural enough; only the milk sea, as they call it--the white water, sir, that comes down twice a-year hereabouts from God knows where--you only see it so at--at _night_!" "Oh, then, according to that," I said, "we shan't be long of sighting your island. I suppose?" "No," said he, "if the breeze freshens at all, keeping our present course, the mast-head ought to hail it in two or three hours; but God knows, Lieutenant Collins, natural though the sight is, there's something a man can't get rid of, especially if"--He stood up, walked to the side, and kept facing the whole breadth of the awful-looking sea, as it were till it seemed to blind him. "I tell you what, sir," said he slowly, "if that water had any use, a priest would say, 'twas sent to wash that same island clean of what's been done on it; but it couldn't, Mr Collins, it couldn't, till the day of judgment!" He leant over till his dark face and his shoulders, to my notion, made the milk-white surge that stole up to the schooner's bends take a whiter look. "If that water could wash _me_, now," muttered he, "ay, if it could only take the soul out of me, curse me, but I'd go down, down this moment to the bottom!" With that he gave a sudden move that made me catch him by the arm. "No, no, Mr Collins," said he, turning round; "the truth is, I mean to go through with it: by G--, I'll let it carry me where I'm bound for! D--n it, wasn't I born without asking my leave, and I'll kick the bucket the same way, if it was on a blasted dunghill!" "Come, come, Mr Jones," said I, in a soothing sort of way, "go below for a little, and sleep; when we hail the land, I'll have you called." "I'd rather not, sir," said Jones, quietly; "the truth is, it strikes me there's something strange in my happening to be aboard here, at this particular season, too; and see that same island, _now_, I must! It's fate, Lieutenant Collins," added he; "and I must say, I think it's the more likely something may turn out there. Either you'll see that ship, or the men, or else _I_'ll be there myself, in some way or other!"

Now there was something in all this that began at moments quite to bewilder one, the more excited the state was it put you in. There was nothing for it but to push on, and see what might come of it. Indeed, the weather favoured us better on our present course than on any other; and I felt, if I didn't keep active, I should go distracted. 'Twas almost as if what Jones said had a truth in it, and a sort of a power beyond one were drawing the schooner the way she steered; while, at the same time, there was every little while somewhat new in the extraordinary looks of things to hold you anxious. Even a flying touch of a squall we had about midnight didn't the least do away with the whiteness of the water all around: on the contrary, as the dark cloud crept down upon us, widening on both sides like smoke, the face of the sea seemed to whiten and whiten, casting up a ghastly gleam across the cloud, with its ripples frothing and creaming: till, not knowing _how_ things might go hereabouts, you almost expected the first rush of the wind to send it all in a flame to our mastheads. Then up she rose on a surge like a snow-drift, and off we drove heeling over to it, gaffs lowered and canvass down, everything lost sight of, save the white sea heaving up against the mist; while the clear-coloured plash of it through our weather bulwarks showed it was water sure enough. The squall went off to leeward, however, the rain hissing like ink into the swell it left, and spotting it all over till the last drops seemed to sink in millions of separate sparkles as far as you could see. The schooner rose from one heave to another to an even keel on the smooth length of it, hoisting her spanking gaffs, hauling aft the sheets, and slipping ahead once more to a breeze fed by the rain. As the sky cleared, the dead white glare the water sent up into it was such, you didn't know the one from the other toward the horizon; and in the midst there was only the smooth faint surface, brushing whiter with the breeze, as if it was nothing else kept it from going out of sight; with a few streaky clouds turning themselves out like wool in a confused rift of the air aloft; the schooner walking in it without ever a glimpse of a shadow on one side or another; while, as for seeing a sail on the horizon, you might as well have looked for a shred of paper. It wasn't light, neither, nor was it haze; nothing but a dead colour off the very sea's face--for the schooner rose and plunged without letting you see a hair's-breadth of her draught below the water-line. Every man rubbed his eyes, as if it were all some kind of a dream, and none the less when suddenly we were right upon a long patch of black stripes winding away through the white, like so many sea-serpents, come up to breathe, with both ends of them lost in the faintness. Nobody stirred, or said, "Look-out;" stripe after stripe she went slipping through them as if they'd been ghosts, without a word or an extra turn of the wheel. I daresay, if we had commenced to rise in the air, every man would have held on like grim death, but he wouldn't have wondered much; 'twas just, "whatever might happen to please them as had the managing of it," which was Jacob's observation when we talked of it after.

Mr Snelling was the only one that ventured to pass a joke; when Jones, who I thought was out of hearing, looked at the reefer with such a fierce glance, and so scornful at the same time, that I couldn't help connecting what happened the very next moment with it--for without the slightest warning, both of us were flung to leeward, and Snelling pitched into the scuppers, as a huge rolling ridge of the white water came down upon our beam; while the schooner broached to in the wind, floundering on the swell with her sails aback. Had the breeze been stronger, I think it would have fairly swamped us with the sternway she had; and heave after heave swelled glaring and weltering out of the pale blind sky, till our decks swam with light in the dusk under the bulwarks, and about the dark mouths of the hatchways. Just as suddenly the rollers seemed to sink in the smooth of the sea, and at last we payed off with the breeze as before, at the cost of a good fright and a famous ducking. Two or three times in the course of the middle watch did this happen, except that we were taken less by surprise, and had the hatches closed, with every rope ready to let go; the breeze strengthening all the time, and the same sort of look continuing all round and aloft.[25]

About four o'clock or so, the appearance of the sky near where the horizon ought to be, right ahead, struck Westwood and me as stranger than ever; owing to a long lump of shadow, as it were, lying northward like the shape of a bow or the round back of a fish miles long, though it softened off at one end into the hollow of the air, and the gleam of the white water broke past the other like the streaks of the northern lights in a frosty night toward the Pole, save for the thin shadowy tint of it, and the stars shining plainly through. I'd have fancied it was high land; when suddenly the half-moon was seen to ooze like a yellow spot out of the shapeless sort of steam to eastward, like a thing nobody knew, shedding a faint brown glimmer far below where you hadn't seen there was water at all. The bank of shadow softened away towards her, till in little more than five minutes the dark rippling line of the sea was made out, drawn across the dusk as if it had been the wide mouth of a frith in the polar ice, opening far on our weather-bow. A soft blue shimmering tint stole out on it by contrast, leaving the milk-white glare still spread everywhere else, astern, ahead, and on our lee-beam, into the sightless sky: 'twas the old blue water we caught sight of once more, with the natural night and the stars hanging over it; and the look-out aloft reported blue water stretching wide off to the nor'ard. There was one full hurrah from the seamen in the bows, and they ran of themselves naturally enough to the ropes, standing by to haul the schooner on a wind--to head up for the old salt sea, no doubt.