Medical Life in the Navy, Gordon Stables [classic fiction .txt] 📗
- Author: Gordon Stables
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daily, with this difference,--the former pay for theirs, while the
latter do not.
CHAPTER TEN. - ROUND THE CAPE AND UP THE 'BIQUE. SLAVER-HUNTING.
It was a dark-grey cloudy forenoon when we "up anchor" and sailed from
Simon's Bay. Frequent squalls whitened the water, and there was every
indication of our being about to have dirty weather; and the tokens told
no lies. To our little craft, however, the foul weather that followed
seemed to be a matter of very little moment; for, when the wind or waves
were in any way high, she kept snugly below water, evidently thinking
more of her own convenience than our comfort, for such a procedure on
her part necessitated our leading a sort of amphibious existence, better
suited to the tastes of frogs than human beings. Our beds too, or
matresses, became converted into gigantic poultices, in which we nightly
steamed, like as many porkers newly shaven. Judging from the amount of
salt which got encrusted on our skins, there was little need to fear
danger, we were well preserved--so much so indeed, that, but for the
constant use of the matutinal freshwater bath, we would doubtless have
shared the fate of Lot's wife and been turned into pillars of salt.
After being a few days at sea the wind began to moderate, and finally
died away; and instead thereof we had thunderstorms and waves, which, if
not so big as mountains, would certainly have made pretty large hills.
Many a night did we linger on deck till well nigh morning, entranced by
the sublime beauty and terrible grandeur of those thunderstorms. The
roar and rattle of heaven's artillery; the incessant _floods_ of
lightning--crimson, blue, or white; our little craft hanging by the bows
to the crest of each huge inky billow, or next moment buried in the
valley of the waves, with a wall of black waters on every side; the wet
deck, the slippery shrouds, and the faces of the men holding on to the
ropes and appearing so strangely pale in the electric light; I see the
whole picture even now as I write--a picture, indeed, that can never,
never fade from my memory.
Our cruising "ground" lay between the island and town of Mozambique in
the south, to about Magadoxa, some seven or eight degrees north of the
Equator.
Nearly the whole of the slave-trade is carried on by the Arabs, one or
two Spaniards sometimes engaging in it likewise. The slaves are brought
from the far interior of South Africa, where they can be purchased for a
small bag of rice each. They are taken down in chained gangs to the
coast, and there in some secluded bay the dhows lie, waiting to take
them on board and convey them to the slave-mart at Zanzibar, to which
place Arab merchants come from the most distant parts of Arabia and
Persia to buy them. Dhows are vessels with one or two masts, and a
corresponding number of large sails, and of a very peculiar
construction, being shaped somewhat like a short or Blucher boot, the
high part of the boot representing the poop. They have a thatched roof
over the deck, the projecting eaves of which render boarding exceedingly
difficult to an enemy.
Sometimes, on rounding the corner of a lagoon island, we would quietly
and unexpectedly steam into the midst of a fleet of thirty to forty of
these queer-looking vessels, very much to our own satisfaction, and
their intense consternation. Imagine a cat popping down among as many
mice, and you will be able to form some idea of the scramble that
followed. However, by dint of steaming here and there, and expending a
great deal of shot and shell, we generally managed to keep them together
as a dog would a flock of sheep, until we examined all their papers with
the aid of our interpreter, and probably picked out a prize.
I wish I could say the prizes were anything like numerous; for perhaps
one-half of all the vessels we board are illicit slaveholders, and yet
we cannot lay a finger on them. One may well ask why? It has been
said, and it is generally believed in England, that our cruisers are
sweeping the Indian Ocean of slavers, and stamping out the curse. But
the truth is very different, and all that we are doing, or able at
present to do, is but to pull an occasional hair from the hoary locks of
the fiend Slavery. This can be proved from the return-sheets, which
every cruiser sends home, of the number of vessels boarded, generally
averaging one thousand yearly to each man-o'-war, of which the half at
least have slaves or slave-irons on board; but only two, or at most
three, of these will become prizes. The reason of this will easily be
understood, when the reader is informed, that the Sultan of Zanzibar has
liberty to take any number of slaves from any one portion of his
dominions to another: these are called household slaves; and, as his
dominions stretch nearly all along the eastern shores of Africa, it is
only necessary for the slave-dealer to get his sanction and seal to his
papers in order to steer clear of British law. This, in almost every
case, can be accomplished by means of a bribe. So slavery flourishes,
the Sultan draws a good fat revenue from it, and the Portuguese--no
great friends to us at any time--laugh and wink to see John Bull paying
his thousands yearly for next to nothing. Supposing we liberate even
two thousand slaves a year, which I am not sure we do however, there are
on the lowest estimate six hundred slaves bought and sold daily in
Zanzibar mart; two hundred and nineteen thousand in a twelvemonth; and,
of our two thousand that are set free in Zanzibar, most, if not all,
by-and-bye, become bondsmen again.
