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

to

view the bodies, to their astonishment, they found that Zareppa had

gone.

 

He had only shammed death, then, in order to escape!

 

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Incidents of the very saddest character are soon forgotten in the

service. It is as well it should be so. But a battle is no sooner

fought than the decks are carefully washed, the damages all made good,

and even rents and holes in the ship's side, that might well redound to

her honour, are not only carefully repaired but painted over. And

whenever a vessel has had sails torn in a gale of wind, sailors are put

to mend them on the following day.

 

For modesty always goes hand-in-hand with true valour.

 

In a fortnight after the fight in the river the brave _Niobe_ was once

more at sea, and looking all over as smart a craft as ever sailed.

 

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Just as I wrote these lines my good friend, Captain Roberts, looked over

my shoulder.

 

"Ay, lad," he said, "and she _was_ a smart craft too. They don't make

such ships now, and they couldn't find the men to man 'em if they did.

I tell you, Nie, it was a sight that used to make Frenchmen stare to see

the old _Niobe_ taking down top-gallant masts."

 

"Well, my dear old sea-dad," I replied, "of course you are fond of the

good old times. It is only natural you should be."

 

"But they _were_ times. Why, nowadays they could no more do the things

we did than they could pitch a ball o' spun yarn 'twixt here and

Jericho. I'm right, lad, I tell you, and I should know."

 

"Oh!" I replied, "for the matter of that, I was living in those brave

old days as well as yourself."

 

"Yes, so you were," cried the old captain, laughing. "You were borne on

the books o' the old _Niobe_ as well as myself, and a queer little chap

you were when first we met. Heigho! time flies: it's more'n forty years

ago, Nie."

 

"Wait half a minute," I said, for I knew the old man was going to spin

me a yarn that I was never tired of hearing--the story of my own early

years. Why was it that I liked to hear him tell the tale over and over

again, you may ask. For this reason--he never told it twice quite the

same: always the same in the main incidents, doubtless, but with

something new each time.

 

"Wait half a minute."

 

"Ay, ay, lad!"

 

I brought out the little table and set it down under his favourite tree

on the lawn, and placed thereon his favourite pipe and his pouch.

 

The old sailor smiled, and drew his great straw chair up and sat down,

and I threw myself on the grass and prepared to listen.

 

The captain had his two elbows on the table; he was teasing the tobacco,

and when he began to speak he was evidently following out some train of

thought, and addressing the tobacco, not me.

 

"As saucy a wee rascal he turned out as ever put a foot on board a

ship," said Captain Roberts.

 

"Whom are you talking about, old friend?" I asked.

 

"I'm talking about baby Nie," replied the captain, still addressing the

tobacco. "I wonder, now, what would have become of him, though, if it

hadn't been for old Bo'swain Roberts. Why, he would have died. Died?

Ay, but I wouldn't see poor Sergeant Radnor's baby thrown to the sharks,

not for all the world. Fed him first on hen's milk [the name given by

sailors to egg beaten up in water]. Didn't do well on that. `Cap'n,'

says I to the skipper one day, `soon's we go to Zanzibar we must get a

nanny-goat for the young papoose, else he'll lose the number of his

mess, and the doctor will have to mark him D.D.' [discharged dead.]

`Very well, Roberts,' says the skipper, `that's just as you like.'

 

"Now our purser was a mean old fellow. `Nanny-goat!' he cries, when I

went to ask him for the money. `What next, I wonder? the service is

going to the deuce. No, Her Majesty pays for no nanny-goats, I do

assure ye.'

 

"I just touches my hat and marches off to our dear old doctor. I knew

he had a kindly heart. `Nanny-goat,' cries he, `why, of course the

darling baby'll have a nanny-goat. We'll keep it out of the sick-mess

fund, and mark it down medical comforts.' [Note 1.] `Excuse me, sir,'

said I, catching hold of the doctor's hand--it was as rough as my

own--`but you're a brick.'

 

"And that, `Nie,' is how you came for the first five years o' your life

to be called nothing else but young `medical comforts.'"

 

"Five years!" I said, "that is a long spell for a ship to be on one

station."

 

"Ay, lad, you're right. But ships were ships in those days.

 

"Young `medical comforts'," he continued, "as they called you, in less

than four years was a deal smarter than any monkey on board. Not that

he could climb quite so high, maybe, but he was more tricky, and that is

saying a lot. And it was among the monkeys that `medical comforts'

would mostly be, too.

 

"But the monkeys all seemed to like you, Nie; they would tease each

other, and fight each other, but they never touched you. There was one

animal in particular, and he was your favourite, the queerest old chap

you ever saw. We got him down in Madagascar, and they called him the

Ay-ay. Doctor always said he was a being from another world, a kind of

a spirit, and the men used to be afraid of him. He had hands like a

human being, but the middle finger was much longer than the others, and

not thicker than a straw. When only a baby, he used to dip this long

skinny finger in milk and give you to suck, and when you went to sleep

he never left your side. Sometimes he would stroke your face and say,

`Ay-ay' as tenderly as if he'd been a mother to you. But the men always

declared it was `Nie, Nie,' he'd be saying.

 

"But you had one pet on board that maybe you mind on--the Albatross?"

 

"I do," said I, "young as I must have been at the time."

