O'er Many Lands, on Many Seas

Chapter Five

 
“Like mountain cat that guards its young.
Full at Fitz-James’s throat he sprung.”
 

Scott.

 
“He watched me like a lion’s whelp,
That gnaws and yet may break its chain.”
 

Byron.

“Ben Roberts, dear old friend,” I said, as soon as the captain had finished. “I remember that sea-fight which you have just so graphically described.”

“And pray,” said he, “what and how much of it could you remember, seeing you were down below, and were so well used to guns thundering over your baby head, that you often went to sleep during general quarters? Now, just you tell me.”

“Well,” I replied, “I suppose it must have been the collision at the conclusion, for I was knocked all of a heap off the chair, and the Ay-ay and I threw ourselves into each other’s arms and wept.”

“Yes, lad, and I found you, when I went down to my cabin, in each other’s arms, and both fast asleep.”

I myself, dear reader, must now resume the thread of my narrative, from the place where Captain Roberts gives it up.

When the crew of the Niobe returned to their native land from the Cape, and the new crew joined, I remained with my foster-father – my dear old sea-dad.

From the Cape we sailed straight to Bombay, it being found that the old Niobe would require to go into dry dock.

I remember being dazzled with all I saw in Bombay, except those terrible Towers of Silence, on which the dead bodies of the Parsees are exposed to be devoured by birds. What I think struck me most was the gorgeous dresses of the natives, and the enormous amount of gold and silver ornaments they wore about them; bangles, and bracelets, and jewelled noselets, and ear-rings as big as cymbals, or the brass plates that barbers hang out in front of their doors. If I wondered at the natives, the natives wondered at me – the piccaninny sailor-boy, as they called me – for I was now dressed out quite like a man-o’-war’s man.

From Bombay we returned to our cruising ground, which was at that time called the Cape station, and stretched all along the entire east coast of Africa, from the Cape to the Red Sea, including not only Madagascar with its circlet of tiny islets, but Mozambique, the Comoro Islands, and Seychelles as well. Were I to tell you all my adventures on these shores, I should have no space to devote to sketches probably quite as interesting.

Let me come then as speedily as I may to the one great event of my life: my capture by that arch-fiend Zareppa, and my treatment while a prisoner for ten long years in the wildest part of the interior of Africa.

As soon as we reached Zanzibar, I being then of the ripe age of six years, the captain called me aft, and Roberts the boatswain came along with me.

“My man,” said the captain to me, “You are six now, and it is high time you were rated.”

I began to cry. A rating I thought meant a flogging, and I had seen poor fellows tied up over and over again and flogged until the blood gushed out of their backs.

“It is nothing,” said the kindly captain; “I’m going to make a man of you.”

“Oh!” I said, and wiped my eyes.

“But,” continued the captain laughing, “We’ll make a second-class boy of you first.”

Roberts laughed now.

“I’ll teach him sir,” he said, saluting the captain, “to splice and reef and steer.”

“Well, away you go,” said the captain, “and see, my little man, that you do all you are told.”

I touched my forelock, and went away forward with the good boatswain; so proud that I’m sure I didn’t feel my feet touching the deck.

My education had begun long before; it continued now, and I hope I did my duty.

For the next four years we had plenty of chasing of ships, plenty of cruising, plenty of jollity and fun, both on shore and afloat, and now and then a pitched battle.

We had never seen Zareppa again, but we had often and often heard of him. We knew that he was in the habit of marching into the interior upon peaceful negro villages lying about the Equator, burning them, and capturing the inhabitants as slaves.

Oh! boys at home, if you but knew the horrors of the slave trade; if you could but realise even a tithe of the misery and wretchedness and fearful crimes included in that one word “slavery,” as applied to Africa alone, you would not deem yourself entitled to the proud name of British boy, until you had registered a vow to do all that may ever lie in your power, be that little or be it much, by deeds or by words alone, to wipe out the curse.

Had you seen what I have seen of it, had you sojourned where I have sojourned, you would have witnessed deeds that would harrow your mind to think of even till your dying day.

My life on board the Niobe was altogether a very pleasant one; the best part of it was the long glorious cruises we used to have in open boats. Fancy, if you can, going away in a well-found boat, away from your ship entirely for, perhaps, a month or six weeks at a time, in the glorious summer weather, with the blue sky above, the blue sea below, and hardly ever more wind than sufficed to cool and fan you, and to raise the sea into a gentle ripple. We cruised along the coast, we cooked our food on shore – and oh! what jolly “spreads” they used to be, what soups, what stews! – we cruised along the coast, and we sailed or pulled up rivers, and into many a lovely wooded creek, going everywhere, in fact, where there was a chance of capturing a slaver, or of making a prize. When the slave ships ran we chased them, when they fired on us we fought them, and they were always beaten. They might win a race, but never a battle. We were some fifty men strong; we never stopped, therefore, for an invitation to go on board; we went, sword or cutlass in hand, and they were bound to give way.

