by G. A. Henty
“It was a moonlight night, and I could see a big head trying to thrust itself in at the other end of the hole. A moment later he began to scrape away at the sides. I lit the bundle of flax. It flared up fiercely, and I thrust it out full into the beast’s face. He gave a roar, and off he went as fast as his feet would carry him. They tried it a dozen times if they did it once; but the torch was too much for them, and the seal bone in its middle must have given them some nasty wounds, for I generally saw blood on the snow in the morning. Whenever I went to get a fresh store of meat and blubber I could see how they had trampled on the snow at the foot of the rock, and how they had scratched its face in trying to get up at it, but it was all no manner of good. I was chased two or three times by them when I went out to gather my cabbages, but I always managed to get into my hole before they overtook me, and they had learned to give that a wide berth.
“It seemed to me that winter was never going to be over; but I was young and had good spirits and was fond of a song, and I used to lie there and sing by the hour. Then I used to go over in my mind all the v’yges I had made and to remember the yarns I had heard, and would go over the talks I had had with Jack and Tom and Harry. You would be surprised how I kept my spirits up. You see I was a young fellow, and young fellows take things cheerful and make light of what would break them down when they get older. I never had a day’s illness, which I set down to them cabbages. I never saw them anywhere else, and I larnt arterwards that Kerguelen Island—for that was the place I was thrown on—was famous for them.
“When spring came and the snow melted I made up a package of forty pounds of meat, for the seals had not come yet, and started to make a tour of the island. I thought such a place as this was pretty well sure to be used by whalers in summer; and if so, I should find signs of their having been there. I made a few excursions first, and found I was pretty near the middle of the island—of course on the westerly side. I climbed a high hill, but I did not learn much except that the island was a big one, and there were hills both to the north and south that looked to me as if they must be thirty or forty miles away. As far as I could see of the west coast of the island the cliffs were everywhere precipitous; and though at the east they did not seem much better, I concluded to try that first. You see at this point the island was not more than fifteen miles across, but it seemed to bulge out both ways, and where I was looked like a sort of neck connecting two big islands. It was an awful country to traverse, all hill and rock; but after three weeks’ tramping I gave a shout, for in a bay in front of me was a large hut.
“I had had a hard time of it and was pretty well done up. My meat had lasted me well enough on short rations and I had filled up on cabbages; but I was often a long time without water, having to depend entirely on melted snow in the hollows of the rocks. I hurried down to the hut; it was a rough shed evidently erected for the use of whalers, and round it were ashes of fires, empty meat-tins, and other signs of the stay of sailors here. For the next month I lived here. The birds were returning. There was a stream close at hand, and enough drift-wood on the shores to enable me to keep up a constant fire. I woke up one morning in November to see a vessel entering the bay. The crew would scarce believe me when I told them that I passed the winter on the island alone, and that I had lived for six months on seal-meat, penguins, and cabbages. I learned from them that the bay was known as Hillsborough Bay, and the cove where the whaler entered as Betsy Cove, and that it was a regular rendezvous of whalers. I fished with them all through the summer, and went home in the ship, and was soon down again on the books of Godstone & Son.”
“Well, that was a go, and no mistake, Joe!” Jim Tucker said. “Fancy having to live for six months on seal frizzled over a lamp and raw cabbages! You did not tell us how you did for drink.”
“Melted snow,” Joe replied. “I used to fix one of the basins of dried seal-skin a foot or so above the lamp, so that it would be hot enough to melt the snow without a risk of its burning itself. Then I used to pour the water from one basin to another for half an hour. Melted snow-water is poor stuff if you don’t do that. I do not know the rights of it, but I have heard tell that it’s ’cause there ain’t no air in it, though for my part I never could see no air in water, except in surf. I had heard that that was the way they treated condensed water, and anyhow it was a sort of amusement like, and helped to pass the time.”
“Well, it is a capital story to listen to, Joe,” Jack said; “but I should not like to go through it myself. It must have been an awful time, shut up in a hole with a stinking lamp, for I expect it did stink, all those months.”
“It did use to smell powerful strong sometimes, lad, and many a time at first it turned me as sick as a youngster on his first v’yage; but I got accustomed to it after a bit. The great thing was to keep your wick short.”
“And now about your other wreck not far from here?”
“I will tell you that to-morrow evening, lads. That was a more ordinary kind of thing. It wasn’t pleasant; I don’t know that wrecks ever are, but it wasn’t such an out-of-the-way thing as being chucked up on to an iceberg. “
CHAPTER XVII
IN DANGEROUS SEAS
The following evening, as the twilight was falling, the lads again gathered round the old sailor.
“Well, lads,” he began, “just as this other affair I was telling you about happened further down south, so the other was a goodish bit to the north. We were bound for the Persian Gulf, and I fancy the captain got wrong with his reckonings. He had had trouble before we sailed; had lost his wife sudden, I heard, and, more’s the pity, he took to drink. He was the first and last captain as ever I sailed under as did it; for Godstone & Son were always mighty particular with their masters, and would not have a man, not for ever so, who was given to lifting his elbow. Anyhow, we went wrong; and it is a baddish place to go wrong, I can tell you, is the Mozambique Channel. There was a haze on the water and a light breeze, and just about eight bells in the morning we went plump ashore—though none of us thought we were within a hundred miles of land. There was a pretty to-do, as you might fancy; but we had to wait until morning to see where we were; then we found, when the mist lifted a bit that we were on a low sandy coast.
