She
foreign parts, but if both you gentlemen are going you will want
somebody to look after you, and I am not the man to stop behind
after serving you for twenty years.”
“That’s right, Job,” said I. “You won’t find out anything
wonderful, but you will get some good shooting. And now look
here, both of you. I won’t have a word said to a living soul
about this nonsense,” and I pointed to the potsherd. “If it got
out, and anything happened to me, my next of kin would dispute my
will on the ground of insanity, and I should become the laughing
stock of Cambridge.”
That day three months we were on the ocean, bound for Zanzibar.
IV.
THE SQUALL
How different is the scene that I have now to tell from that
which has just been told! Gone are the quiet college rooms, gone
the wind-swayed English elms, the cawing rooks, and the familiar
volumes on the shelves, and in their place there rises a vision
of the great calm ocean gleaming in shaded silver lights beneath
the beams of the full African moon. A gentle breeze fills the
huge sail of our dhow, and draws us through the water that
ripples musically against her sides. Most of the men are sleeping
forward, for it is near midnight, but a stout swarthy Arab,
Mahomed by name, stands at the tiller, lazily steering by the
stars. Three miles or more to our starboard is a low dim line. It
is the Eastern shore of Central Africa. We are running to the
southward, before the North East Monsoon, between the mainland
and the reef that for hundreds of miles fringes this perilous
coast. The night is quiet, so quiet that a whisper can be heard
fore and aft the dhow; so quiet that a faint booming sound rolls
across the water to us from the distant land.
The Arab at the tiller holds up his hand, and says one
word:—“_Simba_ (lion)!”
We all sit up and listen. Then it comes again, a slow, majestic
sound, that thrills us to the marrow.
“To-morrow by ten o’clock,” I say, “we ought, if the Captain is
not out in his reckoning, which I think very probable, to make
this mysterious rock with a man’s head, and begin our shooting.”
“And begin our search for the ruined city and the Fire of Life,”
corrected Leo, taking his pipe from his mouth, and laughing a
little.
“Nonsense!” I answered. “You were airing your Arabic with that
man at the tiller this afternoon. What did he tell you? He has
been trading (slave-trading, probably) up and down these
latitudes for half of his iniquitous life, and once landed on
this very ‘man’ rock. Did he ever hear anything of the ruined
city or the caves?”
“No,” answered Leo. “He says that the country is all swamp
behind, and full of snakes, especially pythons, and game, and
that no man lives there. But then there is a belt of swamp all
along the East African coast, so that does not go for much.”
“Yes,” I said, “it does—it goes for malaria. You see what sort of
an opinion these gentry have of the country. Not one of them will
go with us. They think that we are mad, and upon my word I
believe that they are right. If ever we see old England again I
shall be astonished. However, it does not greatly matter to me at
my age, but I am anxious for you, Leo, and for Job. It’s a Tom
Fool’s business, my boy.”
“All right, Uncle Horace. So far as I am concerned, I am willing
to take my chance. Look! What is that cloud?” and he pointed to a
dark blotch upon the starry sky, some miles astern of us.
“Go and ask the man at the tiller,” I said.
He rose, stretched his arms, and went. Presently he returned.
“He says it is a squall, but it will pass far on one side of us.”
Just then Job came up, looking very stout and English in his
shooting-suit of brown flannel, and with a sort of perplexed
appearance upon his honest round face that had been very common
with him since he got into these strange waters.
“Please, sir,” he said, touching his sun hat, which was stuck on
to the back of his head in a somewhat ludicrous fashion, “as we
have got all those guns and things in the whale-boat astern, to
say nothing of the provisions in the lockers, I think it would be
best if I got down and slept in her. I don’t like the looks”
(here he dropped his voice to a portentous whisper) “of these
black gentry; they have such a wonderful thievish way about them.
Supposing now that some of them were to slip into the boat at
night and cut the cable, and make off with her? That would be a
pretty go, that would.”
The whale-boat, I may explain, was one specially built for us at
Dundee, in Scotland. We had brought it with us, as we knew that
this coast was a network of creeks, and that we might require
something to navigate them with. She was a beautiful boat,
thirty-feet in length, with a centre-board for sailing,
copper-bottomed to keep the worm out of her, and full of
water-tight compartments. The Captain of the dhow had told us
that when we reached the rock, which he knew, and which appeared
to be identical with the one described upon the sherd and by
Leo’s father, he would probably not be able to run up to it on
account of the shallows and breakers. Therefore we had employed
three hours that very morning, whilst we were totally becalmed,
the wind having dropped at sunrise, in transferring most of our
goods and chattels to the whale-boat, and placing the guns,
ammunition, and preserved provisions in the water-tight lockers
specially prepared for them, so that when we did sight the fabled
rock we should have nothing to do but step into the boat, and run
her ashore. Another reason that induced us to take this
precautionary step was that Arab captains are apt to run past the
point that they are making, either from carelessness or owing to
a mistake in its identity. Now, as sailors know, it is quite
impossible for a dhow which is only rigged to run before the
monsoon to beat back against it. Therefore we got our boat ready
to row for the rock at any moment.
