Harry Milvaine: or, The Wanderings of a Wayward Boy

“Stay, brother, stay; I will not sit and hear such exclamations. Allah is good, but tempt him not, or he may leave you to a fate worse than that which befel your own brother in Zanzibar.”

“Yes, my brother was hanged, hanged at the hands of those infidel dogs. Oh! Mahmoud, Mahmoud, can you wonder if I sometimes forget myself, forget your teaching, and loose grip of our religion? My wife, too, Mahmoud, chased on shore – death by jungle fever. Would you have me forget that also, Mahmoud?”

“Yes,” said Mahmoud, solemnly; “I’d have you forget even that.”

Suliemon was standing by the little window, gazing seawards, and as Mahmoud spoke the last word —

“Look, look!” he shouted, or almost yelled. “It is she – it is my dhow – deep, deep, in the water – scudding northwards before the breeze; they are going to beach her ere she sinks – Allah! Allah be praised! I’ll have my wish!”

He girded his sword-belt more tightly as he spoke, and, without even a word of farewell to Mahmoud, rushed out, and down the Stone stairs. They ended in a little narrow lane which conducted him to the sands.

At once, on his appearance, all games were stopped. The boys dropped their bones, the young men sheathed their swords and shouldered their spears, and next minute he was surrounded. They knew by the face of their warlike chief he had something of much importance to communicate.

His words were brief and to the point. “Fifty of you I want,” he said. “You, Saleedin,” he continued, “will be captain. Be well-armed, bring irons and surf-boats, and carry with you water, boiled rice, and dates. Bid your friends farewell, the journey may be a long one.

“Saleedin, keep along on the brow of the hill, but keep the boys out of sight behind, keep abreast of yonder dhow, and when she is beached come quickly to me: I shall be on the shore.”

Right well had the captain of the double-masted slave dhow – captured by the Bunting– played his game. Right well and right cleverly.

As speedily as possible the dhow had been put in charge of Harry Milvaine; probably three hours had scarcely elapsed ere she and the gunboat parted company.

Knowing well that he could rely on his men, Harry retired about eleven o’clock to the beautiful saloon, and having caused Doomah, the Arab interpreter and spy who was acting steward, to light the lamps, he threw himself on a couch and gave way to thought. He did not feel at all inclined to sleep, and somehow or other, he, to-night, felt under the shadow of a cloud of melancholy. He could not account for it, he was seldom otherwise than light and bright and happy.

Being a Highlander, he was naturally somewhat superstitious.

“I would give worlds,” he said to himself, “to know what is doing at home to-night, and to be sure that my dear mother and father are well. Dear old father, sitting even now, perhaps, smoking his everlasting meerschaum behind his Scotsman. And mother – reading. Oh! would I could sit beside her for a moment, and tell her how often her boy thinks of her!”

Then all the events of his young days rose up before his mind – his governess and Towsie Jock; he laughed, melancholy though he was, when he thought of that night in the tree – his garden, his summer-house, and pets, and his dear friend Andrew.

He touched a gong and Doomah appeared.

“Are you sleepy?”

“No, sir, I not sleepy.”

“Then come and tell me a story – the story of your life.”

“Ah! dat is not mooch, sir. Plenty time I be in action. I have many wounds from Arab guns.”

“Because you’re a spy, you know.”

“A spy, sir! Not I, sir. No, I am interpreter; I fight in de interests of de Breetish Queen of England.”

“Well, well, have it so.”

“Pah! I no care dat mooch for de Arabs. Pah! When dey catch me den dey kill me. What matter? Some day all die. I am happy, I have one, two, tree wife, and dey all love Doomah, ebery one mooch more dan de oder. And when I go home I shall marry Number 4. Ha! ha!”

Doomah kept talking to Harry till all his melancholy had almost if not quite gone.

It was now about four bells in the middle watch, and Harry was thinking of sleep, when the curtain was drawn aside and Nicholls the bo’s’n entered. He was Harry’s lieutenant.

“Sorry to say, sir, the ship is leaking like a sieve, sir.”

“That is bad news, Nicholls,” said Harry, starting up.

“It be, sir; but what makes matters worse is that I believe she is scuttled.”

“But there were no signs of leakage before we parted with the Bunting.”