“We had no doubt that we should get her off so we got the boats out and the hatches off, and began to get up the cargo. We worked hard all day, and thought we had got pretty well enough out of her, and were just going to knock off work and carry out a couple of anchors and cables astern to try and heave her off, when there was a yell, and two or three hundred black fellows came dashing down on us with spears. They crept up so close before they showed, that we had no time to tumble into the boats before they were upon us. We made the best sort of fight we could, but that wasn’t much. We had brought ashore muskets and cutlasses, but they had been left in the boats, and only a few of us had time to get hold of them before they were upon us. I cut and slashed as well as I could, but it was not for long; for a spear lodged in my shoulder just at the moment when a big native caught me a clip over the head with a club, and down I went.
“I fancy I was some time before I got my senses again. When I did I found that I was tied hand and foot, and was lying there on the sands, with three or four of our fellows in the same plight as myself. They all belonged to the jolly-boat in which I had come ashore. The other boat had made a shift to push off with some of its hands and get back to the ship; but I did not know that until afterwards, for I was lying down behind a hillock of sand and could not get a view of the sea. There were lots of natives about, and they seemed mighty excited. I could hear a dropping fire of muskets, and guessed that those on board were keeping up a fire on any who so showed themselves on the beach. The natives got more and more excited, and kept jabbering together and pointing away along the coast; and I guessed that some of their own craft were coming to attack the ship.
“Presently I heard one of the guns, then another and another. The shot didn’t come whistling our way, so I had no doubt tha
t the ship was attacked. For a quarter of an hour the firing went on—cannon and musketry. I could hear the yells of the natives and the shouts of our men, though I could see nothing. The natives round me were pretty near out of their minds with excitement; then they began to dance and yell, and all at once the firing ceased, and I knew that the negroes had taken the ship. I was afraid it would come to that; for you see they had lost pretty well a third of their crew in the fight on shore, and the negroes would never have ventured to attack if they had not been ten to one against them.
“We lay there all that night, and I believe I should have died of thirst if a negro wench had not taken compassion on us and given us a drink. The next morning our ropes were undone. Our first look when we got up was naturally towards the ship. There she lay, with a dozen native craft round her. Her decks were black with negroes, and they were hard at work stripping her. No one paid much attention to us, for there was nowhere we could run to; and we sat down together and talked over our chances. We saw nothing of our shipmates; and whether they were all killed, or whether some of them were put aboard the native craft, I never knew. They were some days unloading and stripping the ship, and they had big quarrels over the division of the spoil. I think the fellows with boats did our natives out of their share, beyond what fell into their hands when they first attacked us. However, at last it was all done; then two chiefs came and had a look at us, and one took me and Tom Longstaff, and another took the other two.
“We had not done badly for eating while we were on shore, for there was several barrels of pork and biscuits among the lot we had landed, and we were free to take as much as we wanted. The other bales and boxes were all broken open and the contents made up into packets, and Tom and I and about sixty negroes, each with as much as he could stagger under, started away from the shore. It wasn’t a long march, for their village lay only about six miles away. We knew it could not be far, because the women and children had come down to the beach two or three hours after the fight was over. We stopped here about a month, and then one morning the chief and four of his men started off with Tom and me. We made three days’ marches, such marches as I never want to do again. Tom and I did our best to keep up; but the last day we were quite worn out, and if it hadn’t been that they thumped us with their spears and prodded us up, we should never have done it.
“The place we got to was a deal bigger than the first village. We were left outside the biggest hut with the four fellows to guard us, while the chief went inside. Presently he came out again with a chap quite different to himself. He was brown instead of being black, and dressed quite different; and having been trading up in the Persian Gulf I knew him to be an Arab. He looked us over as if we had been bullocks he intended to buy, and then went into the hut again. A few minutes later our chief came out and made signs to us that we belonged to the Arab now, and then went away with his men, and we never saw him again. We had an easy time of it for the next week, and then the Arab started with a number of carriers laden with goods for the interior.
“You would scarcely believe, lads, what we went through on that ’ere journey. Many a time Tom and I made up our minds to bolt for it; and we would have done it if we had had the least idea which way to go or how we were to keep alive on the journey. We had agreed when we started that we would do our best, and that we would not put up with any flogging. We didn’t much care whether they killed us or not, for we would just as leave have died as passed our lives in that country with all its beastly ways. Well, a couple of days after we had started, a big negro driver who had been laying on his stick freely on the backs of the slaves came along, and let Tom and me have one apiece. Tom, who was nearest to him, chucked down his load and went right at him, and knocked him over like a ninepin.
