O'er Many Lands, on Many Seas, Gordon Stables [microsoft ebook reader TXT] 📗

the bulwarks ere it reached the water, while at the same

moment the whole ship was engulphed by a solid sea that swept over her

bows, and carried away almost everything it reached, bulwarks, boats,

and men.

 

Then, as if it had done its worst, the gale moderated, the sea became

less furious, the thunder ceased to roll, the lightning to play, and in

half an hour more the grey light of morning spread over the ocean, and

on the eastern horizon a bank of lurid red showed where the sun was

trying to struggle through the clouds.

 

With bulwarks ripped away and boats gone, the _Niobe_ looked little

better than a wreck, while, sad to relate, when the roll was called five

men failed to answer. Five men swept away during the darkness and

tempest, five brave hearts for ever stilled, five firesides at home in

merrie England made to mourn for those whom their friends would sadly

miss, but never, never see again!

 

But see: the gale begins once more with redoubled fury, and to the

horror of that unhappy ship, the wind goes round to meet the sun.

 

"I fear, sir," said the lieutenant to the captain, "that nothing can now

save us. We must die like men."

 

"That we will, I trust," replied the captain, "but we will die doing our

duty to the very last. Is there any one on board who knows this coast

well?"

 

"The boatswain, sir, Mr Roberts."

 

"Send for him."

 

"Ay, ay, sir."

 

"Mr Roberts, what think you of the outlook?"

 

"A very poor one, captain. But I have been looking at the land, sir,

and hazy though it is I find we are right off the bar of Lamoo."

 

"Why, then, we must have been driven back many many miles; we were off

Brava last night."

 

"I reckon, sir, we made up our leeway at times like, when there was a

bit of a shift of wind, and lost it again when it veered. But our only

chance now is to head for that bar, sir."

 

"You've been over it?"

 

"I have, sir, many is the time; and I'll try to pilot the good _Niobe_

over it now."

 

"Very well, Mr Roberts, you shall try; if you succeed, you are a made

man, if you fail--"

 

"All," said the boatswain, "I knows what failure'll mean, sir."

 

Half an hour afterwards, stripped of nearly every inch of canvas save

what sufficed to steer her, with four men at the wheel, and the sturdy

pilot guiding them with hand movements alone--for his voice could not be

heard amid the raging of the storm and awful roar of the breaking

billows that were everywhere around them--the brave _Niobe_ was rushing

stem on through the mountain seas that rolled shorewards over the most

dreaded bar on all the African coast.

 

It is impossible to describe the turmoil and strife of the waves when

the vessel was once fairly on the bar; and to add to the terror of the

scene more than once she struck the sandy bottom with a force that made

every timber creak and groan. Next moment she would be swallowed up

apparently in boiling, breaking, swirling water, but rising again on the

crest of a wave, she would shake herself free and rush headlong on once

more.

 

But look at her now: she is on the very top of a curling avalanche, and

speeding shorewards with it, her jibboom and bowsprit, and even part of

her bows, hang clear over that awful precipice of water, and if the ship

moves faster than the breaker beneath her then her time is come.

 

It is a moment of awful suspense, but it is only a moment, for in

shorter time than pen takes to describe it, the billow seems to sink and

melt beneath her; again she bumps on the sand, but next minute amidst a

chaos of snowy foam she is hurled into the deep water beyond.

 

An hour afterwards the _Niobe_ is lying snugly at anchor in a little

wooded bay, with all her sails furled, and nothing to tell of the

dangers she has just come through, save the splintered mast, the ragged

rigging, and sadly-torn bulwarks.

 

But the wind goes moaning through the mangrove forest, where birds and

beasts are crouching low for shelter among the gnarled boughs and roots,

and although the water around the _Niobe_ is calm enough, the storm

roars through her upper rigging, and she rocks and rolls as if out at

sea.

 

The youthful sergeant is sitting beside the cot within the screen, but

his head is bowed down with grief, and a sorrow such as men feel but

once in a life-time is rending his heart. The little white hand of his

wife still lies on the coverlet, but it is cold now as well as white.

The heart that loved him had ceased to beat--

 

"And closed for aye the sparkling glance

That dwelt on him sae fondly."

 

All his bright visions of yesterday have fled away, all his hopes are

crushed, his very soul seems dead within him.

 

------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

At the very time the gale was raging its fiercest, and the sea

threatening every minute to engulph the ship, the lady's life had passed

away, and he who sits here pen in hand was left without a mother's care.

Born on the stormy ocean, rocked in infancy on the cradle of the deep,

no wonder he loves the sea, and can look back with pleasure even to the

dangers he has encountered and gone through.

 

As the sea on which he was born, so stormy has been the life of him who

tells this tale.

CHAPTER TWO.

"Majestic woods of every vigorous green,

Stage above stage, high waving o'er the hills;

Or to the far horizon wide diffused,

A boundless deep immensity of shade."

 

Thomson's "Seasons."

