Chapter II: Part 2

Lieutenant Meredith, being a humane man, did not wish to slaughter the wretches like sheep, so refrained giving the fatal order to fire another volley, which would have terminated the contest, and was endeavouring to capture them alive. The struggle was so prolonged, however, and so many of his men were wounded, that he was just going to give the word "Fire!" when Snowball came to the rescue in a novel way, which completed the victory.

The darky emerged from the caboose with a bucket of boiling water filled from the galley coppers, which he had got ready with apt forethought, and dashed it full on to the group of huddling Malays.

They did not want a second dose.

Giving out an appalling howl of pain, which no cut or shot had evoked, they threw down their arms with one accord, and the blue-jackets before, and Bill Musters and Jem Backstay in the rear, seized the trembling scoundrels.

"Gag them all, as well as bind them, men!" said the lieutenant to the blue-jackets. "I don't want them to give the alarm to the schooner. Look alive, men! Be smart there; we've no time to lose! She isn't half a mile off now, and will be alongside in a few minutes!"

Lieutenant Meredith was right.

It was almost a dead calm, and the _Hankow Lin_,--her way deadened by the jib, which still trailed in the water across her bows, for no one had time, during the deadly fight in which they had just been engaged, to hoist it clear on board again--was almost motionless on the water; while every breath of the fast-expiring breeze was gently wafting the pirate schooner nearer and nearer.

The sail that obstructed her motion was at last cut away, and the ship began to creep along through the water; but it was too late for her to have got away from her enemy if those on board had so wished--which, however, they didn't!

"Look out, my men," shouted out Captain Morton, who was as keenly alive to the urgency of their situation as the naval lieutenant,--"we've all our work cut out for us!"

In truth they had; still, although only just out of one fight, in which some two or three had already lost their lives, and several were severely wounded, the blue-jackets under their gallant officer, who had already won the Victoria Cross for his bravery, ably seconded by Captain Morton and Mr Scuppers, and the crew of the _Hankow Lin_ set to work to prepare for a fresh struggle with all the alacrity and glee of schoolboys going out for an unexpected holiday.

The conquered Lascars were tightly bound, and then tumbled below, the hatch being secured over them; and all then set to work to unload the heavy hogsheads which had caused the tar such uneasiness on account of their cumbering his decks, when they had first been shipped on board at Canton, some ten days before.

"There, Jem!" said the boatswain, as the staves of the first cask were knocked to pieces, and a nine-pounder Armstrong gun disclosed in all its ship-shape nicety. "There, didn't I tell you that the skipper had his head screwed on straight?"

"Aye, aye, bo, right you were," answered the brawny foretopman as he knocked in the head of another hogshead. "I'll never doubt him again, you be sure."

There were four guns altogether, and the two other casks contained their ammunition, and spare rifles for the _Hankow Lin's_ crew.

These cannon the lieutenant now caused to be loaded heavily with grape- shot, and placed at the midship ports to windward, on the side that the pirate was approaching; the ports still kept closed, but everything ready for raising them, and running out the guns to command the schooner's deck when she got alongside.

The hands were then mustered. Captain Morton, Mr Scuppers, the lieutenant, and Jack Harper had escaped without a scratch on the part of the officers; but Mr Sprott, the second mate, had a cut across his face from a Malay crease, which caused him considerable pain, and undoubtedly spoiled his beauty; although the brave fellow refused to be put on the list of the non-fighters. Amongst the men, two blue-jackets were killed outright, as well as Phillips, the ship's carpenter of the _Hankow Lin_; while one blue-jacket was wounded severely, and two slightly, as well as another of the ship's regular hands.

Altogether, their defensive force consisted now, therefore, of the lieutenant, captain, and three other officers--for Sprott would fight, and Jack Harper was quite as good with a revolver as any of his seniors--and fifteen men, counting in Snowball, who was as good as two others any day, besides Jem Backstay, who was a regular giant.

"Now, men," said the lieutenant addressing them--"Captain, I have your permission to take the command?"

"Certainly, sir," said Captain Morton. "You're my senior officer in the service, and I wouldn't wish to fight under a braver!"

"Well then, men," resumed the lieutenant, "we all here, _Albatrosses_ and _Hankow Lins_ alike, fight under one flag, the Union Jack of Old England! Stop, don't cheer, men, or those pirate scoundrels will hear us too soon, and we don't want 'em to hear us till they feel us! Men, I want you to be cool--I know you are brave--and wait my word of command before you utter a shout or draw a trigger. That pirate scoundrel is plucky enough, and will take some beating; but he'll get it soon enough if you only obey orders. Captain Morton, will you take charge of the guns, please, with Mr Scuppers? Boatswain, you with that brave black fellow, and two other hands, will mind the forecastle, to prevent boarders coming up while we are attacking them elsewhere. I shall want eight hands along with me for the gig, to clear her away, and get her ready to lower to leeward, when the pirate comes alongside to windward. When we've given them a good sweeping discharge, and cleared their deck, captain, I shall, after reloading, drop into the gig, and board her on her weather-side, so that'll take them between two fires. Now, men, quick to your posts! Boatswain, to the forecastle with three others; gig's men step out, four blue-jackets and four _Hankow Lins_; the others of my cutter's crew will work the guns."

