The Penang Pirate Part 6

"Yes," replied the pensioner; "but, saddest of all, it was to know his poor wife had just come out from England to join him, and was aboard the _London_ at the very time his body was brought alongside the ship in the steam-pinnace in which he had met his death. Ah! he was a fine officer was Capt'in Brownrigg, and liked by everybody--not only by his brother officers and equals, but by the men under him. Bless you, they'd a'

gone anywheres to win a smile from his cheery face. Hullo, though, sir, look there, they're shutting up the dockyard gate!"

Such indeed was the case, showing that the afternoon was pretty nearly "expended," as they say in the service.

"Ah! that comes along o' yarning with you and not minding the business that brought me down here, for now I'm too late."

"Well, in that case," said I, seeing my chance now for getting the oft- evaded yarn of my friend's long service, "suppose you come home to my place and have a cup of tea, when you can tell me the story of your shipwreck off Madagascar, eh?"

He hemmed and hawed for a moment; but seeing that my invitation was cordially given, and I suppose having nothing else particularly to do, he accepted--whence this story.

VOLUME TWO, CHAPTER TWO.

WIND AND STEAM.

When I had made the pensioner as comfortable as I could at my little place--attending carefully to the wants of his inner man before appearing to have any curiosity regarding the matter that had made me invite him home--and the tea-things were cleared away, I gave a sort of inquiring cough, which he immediately took as my signal for him to begin his yarn.

"After serving a year in the _London_, as I told you before, sir," he commenced, without any preliminary beating about the bush, as many a landsman would have done, "I was drafted on to an old cruiser called the _Dolphin_. She's been broken up now, like the old _London_, though I hear they've got a rare smart despatch-boat just building called by the same name; but the _Dolphin_ as I'm speaking of is quite different and not the same vessel--remember that, sir, please, in case anybody should try to throw doubts on my yarn, as some of them sea-lawyers will."

"I a.s.sure you," said I to encourage him, "that I am quite satisfied as to the truth of your story."

"Well, then," he resumed, "the _Dolphin_ I am speaking of to you, sir, was a pretty fast boat for a paddle-steamer, and had already made some tidy captures of slave-dhows--that is, since she had been commissioned and sent out from England, about six months before, to replace an old sailing brig that formerly did duty on the station as tender to the old _London_; so I fully expected when I jined her to have some smart work afore me--and I warn't disapinted neither!"

"No?" said I questioningly to lead him on, settling myself cosily in my chair.

"You're right, sir, I warn't," replied my friend Ben. "The very first day I shipped aboard the _Dolphin_ we took two Mtpe dhows close insh.o.r.e near Pemba. That brought me in a niceish bit of prize-money for a start; and, just a week arter that exactly, when we had got down to our proper cruising ground--that was, sir, just atween Zanzibar and the Mozambique Channel, which, as I daresay you know, sir, is about two hundred and fifty miles wide and runs between Madagascar and the mainland of Africa--why, we came upon the biggest haul that had been made on the coast for years; but we had to work for it, I tell you.

That was a chase and no mistake!"

"Was it?" I asked, glad of Ben's coming now to an actual yarn concerning some of the stirring events of his life; for he had previously only been "beating about the bush," so to speak.

"Yes, sir; and not only a chase that was something to boast of, but a fight as well at the end of it--one of the smartest scrimmages I ever had all the time I was out there. If you don't mind my lighting a pipe, for I allers, sir, can tell a yarn better when I'm smoking, I'll just haul my jaw-tackle aboard and give you a full account of the whole adventure."

"Do," I said.

"There!" exclaimed he with a grunt of satisfaction, carefully filling a briar-root pipe with some dark tobacco, which he produced from out of a little round bra.s.s box that he carried in his waistcoat pocket, telling me it was "the right sort," and proceeding to light it--"now, we can go on serenely."

"Fire away!" said I, to encourage him, "I'm all attention."

He did not waste any more time; but at once began his story.

"The _Dolphin_ had run down south with the f.a.g-end of the north-east monsoon, economising her coals as much as possible, as all the men-of- war have to do nowadays, worse luck--sometimes when it's a question between saving a few pounds or sacrificing a ship! We had pa.s.sed Mazemba island, and had just weathered Cape Delgado, which is some ten degrees south of the equator, when--it was close on sunset at the time, and it grows dark all at once after that, you know, in the tropics--the look-out man sang out, 'sail-ho!' This was just as we were piped down to tea. Bless you, we didn't think no more of going below, I can tell you!"

"I suppose not," I put in, to show I was listening attentively to what he was saying, for he paused at this juncture, as if waiting for me to say something.

"No, sir. Of course, although we were running down under easy sail the engine-fires were ready banked up, so that it didn't take us long to get up steam; and we were soon round like a shot, and retracing our way, right in the face of the wind, after a large dhow which we could see stealing up along-sh.o.r.e and hugging the land. She was what the Arabs called a batilla, and had two large lugs, or lateen sails set, besides a sort of square-cut jib forwards on her high-peaked bowsprit, by the aid of which she was sailing close-hauled, almost in the very teeth of the nor'-easter that was blowing pretty stiffly at the time, making it risky work for a vessel to approach so near a lee-sh.o.r.e as she was doing.

