Chapter XVI Poor Bungle! Just let him Sleep
Sail in sight!
It was a shout from a man on the outlook on the fore-topmast cross-trees.
“Where away?” sang Guilford, who was on duty.
“On the starboard bow, sir. Well in towards the land. Just coming round the wooded point yonder.”
“Why, sir,” he hailed a few minutes afterwards, “it ain’t one, but three, four o’ them there is.”
Guilford went scrambling up into the maintop with his glasses slung over his shoulder. He was too tall to make a very graceful sailor, but he got there all the same.
It was in the forenoon watch, just two days after they had left the slave camp in the creek. The other cruiser had gone on before with a large cargo of the freed slaves, and would be in Zanzibar ere now.
At the very first hail from aloft everyone had hurried on deck, to get if possible a peep at the enemy, for no one doubted for a moment that these great dhows, now slowly rounding the point, were the fighting fleet of the daring Arab Viking, Abdularram.
They were prettily manoeuvred, and at first it was hoped that they would bear down upon the Breezy and attack.
But Abdularram—who had not been killed after all—was too good an admiral to do anything of the kind. His tactics were those of naval guerilla warfare, and now he filled sail and stood out to sea, bearing up for the south and east. The reason was simply because the wind blew in this direction, and before a breeze a well-rigged dhow is as fleet as a drifting cloud.
“Prepare for action!”
Right merrily now the bugle rang out over the clear, blue rippling water. The very sea-birds seemed to rejoice at the sound, and came sweeping nearer and nearer, apparently trying to repeat the call.
In a few minutes’ time all was ready as far as arms were concerned.
Full speed was now the order on board the Breezy, and steam was got up, for the fires had only been banked.
Meanwhile, it is needless to say that the doctor was not idle, nor his able assistant, Kep, either. The wounded men, with the exception of a few of the worst cases that had been sent on in the other ship, had been placed under a canvas screen, forward near the bows on the upper deck, and these had to be carefully moved below.
Your British tar makes a most kindly and gentle nurse, and it was a pleasure to note how tenderly the seamen McTavish had called to his assistance bore their shipmates down below, and laid them on the deck.
Meanwhile the chase went on. The dhows had a long start; but by afternoon the wind had gone down somewhat, and the Breezy was soon coming up hand over hand. At three o’clock she succeeded in disabling two with shot and shell. A third had escaped. Seeing boats lower to board the crippled dhows, No. 4 bore down upon them and prepared to render assistance, but a shell from the Breezy went screaming through her rigging; then she filled and fled, leaving her comrades to their fate. They made a gallant resistance; but their defenders were finally beaten off their own blood-slippery decks and battened down below. Prize crews were put on board with orders to bear up for Zanzibar; and then the Breezy went on after the largest dhow, the flagship of Abdularram himself.
Abdularram in his great dhow escaped entirely when the darkness fell like a pall over sea and land, for to-night there was never a star, the glass was going down, and there was every likelihood of a storm. And it soon began to blow.
This made it hard for every one.
“Bad luck,” said Guilford, “not to catch that scoundrel.”
“Bad luck for the wounded also,” said McTavish; and so it turned out, for several of these died before morning, the pitching and rolling of the Breezy being very great.
“How is your boy Bungle?” asked one of the middies as Kep, looking somewhat crest-fallen, entered the gun-room.
“He is very low indeed,” replied Kep, “and the doctor thinks he cannot live.”
“Going to slip his moorings, is he? Poor little devil! Is he sensible?”
“Oh, yes, and bears his sufferings like a small hero, as indeed he is.”
“Ah, well!” said the middy, “that’s the tack we’ll all be on—some day. Mellor, give that decanter of wine you seem to stick to, a fair wind this way.”
“I’m holding on to it,” said Mellor, “because it has a ball-bottom and won’t stand on the table.”
“Of course it won’t. It was made like that on purpose, you untamed idiot, so that dolts like you should pass it round.”
The Breezy arrived at Zanzibar all right in two days’ time, in spite of the storm.
War-worn and weary, that same night the good surgeon had sunk to sleep among his wounded men on deck, and some kind-hearted sailor had drawn a tarpaulin over him. It was broad daylight when he awoke him.
“I let you sleep, sir. I thought you needed it. Another man dead, sir, and poor boy Bungle going fast, I fear. Insensible now.”
“Just let him sleep,” said McTavish.
But when Kep went back to the brave little lad’s hammock Bungle opened his eyes, and smiled faintly.
“Is there anything you would like, Bungle?”
“In dis world, no,” was the faint reply. “But you speakee my ole mudder. Tell she, dat Bungle nevah fo’got.”
Then his left hand was half raised to his brow as if to touch his forelock. Next moment it fell heavily on the coverlet.
Bungle was gone.
Only a little black boy? True, but may we all do our duty as bravely and well in the world as Bungle did his.
The wounded were all sent to hospital. They would be conveyed to the Cape by the very next steamer.
But something was in the wind surely, for the fleet on this station now received orders by cable to return to Symon’s Bay with all speed after taking in sufficient coal.
Kep had time to go on shore. He went in mufti, not his Arab dress. In mufti and after dark. He could do nothing to find out the whereabouts of little boy Bungle’s “ole mudder,” and so she would never know what had been the fate of her little son.
Perhaps it was better so. For she would do now as most mothers do—just live on in hope of one day seeing him back again.
Taking great care not to be seen, Kep now went to pay a visit to his friend the Arab and to wee Zeena.