"May I come with you, sir?" said Mr Sprott anxiously. "I have no special duty here, and I'd like to pay out that cut across my jib on some of them piratical scoundrels!"

"Aye, you can come," said Mr Meredith cordially, "and glad I'll be to have such a brave fellow with me. Now, is everything ready in the gig, and the falls all slack for lowering?"

"Aye, aye, sir," said the coxswain. "Right as a trivet."

"Well, then, see to your small-arms, men. Have them all loaded ready, like the guns. The surprise will favour us at first, but we shall have to fight hard afterwards, as they'll muster pretty numerous if the account I have received be true."

All these preparations being complete, the guns loaded, and ready for discharging the moment the enemy ranged herself alongside, and each man being in his proper station, they awaited with the courage and caution of brave men the approach of the pirate. Fortunately for them, as it gave them more time to prepare, the breeze had quite died away, and a dead calm had fallen on the surface of the deep, while yet the schooner had scarcely decreased her distance, and they had been making their preparations for the fight. The glassy sea heaved up and down under the burning sun, which was now high in the heavens, with a sort of heavy, waveless throb, as if composing itself uneasily to sleep, the ship rolling with the motion to and fro.

The pirates were not asleep, however. As soon as the breeze failed they rigged out long oars from her low sides, and were leisurely sweeping nearer and nearer to the _Hankow Lin_ with every pulse of the sea.

They must have heard the reports of the rifles and revolvers, as well as seen the smoke of the discharges, and heard the yells of the Malays as they fought hand to hand with the blue-jackets, for the air was as clear as could be; but the stillness now, and the absence of any attempt to trim the sails or to escape, deceived them. They evidently thought that their fellow-conspirators on board had gained the day, or that the slaughter had been so great on both sides that there was no longer anybody capable of resistance; for after a short pause, when they were a cable's-length distant, the sweeps again set to work, and the low black hull of the schooner was urged forwards again towards the _Hankow Lin_, until those on the watch between the ports could see down on to her deck, which was crowded with yellow Malays like those with whom they had had such a desperate fight; besides numbers of Chinese, some of the black natives of Borneo and New Guinea, Portuguese desperadoes, and such ferocious-looking ruffians as herd together in Eastern seas.

"Be ready, men, to lift the ports and run out the guns," said the lieutenant, with finger uplifted to impose silence. "Depress your muzzles, and wait till I give the word to fire. She'll come up on this side, as I thought, so we'll give her the benefit of all four at once!"

Up crept the pirate, the ominous black flag still hoisted, although, as the breeze had dropped, it hung down limp from the mast; and they could hear the chatter of voices on board her quite distinctly. Nearer and nearer she came--until the lieutenant could count every man that stood grouped on her flush deck.

There seemed to be sixty or seventy of them, and they clustered together, looking over the side of their vessel at their expected prey.

Nearer and nearer she still continued to glide--until the schooner was almost alongside the _Hankow Lin_, and not ten yards off. It looked as if the pirate was going to run them aboard!

"Now," whispered the lieutenant again to the expectant Englishmen around him--"small-arm men reserve your fire; you at the guns, be ready to run them out. Now, men, altogether, drop the ports! Run out the guns! Fire!"

The concussion shook the ship to her centre, and a perfect hail of grape-shot was poured on the deck of the schooner, making long lanes or furrows through the ranks of the pirate's crew, as if they had been mowed down by a scythe!

"Again, men; sharp's the word. Load again, and give them another round. Quick! That's right," as a wild yell rose again from the crowded pirate. "Now, Captain Morton, one more round and then I shall board her on the weather-side. Load again as quickly as you can. Fire!"

The terrific shot-shower again swept into the schooner, which had remained in the same position, the first two broadsides having broken the sweeps and killed the men manning them; and before the pirates could recover from their surprise the guns had been loaded again, and the gig of the _Hankow Lin_, with Lieutenant Meredith and his chosen crew, not forgetting Mr Sprott, had dashed out from the ship and boarded the schooner on her other side, where they least of all expected a foe, and the smoke concealed the boat's movements.

At the instant that the naval lieutenant jumped into her rigging with his men, another discharge of the Armstrong guns swept her decks, and the schooner, impelled by the calm, which makes floating surfaces approach each other on the water, ranged up alongside the tea-ship. At this moment, Snowball dropped from the forecastle of the _Hankow Lin_ into the bows of the schooner, followed by Jem Backstay and half-a-dozen others.

Assailed thus on all sides--the lieutenant and his crew clearing all before them with a valiant cheer, which Snowball re-echoed with a terrific shout like an Indian war-cry, perhaps from some intuitive recollections of his native wilds on the banks of the Congo, in which the words "golly, take dat now!" could, however, be plainly distinguished--the attack proved a trifle too hot for the mongrel lot of scoundrels whom the pirate captain, or cut-throat, commanded; and they gave way instanter. Some died fighting to the last; some jumped overboard, preferring cold water to English cold steel; and the remainder, some twenty in number, who had escaped the murderous grape from the guns and the keen cutlasses of the blue-jackets, threw down their arms and surrendered, when they were driven into the hold, and the hatches battened down over them.

