Harry Milvaine: or, The Wanderings of a Wayward Boy

The whaler, being lighter, well-manned and well-steered by Harry, took the lead.

The Bunting came slowly on after the boats.

But behold! the latter are seen from the dhow’s decks, and lights spring up at once, and a rattling volley flies harmlessly over the heads of our advancing heroes. At the same time it is evident that boarding-nets are being quickly placed along the bulwarks of the slaver.

In a few minutes the whaler is at the bows of the dhow. This was unprotected by netting, and low in the water, for the vessel was deep. Harry was the first to spring on board, followed instantly by his fellows.

He speedily parried an ugly thrust made at his throat by a spear, and next moment his assailant fell on his face with a gash on his neck and his life’s blood welling away. For a few seconds this part of the dhow bristled with spears, and one or two of Harry’s men succumbed to the lunges and fell to the deck.

But the Arabs retreated before the charge, fighting for every inch of deck, however.

Meanwhile the cutters were boarding. They were cutters in more ways than one, for they had not only to defend themselves against spear-lunging, but to slash through the netting.

A bright white light now gleamed over the dhow’s deck. The Bunting was nearly alongside, and burning lights.

It was well this was so, for on the deck of that slave dhow stood fully seventy as brave Arabs as ever drew a sword or carried a spear.

They went down before our blue-jackets, nevertheless, in twos and threes. The modern colt is a glorious weapon when held in a cool hand and backed by a steady eye.

Their very numbers told against these Arabs, but they fought well and desperately, for they were fighting with the pirate-rope around their necks. Arab dhows who fire on our British cruisers are treated as pirates, and, when taken red-handed, have a short shrift and a long drop.

That they fought with determined courage cannot be gainsaid – gentlemen Arabs always do – but they have not the bull-dog pluck of our fellows. They cannot hang on, so to speak; they lack what is technically called “stay.” Nor were they fighting in a good cause, and they knew it.

They knew or felt that they could not, if killed, walk straight from that blood-slippery battle-deck into the paradise of Mahomed.

Add to this that their weapons were far inferior to ours. Their spears were easily shivered, and even their swords; while their pistols could scarcely be called arms of precision.

So after a brave but ineffectual attempt to stem the wild, stern rush of our British blue-jackets, they fell back towards the poop, so huddled together that the fire of our men riddled two at a time. They finally sought refuge in the poop saloon, and even down below among the remainder of those poor trembling slaves who had not been butchered or forced to walk the plank.

Many were driven overboard, or preferred the deadly plunge into the ocean to falling into the hands of the British.

The captain surrendered his sword, standing by the mainmast. He was a tall and somewhat swarthy Arab, and spoke good English.

“Slay me now, if so minded, you infidel dogs,” he shouted, “or keep me to satiate your revenge?”

Meanwhile, up rose the moon – a vermilion moon – a moon that seemed to stain all the waves with long quivering ribbons of blood, and the shadows of the two ships were cast darkling on the water far to the west.

A wretched half-caste Arab was found skulking under the poop, and dragged forth by one of the Bunting’s men. He had not been in the fight, yet he had a most terrible appearance.

He was very black and ferocious-looking, dressed only in one white cotton garment, with a rope for a girdle, from which dangled an ugly knife.

This fiend in human form was dabbled in blood; his face, hands, bare arms, and all the front of his garment were wet with gore. He had been the butcher of the innocent slaves.

He was dragged forth and dragged forward, but suddenly, with an unearthly yell, he sprang from the sailor’s grasp, and next moment had leapt into the sea.

He was watched for a few moments swimming quickly away from the ship, then a strange commotion was seen near him, and the wretch threw up his arms and disappeared.

He had been dragged under by the sharks.

It is through no love of the sensational I pen these lines, reader, nor describe the capture of this blood-stained dhow. The story is almost from the life, and I deem it not wrong that my young readers should know something of the horrors of the slave trade.

Two hundred living slaves were found in the hold of the dhow, many dead were among the living, and many dying. And it will never be known in this world how many poor creatures were butchered or thrown overboard to lighten the ship.

The vessel was condemned at Zanzibar, and taken away out to sea and set on fire. Nothing was taken out of her except a few shields and spears that the men got by way of curios. She was simply burned, and sank hissing and flaming beneath the waves.