“Well, Job,” I said, “perhaps it would be as well. There are lots
of blankets there, only be careful to keep out of the moon, or it
may turn your head or blind you.”
“Lord, sir! I don’t think it would much matter if it did; it is
that turned already with the sight of these blackamoors and their
filthy, thieving ways. They are only fit for muck, they are; and
they smell bad enough for it already.”
Job, it will be perceived, was no admirer of the manners and
customs of our dark-skinned brothers.
Accordingly we hauled up the boat by the tow-rope till it was
right under the stern of the dhow, and Job bundled into her with
all the grace of a falling sack of potatoes. Then we returned and
sat down on the deck again, and smoked and talked in little gusts
and jerks. The night was so lovely, and our brains were so full
of suppressed excitement of one sort and another, that we did not
feel inclined to turn in. For nearly an hour we sat thus, and
then, I think, we both dozed off. At least I have a faint
recollection of Leo sleepily explaining that the head was not a
bad place to hit a buffalo, if you could catch him exactly
between the horns, or send your bullet down his throat, or some
nonsense of the sort.
Then I remember no more; till suddenly—a frightful roar of wind,
a shriek of terror from the awakening crew, and a whip-like sting
of water in our faces. Some of the men ran to let go the
haulyards and lower the sail, but the parrel jammed and the yard
would not come down. I sprang to my feet and hung on to a rope.
The sky aft was dark as pitch, but the moon still shone brightly
ahead of us and lit up the blackness. Beneath its sheen a huge
white-topped breaker, twenty feet high or more, was rushing on to
us. It was on the break—the moon shone on its crest and tipped
its foam with light. On it rushed beneath the inky sky, driven by
the awful squall behind it. Suddenly, in the twinkling of an eye,
I saw the black shape of the whale-boat cast high into the air on
the crest of the breaking wave. Then—a shock of water, a wild
rush of boiling foam, and I was clinging for my life to the
shroud, ay, swept straight out from it like a flag in a gale.
We were pooped.
The wave passed. It seemed to me that I was under water for
minutes—really it was seconds. I looked forward. The blast had
torn out the great sail, and high in the air it was fluttering
away to leeward like a huge wounded bird. Then for a moment there
was comparative calm, and in it I heard Job’s voice yelling
wildly, “Come here to the boat.”
Bewildered and half-drowned as I was, I had the sense to rush
aft. I felt the dhow sinking under me—she was full of water.
Under her counter the whale-boat was tossing furiously, and I saw
the Arab Mahomed, who had been steering, leap into her. I gave
one desperate pull at the tow-rope to bring the boat alongside.
Wildly I sprang also, Job caught me by the arm and I rolled into
the bottom of the boat. Down went the dhow bodily, and as she did
so Mahomed drew his curved knife and severed the fibre-rope by
which we were fast to her, and in another second we were driving
before the storm over the place where the dhow had been.
“Great God!” I shrieked, “where is Leo? _Leo! Leo!_”
“He’s gone, sir, God help him!” roared Job into my ear; and such
was the fury of the squall that his voice sounded like a whisper.
I wrung my hands in agony. Leo was drowned, and I was left alive
to mourn him.
“Look out,” yelled Job; “here comes another.”
I turned; a second huge wave was overtaking us. I half hoped that
it would drown me. With a curious fascination I watched its awful
advent. The moon was nearly hidden now by the wreaths of the
rushing storm, but a little light still caught the crest of the
devouring breaker. There was something dark on it—a piece of
wreckage. It was on us now, and the boat was nearly full of
water. But she was built in air-tight compartments—Heaven bless
the man who invented them!—and lifted up through it like a swan.
Through the foam and turmoil I saw the black thing on the wave
hurrying right at me. I put out my right arm to ward it from me,
and my hand closed on another arm, the wrist of which my fingers
gripped like a vice. I am a very strong man, and had something to
hold to, but my arm was nearly torn from its socket by the strain
and weight of the floating body. Had the rush lasted another two
seconds I might either have let go or gone with it. But it
passed, leaving us up to our knees in water.
“Bail out! bail out!” shouted Job, suiting the action to the
word.
But I could not bail just then, for as the moon went out and left
us in total darkness, one faint, flying ray of light lit upon the
face of the man I had gripped, who was now half lying, half
floating in the bottom of the boat.