The fight from beginning to end had not lasted ten minutes; and the pirate ship was captured in almost quicker time than it had taken to overcome the original Malay gang on board the _Hankow Lin_.

"Hoist the Union Jack, Snowball," said the lieutenant to the darky, who had done so much to gain the victory--seeing him with the flag in his hand, and apparently itching to haul it up. "Hoist away, darky, and let us have honest colours over that dirty black rag! Now, lads, three cheers!"

"Lord bless you!" as Bill the boatswain said to his wife when telling her the story of the pirate's repulse when he got home some time afterwards, safe and sound, as luck would have it, "you oughter have just heard the shout that then went up from our throats to heaven! It sounded a'most like thunder; it were louder nor the report of the Armstrong guns as peppered the varmint!"

VOLUME ONE, CHAPTER SIX.

"ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL."

To make a long story short, I may state briefly that in the second part of the action--the second act of a tragedy, it was for the Malays--both the bluejackets and the men of the _Hankow Lin_ got off scot-free, not another casualty happening to swell the death-roll, or a fresh wound of any consequence being received by any of those engaged. The surprise to the pirates on finding they had "caught a Tartar," instead of assailing a defenceless merchant vessel, as they had expected, was so complete, that, in nautical phraseology, they were "taken all aback."

Not expecting any opposition to speak of, and confident that the ship they were attacking carried no guns--for how could even the most astute of the Malays have supposed, with all their prying and peeping, that the _Hankow Lin_ had a set of Armstrongs on board her, headed up in hogsheads?--the pirates were stupefied by the first broadside they received; and, after that, their resistance amounted to _nil_, especially the more as one of the discharges killed their chief, when, of course, they had no one to lead them on or rally their drooping energies on the pinch.

The schooner, it was found, was none other than the _Diavolo_, a pirate craft commanded by a Portuguese renegade, who had already earned for himself a somewhat questionable reputation in Eastern seas; and how Captain Morton got wind of the intentions of the Malay crew to mutiny and bring his ship for destruction may be thus briefly told:--

Several large tea-traders having mysteriously disappeared on their voyage home to England, after shipping Malay crews on board, the English admiral on the station had conferred with the Chinese authorities, and from them learned that the _Diavolo_ was suspected, and that a spy had discovered that an attempt would be made on the _Hankow Lin_, which was just loading at the time, and which had, like the other missing ships, shipped some Malay hands, in consequence of the loss of the main portion of her English crew on the voyage out.

Accordingly, precautions were taken to counteract the conspiracy of the Malay crew and capture the pirate by putting on board arms and munition--of which they supposed the ship to have none--and concealing in the saloon a force of blue-jackets to combine with the English part of the crew should the contemplated mutiny break out--the result of which precautions proved, as we have seen, to be eminently successful.

While the calm lasted, the bodies of the dead pirates were hove overboard, and the three bluejackets and Phillips who had lost their life in the first struggle with the Malays committed carefully to the deep with every solemnity; and then the _Hankow Lin_, as soon as the wind sprang up again, as it did by sundown, was headed towards Singapore in accordance with Lieutenant Meredith's wish, although it was sorely against Captain Morton's will to bear off from his direct course to England, which was almost right in front of him, the Straits of Sunda bearing a point or two off the lee beam.

However, Captain Morton lost nothing by his compliance with the lieutenant's wish. The _Hankow Lin_ when she arrived at Singapore was allotted a half share of the value of the pirate schooner and all she contained; and that craft being pretty nearly crammed full of plunder, which she had accumulated from the different ships that had been captured and scuttled by her in her nefarious career, the sum thus awarded to Captain Morton was more than sufficient to compensate his owners for any delay that had arisen through the _Hankow Lin's_ detention at the Dutch port, besides swelling the handsome bounty that was paid to each and all of the crew engaged in the affair.

This was not all, either.

At Singapore, Captain Morton was able to obtain what he could not have very well voyaged home without, and that was a supply of fresh hands to navigate the ship in place of the treacherous scoundrels who had engaged with him at Canton only to plot her destruction, although the captain had ample satisfaction for all this ere he left the place, for, as Bill the boatswain said in mentioning the fact afterwards, he "saw every mother's son of them hung before he weighed anchor again."

After bidding adieu to their late active comrades the blue-jackets, all went well with the old vessel, from Singapore to the Straits of Sunda, across the Indian Ocean, and round the Cape of Good Hope. Not an untoward event happened on the way home, not a mishap occurred, and, as Snowball said when he stepped ashore in the East India Dock, "All's well dat ends well." And so ended *The Voyage of the "Hankow Lin*."

VOLUME TWO, CHAPTER ONE.

AT ZANZIBAR.

"Have I ever been to Madagascar?" he repeated, with a look of amazement and wonder quaintly combined on his good-natured, ruddy-brown, weather- beaten face. "Is that what you wanted to know, eh?"

"Yes," I replied, "that is, if you've no objection to answer my question."

"Why, no! I've nothing to keep dark of my doings."

"All right!" said I; "then you can go ahead."

