Read Ebook: A Middy of the Slave Squadron: A West African Story by Collingwood Harry Mays D L Illustrator

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Of course we were all in a perfect fever of impatience to get to sea and make the best of our way to the scene of action, lest haply we should arrive too late and find the birds flown; but the skipper retained his coolness and would permit nothing to be done that could by any possibility suggest to the slavers the idea that the faintest hint of their audacious scheme had been allowed to get abroad. He insisted that we had plenty of time and to spare, and actually remained in harbour three whole days after the information had reached him. Then, on the morning of the fourth day, we weighed and stood out to sea, beating off the land against the sea-breeze until we ran into the calm belt between the sea-breeze and the trade-wind. Here we remained motionless for more than an hour until the trade-wind gradually ate its way inshore and reached us, when we ran right out to sea until we had sunk the land astern of us. Then we hauled up to the southward on a taut bowline, and, under easy canvas, made our leisurely way toward the mouth of the Fernan Vaz river, off which we arrived five days later, making the land from the masthead about an hour before sunset.

All that night, the whole of the next day, and all the night following we remained hove-to under topsails, jib, and spanker, dodging to and fro athwart the mouth of the river, with a man on the main-royal yard, during the hours of daylight, to give us timely notice of the appearance of the craft which was to play the part of decoy; while with the approach of nightfall we made sail and beat in to within a distance of some three miles of the coast, running off into the offing again an hour before daylight. At length, when we had hung upon the tenterhooks of suspense for close upon forty hours, and were beginning to fear that the captain, in his resolve to cut matters as fine as possible, had overdone the thing and allowed the quarry to escape, we were gladdened by the hail from aloft of--

"Sail he! A large schooner just comin' out o' the river, sir."

"Ay, ay," answered the first lieutenant, whose watch it happened to be. "Just keep your eye on her, my lad, and let me know how she steers when she is clear of the bar."

Meanwhile, as previously arranged, Captain Harrison was aroused, and informed of the fact that the decoy schooner, or what was assumed to be such, had made her appearance and was now fairly at sea, steering a little to the northward of west under a heavy press of sail; and close upon the heels of the returning messenger the worthy skipper himself appeared. He sprang upon a gun-carriage and peered intently shoreward under the shade of his hand; but only the upper canvas of the stranger was visible from our deck; and he impatiently hailed the look-out aloft to give him a detailed description of the vessel. The fellow in the cross-trees happened, however, to be a poor sort of unintelligent fellow, and could say very little about the craft beyond stating the fact that she was a schooner, painted black; that she sat deep in the water, showed an immense spread of canvas, and appeared to be very fast.

"I have no sort of doubt that yonder schooner is the craft whose duty it is to draw us off the coast and leave the way clear for the other fellows to get out to sea," he said. "But I should like to have a somewhat better description of her than that `sodger' up aloft there seems able to give."

He glanced round the deck and his eye fell upon me.

"Ah, Mr Fortescue," he exclaimed, "you will doubtless be able to do what I want. Just slip down into my cabin; you will find my glass hanging above the head of my bunk. Throw the strap of it over your shoulder, and shin up alongside that fellow in the cross-trees; take a good look at the stranger; and report to me any peculiarities that you may detect in her, will ye."

"Thank you, Mr Fortescue; that will do; you may come down. Or--hold on a minute. Is the stranger far enough out of the river to enable her to get clear away, think ye?"

"She is fully a mile from the mouth of the river, sir," I answered.

"Ah, that will do, then, thank you; you may both come down," answered the skipper. And as I swung myself down through the cross-trees to the topmast rigging, I heard him give the order to "Wear ship and make sail."