“No, indeed, sir, these rascally slaver Arabs know what they are about. The scuttling was filled up with paper, sure to come out after she had a few hours of way on her.”

“This is serious indeed. Think you – can we keep her afloat till we reach Zanzibar?”

“If we could pump, yes.”

“Well, rig the pump.”

“It is gone, sir. Doubtless thrown overboard.”

“That is indeed serious, Mr Nicholls.”

By daybreak the breeze had freshened considerably, but veered a bit, and was now dead ahead. The water had gained so much that the slaves had all to be taken on deck. Bailing was kept up, but seemed to do comparatively little good.

Harry walked up and down the deck for some time in deep thought. At last he called Mr Nicholls.

“Put her about,” he said, “she’ll make less water, then we will try to run for Magadoxa. We know the Parsee merchant there. And the Somalis are civil.”

“As civil,” said Nicholls, “as Somalis can be, when you are not standing under the lee of British bayonets. Trust a Somali and make friends with a fiend.”

The dhow went round with terrible flapping of her enormous sails, and much creaking of blocks, her great wings almost dragging the vessel on her beam ends.

But she went fast enough now. Dhows do fly before the wind, and, water-logged though this vessel was, her speed was marvellous.

She was far out at sea, however, and soon had to be hauled closer to the wind in order to gain the shore.

By midday they were about fifteen miles south of Brava, but the wind was falling, and the dhow now fast filling. They staggered past the ancient little town, but all hopes of reaching Magadoxa soon fled, and it became evident to every one that they must soon beach her or sink.

The coast here is most dangerous, owing to the number of sunken rocks, and to the long stretches of shallow water – water on which the breakers sometimes run mountains high, as the saying is, but where between the waves the bottom was everywhere close to the surface. Only the native surf-boats could get over shoals like these.

Looking for a place on a lee-shore on which to beach a vessel is sad work, and trying to the nerves; you may pass a fairly good spot, thinking to come to a better; you may go farther and fare worse.

Harry’s, however, was a decided character, and when he came, some ten miles to the north of Brava, to a spot where the breakers did not seem to run extremely high —

“Here it must be, Nicholls. Stand by to lower both our boats.”

“Starboard, as hard as she’ll go.”

Up went the tiller, round came her head, and a minute afterwards she struck with such fearful violence on a coral rock, that her masts, none of the strongest, went thundering over the side.

“We must try to save the slaves first, Nicholls.”

“That will we, sir. Never a white man should cease to work until these poor abject creatures are safely on shore.”

“Bravo! Nicholls. Well spoken, my brave man! I will not forget you when opportunity offers.”

Harry cast his eyes shorewards, the breakers were thundering on the beach, but no one was visible except a solitary armed Arab.

“Lower away the boats. Gently.”

The dhow was already bumping fearfully on the reef and rapidly going to pieces.

To stand on deck without clinging to bulwarks or rigging was impossible. The condition of the slaves was now pitiable in the extreme. They were huddled together, buried together, one might say, in one long cluster, dying, smothering each other, and drowning in the lee scuppers, for the sea was breaking clean over the wrecked and dismasted dhow.

Our fellows – bold blue-jackets – took them one by one as they came; they had almost to lift them down into the boats, so utterly prostrated with fear were they.

At last a boat got clear away.

Hardly had they left the dhow’s side, when high over the moaning and cries of the poor negroes, high over the sound of roaring tumbling waves and broken hissing water, arose a shout of triumph, and looking in the direction from which it proceeded, Harry could see the previously all but deserted beach swarming with armed and naked Indians.

The boat rode in on the top of a breaker, and was speedily seized and hauled up high and dry. The men were roped and thrown on their backs, and the slaves placed in a corner among rocks and guarded by spear-armed Somalis.

Then surf-boats were launched, and speedily got alongside the dhow.

Thinking nothing about his own safety, Harry was nevertheless glad to see that the slaves were being taken off, and saved from a watery grave, whatever their ultimate fate might be.

His men and himself were rowed on shore in the last boat that left that doomed slave dhow.

In this boat sat that grim dark Arab I have introduced to the reader at the commencement of this chapter.

For some time he sat sternly regarding Harry. The young Highlander returned the gaze with interest.