"Well, sir," he began, drawing a deep breath as if he only just took in the import of my question and was turning over in his mind the matter in all its bearings, "I should rather just think I had been to Madagascar, and there's precious little chance too of my forgetting it, either, in a hurry. Ah! if you'd once been wrecked on sich a queer, outlandish, wild, desolate sort o' shore as that there, arterwards havin' to swim miles upon miles through a heavy rolling sea to get to land, and that under a fierce burning sun the while; besides, when got ashore at last, being forced to tramp for ten long weary days and nights across slimy green marshes filled with alligators, crawling through thick jungles of thorny bushes that tore your flesh to pieces before ever you could ha' come to a civilised place to get your wants attended--you, that is me, not having a morsel of food or a drop of pure water to drink all the way--why, sir, I fancy as how you'd remember the blessed place to your dying day; and, would recollect all about it in the flash of a moment again when any one just mentioned its name again the same as you have done just now!"

The speaker was a fine, robust-looking seaman of middle height, and probably of middle age also, for there was a slight suspicion of grey in the crisp brown beard that covered the lower part of his countenance, while several prominent wrinkles were apparent about the corners of his merry, twinkling, blue eyes.

He was dressed respectably in a sober suit of some rough material that fitted easily to his well-proportioned limbs, and, from his civilian costume and nautical look--for he had a sort of briny flavour about him, so to speak--I took him for a petty officer of the Royal Navy who had retired from the active duties of his profession on account of his length of service afloat having entitled him to the _otium cum dignitate_ of a pension ashore for the remainder of his days. Such was my surmise at first sight--an impression subsequently in part confirmed; but be that as it may, he and I had got into conversation one bright summer day not long ago while standing on Portsmouth Hard, watching a white-hulled Indian troopship steaming out of the harbour beyond, with the marines for Egypt on board. I had mentioned Madagascar in casually commenting on the plucky behaviour displayed at Tamatave by Captain Johnstone of HMS _Dryad_ in resisting the high-handed proceedings of the French admiral, who appeared to think that he might insult the English flag with impunity from the fact of his being in command of a squadron flying the Tricolour flag while the representative of the Union Jack had only one solitary vessel to oppose to that force.

"Aye, I know the East African station well," continued my friend. "I was invalided home from there, and got my pension three years before my twenty years' term of service was up in consequence."

"Indeed!" said I, to lead him on, in expectation of the yarn I could perceive looming before me; but playing with my fish gently, as anglers know so well how to do, so that I might not frighten him into silence by any undue display of anxiety on my part.

"Yes, I served over a year in the _London_ at Zanzibar before being drafted off to one of the cruisers on the station. Beastly unhealthy place that Zanzibar--all fevers and agues and malaria in the wet season, and as hot as a place you've heard of, sir, when the sou'-west monsoon blows off the African shore. I was there when Sir Bartle Frere came to interview the old sultan to try and make him sign a treaty to put down the slave-trade; but it was all no go--the old sultan was too wide-awake for that, and, indeed, treaty or no treaty, we can never quite stop the dealing in slaves between the Arabs on the one hand and the clove- growers on the other."

"No?" said I interrogatively, wondering what the harmless clove, which forms such an important unit in the "sugar and spice and all things nice" combination of culinary seasoning, could possibly have to do with the slave-trade of East Africa.

"No, sir," he answered emphatically, with the air of a man who well knew what he was talking about and was certain of his facts, "it can't be done. You see, at certain times of the year, about a month after the rainy season ends, in September, the cloves ripen, and it takes a good many hands to pick 'em all and gather them in. Did you ever see them growing, sir?"

"I can't say I ever have," I responded, "although, of course, I've read about them."

"Well, sir, the cloves grow on tall, biggish-sized trees--"

"Dear me!" I said, interrupting him, "why, I thought they were the fruit of some little shrub like currants and capers."

"Oh, no! They grow on trees, and some of a goodish height too. The cloves are the bud or blossom of the tree before the flower comes; and they must be picked early in time, or else they're not fit for anything. Their name, `cloves'--I don't know whether you are aware on it, sir--is from the little things resembling a small nail--_clavo_, as it's called in the Spanish."

"I didn't know that," I said.

"That's it, then," he replied, proceeding with his explanation. "Now, of course you can see that the cloves must be got off the trees before the blossom ripens too much, but as the sun is so terribly hot and such a miasma comes up from the places where the trees grow only niggers can stand the exposure; and so it is that slave labour is wanted, for no whites could undertake the job, and the Arab merchants, you may be sure, wouldn't do it themselves, in spite of the large demand for cloves in the European markets--that is, so long as they can get slaves to do it for 'em."

"How do they gather them?" I asked.

"Why, they have queer-shaped ladders, just of the same sort as those little things they put in pots of garden musk to train the plants on, broad at one end and narrow at the other--something like a triangular grating--so that a lot of the niggers can stand on it at a time and pick away from the same tree, on which, perhaps, there are millions of buds to be taken off in less than no time. When they are all gathered they're spread out in the sun and dried, and then sent off in bags to whoever wants 'em."

"And where are they principally grown?" said I.

"Why, Pemba. That's an island up above Zanzibar, about sixty miles from the coast, though they're very good cloves grown on Zanzibar Island too; but Pemba is the chief place, and it is to there that the chief runs of slaves are made by the Arab dhows. That is why the _London_ was so long stationed thereabouts: it was in order to intercept these craft and stop the traffic."