But to me, I think, the glad sense of being away from the ship and of leading a free and roving life, was the greatest part of the pleasure, and I used to be so sorry when we bore up at last for the rendezvous where we were to meet our ship.

That, then, was the bright side of the picture of my life in these glad old days. And I must confess that it really had not a dark one, although sadness used to steal over my heart, when letters came from what others called home – England.

Home! To me the word had no other meaning except the wide ocean, and yet when I saw others reading their letters with such joy depicted on every countenance, well – it was very foolish of me, no doubt – but I used to steal away into some quiet corner, and weep.

“Now, my lad,” cried Roberts to me one day. “Get that twopenny-ha’penny cutlass of yours out, and prepare to go on shore. We’re going up country to fight those rascally Arabs. We are going to storm Zareppa’s own stronghold.”

“Hurrah!” I shouted; “And you will really take me with you, Mr Roberts?”

“That I will, lad; and you’re not your father’s son unless you know how to behave yourself in presence of a foe.”

I said nothing; but at that moment I almost thought that Roberts instigated an act on my part, which followed some days after this. Had he not mentioned Zareppa and my father in two consecutive sentences – my father and my father’s slayer?

“Oh!” I said inwardly, “could I but meet the man face to face!” What a childish thought, you will say, for a mere stripling, with a twopenny-ha’penny cutlass! The cutlass, by the way, was a middy’s dirk, of which I felt very proud indeed.

The boats were called away. The expedition against the Arab stronghold was going to be “a big thing,” as Roberts said, so every man that could be spared from the ship joined it.

Our guide was poor Sweeba. This negro had but one thought in life; namely, to avenge the murder of his family. I’m afraid that revenge is a very human though an improper feeling; and it is easy enough to understand, without attempting to justify, Sweeba’s thirst for vengeance. I hope that I myself shall never forget that Bible text which says —

 
“Vengeance is Mine, I will repay.”
 

The utmost caution was necessary in passing up through the forest and jungle, for we were surrounded by enemies on all sides. However, we made forced marches in silence and all by night, and in three days’ time, being favoured by fortune, we arrived in front of Zareppa’s stronghold, and within two miles of the place. We lay closely hidden till daybreak, a good two hours, sending Sweeba forward to scout. He returned shortly with the intelligence that the Arabs were in great force, and had both camels and cavalry, and that they had also thrown up a strong earthwork on the hill around their position.

Before sunrise we were ready; a mere band we were, but a brave one, about one hundred and twenty in all, bluejackets and marines. Ere the sun had mounted over the forest land we were close upon Zareppa’s position, and in the darkness our fellows had even cut out a company of war and baggage camels. It was here that the fighting first began, but taken by surprise, the camel-drivers, after a faint show of resistance, fled hurriedly up towards the fort.

It was now daylight, but the beams of the sun were sadly shorn by the smoke that arose from the fort as a tremendous volley was fired to check our advance. Under cover of this volley down thundered the foe to the charge. But little more than two hundred yards intervened between the fort and our fellows. Yet many a horse lost its rider, many a brave and stately Arab bit the dust, ere the enemy reached us.

I cannot describe what followed. No one can give an account of anything save his own experience in a fight like this. The enemy fought with terrible courage. Again and again were they foiled, again and again did they return to the charge with redoubled determination. They leaped on our very bayonets, over their own wounded, and their dead and dying fell together in heaps. But all in vain. Zareppa at last, despairing of success, withdrew his daring followers.

“Now, lads,” cried our commander, “follow me into the fort. They have shown us how Arabs fight; we will now show them what true Britons can do. Hurrah!”

The wild “Deen! deen!” of the Arab is nothing in strength of volume to the stern British “Hurrah!” It is a war-cry that has struck terror into the hearts of foemen on every land on which the sun shines. It is a war-cry that means business. It meant business to-day, as our fellows dashed up that hill and entered the fort. Then the fighting commenced in deadly earnest; the Arabs had leaped from their chargers, which were held in readiness in the rear, and fought with swords only, even their spears being for a time discarded. Our fellows fought with sword, with bayonet, or with butt-end, and men fell fast on both sides.

Only once during this fight Roberts was near me, but then his good sword saved me from a fearful cut. “Back to the rear, boy,” I heard him yell; “you’re too young for this work.”