I am not an advocate for slavery, and would like to see a wholesale raid
made against it, but I do not believe in the retail system; selling
freedom in pennyworths, and spending millions in doing it, is very like
burning a penny candle in seeking for a cent. Yet I sincerely believe,
that there is more good done to the spread of civilisation and religion
in one year, by the slave-traffic, than all our missionaries can do in a
hundred. Don't open your eyes and smile incredulously, intelligent
reader; we live in an age when every question is looked at on both
sides, and why should not this? What becomes of the hundreds of
thousands of slaves that are taken from Africa? They are sold to the
Arabs--that wonderful race, who have been second only to Christians in
the good they have done to civilisation; they are taken from a state of
degradation, bestiality, and wretchedness, worse by far than that of the
wild beasts, and from a part of the country too that is almost unfit to
live in, and carried to more favoured lands, spread over the sunny
shores of fertile Persia and Arabia, fed and clothed and cared for;
after a few years of faithful service they are even called sons and feed
at their master's table--taught all the trades and useful arts, besides
the Mahommedan religion, which is certainly better than none--and, above
all, have a better chance given them of one day hearing and learning the
beautiful tenets of Christianity, the religion of love.
I have met with few slaves who after a few years did not say, "Praised
be Allah for the good day I was take from me coontry!" and whose only
wish to return was, that they might bring away some aged parent, or
beloved sister, from the dark cheerless home of their infancy.
Means and measures much more energetic must be brought into action if
the stronghold of slavedom is to be stormed, and, if not, it were better
to leave it alone. "If the work be of God ye cannot overthrow it; lest
haply ye be found to fight even against God."
CHAPTER ELEVEN. - AN UNLUCKY SHIP. THE DAYS WHEN WE WENT GIPSYING. INAMBANE. QUILP THE PILOT AND LAMOO.
It might have been that our vessel was launched on a Friday, or sailed
on a Friday; or whether it was owing to our carrying the devil on board
of us in shape of a big jet-black cat, and for whom the lifebuoy was
thrice let go, and boats lowered in order to save his infernal majesty
from a watery grave; but whatever was the reason, she was certainly a
most unlucky ship from first to last; for during a cruise of eighteen
months, four times did we run aground on dangerous reefs, twice were we
on fire--once having had to scuttle the decks--once we sprung a bad leak
and were nearly foundering, several times we narrowly escaped the same
speedy termination to our cruise by being taken aback, while, compared
to our smaller dangers or lesser perils, Saint Paul's adventures--as a
Yankee would express it--wern't a circumstance.
On the other hand, we were amply repaid by the many beautiful spots we
visited; the lovely wooded creeks where the slave-dhows played at hide
and seek with us, and the natural harbours, at times surrounded by
scenery so sweetly beautiful and so charmingly solitary, that, if
fairies still linger on this earth, one must think they would choose
just such places as these for their moonlight revels. Then there were
so many little towns--Portuguese settlements--to be visited, for the
Portuguese have spread themselves, after the manner of wild
strawberries, all round the coast of Africa, from Sierra Leone on the
west to Zanzibar on the east. There was as much sameness about these
settlements as about our visits to them: a few houses--more like tents--
built on the sand (it does seem fanny to see sofas, chairs, and the
piano itself standing among the deep soft sand); a fort, the guns of
which, if fired, would bring down the walls; a few white-jacketed
swarthy-looking soldiers; a very polite governor, brimful of hospitality
and broken English; and a good dinner, winding up with punch of
schnapps.
Memorable too are the pleasant boating excursions we had on the calm
bosom of the Indian Ocean. Armed boats used to be detached to cruise
for three or four weeks at a time in quest of prizes, at the end of
which time they were picked up at some place of rendezvous. By day we
sailed about the coast and around the small wooded islets, where dhows
might lurk, only landing in sheltered nooks to cook and eat our food.
Our provisions were ship's, but at times we drove great bargains with
the naked natives for fowls and eggs and goats; then would we make
delicious soups, rich ragouts, and curries fit for the king of the
Cannibal Islands. Fruit too we had in plenty, and the best of oysters
for the gathering, with iguana most succulent of lizards, occasionally
fried flying-fish, or delicate morsels of shark, skip-jack, or devilled
dolphin, with a glass of prime ram to wash the whole down, and three
grains of quinine to charm away the fever. There was, too, about these
expeditions, an air of gipsying that was quite pleasant. To be sure our
beds
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