"I suppose you've seen some service chasing the dhows yourself, eh?" I said, thinking this a good opening for getting him back to his yarn, as he seemed inclined to end the conversation at this point, hinting that he had an appointment "in the yard"--meaning Portsmouth dockyard--and that it was getting on late, and they would soon be closing up.

"Oh yes, sir! I served my time dhow-chasing when I was in the _London_; and saw a few sights, too, in the different craft we overhauled that would ha' made your blood boil against slavery. One dhow, I remember, we captured with nearly a hundred on board, all crammed into a space that you couldn't have thought would have held half that number of human beings, for it was a small dhow, of probably not more than forty tons at the outside. On the ballast at the bottom of the vessel were huddled up twenty-three women, some with infants in their arms. They were literally doubled up, sir, as they could not stand from the position they were in, as right over them was placed a bamboo deck not three feet above the keel of the boat, on which forty men were jammed together in the same way. This was not all, either, for, right above the men, right on to their heads almost as they squatted down, was another deck of bamboo, on which were over fifty children of all ages. The whole lot, too, when we boarded the dhow, were in the last stages of starvation and dysentery, not to speak of what they must have suffered from the cramped position in which they were confined and the want of air. They smelled something awful when we unkiverd them; it was enough to knock down a horse."

"It was horrible," I said in sympathy.

"No doubt it were all that," replied my friend the pensioner. "But from what I saw out there I do believe the very attempts our government make to put down the slave-trade only increases the evils of the poor wretches we are trying to liberate."

"How is that?" I asked.

"Why, you see, when the traffic used to be permitted, as it was once for a period of eight months in the year, just as you have at home a set time for shooting game, the slaves used to be carried in large dhows, more comfortably, and well supplied with food and water in their passage from the mainland to Pemba and Zanzibar; but when our cruisers began to look out for them and stopped the trade, no matter whether it was in the dry season or not, then the Arabs would pack 'em up in small craft that could lie hid in the creeks or shallows of the coast and smuggle the niggers in during the night-time, for these Arabs are just like cats, and can see in the dark when our men couldn't perceive their hands afore their face. Once upon a time, when I first went on the station, we used to capture good big dhows that were of a hundred and eighty tons burden and upwards; now our men only get hold of little Mtpe dhows that are hardly worth taking--I suppose you know, sir, as how we get a bounty or prize-money, according to the size of the vessels and the number of slaves we liberate?"

"Yes," said I, "I'm aware of that, as I have noticed advertisements in the _London Gazette_ about the distribution of the bounty for such and such slave-dhows `captured by the boats of HMS _London_' or some other cruiser named. How are these dhows built?"

"Of a sort of close hard wood like African oak, but harder than our English timber of the same nature. The planks of the small Mtpe dhows are sewn together with a thread-like stuff they get from the reeds in the lagoons. They are built broad and shallow, with a keel deepening towards the stern, almost like a wedge, so that they can turn quickly. They're good sea-boats, too, and can sail almost up into the wind's eye, with their large lateen sails, which are cut something like an old- fashioned leg of mutton, or short tack lug. The stem of them rises high out of the water, having a poop on it, which is thatched over with matting and banana leaves; and altogether they don't look unlike a Chinese junk. Some of the bigger dhows, which are used as war craft by the Arab chiefs of Lamoi and Mozambique, are fine craft, and carry six and twelve brass guns sometimes, like the old carronades of the service."

"They sail well, you say?" I inquired.

"Don't they, that's all! Why, none of our quickest steam-pinnaces can overhaul them when they're going on a wind, for even with the lightest breeze their sails, being made of twilled calico and light, waft them along as if by magic. There are twenty that escape us for every one we catch, as, in the busy season, the caravans from the interior bring the slaves down to the coast wholesale. The Portuguese and Arabs are the chaps that manage the business; and once the slaves are aboard the dhows, they sneak along the land until night-time, when, if the wind blows fair for them, they're off and away to Pemba, or further up towards the Arabian coast, where our boats can whistle for them for all the chance they have of overhauling them!"

"What becomes of the slaves that are liberated when the dhows are captured?" said I.

"Oh, the boys are sent to the Boy's Mission Schools at Zanzibar, and the girls to the Female Mission there also; while the men folk, at least all the able-bodied and strong ones that are not too old, are enlisted into the sultan's army--the Sultan of Zanzibar, I mean, the Seyyid Burgash that was. When I was there, the commander of his army was a lieutenant of our navy who had been `lent' by government for the purpose for three years, and now he has left the service altogether and is known as `General Matthews' on the east coast. A right smart chap he is too, for he drilled the niggers as well as if he were a born sojer instead of a sailor!"

"Do the slaves like this business?" I asked, thinking that their "freedom" seemed rather questionable; and then, too, consider the cost both in men and money it is to England every year.

"Well, I don't believe they do," answered the ex-man-o'-war's-man--"I've heard some of them say that they were quite contented to work on the clove plantations, and preferred that to loafing about the streets of Zanzibar, where hundreds of them are to be seen every day, with nothing to do and very little to eat, unless they take to thieving!"

"What sort of a place is Zanzibar?" said I now.