But, look! yonder is the chief, yonder is Zareppa. Though I had never seen him before, an instinct seemed to tell me that that was the man who had slain my father. I flew at him – foolishly enough, no doubt – flew at him as if I had been a wild cat. I clutched his belt and raised my arm to strike. He bore me to the ground by a blow from his sword-hilt. He seemed to scorn to fight with such as I.

Next moment he himself was down. Sweeba had felled him, but was, in his turn, cut down almost immediately. On the ground I grappled again with the pirate chief. It seems all like a dream now, but I have little doubt my agility saved me, and enabled me to make such good use of my dirk that Zareppa never rose again.

Years after this I knew we had gained this fight, but now, as for me, I was taken prisoner, bound hand and foot, and carried into the interior. After the death of their chief, the Arabs had fought only long enough to secure possession of the boy who had killed their leader. This done, they mounted and fled.

I was, it would seem, reserved for the torture. But the king of a warlike tribe fancied the boy for a white slave, and the cupidity of the Arabs overcame their love even for vengeance – I was sold into slavery.

Then began a long, dreary march into the interior. It is only fair to say, however, that from the commencement King Otakooma was not unkind to me. He ordered my wrists to be untied, and I was set free – such freedom as it was, for with a mob of savages around me I dared not attempt to escape. Indeed, I cared little now what became of me, and for the first few days I refused all food. Then nature asserted herself, and I ate greedily of the fruit that grew plentifully everywhere in the country through which we were passing.

I had pulled what appeared to me a most delicious-looking large berry, when suddenly I heard our chief shriek.

“Oa eeah wa ka!” and at the same moment the fruit was dashed from my hand ere I could convey it to my lips. I knew from this it was poison. Then the chief called me towards him, and placed me on the grass, and put before me a plate of boiled paddy (a kind of rice) and a bright glittering dagger. I knew what he meant, and chose the paddy. Then the king laughed till his fat sides shook again. He was a sort of half-caste Arab, I suppose, and yellow, not black. Perhaps his colour made him king, for his followers were very black, tall, wiry, and savage-looking.

The king on the other hand simply looked good-humouredly idiotic, but I found out afterwards that he could be both cruel and fierce, and though not a cannibal, he was addicted to human sacrifices. Piles of skulls adorned his palace grounds. He built them up like rockeries, and flowers actually grew on them, although they had never been planted.

As soon as I had eaten the rice, he patted my cheek and asked me, through a boy interpreter, if I would have some rum. I refused; upon which a cocoa-nut half full and the dagger were again placed before me.

I drank the rum, and I learned a lesson; and whenever afterwards the king asked me to do anything that I had scruples at performing, I pretended to be exceedingly eager to do it – and thus got off.

Our adventures on our journey inland were many and varied. Under other circumstances I should have enjoyed them, but every mile west was taking me away from all I held dear in the world, so no wonder my heart sank within me and that I loathed the savages, loathed the fat old king, and even the boy interpreter, although he was the only one with whom I could converse.

Jooma was his name, and he turned out no friend to me. He entertained me from the first with terrible stories about the cruelties of the tribe I was going amongst, tales that made me long for death and my very blood run cold.

Then I thought of the poison berry, and was strangely tempted to eat a few. Thank Heaven, I did not give way to the fearful temptation! It is an awful thing for a human soul to hurry unbidden into the presence of its Maker.

One adventure thrilled me at first with delight, afterwards with grief. We met and attacked a caravan of English travellers. I was bound to a horse and strictly guarded, at a distance from the scene of action. I do not know what occurred, but from the exultant looks of the savages on their return, and from the blood-stained booty they brought with them, I feared the worst.

Another adventure I remember was a night attack on our camp by a rhinoceros. The savages fled before the infuriated brute more speedily than they would have done before a human foe.

But my experience, gained since then, is that rhinoceroses are not as a rule dangerous animals, although a great many marvellous stories are told about them, usually travellers’ tales.

Sometimes the hill and the jungle gave place to wide marsh lands, through which the cattle were driven first, the horses following, and last of all the foolish old king on his litter, with his rum bottle beside him.

Often he used to drink till he fell asleep. Sometimes he would make me sit by him. Once he had his great hand on my shoulder, and kept feeling at my neck.

I afterwards asked Jooma what he meant.

“Nothing he mean,” replied Jooma, grinning, “only feel for proper place to cut your head away. Dat nothing!”

This was pleasant.

At last we arrived in the king’s country, and a small tent was assigned to me near the royal palace.