“Would you not like,” he said at last, “to know your fate?”

“No. And if it be death, I know how to face it.”

“It is death. It is justice, not revenge. I am Suliemon. I was captain of that dhow. Now you know all and can prepare.”

Like his poor men, Harry was bound hands and feet and placed by their side, fully exposed to the fierce glare of the tropical sun.

How very long the day seemed! But the evening came at last. Then great fires were lighted on the beach, the flare falling far athwart the waves, and giving the breaking waters the appearance of newly drawn blood.

The scene was wild in the extreme; only the pen of a Dickens and the pencil of a Rembrandt could have done justice to it. The trembling group of slaves – the waves had sadly thinned their ranks – lying, squatting, or standing on the sands, the poor white men, with pained, sad faces, the rude cords cutting into ankles and wrists, the wild gesticulating armed Indians, and the tall figure in white gliding, ghostlike, here, there, and everywhere.

One of the boats belonging to the Bunting was now carried to the rear, and on his back across the thwarts, still bound, Harry was placed. Dry wood was piled beneath him. Dry wood was piled all round the boat.

He shut his eyes and commended himself to Heaven. Even then he thought of his poor father and mother far away in their bonnie Highland home, and he prayed that they might never know the fate that had befallen him.

The Indians formed themselves into a fiendish circle, and danced, yelling, around him, brandishing sword and spear.

But the dark Arab commanded silence.

“Your hour has come,” he said, solemnly.

“This,” he added, “is justice, not revenge.”

Book Three – Chapter Two.

Harry is Made a Slave – The Journey Inland – Escape

As he spoke these dread words the dark-skinned Arab seized a lighted torch from an Indian, and was about to apply it to the pyre, when his arm was struck upwards, and the torch alighted harmlessly on the soft sand.

It was Mahmoud who had struck the blow.

For a moment the two men stood confronting each other. Even Mahmoud now had a drawn sword in his hand.

“For his worthless life,” cried the latter, “I care not, but for your eternal welfare, brother, I do. I have saved you from a deadly sin. Take not thus rashly away the life you cannot give.”

“Back!” he shouted to the Somali Indians, and they shrank cowering and silent before the wrath of this strange being whom they called a prophet.

With a sharp knife he now severed Harry’s cords, and bade him stand up.

“You are my prisoner,” said Mahmoud in good English; “you are my slave. If you make no attempt to escape, you shall be comparatively free; attempt to fly, and – ”

He tapped the hilt of his sword as he spoke, and Harry knew only too well what was meant.

He passed a sleepless night until within an hour or two of morning, when he dozed off into a pained and dreamful slumber, from which he was roused at daybreak by Mahmoud himself. To his great surprise and grief, the beach was almost deserted. Some armed Indians still lay near the white ashes of the dead fires, but his men, the other Arab, and all the rest of the Somalis were gone.

“Eat,” said Mahmoud, “you have far to go.” He placed a dish of fragrant curry before him as he spoke, and Harry partook of it mechanically.

“Where am I to be taken to?” he inquired of this warlike priest.

“Ask nothing,” was the reply. “I have saved your life, be thankful to Allah. Prepare to march.”

Surrounded by armed, grinning Somalis, many bearing parcels on their heads, with Mahmoud trudging on in front, the journey was commenced, straight away across the sandy hills, where only here and there some little tuft of grass or some pale green weed was growing.

At the top of the ridge Harry, in spite of his guard, paused for a moment to look back. Never, he thought, had the sea looked more lovely. Save where in whitish yellow patches the coral shoals were showing, the whole surface, unrippled by a wavelet, was of a deep cerulean blue. Here and there a shark’s fin made the water tremble, and here and there a white bird floated.

“Oh,” he thought, “could he only be as free as one of those happy sea-birds! But never again,” he sighed; “no, never again!”

Even in the morning the sun was fiercely hot, but towards noon it became almost insupportable, and Harry was glad indeed when green things appeared at last, and the halt was made in the shade of a little forest land – a kind of oasis in a barren desert. Here was a cool spring and a few cocoanut trees.