"Well, sir," replied the pensioner, "like all them oriental towns I have ever seen in the Levant and elsewhere, it looks ever so much better as seen from the sea than it does at close quarters. Coming into the harbour from the southwards, as I've entered it many a time when returning from a trip down to the Mozambique, your vessel has to wind slowly along through numerous little coral islands, which are, however, grown with stunted trees and bush quite close down to the water."

"That must be lovely!" I remarked.

"Aye, aye, so it is," said my friend; "but the navigation is awfully difficult, not to say dangerous, even with a man in the chains heaving the lead and singing out the depth every moment, for the soundings shoot from the `deep nine' to the `short five,' and less nor that too, before you know where you are! Howsomdever, once you've got inside and cast anchor, it's as pretty a roadstead as I ever clapped eyes on--as pretty as Rio in South America, which I daresay you've heard of?"

"Yes, and seen too," I said in response.

"Have you, sir?" replied the ex-man-o'-war's-man--"then all I can say is that you've seen the handsomest harbour in the world! But, still, Zanzibar ain't far behind it. The front of the town, which faces the anchorage, looks quite imposing like. The water of the bay is clear too, so that you can see the bottom down to any depth; and the white sandy beach fringing it round is just like snow against the dark background of palm-trees and green foliage. Along the beach are the warehouses and residences of the English-speaking merchants, the grand mansions of the richer sort of citizens, and the offices of the different foreign consuls--each with its own national flag fluttering gaily from the top, the British Union Jack and the Yankee Stars and Stripes being very prominent; while, in the very centre of the lot, is the palace of the sultan, a fine concern. From the top of this flies the red ensign of Arabia, and around it may be seen sentries in a sort of zouave uniform, selected from that very slave army I told you of just now."

"What struck you as most peculiar about the place?" I asked.

"Well, I'm hanged if it weren't the niggers, sir!" said my informant. "You see there the most extraordinary number of little darkies you ever saw in your life, all with nothing on 'em, no more than Adam--not even a fig-leaf! The next thing to strike you, if a stranger, would be the heat, for it is far hotter, strange to say, ashore there than it is aboard your own ship. Some of the houses are curious to look at, for they have neither windows nor doors; for the best dwellings are built round an open court, and the windows, or air-holes as they might more properly be called, open on to that. Instead of being light and built of some flimsy stuff, as you might expect, the houses are all put up `on the heat-resisting principle,' as I heard an engineer describe them-- just like the Irishman that wore his Connemara frieze coat in summer to keep out the sun, as he said, in the same way as he put it on in winter to keep out the cold!"

"Indeed!" I said.

"Yes, sir," continued my friend; "the walls of all the large houses at Zanzibar are many feet thick of solid stone masonry; and even the floors and partitions dividing the rooms are of several thicknesses too, all made of wood and stone and lime, the wood being covered over with mortar. The roof is the best part of them, however. It is made quite flat, and it is the principal spot for the family to go of an evening when the sun has gone down and the night-breeze begins to blow. The Arabs and Parsees go on top in the mornings too, at sunrise, to say their prayers, spreading out a bit of sacred carpet over the stone flagging that forms the floor of the roof."

"Are there many shops?" I next inquired.

"Bless you, the town's crammed full of them! but they're only open sheds, in the centre of which some Hindoo or Banian merchant is to be seen squatting all day long, chewing hashish or smoking his hubble- bubble, as if he hadn't a stroke of business to do, and didn't care about doing it either if he got the chance!"

"I suppose they have goods to sell, though, eh!" I said.

"Oh, yes, shawls and sandals and silks and such like; while in the eatable line you can get coffee and sherbet, and arrack too, or what they call English rum, besides pine-apples and mangoes, oranges, citrons, guavas, green cocoa-nuts, and every fruit you could think of, as well as cakes and sweetmeats. The streets in the town are very narrow and are crowded with these sorts of shops or rather stalls, for they're just like the places you see old apple-women rig up at the corners in London; but the bazaars are the best spots to look at-- they're just like those in India, and some that I've seen too in Constantinople. Lor' sakes! why, they're crowded with Arabs and Hindoos, Persians, Africans, Somali Arabs, and every sort of coloured native you can imagine, sir, from the lightest coffee-tinted mulatto down to the jettiest black of the pure nigger brought originally from the interior as a slave.

"The funniest thing, too, about these bazaars is to see the different trades or handicraftsmen at work, the goldsmiths making rings by hammering and beating the metal, the jewellers stringing pearls together for necklaces and bracelets, the toy-makers rigging up the queerest curios you ever saw, and the sandal-makers cutting out shoes of leather; but the biggest treat of all is to watch a Parsee school and see how the master instructs the little shavers. The children, to the number of fifty or more, all squat on the floor of the school-room, which is a large open shed on a raised platform, each holding in one hand the blade-bone taken from the shoulder of a camel to serve as a slate, on which they make marks with a pencil-like brush. They are pretty little trots, the children; and are mostly all smartly dressed in little jackets and trousers of various coloured silks, green, yellow, and red, with turbans on top of their heads, just like their fathers, to complete the picture."

"The end of the rainy season, you say, is the best time for catching the dhows?" I asked now, to bring my friend back to the main point of all my interrogatories.