The country all round, although unfilled, was fertile and lovely in the extreme. Giant cocoa-palms waved on high, some parts of the landscape were wild orchards of the most delicious fruit, the hills were covered with purple heath, the valleys carpeted with grass and flowers of every shape and hue; while the birds that flitted among the boughs, and the monster butterflies that floated from one bright blossom to another, were lovelier than anything you could imagine in your happiest dreams.

To King Otakooma’s country bands of wandering Arabs occasionally came, and visited the king in his summer tent or his winter palace – for he had both. They came to solicit his assistance in the inhuman raids they made upon surrounding tribes of less warlike negroes.

Did I hope for escape through these Arabs? As well might the linnet beg the hawk to deliver her from the talons of the owl.

Chapter Six

 
“Much I misdoubt this wayward boy,
Will one day work me more annoy.
I’ll watch him closer than before.”
 

Byron.

When I look back now to the first two, or even three, years that I spent in Otakooma’s country, among Otakooma’s savages, I wonder that I was not bereft of reason, or that, knowing escape by death to be in my power, I did not have recourse to the deadly poison berry that grew in abundance in many a thicket. Our goats ate freely of this berry, by-the-bye, but it seemed to have no other effect upon them than to make them lively.

But even at this date, strange to say, there are certain sights and sounds that never fail to recall to me not merely my life among those savages, but the very feelings I then had. For instance, in the county in England where I now reside, the cow-boys, or sheep-herds (I will not call them shepherds), have a peculiar way of calling to each other; it is a kind of prolonged shrill quavering shout, and it bears some faint resemblance to the howl of Otakooma’s savages, as heard by night in the forest. Again, anyone drumming on the table with his finger-nails will sometimes bring to my mind the feelings I used to have on hearing the beating of the horrid tom-toms. The beating of tom-toms and the howling, combined now and then with a shriek as of some poor wretch in mortal agony and dread, even when I was not present, but probably a prisoner in my hut, used to tell me as well as words could, that a human sacrifice was progressing somewhere in the vicinity of the royal palace.

The smell of weeds burning in a field only yesterday depressed me; the savages were constantly burning fires of different kinds of dried roots and weeds.

Just one more instance. I would not have a rockery in my grounds or garden; it would remind me of Otakooma’s terrible piles of skulls on which weeds grew green, and flowers bloomed, and lizards – sea-green lizards with crimson marks on their shoulders, and lizards the colour of a starling’s breast, that is, metallic-changing colour – used to creep.

If ever at that time I spent a happy hour it was in studying and wondering at the tricks and manners of the many strange denizens of the forest. Monkeys, mongooses, and even chameleons I managed to tame.

You see, then, I could not have been very happy. How could I? For at least two years I lived in constant dread of a violent death, and I never knew what shape it would take. I might die by the spear of some angry savage; I might be sacrificed to please some sudden fancy of the king; I might be burned at the stake or die by the torture.

My enemy – and he ought to have been my friend – was the boy Jooma. He was jealous, no doubt, of my influence with the king. I tried my best in every way to please this lad, because he could talk English, but in vain. He belied me one day after I had been a whole year in the country, belied me to the king in my presence – he pointed his hand at me. I struck the hand.

Then, as he threatened to kill me with his knife, I squared up in good English fashion and let my enemy have one straight from the shoulder. He went down as if he had been shot.

The fat old king shouted for joy. That boy Jooma had never had a proper British bleeding nose before in his life, I expect. And he did not like it. He kept lying on the ground, because he saw me in the attitude to give him another blow. But the king made him stand up, and for fear of offending the king I had to put him down again. Then he refused to rise. The king told him that a cock and a goat and two curs were going to be carried in procession to the execution ground that afternoon, and that if he, Jooma, did not fight “the foreign boy” he should head the procession and finally lose his head. So Jooma had to fight as well as he could, and although I did not punish him willingly, he was paid out for many an ill turn that he had done me.

I was a favourite with the king for fully a month after this. He brought boy after boy for me to thrash. Indeed, three or four times a day I was fighting. I suppose every boy about the king’s village had a set-to with me. I cannot say I blacked their eyes because they were already black, but they must have felt my knocks, and I know they did not love me any the better for it.

I did not know how all this would end, but my heart leaped to my mouth when one day the king himself, valiant through the rum he had drunk, stood up and announced his intention of trying conclusions with me himself.

What could I do?

What would you have done, gentle reader?

I knew I could have thrashed him, for though not old I was very hardy and wonderfully strong for my years, but I did not want to figure in a procession. So I submitted to be knocked down. Then I had to get up and be knocked down again and again. It didn’t hurt very much, but there was indignity attached to it.