It was just noon when, having arrived off the mouth of the river, we made a flying moor of it, letting go the first and then the second bower anchor in ten fathoms, at a distance of about one and a half miles from the shore, and at a spot from which the river mouth and perhaps half a mile of the river itself were in plain view. The town of King Olomba, it was understood, was situated at a distance of about thirty-two miles from our anchorage; and as the captain was anxious that the journey should be made at an easy pace, so that the men might arrive comparatively fresh, and in fit condition for the rather stiff bit of work that lay at the end of it, eight hours were to be allowed for the passage of the boats to their destination. And as it was highly undesirable that the expedition should be unduly exposed in the boats to the pestiferous effects of the miasmatic night-fogs which gather upon most of the West African rivers after sunset, it had already been arranged that the attacking party should not start until the following morning, at an hour which would enable us to reach the scene of operations in time to make a reconnaissance and arrange the plan of attack by nightfall. The remainder of that day was therefore employed in getting the boats ready, stocking them with three days' rations of provisions and water, overhauling the boat guns and slinging them ready for lowering, filling the ammunition boxes, sharpening cutlasses, fixing new flints to the pistols, where necessary, and generally completing our preparations. We also sent down royal and topgallant yards and housed the topgallant-masts, in order that, should it by any chance come on to blow heavily from the westward during our absence the ship might ride the more easily at her anchors. We also made preparation, in view of the foregoing contingency, for backing the bowers with the two stream anchors, and otherwise made every possible preparation for the safety of the ship during our absence; for the expedition in which we were about to engage was one of very considerable importance, and the task which we had set ourselves to perform was so formidable that, in order to insure success, it would be necessary to employ practically the entire ship's company, leaving the vessel in charge of the second lieutenant and only enough hands to keep a look-out and perform such tasks as, for example, the letting go of the stream anchors in case of necessity, the paying out of the additional amount of cable, the keeping of the ship reasonably clean, and so on.

We mustered ninety all told, and were none too many for the work that we had undertaken to do, which was--to capture three, if not four, large ships; capture and demolish the shore batteries which the slavers very frequently erected for the defence of their strongholds; and also, most likely, fight King Olomba and a whole flotilla of war canoes. The task was indeed a formidable one; the more so that we, the attacking party, would be, at least at the beginning of the fight, huddled closely together in boats, while our antagonists would have all the advantage of roomy decks to move about on, and steady gun platforms from which to pour in their fire, to say nothing of a tremendous superiority in point of numbers. We thought nothing of all this, however; we were going to have a change from the monotony of shipboard life; we should be certain to see new sights of a more or less interesting character; there was the excitement and exhilaration of a stiff fight awaiting us at the end of our journey; and, finally, there was the prospect of a pocketful of prize-money as a wind-up to the whole affair. What more could any reasonable individual desire?

Like most African rivers, the Fernan Vaz has a bar, but the sea breaks upon it only when the wind blows fresh from the north-west, owing to the fact that as far up as the town of Olomba the river flows parallel to the line of coast, being separated from the open Atlantic by a low, sandy peninsula, varying from one to three miles in breadth, terminating in a spit which ordinarily shelters the bar from the rollers, leaving a narrow channel of unbroken water, wide enough to enable a couple of craft of moderate tonnage to pass each other comfortably.

And well was it for us that this was the case; for as we approached the river's mouth we saw that the ground-swell was rapidly increasing in weight, and that the surf was breaking upon the beach with such violence that if it happened to be also breaking upon the bar it would be quite useless for us to attempt to enter the river. Indeed, so formidable did the appearance of the surf at length become that the captain ordered the rest of the boats to heave-to, while we in the gig went ahead to reconnoitre and inspect the condition of the bar. This was a bit of work for which the gig was peculiarly well adapted, for she was a beautifully modelled boat, double-ended, with a long flat floor--a splendid sailer, and a boat which would claw off a lee shore in almost any weather, the skipper having had her fitted with a good, deep, false keel.

The wind was blowing a moderately fresh breeze from the westward at the time, thus, the rest of the boats having hove-to, it did not take us very long to run in far enough to get a sight of the bar. This was a rather trying experience for the nerves of us all; for the surf was pounding on the beach ahead of us in a constant succession of towering walls of water, that reared themselves to a height of fully thirty feet ere they curled over and broke in thunder so deafening that we presently found it impossible to make our voices heard above its continuous roar. But the skipper, standing up in the stern-sheets, soon detected the smooth, narrow strip of unbroken water, and directed the coxswain to shift his helm for it. I sprang up on a thwart and waved a small white flag as a signal to the other boats to fill away and follow us; and as soon as we had reached the very middle of the channel we rounded-to and lowered our sail, remaining where we were to act as a guide to the other boats.

Keeping our position with the aid of a couple of oars thrown over to enable us to stem the out-flowing current, which we now began to feel, we allowed the other boats to pass in over the bar and reach the smooth water before us; then, hoisting our sail again, we followed them in and presently resumed our position at the head of the line.