Some of the Somalis climbed these as one climbs a ladder, holding on like monkeys to little stirrup-like steps that ran all up one side of the trees. They then cut and threw down some of the greenest, and Harry, in grief though he was, was glad enough to regale himself on the proffered fruit. They were filled principally with “milk,” for the nut itself was hardly yet formed, otherwise than as a transparent jelly.

It may interest some of my young readers to know how the water or milk of the cocoanut is got at, after the great nut has been thrown to the ground by the monkey-like boy in the tree.

Cocoanut trees grow all over the tropical world, and their appearance must be familiar to every one – immensely tall stems with feathery-like tops formed of great palmate leaves. The stems are hardly as thick as an ordinary larch, and they are seldom altogether straight. Close to the tree-top, and in under the leaves, as if to hide from the blazing sun, grow the nuts. When large enough for use one or two are culled. The nut itself is covered by the thick, green husk – that which Sally scrubs the kitchen floor with at home here in England; it is young now, however, but tough enough. The “nigger” at the tree-foot, who has been very careful to look after his own nut while the fruit came tumbling down, now thrusts a stake pointed at both ends into the ground; against the protruding point he strikes the top of the cocoanut with all his force again and again till he has forced open a portion of husk. Then his knife comes into play, and presently he has quite cut away the top of the husk and nut as well, for the shell is still soft. Then he hands you the cool green cup, and before drinking you look inside and see only water with just a little clear jelly adhering to the inside of the shell. You drink and drink and drink again – there is probably about a pint and a quarter of it. Oh, how sweet, how cold – yes, cold– how delicious it is! Probably after you have drunk all the water, you may care to eat some of the jelly, which you scoop out with your knife the best way you can. Well, you will confess when you try it that you never really tasted cocoanut before. Neither Christmas pudding, nor custard, nor anything ever you ate in life is anything to be compared to it.

Yes, the cocoanut tree is well suited to the climate in which it grows; it is a God-gift to the native and to travellers from foreign lands. I may add that it is chiefly near the sea you find the cocoanut tree, for it is a thirsty soul. And no wonder. Look at those broad, green leaves expanded to the sun, from which the sap must be constantly evaporating.

When cruising on the shores of Africa in open boats, towards evening we used to look out for a part of the coast, where we saw cocoanut trees rearing their nodding heads high in air. There we used to land, certain that we would find native huts and human beings at the foot of them, from whom we could buy fowls to make our cock-a-leekie soup and stew, previously to pulling off from the shore and lying at anchor to wait the coming morn.

All this is a digression, still I have no doubt it will be found interesting to some, and the others are welcome to skip it.

After a few hours of grateful rest, on went the caravan, Mahmoud himself at its head, trudging steadily, sturdily along, his eyes for the most part cast on the ground, and leaning on his spear. He never deigned to address a word to Harry – not that Harry cared much for that, for his back was turned to the sea, he was leaving all he cared for in the world, and going into exile, going he knew not whither. His prospects were as dreary as the scenery around him, and what is more heartless to behold than a barren plain stretching away apparently to the illimitable, without hill and with hardly rising ground, stunted bushes here and there, and beneath one’s feet the everlasting scrubby, “benty,” half-scorched grass? He thought this day would never end, that the sun would never decline towards the hazy horizon. But it did at last. It went round and stared them in the face; then it seemed to sink more rapidly, and finally – all a blaze of purple red – it went down.

The short twilight was occupied by Mahmoud and his yellow-skinned minions in preparing for the night’s bivouac.

Wood was collected, a clearing was found on which to build a fire, and by and by supper was cooked.

Then Mahmoud retired to prayers!

He took a little carpet, and, going to a distance away, knelt down, then threw himself on his face in a devotion which I doubt not was sincere enough. We ought not to despise the Mahometan religion, nor any religion, for any religion is better than none. Oh! woe is me for the boy or girl who retires to bed without having first felt grateful for the past, and commended his or her soul to Him for the night!

Harry Milvaine did not forget to pray.

No, he did not; and, like a Scotch boy, he always concluded his devotions with our Lord’s Prayer; but ah! how hard he thought it to-night to breathe those words, “Thy will be done”! It seemed that Heaven itself had deserted him.

For Harry was very low in spirits.

Whither did his thoughts revert? Home, of course. It was a pleasure to think of the dear ones far away, even although something seemed to whisper to him that he would never see them more.