The king had found a new pleasure, and every afternoon or evening I was summoned to the palace yard or grounds, and first I had to fight the king, then a boy of my own standing. Well, I am afraid that if I suffered in body and mind from my encounter with the king, I took it out of the smaller savage to follow. There was some satisfaction in that.

But one day, to show his own wonderful powers of fisticuff, the king summoned a crowd of his warriors to his palace, and made them form a great ring. Then I was ordered in and pitted against an Indian boy bigger than myself. I never cared how big they were, they held their arms wide and hit downwards as if thumping a piano.

After one or two boys had been disposed of, to the wild delight of the warriors, the king took a drink of rum and handed the leather bottle to his chief executioner; then he took off his extra garments – his one boot and his crown, an old tin kettle without a bottom to it – and stood up in front of me. I went down several times according to my own programme, and the savages shook their spears and rattled them against their shields of buffalo hide, and shouted and shrieked to their hearts’ content.

Then the king hit me rather hard, and I suppose my English pride was touched, for the next thing I remember is – horror of horrors! – the sacred person of his Majesty King Otakooma sprawling on the dusty ground and his nose bleeding.

A silence deep as death fell on all the crowd.

Then there was a rush for me. Spears were at my breast and I expected only instant death, when the king sprang to my rescue and all fell back.

If I had knelt to him and begged his pardon, even then I might have been forgiven.

But an English youth to sue on his knees for mercy from a savage! Nay, it was not to be thought of.

The king sat down.

The king was silent for a space of time. The king took more rum.

Then he ordered ropes of skin to be brought, and I was bound hand and foot and taken away to a loathsome dungeon.

I knew I was to die next day, and I longed for sunrise to have it past, for I suffered excruciating agony from the tightness of the cords that bound me.

The time came. I was to form part in a procession, and did; I was carried shoulder-high, lying on my back on a kind of bark tray, amid tom-tom beating, howling, shrieking, and a deal of capering and dancing that at any other time I should have laughed most heartily at.

At the execution ground goats and cocks were killed, then it came to my turn.

The king came to have a last look at me. The cords were undone, and I stood up staggering because my feet were swollen. The king looked at my hands: they were swollen double the size.

The king rubbed his nose.

The king was thinking.

“Now,” he must have thought, “here is a hand (meaning my swollen fist) that couldn’t hurt anybody. What a chance to redeem my lost honour!”

The king took more rum.

Then he started from his throne and shouted. What he said matters little. At the conclusion of his speech I was again dragged up to fight the king. If I could have hit him then I would have done so. But with such hands, how could I? So it ended in my being fearfully punished.

Then there was such shouting and yelling as I had never before heard in my life. But I was free.

The king took more rum.

For a whole year after this I was kept under almost constant surveillance, but there was no more fighting.

Sometimes the king and his savages went away on the war-path, for many weeks together. When they did so, I was confined in a dungeon, and had no other companions except frogs, lizards, and centipedes. All the food they gave me was a piece of dried cassava root (the root from which arrowroot is made), daily, and I had very little water.

But in spite of my hardships, I grew strong and robust. Probably, if I had not been a friendless orphan, if I had had a mother for instance, or a father, or sisters, or brothers, in a far-off home to think about, my misery would have been greater; as it was I had no one, for I believed that Roberts and all the people of the Niobe had been slain in that terrible fight at Zareppa’s fort.

Amelioration of my sufferings came at last, and in a strange way.

The king fell ill.

The king took more rum.

The king grew worse, and all the sorcery of his medicine men could not cure him, so I was sent for.

I had seen Jooma putting poison into the rum, and I told the king he had been poisoned. Who had done so? he asked: the culprit should die. No human being, I was determined, should die on account of anything I said. I told him, however, that next day I should fetch the evil creature who had destroyed the health of the king. Meanwhile the rum was poured on the ground, and I made him a pill of the poison berry, and a little scraped cassava root. He saw me mix it. His medicine men assured him it would be death to take it; I took a pill myself, and when he saw I did not die, he followed my example, and took two or three. For I had found out that in small doses this poison berry was medicinal. The king slept, and awoke refreshed.

Then he called for the culprit who had dared to poison his rum.

I went and found Jooma. I told him that his guilt was discovered, and that his life was in my hands; that a word from me would march him to the execution ground. He knelt and prayed for mercy. I told him he needn’t trouble, that Englishmen were far too honourable to harbour revenge. Then I made him bring a very old and savage billy-goat, and together we brought it to the king.

The king was greatly pleased. He said he never had liked the looks of the billy-goat, and he had no doubt that it had worked some deadly spell upon his rum. So the billy-goat – poor beast – was slain, and after a few more pills the king got better, and I was chief favourite among all the tribe.