The change from the scene of wind-flecked blue sea, stately march of the swell, and thunderous roar and creaming froth of the breakers outside to the oil-smooth, mud-laden, strong-smelling river, with its tiny, swirling eddies here and there, its mangrove-lined banks, and its silence, through which the roar of the surf came to us over the intervening sand spit, mellowed and subdued by distance, was so marked that, although this was by no means my first experience of that kind of thing, I found myself rubbing my eyes as though I were by no means certain that I was awake; and I noticed others doing the same. A sharp word from the skipper, however, cautioning all hands to maintain a smart look-out, soon brought to us the realisation of our surroundings; for the river here was narrow, being not more than half a mile wide, with a number of small islets dotted about it, any one of which might prove to be the hiding-place of a formidable foe. When at length we had passed these without interference, and had reached the point where the river began to widen out somewhat, we were no better off, but rather the worse; for here the stream was encumbered with extensive sandbanks, to avoid which we were compelled to approach the margin of the river so closely that a well-arranged ambush might have practically annihilated us before we could have effected a landing through the thick, viscid mud and the almost impenetrable growth of mangroves that divided the waters of the river from the solid ground of the shore. Fortunately for us, the slavers appeared unaccountably to have overlooked the admirable opportunities thus afforded for frustrating an attack; or possibly, as we thought, it was that they had fully relied upon the power of the decoy schooner to draw us away from the coast, and thus leave the way free for them to escape.

The passage of this part of the river occupied us until noon, and was rather trying to the nerves of all hands, for not only were we constantly exposed to attack by the slavers, but there were the natives also to be reckoned with; and these, as we all knew, had a most objectionable habit of using poisoned arrows, the slightest wound from which was invariably followed by death after some eight to twelve hours of dreadful suffering. Shortly after noon we emerged from these natural entanglements into a long reach of the river where the stream expanded to a width of some three and a half miles, with a narrow deep-water channel running about midway between the banks. Here we were quite free from any possibility of ambush of any kind; and with a sigh of intense relief the captain gave the word to pipe to dinner.

About four o'clock in the afternoon we arrived at a point where the river again narrowed to a width of about a mile; but some two miles farther on it again widened out, and changed its direction, trending away almost due east, or about at right angles to its former course; and this, according to the information in the skipper's possession, indicated that we were nearing our destination. Drawing from his pocket a sketch chart which he had already consulted several times during our passage up the river, he again studied it intently for several minutes, carefully comparing the configurations delineated upon it with our actual surroundings; then, apparently satisfied with the result, he refolded the paper, returned it to his pocket, and directed the coxswain to bear away a couple of points toward a projecting point--which we afterwards discovered to be the western extremity of an islet--on the far side of the river. As we approached the spot for which we were heading it became apparent that there were two islets instead of one between us and the river bank; and a quarter of an hour later the gig, with the rest of the flotilla following her, glided in between these two islets, and, lowering her sails, made the signal for the other boats to anchor.

The boats were now completely concealed from all possible observation, for we soon saw that the islets between which we were anchored consisted merely of mud-banks thickly overgrown with mangroves, and absolutely uninhabitable even by natives; for there did not appear to be an inch of ground upon either of the islets sufficiently solid to support even a reed hut, while the mangroves were tall enough and grew densely enough to hide the boats from all possible observation from the mainland. The only question which now troubled us was whether the presence of the boats in the river had already been observed. If the slavers had placed absolute confidence in the success of their plan to draw us away from the coast by means of the decoy schooner, they might not have troubled to keep a look-out; but if they were as cautious as such gentry usually are, and had left nothing to chance, it would be scarcely possible for the approach of the boats to have passed undetected. This was the question to which the captain was now going to seek an answer.

AT THE CAMMA LAGOON.

Distant about a mile from our hiding-place, there was, according to the captain's rough sketch map, a small peninsula enclosing a little bay, or creek, at the inner extremity of which was situated King Olomba's town; and it was here that we were led to believe we should find the slavers busily engaged in shipping their human cargoes. And truly, as seen from the boats, the ingenuity of man could scarcely have devised a more perfect spot whereat to conduct the infamous traffic; for the configuration of the land was such that boats, entering the river merely on an exploring expedition, without having first obtained, like ourselves, special information, would never have suspected the existence of the creek, or of the town which lay concealed within it. Nor would it have been possible to detect the presence of slave craft in the creek; for the peninsula which masked it was thickly overgrown with lofty trees which would effectually conceal all but the upper spars of a ship, and these would doubtless be struck or housed while she was lying in the creek.