"Yes, there's the greatest demand then for the slaves; besides which the south-west monsoon sets in at that time, and is favourable for their crossing from the mainland."

"Do they ever show fight?" I inquired.

"Bather!" ejaculated my informant; "they're about as treacherous a lot as you could ever come across, them Arabs; for, I tell you what, they'll sometimes let a boat's crew overhaul 'em, and come up alongside as if everything was ship-shape and clear sailing--that is to say, sir, that they have nothing contraband aboard and could show a clean bill o' lading; when, drat 'em, they'll turn round on you like a parcel o' tigers with their sharp knives and spears. It was in this way my poor skipper, Capt'in Brownrigg, was killed in December '81--just at Christmas time, when I were out there."

"That was a sad thing," said I sympathisingly.

"Yes," replied the pensioner; "but, saddest of all, it was to know his poor wife had just come out from England to join him, and was aboard the _London_ at the very time his body was brought alongside the ship in the steam-pinnace in which he had met his death. Ah! he was a fine officer was Capt'in Brownrigg, and liked by everybody--not only by his brother officers and equals, but by the men under him. Bless you, they'd a' gone anywheres to win a smile from his cheery face. Hullo, though, sir, look there, they're shutting up the dockyard gate!"

Such indeed was the case, showing that the afternoon was pretty nearly "expended," as they say in the service.

"Ah! that comes along o' yarning with you and not minding the business that brought me down here, for now I'm too late."

"Well, in that case," said I, seeing my chance now for getting the oft- evaded yarn of my friend's long service, "suppose you come home to my place and have a cup of tea, when you can tell me the story of your shipwreck off Madagascar, eh?"

He hemmed and hawed for a moment; but seeing that my invitation was cordially given, and I suppose having nothing else particularly to do, he accepted--whence this story.

VOLUME TWO, CHAPTER TWO.

WIND AND STEAM.

When I had made the pensioner as comfortable as I could at my little place--attending carefully to the wants of his inner man before appearing to have any curiosity regarding the matter that had made me invite him home--and the tea-things were cleared away, I gave a sort of inquiring cough, which he immediately took as my signal for him to begin his yarn.

"After serving a year in the _London_, as I told you before, sir," he commenced, without any preliminary beating about the bush, as many a landsman would have done, "I was drafted on to an old cruiser called the _Dolphin_. She's been broken up now, like the old _London_, though I hear they've got a rare smart despatch-boat just building called by the same name; but the _Dolphin_ as I'm speaking of is quite different and not the same vessel--remember that, sir, please, in case anybody should try to throw doubts on my yarn, as some of them sea-lawyers will."

"I assure you," said I to encourage him, "that I am quite satisfied as to the truth of your story."

"Well, then," he resumed, "the _Dolphin_ I am speaking of to you, sir, was a pretty fast boat for a paddle-steamer, and had already made some tidy captures of slave-dhows--that is, since she had been commissioned and sent out from England, about six months before, to replace an old sailing brig that formerly did duty on the station as tender to the old _London_; so I fully expected when I jined her to have some smart work afore me--and I warn't disapinted neither!"

"No?" said I questioningly to lead him on, settling myself cosily in my chair.

"You're right, sir, I warn't," replied my friend Ben. "The very first day I shipped aboard the _Dolphin_ we took two Mtpe dhows close inshore near Pemba. That brought me in a niceish bit of prize-money for a start; and, just a week arter that exactly, when we had got down to our proper cruising ground--that was, sir, just atween Zanzibar and the Mozambique Channel, which, as I daresay you know, sir, is about two hundred and fifty miles wide and runs between Madagascar and the mainland of Africa--why, we came upon the biggest haul that had been made on the coast for years; but we had to work for it, I tell you. That was a chase and no mistake!"

"Was it?" I asked, glad of Ben's coming now to an actual yarn concerning some of the stirring events of his life; for he had previously only been "beating about the bush," so to speak.

"Yes, sir; and not only a chase that was something to boast of, but a fight as well at the end of it--one of the smartest scrimmages I ever had all the time I was out there. If you don't mind my lighting a pipe, for I allers, sir, can tell a yarn better when I'm smoking, I'll just haul my jaw-tackle aboard and give you a full account of the whole adventure."

"Do," I said.

"There!" exclaimed he with a grunt of satisfaction, carefully filling a briar-root pipe with some dark tobacco, which he produced from out of a little round brass box that he carried in his waistcoat pocket, telling me it was "the right sort," and proceeding to light it--"now, we can go on serenely."

"Fire away!" said I, to encourage him, "I'm all attention."

He did not waste any more time; but at once began his story.

"The _Dolphin_ had run down south with the fag-end of the north-east monsoon, economising her coals as much as possible, as all the men-of- war have to do nowadays, worse luck--sometimes when it's a question between saving a few pounds or sacrificing a ship! We had passed Mazemba island, and had just weathered Cape Delgado, which is some ten degrees south of the equator, when--it was close on sunset at the time, and it grows dark all at once after that, you know, in the tropics--the look-out man sang out, `sail-ho!' This was just as we were piped down to tea. Bless you, we didn't think no more of going below, I can tell you!"