 

"People say," the captain went on, "they've never been tamed; but there

he was, sure enough, in an immense great hencoop, that the doctor had

made for him, and there you'd be in front of him often enough, though he

would have cut the nose of anyone but yourself; and never a flying-fish

was caught you didn't get hold of, and take to him. The men got small

share of these. But, bless you, Nie, you were the ship's chief pet, and

the men would have gone through fire and water for you any hour of the

day or night.

 

"The jealousies there used to be about you, too, Nie! Why, lad, if it

had been a young lady it couldn't have been worse. Jealousies, Nie, ay,

and more than jealousies, for our fellows didn't need much to make them

strip to the waist and fight. Fact is, when times were dull with us, I

think they rather liked the excuse. I've heard a row got up for'ard

just in the following fashion:

 

"You would be playing on Davis's knee.

 

"`Give us half an hour o' the wee chap,' Bill would say.

 

"`Go along,' Davis would reply, `you 'ad him all day yesterday.'

 

"`He's smilin' to me,' Bill would say.

 

"`Smilin' _at_ you, you mean,' Davis would answer derisively.

 

"`Smilin' at your ugly face. Why, that mouth o' yours couldn't be made

any bigger 'athout shifting your ears back.'

 

"This would be enough.

 

"`Come below,' Bill would cry, `and I'll see if a big ugly lubber like

you is to cheek me!'

 

"`Go with him, Davis!' half a dozen would cry. `_I'll_ hold the

youngster!'

 

"And there would be such a scramble to get you, that I used to wonder

you weren't torn to pieces. And all the while that animal with the long

skinny middle finger would be jumping around like a demon and crying--

 

"`Ay-ay!--Ay-ay!--Ay-ay!'

 

"As he never cried like this without all the monkeys following suit, and

all the parrots whistling and shrieking--on occasions like these, Nie,

there was five minutes of a rough ship, I can tell you."

 

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Note 1. Medical comforts are luxuries for the sick, bought at the

surgeon's discretion out of the sick-mess fund.

CHAPTER FOUR.

 

"Still onward, fair the breeze nor rough the surge,

The blue waves sport around the stern they urge;

Far on the horizon's verge appears a speck,

A spot--a mast--a sail--an armed deck."

 

Byron.

 

"Well, Ben," I said, "life must have been very pleasant to me then."

 

"And isn't it now, Nie? isn't it now, lad? Look at the beautiful old

place that you have around you--all your own; you ought to be thankful.

Listen to the birds on this delightful morning, their songs mingling

with the cry o' the wind through the poplars. And, lad, you cannot draw

a breath out on the lawn here, without inhaling the odour of honey, and

the perfume of flowers."

 

"You are quite poetic, Ben Roberts," I replied.

 

"Quite enough to make the barnacliest old tar that ever lived feel

poetic, Nie," quoth Ben.

 

"Well, fill your pipe again, Ben."

 

"Ha! ha!" laughed the old man, "fill my pipe again, eh? That means

heave round with another yarn, eh?"

 

"Something very like it," I said.

 

"Well," said the captain, "an old man is to be forgiven if he does get a

little bit gossiping now and then, and wanders from his subject, and I

always was fond of a bit o' pretty scenery, Nie--pretty bits like the

old mill by the riverside down yonder."

 

"And a bit of fishing and shooting, Ben?"

 

"Ay, lad. But memory is at this moment taking me back to one of the

loveliest bits o' woodland landscape in the world. What a poem our

Robbie Burns could have written there! You were still the _Niobe's_

pet, but old enough now to be left at times without your sea-dad. Away

miles and miles into the wooded interior of Africa, we were a good long

distance south the Line, and just sitting down, me and my mates, to a

snack o' lunch on the banks of a roaring tumbling brook, where we'd been

bathing. We'd had a smartish week's shooting, and were thinking of

returning to the ship the very next day.

 

"Our guns were lying carelessly enough at some little distance, when

suddenly a branch snapped, and before any of us could have stood up to

defend ourselves, had it been an unfriendly Arab, or a savage Somali, a

dark skin pushed the branches aside and stood before us.

 

"It was our faithful Sweeba, the negro who had brought us the news of

Zareppa's intended attack on the night your poor father was killed, Nie.

 

"`Sweeba, what on earth brings you here?' says I.

 

"`Commander's orders,' said Sweeba, saluting.

 

"Now Sweeba was always dressed when on board like a British sailor, but

here he was almost as naked as the stem of a palm-tree.

 

"`What have you done with your clothes, Sweeba?' I asked.

 

"`I expect he has pawned them,' said little Brown, our purser's clerk.

 

"`I not can run muchee wid English clothes,' Sweeba said modestly.

 

"`And so you hid them in the bush, eh?'

 

"`Ah! Massa Roberts,' replied the negro, smiling; `you berry much

clebber.'

 

"`Well, and what are the commander's orders?'

 

"`You come back plenty much quick.'

 

"`Ship on fire?'

 

"`No, sah.'

 

"`Anything happened to Nie?'

 

"`No, sah. Nie and de monkey all right, sah.'

 

"`Well, explain.'

 

"`Only dis, sah, we goin' to fight Arab dhow.'

 

"We were all up quick enough at this intelligence. We didn't stop to

finish our luncheon.

 

"`Lead the way, Sweeba,' I cried.

 

"And off went Sweeba through the forest, we following in Indian file.

We didn't take more of the game with us than we could easily carry, so

the jackals had a good feed that night.

 

"It was a long and a rough road to travel. You know the style of thing,

Nie; the dark dismal woods, the broad