The skipper having explained to the officers in command of the other boats what he intended to do, and given them instructions how to act in the event of certain contingencies arising, the gig's crew manned their oars, and we pulled away in the direction of the peninsula, which we reached in the course of a few minutes. Now our real troubles began, for our object was not only to reach the peninsula but also to land upon and walk across it until a spot could be found from which, unseen ourselves, we could obtain a clear view of the creek and everything in it, and upon approaching the shore of the peninsula we discovered that, in common with as much of the river bank as we had yet seen, it consisted, first of all, of a wide belt of soft, fathomless mud overgrown with mangrove trees; the mud being of such a consistency that to attempt to walk upon it would mean being swallowed up and suffocated in it, for a sixteen-foot oar could be thrust perpendicularly into it with scarcely any effort, although when one of the men incautiously tried the experiment, it was only with the utmost difficulty that he was able to withdraw the oar, so tenaciously did the mud cling to it. Yet it was not sufficiently liquid to allow of the gig being forced through it, even if the thickly clustering mangrove roots would have permitted of such a proceeding. The only alternative left to us, therefore, was to endeavour to reach solid ground by clambering over the slippery mangrove roots, with the possibility that at any moment one or another of us might lose our footing, fall into the mud, and be swallowed up by it. However, "needs must" under certain circumstances, the skipper and I therefore scrambled out of the boat--taking Cupid with us to search out the way and carry a small coil of light line in case it should be wanted--and proceeded cautiously to claw our way like so many parrots, over and among the gnarled and twisted roots of the mangrove trees, the Krooboy leading the way, leaping and swinging himself with marvellous agility from tree to tree, while we followed slowly in his wake, as often as not being obliged to make a slip-rope of the line to enable us to cross some exceptionally wide or awkward gap. In this manner, after about half an hour's arduous toil, with the perspiration pouring out of us until our clothes were saturated with it, while we were driven nearly frantic by the attacks of the mosquitoes and stinging flies that beset us by thousands, and could by no means be driven away, we contrived at length to reach soil firm enough to support our weight, and, some five minutes later, the solid ground itself.

The captain stared across the water as though he found it quite impossible to believe his eyes. Then he drew the sketch map from his pocket and once more studied it attentively, muttering to himself the while. Finally he sat himself down upon a knot of twisted roots, with his back against the trunk of the tree, and, spreading the sketch wide open on his knee, beckoned me to place myself beside him.

"Just come here and look at this map, Mr Fortescue," he said, and he spoke with the air and in the tones of a man who is so utterly dazed with disappointment that he begins to doubt the evidence of his own senses. "Just give me your opinion, will ye. I cannot understand this business at all. This map, although only a free-hand sketch, seems to me to be perfectly accurate. There, you see, is the mouth of the river, just as we found it; there are the little islets that we passed immediately after getting inside; there are the dry mud-banks; and there, you see, the river widens out, in precise accordance with our experience; here it narrows again at the bend; there is where the boats are lying concealed; and this," laying his finger upon a particular part of the sketch, "is the creek that we are now looking at; and there is the town of Olomba. It all seems to me to be absolutely correct. Does it not appear so to you?"

"Certainly, sir," I answered. "The sketch answers in every particular to what we have seen since entering the river--answers to it so perfectly, indeed, that it might have been copied from a carefully plotted survey."

"Exactly," assented the skipper. "Yet it is nothing of the kind; for with my own eyes I saw it drawn from memory by a man whom I happened to meet in one of the third-rate hotels in Freetown, which are frequented by the masters and mates of palm-oil traders and the like. I happened to hear him mention that he had been in and out of the Fernan Vaz at least a dozen times, in his search for cargo along the coast, so I waited until the people with whom he was talking had left him, and then I entered into conversation with him, finally inducing him to furnish me with this sketch."

"And was it from him, sir, that you also obtained the information upon the strength of which you determined upon this expedition?" I asked.

"Yet there seems to have been something wrong somewhere, sir," I ventured to suggest. "But it is not with your map; that appears to be marvellously accurate for a mere free-hand sketch; there is no attempt at deception apparent there. This creek that we are looking at is undoubtedly the one shown on your map, and there is King Olomba's town, precisely in the position indicated on the sketch; the assumption therefore is that the man who drew the map for you was dealing quite honestly with you. The misleading information, consequently must, it appears to me, have come from the others; as indeed is the case, seeing that they led you to believe that you would find at least three or four large ships in the creek, whereas there are none."

"That is perfectly true," concurred the skipper. "Yet I quite understood my informants to say that they were the persons who had formulated the scheme."

"N-o-o," said the skipper dubiously; "it would not. Yet I cannot see why, if they had recognised me, they should have gone to the trouble of spinning an elaborate yarn merely to deceive me. It would have been just as easy for them to have knifed me, for there were seven of them, while I was quite alone. No, I don't quite see--"

"Do you not, sir?" I interrupted with a smile.