The slaves were liberated. Well, even their liberty was something. But that would not restore them their far-off happy homes amid the wild and beautiful scenery in the African interior: no, nor restore them their friends and kindred. Henceforward they must languish in a foreign land.

“What became of the captain of the dhow?” I fancy I hear some of my readers ask. Have I not, I reply, given you horrors enough in this chapter? But, nevertheless, I will tell you. He and five others were hanged. This end was at all events less revolting than an Arab execution as sometimes carried out. Fancy five political offenders tied hand and foot, and placed on their backs all in a row in the prison yard, an Arab executioner with a sharp sword leisurely stepping from one to another and half-beheading them!

It was a very lovely morning. Harry came on the quarter-deck just as a great gun was fired from the bows of the Bunting; making every window in the front part of the town rattle, and multiplying its echo among the distant coral islands. That gun told the condemned men that their day had come.

“What a lovely morning!” said Harry to Mavers, who was leaning over the bows, looking seaward and eastward where the sun was silvering a broad belt of long rippling wavelets.

“Charming,” replied Mavers; “but bother it all, Milvaine, old man, I fell asleep last night thinking about those poor beggars that have to die this morning.”

“So did I,” said Harry, “and I dreamt about them.”

“You see,” continued Mavers, “it is one thing dying sword in hand on a battle-deck, and another being coolly hanged. But notwithstanding, Milvaine, don’t let us fall into the blues over the matter; the villains richly deserve their fate.”

“Yes,” he added, after a pause, “it is a lovely morning. What a beautiful world it would be if there was neither sin nor sorrow in it!”

The doctor joined them. He was a young man of a somewhat poetical temperament, curiously blended with an intense love for anatomy and post-mortems, and a very good fellow on the whole.

“Talking about the condemned criminals? Eh?” he said. Then he laughed such a happy laugh.

“I’m going to post-mortem them. Will you come and see the operation?”

“Horrible – no!”

“Oh, it is all for the good of science. Shall I describe it?”

“No, no, no?” cried Harry.

“Then come below to breakfast, boys.”

“Why,” said Mavers, “you’ve almost taken away my appetite.”

“And mine too,” said Harry Milvaine.

“Stay,” exclaimed the doctor, “I will restore it. Listen.”

He threw himself into an attitude as he spoke.

“Sweetly, oh, sweetly the morning breaks            With roseate streaks,Like the first faint blush on a maiden’s cheeks.Alas! that ever so fair a sunAs that which its course has now begunShould gild with rays, so light and free,That dismal dark-frowning gallows-tree.”

“I’m not sure,” said Mavers, laughing, “that you haven’t made matters worse. But come along, we’ll go below, anyhow.”

The Bunting, as her name implies, was only a little bit of a gunboat, but to the slave-dealing dhows she became the scourge of the seas in the Indian Ocean, all the way south from Delagoa Bay, to Brava and Magadoxa in the north.

She was always appearing where least expected, sometimes far out at sea, at other times inland on rivers or wooded creeks. She could sail as well as any dhow, and that is saying a good deal, and she could steam well also.

Many a prize fell to her lot, many a cutting-out expedition the boats had, and right bravely they did their work. So the prize money that would fall to the share of even the ordinary seamen when the commission was completed, would be rather more than a trifle.

On Saturday nights, when, after dancing for a time to the merry tunes the doctor played on his fiddle, the sailors would assemble round the fo’c’s’le to smoke their pipes and quaff the modest drop of rum they had saved to toast their sweethearts and wives in, they might be heard building castles in the air as to what they would do with their prize money.

Perhaps the conversation would be somewhat as follows: —

“I’m going to pour all my prize money into my old mother’s lap straight away as soon as I gets it.”

“Ah! well, Jack, you have a mother, I hain’t, but I’ll give mine to my Soosie. My eye! maties, but she’s a slick fine lass. Talk about a figure! Soosie’s is the finest ever you saw. Blow’d if two arms would meet round her waist, fact I tells ye, mates. I’ve seen a rye-nosser-oss with not ’arf so fine a figure as Soosie’s got.”

“But,” another would say, “I’m going to keep all my prize money in the bank till I serves my time out in the service; then I’ll take a public-house.”