However, I suppose her captain thought he would be able to slip by us in the darkness, when he might have got under the shelter of the island we had pa.s.sed only a short while previously in our downward pa.s.sage to the Mozambique; and, once he was out of sight of the _Dolphin_, of course he could have put out to sea again at his leisure, making his way north as soon as the coast seemed clear, and thus escaping us altogether."

"But he reckoned without his host that time, eh?" said I.

"Aye, that he did," responded the ex-man-o'-war's-man, warming up to his subject as he proceeded. "He made a great mistake, did that there Arab slave skipper when he thought he'd hoodwink us aboard the _Dolphin_ this evening I'm a-talking of--a mistake, sir, as I'll soon show you, that cost him not only his vessel, but his life as well!"

"Indeed?" I interposed, beginning to get interested in Ben's yarn now that he had actually got under weigh with it in earnest.

"Yes, that it did," replied Ben Campion, striking another match to relight his pipe, which had gone out in the interval, and puffing away vigorously for a few seconds in order to get it in full blast.--"He was a 'cute chap, though, that skipper," continued Ben presently when he had got the pipe to go to his satisfaction;--"for no sooner had he perceived that we had observed him and were in chase, than he threw off all pretence of attempting to deceive us by pa.s.sing off as a simple trader.

Abandoning his design of beating up to Cape Delgado, he wore the dhow round as sharp as lightning and made off down along the coast, right before the full strength of the monsoon; where, with the wind in his favour, he would have a better chance of getting away from us, those dhows, as I've told you, sometimes walking away from a steam-pinnace as if she were standing still. This time, however, he had no c.o.c.kle-sh.e.l.l of a pinnace after him, but a smart paddle-steamer, and one, too, that could go along well also before the wind, carrying square sails as did the _Dolphin_ on her foremast and a huge spanker aft. A stern-chase, of course, is a long chase all the world over, as everybody knows, and ours was no exception. Still, all the time we gradually overhauled the dhow; and just about sunset we got within range of a long seven-inch gun, which we carried forwards. This, Mr Shrapnel, our gunner, trained right across the slaver's bows, and at the word of command, 'Fire!' let drive with a bang that shook the steamer right down to her kelson and seemed to stop her way for the moment, sending her back, as it were, with the recoil.

"The gun was well aimed, the shot pitching up the water some fifty yards in front of her, but it didn't seem to make any difference to the dhow a bit, her captain keeping right on with every st.i.tch of his canvas set, the wide lateen sails bellying out to their full, as we could see, and the queer-looking craft burying herself in the foam that she churned up as she dived down into the waves every moment with a plunge, as if she were going headlong down to the bottom, taking in huge seas over her cat-heads; for it was blowing more than half a gale at the time, and even we in our bigger craft found it hard work carrying on as we did with both wind and steam. And I tell you we were going too! Our engines were revolving full speed ahead, and our canvas must have helped us full another five knots, with the wind dead astern as it was, and we running before it, while, to aid us, there was the usual insh.o.r.e current--that runs down the coast of the Mozambique from Cape Delgado to right opposite Madagascar, where it turns off more in an easterly direction--carrying us along like a mill-race, some rate of three knots more. It made the _Dolphin_ quiver and tremble through every timber as she seemed literally to fly through the water, but it didn't make us approach the dhow any closer, although we held our own. As the wind got up more and more, for it was the tail-end of the north-east monsoon, as I told you, and those blessed monsoons always die out with a brush when they've got to the end of their tether, the slaver appeared to rise bodily out of the water and skim along the surface from the top of one rolling wave on to another--just as you see an albatross does off the Cape of Good Hope when it has taken its first dart downwards after its prey, and has then to pursue it over the sea, the large sheets of the triangular sails of the dhow standing out on either side of her low dark keel in the same way as the pinions of the albatross touch the water in its flight.

"Mr Shrapnel was told to fire another gun; but it had no greater effect than the first one, and our skipper hardly seemed to know what to do; for the dhow was now heading more towards the land, and the _Dolphin_ would soon be in shoal water, as there are lots of reefs about them parts. It would never do, either, to fire right into her, although we were well within range now, as we might probably damage some of the poor slaves aboard, who were no doubt packed as tightly as herrings in a barrel; and yet, it was growing dark, the sun being just on the point of setting over the highlands of the great African continent on our starboard hand. If we didn't do something pretty soon Mr Arab dhow would be able to cry, 'Walker!' and laugh at us for the wild-goose chase he had led us!"

"You must have been pretty anxious as the moments flew by, the sun setting, and the darkness creeping up, without your being able to overhaul her?" I said.

"We were all that," replied Ben, knocking the ashes out of his pipe viciously as if he were giving the slave captain a rap on the head;--"and as we stood grouped around the deck amidships close by the engine-room hatch, fixing on our cutla.s.ses and getting ready for the scrimmage, should luck enable us to have one, I don't know what we said we wouldn't do to the impudent beggars when we got aboard!