I need not waste a sentence in telling of the reception he had nor of the happy evening he spent, or the farewells said. Zeena was Kep’s little romance, and it would be very long indeed before he could forget the child.
Why had the ships been ordered down to the Cape? It is a question I cannot really answer. It was now the year 1908, and notwithstanding the great advances in every kind of science, there will still be a few blind men at the Admiralty and in the Government generally. The consequence was that there was far too much wire-pulling. Much was lost by our fleets on the various stations having to wait for orders from home.
The scare on this particular occasion was brought about by what was called an unpremeditated attack by a supposed German cruiser on some British merchant steamers.
In fact some of the latter had been looted and sunk, and their crews and passengers landed almost starving on the nearest land. But as the Germans disclaimed all knowledge of the cruiser, which they advanced in their arguments must be a sort of pirate or Alabama, then the British bull-dog began to growl, and the peace-at-any-price tried to appease him, and said he must not fly at poor Germany, for that heavenly land and all in it were most friendly to the bull-dog. Negotiation, negotiation, that, they said, would settle all disputes.
Well, it eventually did in this case at all events. But there were wheels within wheels, political mining and counter-mining, and intrigues deep and shallow.
Be all this as it may, Zanzibar was for the present left unprotected save by its own fleet. Now this fleet was a very good one, as I have before hinted, and if manned by British seamen it could really have done some splendid execution when it came to be wanted. At present it lay in the open roadstead, and was even anchored without much system.
The new Sultan was very easy-minded. The ships made a fine show. That was delightful, and especially did he love to look upon them on gala days. In fact, he made gala days and kept birthdays and high days, just for the pleasure of seeing his war-ships dressed all over with bunting. And such a blaze of colour had really a fine back-ground by day in the blue bright Indian Ocean.
Then when darkness came the Sultan spent a deal of his pocket money precisely as boys do in the first week in November. He went in heavily for fireworks, and the ships were all lit up with blue or crimson fire. The Sultan of Lamoo was not a fool, and he had some heavy men (of other nations be it whispered) who backed him. He had, moreover, a splendid admiral in Abdularram. Perhaps he knew more about dhow-fleets than gun-boats or cruisers, but he had men on board the spit-fire shiplets of Lamoo that knew far more about the newest class of torpedoes than they did about the Koran.
There is a tradition (as in a former book of mine I mentioned) that one time—date forgotten—when Zanzibar was not so valuable a possession, but a city nevertheless of some 300,000 inhabitants, an enormous fleet of armed dhows suddenly appeared like a cloud of locusts on the distant horizon. And like the locust-cloud, it bore right down upon the city, and an army of strange men was thrown upon the beach and at once attacked the Sultan’s forces. These had soon been made an end of, and the palace was robbed.
The whole town was looted—women carried off, and all who resisted slain.
But, so says the tradition, the army at last re-embarked, carrying with them their dead and wounded, then this Armada put to sea again. They disappeared beyond the horizon and were never seen nor heard tell of in this world again.
They were foreign men, they were foreign dhows, foreign devils all, but who they were or whence they came may never be known.
However, history was now going in some measure to repeat itself, without so much of the mysterious.
Down the beautiful river, therefore, which after gliding through a quiet landscape of green and charming forest, rolls over a sandy bar and empties itself into the Indian Ocean, there dropped one day the midget fleet of Lamoo, and one by one braved the danger of the only opening in the reef, and got clear and safely out.
They were small vessels, very, but every one of them carried death on her decks, and death between decks, in the shape of guns and torpedoes.
They numbered only ten and were all of the same class.
If they were lacking in anything it was speed, and although they had good gunnery men on board their engineers had none too much skill. In addition to sailors proper their decks were crowded with dare-devil fighting Arabs, many of the chiefs of whom had old scores to settle with the inhabitants of Zanzibar.
They had orders from the Sultan of Lamoo to bring back with them the Sultan of Zanzibar—alive. He must be alive, Lamoo said, for in the fierce heat of the tropics, “if dead he would not keep a day.”
The Sultan of Lamoo found great pleasure in preparing quarters for his coming sovereign guest. The palace, which looks a very noble one and quite imposing from the broad river front, was specially refurnished, and all that the art of the twentieth century could suggest was lavished thereon. He had even ordered new dresses for himself all ablaze with the most precious stones, and the ladies of his harem were also, much to their delight, refitted as it were. For this wicked Sultan was to lead his august prisoner all through the palace—securely manacled of course—in order to dazzle his eyes with its gorgeousness.
He had bought the best new gramophones and pianolas for this especial purpose, with pictures galore, and carpets as soft as feather beds. Indeed he had not regarded expense in any way, and determined even to permit his majesty to have a peep inside his beautiful harem, the ladies of which he had specially trained to close on his entry in every form of gracefulness imaginable, and on these as they posed colour flash lights were to be turned.
This was all very delightful, especially for Lamoo himself, but his guest’s bedroom had also to be refitted and replenished, for here he was to remain for a week, or as much longer as he chose to live without food, unless he chose to devour the awful rats and reptiles with which this slimy dungeon was purposely stored.
When the fleet was once fairly at sea, the three happiest men anywhere on the coast of Africa were Admiral Abdularram, who gloated on the thoughts of the coming bombardment, the Sultan of Zanzibar because he was in blissful ignorance of what was to happen, and Lamoo himself, as he mused all day and dreamt all night about the treat he had in store for his kingly guest.