“That’s my ambition too, Bill.”

“Yes, and ain’t it a proper ambition too?”

“That it be.”

“And if ever any of you old chums drops round to see Jack behind his bar counter – ahem! my eye! maties, won’t I be glad to see you just! Won’t I get out the longest clay pipe in the shanty, and the best nigger head! And won’t I draw ye a drop o’ summut as will make all the ’air on your ’eads stand straight up like a frightful porkeypine’s! And maybe there won’t be much to pay for it either?”

It will be noted from the above conversation that the aims in life of the British man-o’-war sailor are seldom of a very exalted character.

But even in the little ward-room prize money was not altogether left out of count in conversation on Saturday nights.

“I believe,” said the doctor once, “I shall have over a thousand pounds when I get home. I think I’ll cut the service, buy a shore practice, and settle down.”

“Bah!” cried Mavers, “you’re too old a sailor for that, Mr Sawbones. Don’t talk twaddle. Take out your old fiddle and give us a tune.”

The worthy medico never required two biddings to make him obey a behest like this.

Out would come the violin, and his messmates would speedily be in dreamland as they listened; for the doctor played well on that king of instruments.

Songs were sure to follow, during which very often the door would open, and there would be seen standing smiling the captain himself.

You may be sure that room was speedily made for him, and so these happy evenings would pass away till eight bells (twelve o’clock) rang out Ding-ding, ding-ding, ding-ding, ding-ding – that is the way they went, and this warned every one it was time to turn in.

The Bunting could not be said to be a very well-found ship, as far as the officers’ mess was concerned. There is as much difference usually between the mess in a gunboat and a flagship as between that of a humble cottage and a lord mayor’s mansion.

So the Buntings, as the other ships called them, roughed it rather. They could have bought nice things about big towns like the city of the Cape, or even at Zanzibar, but they had only the ship’s cook, and the steward was a half-caste Portuguese, whose only strong point was an excellent curry, into which, however, he often slipped more garlic that was palatable to English tastes.

For three more years the Bunting carried it with a high hand among the slavers on the Eastern coast. Even Harry himself now began to long for home, and to see his dear mother and father again.

Letters came but about once in three months, and the mail never failed to bring Harry a bundle that kept him reading for a week, because he read them all over and over again, put them aside for days, took them out once more, and again read them.

His old friend Andrew’s letters were always comical, and his good-natured, simple face invariably rose up before our hero’s mind’s eye as he perused them.

Even his old dominie did not forget Harry. By almost every mail now the Buntings expected a letter from their lordships ordering them home.

It came at last, and, strange to say, it came on. Captain Wayland’s birthday.

“Putting both events together, boys,” said the doctor to his messmates, “I really don’t think we can do better than invite the skipper to dinner.”

“Good?” cried Harry.

“Hurrah!” cried another.

“Steward!” cried Dewar.

“Ess, sir; Ise here, sir.”

“Well, come here, you dingy son of a Portuguese cook.”

The steward threw his apron over his left shoulder and entered from the steerage.

“Can you give us a ripping good feed to-night, and have it all on the table smart at half-past six?”

“Let me see, sir,” said the steward, placing a forefinger on the corner of his mouth and looking profoundly wise. “What I would propose, sir, would be diss ting.”

“Well? – out with it.”

“Der is French Charlie on shore here.”

The ship, by the bye, was lying off the Sultan’s Palace, in the roadstead at Zanzibar.

“Yes – French Charlie?”

“Well, sir, he cook one excellent dinner, and wait too; and myself, sir, vill make de curry.”

“Very well, steward, but mind this, if there be one-sixth of a grain of garlic in the whole boiling of it, you shall swing at the yard’s arm.”

“Ver goot, sir.”

“Now, off with you on shore, and give your orders. Don’t forget to be off in time. Take the dingy and bring off quickly a boat-load of flowers and green stuff.”

Mr Dewar was just as quick at work as he was with his tongue and sword, and both of the latter, it was universally allowed, he could make the best of.

He was ably supported on this occasion by the whole strength of the mess, including Simmonds, the clerk – they were but five in all – and the engineer himself.

The captain cheerfully accepted the invitation, and proposed to the surgeon that forward in the course of the evening they should splice the main-brace.