"I suppose not," I put in, to show I was listening attentively to what he was saying, for he paused at this juncture, as if waiting for me to say something.

"No, sir. Of course, although we were running down under easy sail the engine-fires were ready banked up, so that it didn't take us long to get up steam; and we were soon round like a shot, and retracing our way, right in the face of the wind, after a large dhow which we could see stealing up along-shore and hugging the land. She was what the Arabs called a batilla, and had two large lugs, or lateen sails set, besides a sort of square-cut jib forwards on her high-peaked bowsprit, by the aid of which she was sailing close-hauled, almost in the very teeth of the nor'-easter that was blowing pretty stiffly at the time, making it risky work for a vessel to approach so near a lee-shore as she was doing. However, I suppose her captain thought he would be able to slip by us in the darkness, when he might have got under the shelter of the island we had passed only a short while previously in our downward passage to the Mozambique; and, once he was out of sight of the _Dolphin_, of course he could have put out to sea again at his leisure, making his way north as soon as the coast seemed clear, and thus escaping us altogether."

"But he reckoned without his host that time, eh?" said I.

"Aye, that he did," responded the ex-man-o'-war's-man, warming up to his subject as he proceeded. "He made a great mistake, did that there Arab slave skipper when he thought he'd hoodwink us aboard the _Dolphin_ this evening I'm a-talking of--a mistake, sir, as I'll soon show you, that cost him not only his vessel, but his life as well!"

"Indeed?" I interposed, beginning to get interested in Ben's yarn now that he had actually got under weigh with it in earnest.

"Yes, that it did," replied Ben Campion, striking another match to relight his pipe, which had gone out in the interval, and puffing away vigorously for a few seconds in order to get it in full blast.--"He was a 'cute chap, though, that skipper," continued Ben presently when he had got the pipe to go to his satisfaction;--"for no sooner had he perceived that we had observed him and were in chase, than he threw off all pretence of attempting to deceive us by passing off as a simple trader. Abandoning his design of beating up to Cape Delgado, he wore the dhow round as sharp as lightning and made off down along the coast, right before the full strength of the monsoon; where, with the wind in his favour, he would have a better chance of getting away from us, those dhows, as I've told you, sometimes walking away from a steam-pinnace as if she were standing still. This time, however, he had no cockle-shell of a pinnace after him, but a smart paddle-steamer, and one, too, that could go along well also before the wind, carrying square sails as did the _Dolphin_ on her foremast and a huge spanker aft. A stern-chase, of course, is a long chase all the world over, as everybody knows, and ours was no exception. Still, all the time we gradually overhauled the dhow; and just about sunset we got within range of a long seven-inch gun, which we carried forwards. This, Mr Shrapnel, our gunner, trained right across the slaver's bows, and at the word of command, `Fire!' let drive with a bang that shook the steamer right down to her kelson and seemed to stop her way for the moment, sending her back, as it were, with the recoil.

"The gun was well aimed, the shot pitching up the water some fifty yards in front of her, but it didn't seem to make any difference to the dhow a bit, her captain keeping right on with every stitch of his canvas set, the wide lateen sails bellying out to their full, as we could see, and the queer-looking craft burying herself in the foam that she churned up as she dived down into the waves every moment with a plunge, as if she were going headlong down to the bottom, taking in huge seas over her cat-heads; for it was blowing more than half a gale at the time, and even we in our bigger craft found it hard work carrying on as we did with both wind and steam. And I tell you we were going too! Our engines were revolving full speed ahead, and our canvas must have helped us full another five knots, with the wind dead astern as it was, and we running before it, while, to aid us, there was the usual inshore current--that runs down the coast of the Mozambique from Cape Delgado to right opposite Madagascar, where it turns off more in an easterly direction--carrying us along like a mill-race, some rate of three knots more. It made the _Dolphin_ quiver and tremble through every timber as she seemed literally to fly through the water, but it didn't make us approach the dhow any closer, although we held our own. As the wind got up more and more, for it was the tail-end of the north-east monsoon, as I told you, and those blessed monsoons always die out with a brush when they've got to the end of their tether, the slaver appeared to rise bodily out of the water and skim along the surface from the top of one rolling wave on to another--just as you see an albatross does off the Cape of Good Hope when it has taken its first dart downwards after its prey, and has then to pursue it over the sea, the large sheets of the triangular sails of the dhow standing out on either side of her low dark keel in the same way as the pinions of the albatross touch the water in its flight.

"Mr Shrapnel was told to fire another gun; but it had no greater effect than the first one, and our skipper hardly seemed to know what to do; for the dhow was now heading more towards the land, and the _Dolphin_ would soon be in shoal water, as there are lots of reefs about them parts. It would never do, either, to fire right into her, although we were well within range now, as we might probably damage some of the poor slaves aboard, who were no doubt packed as tightly as herrings in a barrel; and yet, it was growing dark, the sun being just on the point of setting over the highlands of the great African continent on our starboard hand. If we didn't do something pretty soon Mr Arab dhow would be able to cry, `Walker!' and laugh at us for the wild-goose chase he had led us!"

"You must have been pretty anxious as the moments flew by, the sun setting, and the darkness creeping up, without your being able to overhaul her?" I said.