"The land was looming well on our beam, some six miles distant, and those breakers visible between us and it. The situation was a 'tight'

one, if there ever was such, for it looked uncommon like as if the captain of the dhow intended running ash.o.r.e and risking her breaking to pieces on the rocks, if he couldn't find an opening in the coast into some lagoon where he could with his light draught beach the craft in safety. He was evidently determined to escape us, run what risk he might!

"I was standing alongside our skipper on the bridge; and I could see that he, too, was bound not to be licked, for he had screwed up his mouth in a way that he had when he had made up his mind to something, and then the admiral himself wouldn't have turned him from it!--He was a bold, courageous officer, was Captain Wilson, and every inch a sailor.

Poor chap! he afterwards fell a victim to the fatal coast fever at Zanzibar.

"Well, I could see from the look on his face now, that if the Arab skipper was a determined fellow, and had resolved to circ.u.mvent us, why, Captain Wilson was equally determined, too, that he shouldn't, and that it was a case of 'pull baker, pull devil' atween the two!

"'Campion,' say he to me, 'pa.s.s the word forra'd for Mr Shrapnel to come here to me for a moment.'

"Of course I did as he told me; and soon the gunner arrives on the bridge, where, as I still stopped, it being my station there for the time, I heard all that was said between the skipper and him.

"'Mr Shrapnel,' says Captain Wilson, 'we'll have to fire at the fellow in earnest now, or else he'll escape us; but I don't want to hurt any of those poor creatures, who are on board against their will. Can't you manage to shoot away a spar so as to cripple his wings a bit, so that we can manage to get alongside before he gets too close insh.o.r.e?'"

"'I'll try, sir,' says the gunner, turning to go away.

"'Do,' replies our skipper, 'and look sharp about it, too, or else it will be too late. Mind, though, and aim high. I wouldn't have the slaves hurt for anything. As for the Arab crew, we'll give 'em a taste of cold steel when we come across them, and that will be better than all the shot and sh.e.l.l we can send after them now!'

"'Aye, aye, sir,' said Mr, Shrapnel, going forwards again without any delay; and the gun detachment being all ready, our seven-inch spoke out again to the slaver, with more purpose than it had done before.

"The first shot went wide of the mark, and so did the second; but the third carried away her main halliards apparently, for the big sail came down all at once by the run, making the dhow broach-to as it fell over the side to leeward. Our men gave a tremendous cheer at this, but the slaver captain was a smart chap, as you might have noticed before, and would not give in yet; as before you could say 'Jack Robinson,' he had the halliards spliced again, and the sail hoisted, bearing away straight for the land now, and not edging along it as he had previously done. He was evidently determined to destroy the vessel rather than give in.

"'Silence, men!' shouted out Captain Wilson to stop our fellows cheering, which, as you know, sir, is against the rules of the service, although winked at sometimes in the enthusiasm of the moment. 'We haven't got the slaver yet, and it will be time to cheer when we've captured him! Mr Shrapnel,' he added then, as soon as all was quiet, the men being as mum as a mouse fore and aft--'you must send another messenger after, my joker; try if you can't do him a little more damage this time!'

"'Aye, aye, sir,' sang out the gunner; and he set to work again with a will, for the brief time during which the dhow's big main lug had been down had enabled us to get within half a mile of her, and Mr Shrapnel was better able to see what he was shooting at. He was a knowing hand, was the gunner! Watching his opportunity when the _Dolphin_ rose on the top of the heavy rolling swell that set in towards the land, and when the dhow was right down in the hollow of the combers, he pulled the lanyard of the trigger, and with a bang and a belch of flame and smoke a heavy conical shot went rotating through the air, making as much noise as a railroad train as it hurtled forwards at the chase, whose hull was hidden from view, but whose masts seemed quite close to us.

"He didn't require to fire a second shot this time.

"No sooner had the report sounded and the roaring rumbling thunder of the discharge died away in the distance, rolling in towards the coast-- the smoke being blown away, too, as quickly by the wind--than we could see the dhow dismasted before us, swaying about in the trough of the sea.

"She was a hopeless wreck, for both her masts had been snapped off short by the shot, and the yards to which the sails had been attached were lying athwart the deck. The _Dolphin_ now ranged up alongside her on the leeward bow, and the captain hailed her to know if she surrendered, when one of the Arabs on board, who must have been the skipper, waved a red handkerchief or cloth of some kind in token of truce. He was a tall, swarthy chap, with a turban instead of a fez, which the others wore, on his head; and the belt round his body, as we could see from looking down on to the deck of the dhow, which was much below the level of our vessel, was filled choke-full with long-barrelled pistols and dirks, and a round-shaped scimitar-like sword without a sheath that seemed as if it could give a fellow a very tidy cut.

"The sea was rough and both the dhow and the _Dolphin_ were rolling about terribly, we dipping our foreyard-arms as we lay-to; but Captain Wilson at once ordered the first cutter to be piped away, with one of the lieutenants in charge; while nothing would suit him also but to have his own gig manned. He said he mistrusted the slaver and would board her also himself, as she had a number of Arab rascals on her deck who would probably show fight.