The doctor assented with alacrity, and the ship’s stores thus expended were afterwards put down as sick-bay comforts.

The steward was off in good time, with foliage and flowers. Then a huge awning was rigged on deck, and lined with flags and candles stuck amidst the flowers, and branching bayonets and cutlasses.

The steward did his duty nobly; so did French Charlie.

For once there smoked on the tables of the Bunting a banquet that the Sultan himself would have enjoyed.

The toast of the evening, after the loyal ones, was of course Captain Wayland; and that gentleman replied in the neatest little speech that had ever been heard on the deck of a man-o’-war.

The dessert on the table deserves especial notice. No place in the world can vie with Zanzibar for its fruit, and here were samples of probably a score of different sorts, almost unknown in England. The pine-apples were especially delightful, appealing to eye, to scent, and taste all at once. But probably the king of fruits was the mango. If this is indeed Eve’s apple, one can hardly wonder our first parent fell. The trees these grow on in the forest of this beautiful isle of the sea are a picture. Fancy an enormous chestnut with its branches weighted to the ground with fragrant fruit somewhat like peaches, but each as big as a cocoanut!

The sides of the deck-tent were decorated with flowers, but on the table itself stood the choicest of all. Shall I describe them? I cannot, for —

Here my muse her wings must cower,’Twere far indeed beyond her powerTo praise enough e’en one sweet flower.

When dessert had been done moderate justice to, then the end of the curtain was drawn aside, the steward brought up the “sick-bay comforts,” and in due form the main-brace was spliced; and every man as he raised the cup to his lips wished long life and prosperity to their jolly captain.

After this there was a wild hurrah! and in the very midst of it the doctor started playing.

Well, some of my readers may have seen sham sailors dancing on the stage. But never on any stage is such wild footing witnessed as that which graces the deck of a man-of-war on a night like the present.

But everything has an end. The men retired at last to the bows and fo’c’s’le to talk of home and spin yarns till long past midnight.

Meanwhile the officers once more surrounded the festive board, and after a few songs story-telling commenced.

As one at least of the yarns spun was not devoid of humour, I do not think I need apologise for repeating it.

It was the doctor’s yarn.

He helped himself to an orange and a mango and a handful of nuts and raisins, to pare, to eat, to crack, and to pick, because the truth is the doctor was a Scotchman, and Scotchmen never talk half so well as when they are doing something, if it be only whittling a stick.

“Ahem!” began the doctor, clearing his throat.

“Attention, gentlemen,” said Mr Dewar, the president.

Book Two – Chapter Five.

The Surgeon’s Yarn

“You must know, then,” said Dr Scott, “that though I do not vouch for the absolute truth of this story, the reason is that I was not myself one of the actors therein. But I have it on what I call indisputable authority, for old Brackenbury, who is the principal hero, told it to me one evening in his little place down in sunny Devonshire. And I do not believe that Brackenbury ever told an untrue tale in his life.

“A funny old fellow was Brackenbury, and it seemed to me that he must always have been old – must have been born old. He wasn’t a handsome man, nor had he a pretty face; his nearest and dearest wouldn’t have said he had. Yet, gentlemen, it is truly wonderful what a change for the better the play of a good-natured smile throws over even the plainest countenance. And Brackenbury used to smile from his very heart. Then he had such honest, truthful eyes that you couldn’t have helped liking the man.

“But to my tale, as Burns says.

“Goodness knows how long ago it is, but Brackenbury was then about in his prime, and commanded a fine vessel, that, after discharging a mixed cargo at Sydney, was ordered on a kind of a mixed cruise round to San Francisco, which was only a small village then, but had the gold fever rampant. Here he had to take on board specie, with a gentleman as supercargo. They were then to slip southwards along the western shores of South America, calling at Callao for goods from Lima, and so onwards round the Horn and home.

“I don’t think that Brackenbury and the supercargo, Mr O’Brady, liked each other over much. There was a natural jealousy between them. Brackenbury looked upon O’Brady as a kind of spy on his actions, and O’Brady didn’t like Brackenbury’s airs, as he was pleased to call them.

“Never mind, they were shipmates and messmates, and they settled down together as well as they could.