 

"Hearts of oak!" our captain cried, "when each gun

From its adamantine lips,

Spread a death-shade round the ships,

Like the hurricane eclipse of the sun."

 

Campbell.

 

There are two events in the history of a man, of which he himself in

writing his autobiography can hardly be expected to give any very clear

account, namely, his birth and his death. To describe the former, he

would require to be born with his eyes very wide open indeed, and

instead of a silver spoon in his mouth, which they tell me some children

are born with, a silver pencil-case behind his ear; to describe the

latter, a man would need to be a prophet in reality. How is it then, it

may be asked, that I, Niobe Radnor, am able with truthfulness and

accuracy to give an account of the occurrences that were taking place

around me when I first made my appearance on "the stage of life." For

the ability to do so, I am indebted to the only father I ever knew, my

true and trusty old friend Captain (formerly boatswain) Ben Roberts, who

supplies me with the facts.

 

Yonder he is, sitting out on the rose lawn there, as I write, book in

hand, his white beard glittering in the spring sunshine, and his jolly

old round red face surmounted by an immensity of straw hat--just as if

_his_ complexion _could_ be spoiled, just as if a complexion that has

borne the brunt of a thousand storms, been scathed and scarred in

battle, blistered by many a fierce and scorching summer sun, and

reddened by the snows of many a hard and stormy winter, _could_ be

spoiled.

 

Ah! dear old Ben! he is getting old, wearing up towards the threescore

years and ten--

 

"--That form

That short allotted span.

That binds the few and weary years

Of pilgrimage to man."

 

Yes, Ben is getting old. As oaks get old, so is my faithful friend

getting old. As oaks in age are hard and tough, and defiant of the

gales that rage through the forest, uprooting mighty trees, so is Ben my

friend; and for all the storms he has weathered, I trust I shall have

him by me yet for years and years to come. Ben is so buoyant and fresh,

it always instils new blood into my veins merely to talk to him. "Ben,

my boy," I often say, "you are, by your own confession, some twenty

years my senior, and yet I believe you feel as young and even younger

than I do."

 

"Well, Nie," he replies, "I believe it's the heart that does it, you

know.

 

"For old as I am, and old as I seem,

My heart is full of youth.

 

"Eye hath not seen, tongue hath not told,

And ear hath not heard it sung,

How buoyant and bold, though it seem to grow old,

Is the heart for ever young.

 

"For ever young--though life's old age

Hath every nerve unstrung;

The heart, the heart, is a heritage

That keeps the old man young."

 

He always calls me "Nie" for short, "because," he added once, by way of

explanation, "your name is a heathenish kind of one at best, but a

person is bound to make the most of it."

 

I cannot deny that Ben is right; my name is a heathenish one. How did I

come by it? I will tell you. I was born, as you know, at sea, in the

Indian Ocean, in the _Niobe_, whilst she was cruising in that region in

the search of slavers--born not long before the appearance of that

terrible gale of wind described in the first chapter of this story, when

the tempest was at its fiercest, and the stormy waves were doing their

worst; born on board a vessel which seemed doomed to certain

destruction. And it is the custom of the service to call a child by the

name of the ship in which he first sees the light of day.

 

I never knew a father's love or a mother's tender care, for the gentle

lady who gave me birth lived but a little after that event; but she

bequeathed me all she had--her blessing--and died. In a glade in the

gloomy depths of an African forest my mother is sleeping, in the shade

of a banian tree. I stood by that lonely grave one morning not many

years ago. The ground, I remember, was all chequered with sunshine and

with shade from the tree above; little star-like primulas grew here and

there. Among these and the fallen leaves sea-green lizards were

creeping; high overhead bright-winged birds sang soft lullabies, and

every time the wind moved the boughs a whole shower of sparkling drops

fell down, like tears.

 

And my father? He never seemed to rally after my mother's death until

one hour before his own, just a fortnight and a day from that on which

he had followed her to her grave in the forest like one dazed. He did

not appear in his mess-place after this. He took no food, he spoke to

no one, he spent his time mostly within the screen by the empty cot

where my mother had been--in grief.

 

About the tenth day he suffered my friend Roberts (the boatswain) to

lead him like a child to the spare cabin where his baby boy was

sleeping; and in a daze he had seen her loved remains laid to rest

beneath the tree. He bent over the grave for a moment, and then for the

first time he burst into tears.

 

------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

The _Niobe_ remained for ten days where she had cast anchor, in order to

make good repairs.

 

It was a very quiet spot in which she lay, a kind of bay or bight, as

the sailors called it, with mangrove trees growing all around it close

down to the water's edge, except at the one side where the great river

stole silently away seaward, its current seeming hardly to affect in any

degree the waters in the bay itself.

 

At last all repairs were finished, and the "clang, clang, clang" of the

carpenters' hammers, that had been till now incessant all day long, and

far into the night, was hushed, sails were shaken half loose, and the

_Niobe_ only waited for a breeze to bear her down the river and across

the great and dreaded bar, where, even in the calmest weather, the

breakers rolled and tumbled