Presently he fell into a kind of stupor. He had collected the withered grass in his immediate neighbourhood and formed it into a sort of pillow, and on this his head lay.

When he awoke – if he really had been asleep – the moon was shining very bright and clearly, the camp-fire had died to red shining embers, around it in various positions lay the Somali Indians, not far off was Mahmoud himself, while beside Harry’s grass pillow, leaning on his rifle, stood the sentinel. This rifle had belonged to one of Harry’s own men, so had the belt and well-filled pouch.

Harry raised himself on his elbow.

The sentinel never moved. There was a deep, death-like stillness over all the place, broken only now and then by the eldritch laugh of some prowling hyaena.

For a moment thoughts of escape came into Harry’s mind. He was unfettered; he was, indeed, on a kind of parole. In so far only as this: the Arab Mahmoud had told him he should be free from fetters unless he attempted to escape; if he did so, he would either be shot down at once, or, if captured alive, manacled as a slave. Harry’s answer had been bold enough.

“I accept parole,” he had said, “on those conditions, and if I attempt to escape you may shoot me.”

He sat up now and looked about him. The sentinel moved a few paces off and stood ready. But hearing his prisoner cough, and observing his perfect nonchalance, he stood at ease once more. Harry threw himself back. He shuddered a little, for dew was falling, and the night air was chill. Instead of sleeping it was his purpose now to think, but his thoughts soon resolved themselves into confused and ugly dreams, in which scenes on board ship were strangely mixed up and jumbled with those of his life at home and at school.

When he awoke again it was broad daylight, and all the camp was astir.

He ate his breakfast of boiled rice and dates in silence, and shortly after this a start was made.

Another long weary day.

Another weary night.

What the caravan suffered most from was the want of water. It was small in quantity and of such wretched quality, being thick, dark, and smelling, that Harry turned from his short allowance in loathing and disgust.

The route was ever inland, day after day. Knowing what he did of the country, Harry thought it strange they were following no direct road or caravan path. Sometimes they bore a little south, at other times almost directly north.

It was evident enough, however, that Mahmoud, their bold and stern leader, knew what he was about, and knew the country he was traversing, for he never failed to find water, without which a journey in this strange land is an impossibility.

The thought of escaping – the wish to escape – grew and grew in Harry’s mind till it formed itself into a fixed resolve.

He would have carried it out at the earliest moment had he deemed it prudent, but there was the want of water to be considered. What good escaping, only to perish miserably in the wilderness? He would wait till the country became less barren.

The caravan in its route inland forded more than one broad stream. By the banks of these they sometimes journeyed for many miles, rested by day or camped at night.

Where, Harry often wondered, were his poor men? What fate was theirs, and what would his own fate be?

That he was to be sold into slavery, he had little, if any, doubt; and the truth was rendered more patent to him one evening by overhearing a conversation in Swahili between two of the Somalis. It referred to him, and mention was repeatedly made of the name of a great chief called ’Ngaloo, a name he had never heard before.

“Perhaps,” thought Harry, “my men, too, are being driven to this king’s country, though by a different route.”

But this was improbable. Had he believed it at all likely he would have gone on patiently with his captors, and have shared the fortune of the poor fellows, whether that might be death or slavery.

No, he determined to escape.

His chance came sooner than he had anticipated.

The caravan was encamped one night by the banks of a stream – a deep and ugly stream it was, its banks bordered by gigantic euphorbia trees or shrubs, so shapeless and ugly, that betwixt Harry and the moonlight they looked living uncanny things, and it needed but little imagination on his part to make them wave their arms and make motions that were both fantastic and fiend-like.

Harry was lying with his eyes half-shut looking at them when suddenly the sentinel bent down and gazed for a moment earnestly into his face. Suspecting something, but not knowing what, he pretended to sleep, breathing heavily, with an occasional sob or sigh, but ready to spring in a moment if foul play were meant.

The sentinel now left his side and strode away on tiptoe – though with many a stealthy backward glance – around the sleeping caravan. He went so far as to touch several of the Somali Indians with his foot. But when a Somali does sleep it takes a deal to rouse him. Seemingly satisfied, he came back and had one other look at Harry, then walked straight away to the river’s brink.