“Lima was in those days a hot place, socially speaking, but Brackenbury and his supercargo found themselves most hospitably treated. There was one tall, dark, handsome gentleman, called Pedro Dolosa, whom they frequently met at dinner-parties, who used to smoke much with them and hob-nob in the cool verandahs after dessert. He took to them very much apparently, and they were both flattered by his attention, for was he not a count, Le Comte Pedro de Dolosa? That was his tally complete.

“Brackenbury opened his heart to him; O’Brady was jealous, and opened his heart still more wide to Le Comte Pedro de Dolosa; and these two old fools did what they had no right to do – they told this strange count what their cargo was.

“However, the Adelaide left Callao at last, and after encountering a gale that blew them a long way out of their course, they lost their reckoning; but one day they found themselves pretty close to the shore again, and, the weather being now fine, they managed to find out their whereabouts.

“They were south the line, and on a lovely coast.

“‘I move,’ said Brackenbury, ‘that we enjoy ourselves a bit; I’m fond of shooting and botany.’

“‘So am I,’ replied O’Brady.

“Now more than once they had seen a very pretty little yacht careering about, as if watching them, but they had no suspicion of anything like foul play.

“It was seen again and again after this, but when one day it stood away in through an island-bound creek —

“‘I’ll bet a penny,’ said Brackenbury, ‘that that is some English lord out on the sport; what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, let’s follow him.’

“‘Agreed,’ said O’Brady.

“And so they did.

“They soon found themselves in an unusually romantic spot. A little bay it was, with a native village at the head of it, which looked imposing as seen from the sea. Then there was a beautiful river meandering down through a well-wooded, rolling valley, and far inland were hills and mountains.

“The yacht lay there at anchor, but she had hoisted Spanish colours. Next morning at breakfast —

“‘I feel unusually young this morning,’ said Brackenbury.

“‘So do I,’ replied O’Brady. ‘It’s the air, I suppose, but I do feel as gay as a lark.’

“‘Suppose we have a little lark, then, all by ourselves up in this valley – eh? What say? A kind of private picnic?’

“‘Is it safe?’

“‘Yes, safe as anything. We’ll take a few blue-jackets with us and a big hamper.’

“‘Well, I’m with you,’ said O’Brady, briskly.

“The spot looked so sweetly peaceful. Who could ever have dreamed that danger lurked in those lovely woods? The whole scene was more like one in our own delightful Devonshire than in the wilds of South America.

“Nor had the usual crowd of boats surrounded the vessel, and when the gig from the Adelaide landed the supercargo and captain, so well clad were the natives, and so peaceful did they seem, that Brackenbury felt half inclined to apologise to them for his armed escort.

“Two padres met them and saluted, and when told the errand that had brought them on shore, at once agreed to escort them to the head of the valley, where, the padres assured their illustrious visitors, there was the finest scenery in the world. This interpreter was a tall Chilian, a by-no-means prepossessing fellow either. He was enveloped in a kind of blanket cloak, carried a pole in his hand, and wore a broad, peak-crowned sombrero of very greasy straw. His pointed beard and long black locks were greasy also. In fact he was altogether grim and greasy, and his speech was too oily to be pleasant.

“The coach that the padres had provided was apparently about a hundred years old, but the four horses attached to it seemed fit for anything.

“They took their seats at last, the padres crowded in beside them, and the great hamper was put up on top, the Chilian interpreter sat down beside the driver, and away they rumbled and rattled.

“Rumbled? Yes, rumbled; that is the exact word. Brackenbury and O’Brady had never got such a shaking and jolting before. But the higher up the valley the coach went, the grander grew the scenery. Every now and then at a turn of the road, away beneath them they caught glimpses of the green glen basking in the summer sunshine, the river gliding through it like a silver thread, falling at last into the bright blue bay, where lay the ship with its little white boats floating peacefully astern.

“But the scene grew wilder still, and oh! what a wealth of woodland beauty was all around them, covering the tops of the round hills, climbing halfway up the sides of precipitous mountains, clinging over cliffs and waterfalls, and fringing lovely lakes, the water of which was so pellucid that the sandy bottom was seen yards and yards from the shore.

“Anon the coach would plunge into a wood of pines and mimosa, draped in the most gorgeous of creeping flowers, while down beneath lovely snow-white heather showed in charming contrast to the mantle of scarlet and green, that half hid the sun from them.