“Well, some of the other drivers or guards, or whatever they call them, ran up, and there was a tidy skrimage, I can tell you. It was ten minutes, I should say, before they got the best of us; and there was not one among them but was badly damaged about the figure-head. When they had got us down they laid it on to rights, and I believe they would have finished us if the Arab had not come up and stopped it.
“‘Look here,’ said I, when I was able to get up on to my feet again; ‘we are ready to work just as far as men can work, but if one of those negroes lays a finger on us we will do for him. You may cut us in pieces afterwards, but we will do for him.’
“I don’t know whether the Arab understood just what I said, but I think he got the gist of it. He spoke sharp to his men, and they never touched us afterwards. I could not quite make out what they were taking us for, because I can say honestly we were not much good at carrying—not half as good as one of the slaves. The first day or two we carried a good manful load. Then our shoes went to pieces, and we got that footsore and bad we could scarcely crawl along, let alone carrying loads. Tom said he thought that the Arab was a-taking us to sell as curios to some fellow who had never seen white men before, and it turned out as he was right. After we had been travelling for nigh a month we came to a big village; and there was great excitement over our coming, and for two days there were feastings, while the Arab sold part of his goods to the people for gold dust and ivory.
“The chief had come to look at us the day we arrived, and we had been packed away together in a little hut. The third day he came again with the Arab, and made signs that I was his property now, while the Arab told Tom to go out and start with his caravan. It was a big wrench for us, but it were no good struggling against what was to be. So we shook hands and parted on it quietly, and what became of Tom I have never heard from that day to this; but like enough he is dead years ago.
“Well, it would be too long a story to tell you all that happened in the nine months I stopped in that village. The chief was very proud of me, and used to show me off to his visitors. I had not such a very bad time of it. I used to make myself as useful as I could. I had been a handy sort of chap, and fond of carpentry, and I made a shift with what native tools I could get to turn out tables and chairs, and cupboards, and such like. All this time I was wondering how I was ever to get back again. I used to share a hut with another slave who had been captured in war. They generally sell them to the Arab slave-dealers to take down to the coast, but this man was the son of a chief who had gone to war with the fellow who owned me, and had been killed; and he kept this chap as his slave as a sort of brag, I think.
“We got on very well together, and of course by the time we had been there six months I got to talk their lingo, and we agreed at last that we would try to make a bolt of it together. So one night—when it happened that there was a great feast in the village—we slipped away as soon as it got dark, and made south, our object being to strike one of the Portuguese stations. We armed ourselves with bows and arrows, and spears; and as many yams as we could carry. It would make a book, lads, if I was to tell you all we went through before we got there. We travelled chiefly by nights; sometimes killing a deer, sometimes getting a few yams or heads of corn from the fields of the villages we passed. We had one or two skrimages, but fortunately never ran against any strong bodies of natives. By myself I should have died before I had been gone a fortnight but Mwango was up to every dodge. He knew what roots were good to eat, and what fruit and berries were safe. He could steal up to a herd of deer without frightening them, and was a first-rate hand in making pitfalls for game.
“I didn’t keep no account of time, but it was somewhere about six weeks after we had started when we came down on the banks of a biggish river. We followed it down until, two or three days later, we came on a village. There we stole a canoe, and paddling at night and lying up in the day, we came after about a week to a Portuguese post. There we were kindly received, and stopped for a month; and then I went down the river with some traders to the coast, while Mwango took service with the Portuguese. Six weeks later I was lucky enough to get a ship bound for the Cape, and there shifted into another for England. So that, young gentlemen, was the second time as I was off the
books of Godstone & Son.”
“Thank you very much, Joe. Some day you must give us some more yarns about it, and tell us something of your life in the village and your journey.”
“I will think it over, Master Jim. It is a long time ago now, for I was not above six-and-twenty when it happened. But I will think it over, and see if I can call back something worth telling.”
From that time onwards the boys had no reason to complain of dulness.
If the old man’s memory ever played him false, his imagination never failed him. Story followed story in almost unbroken sequence, so that between old Joe’s yarns and the ordinary duties of sea life the time passed swiftly and pleasantly. After rounding the Cape they had a spell of fine weather, until one morning when Jack came on deck he saw land away on the port beam.
“There is Ceylon,” Jim Tucker said.
“I should like to land and have a day’s ramble on shore there, Jim. There would be something to see there with all that rich vegetation. A very different thing from the sands of Egypt!”
“Yes, and all sorts of adventures, Jack. There are snakes and elephants and all sorts of things.”
“I certainly should not care to meet snakes, Jim, and I don’t know that I should like wild elephants. Still, I should like a ramble on shore. I suppose there is no chance of our getting nearer to the land.”
“Not a bit, Jack. I heard Mr. Hoare tell Arthur that it was very seldom we passed within sight of the island at all. Sailors are not fond of land except when they are actually going to make a port. The further they keep away from it the better they are pleased.”
“Such splendid weather as this I should have thought it would have made no difference,” Jack said. “I should be glad if we were going to coast up the whole way. Why, we have had nothing but a gentle regular wind ever since that storm off the Cape.”