"I do. I see quite clearly two very excellent reasons why they did not resort to the rough and ready method of the knife. In the first place, these fellows attach a ridiculously high value to their own skins, and never seem to imperil them when an alternative will serve their purpose equally well; and although they were seven to one, if they really recognised you they would know perfectly well that, while the ultimate result of a fight would probably be in their favour, you would certainly not perish alone; and I suppose none of them were particularly anxious to accompany you into the Great Beyond. And, apart from that, they would know quite well that were the captain of a British man-o'-war to go a-missing there would be such a stir among their rookeries that soon there would be no rookeries left. Oh, no, sir! glad as they might be to put you quietly out of the way if they had the chance, depend upon it the last thing that they would dream of would be to attempt anything of the sort in Sierra Leone."

"Well, well, well, perhaps you are right, young gentleman, perhaps you are right. You seem to have quite a gift for reasoning things out," replied the skipper, as he pocketed his map and hove himself up into a standing position. "But it is high time that we should get under way, for the sun is setting, and we shall have all our work cut out to find our road back to the boat. Do you think you will be able to find the gig, Cupid?"

"Yes, I fit, sar," answered the Krooboy. "But we mus' make plenty haste; for dem darkness he come too much plenty soon, an' if we slip and fall into dem mud we lib for die one time."

"Ay, ay," answered the skipper, with an involuntary shudder at the hideous fate thus tersely sketched by Cupid; "I know that, my lad, without any telling; so heave ahead as smartly as you like."

And therewith we started upon our return journey with all speed; striding, leaping, slipping, and scrambling from root to root, Cupid leading the way, I following, and the skipper bringing up the rear, until at length we stood upon solid ground once more. But by this time not only had the sun set but the dusk was gathering about us like a curtain, while star after star came twinkling out from the rapidly darkening blue overhead, and the foliage of the trees that hemmed us in on every side was changing, even as we stood and watched while recovering our breath, from olive to deepest black. Now, too, we were beset, even more pertinaciously than before, by the myriads of mosquitoes, sand flies, gnats, and other winged biting creatures with which the islet swarmed; to say nothing of ants; indeed it almost seemed as though every individual insect upon that particular patch of soil and vegetation had scented us out and, having found us, was quite determined that we should never escape them alive. When presently we again began to move, it seemed impossible to take a single step without tripping over a land-crab's hole, or treading upon one of the creatures and hearing and feeling it crackle and writhe underfoot. Ugh! it was horrible.

All these unpleasantnesses were sharply accentuated by the darkness, which fell upon us like a pall; for now the stars began to be obscured by great black clouds that came sweeping in from seaward, while the increasing roar and swish in the boughs overhead seemed to indicate that the wind was freshening. Progress was difficult enough, under such conditions, while we were traversing solid ground and had no special need to pick our footsteps; how would it be, I wondered, when it came to our re-crossing the belt of mangroves and mud that lay between us and the gig? Then, to add still further to our difficulties, the dank, heavy, pestilential fog that rises from the tropical African rivers at nightfall began to gather about us, and in a few minutes, from being bathed in perspiration from our exertions, we were chilled to the bone, with our teeth chattering to such an extent that we could scarcely articulate an intelligible word.

"Plenty too much fever here come," remarked Cupid, while his teeth clattered together like castanets. "Sar, you lib for carry dem quinine powder dat dem doctor sarve out dis morning?"

"Certainly, Cupid," jibbered the skipper. "M-m-many thanks for the hint. M-m-m-mister Fortes--ugh! t-t-take a p-p-pow-ow-der at once."

I did so, and handed one to the Krooboy, who simply put it, paper and all, into his mouth, and swallowed the whole. Having done this, Cupid announced, as well as his chattering teeth would permit, that in view of the fog and the intense darkness it would be simply suicidal for us to attempt the passage of the mangroves without a light, and that therefore he proposed to make his way alone to the gig, not only to reassure her crew as to our safety, but also to procure a lantern. And he enjoined the skipper and me to remain exactly where we were until he should return. After an absence which seemed to be an age in duration, but which was really not quite three-quarters of an hour, he reappeared, accompanied by the coxswain of the boat and two other seamen, who brought along with them a couple of lighted lanterns. Thus reinforced and assisted, we got under way again, and eventually, after a most fatiguing and dangerous journey, reached the boat and shoved off into the stream. The gig was of course provided with a boat compass, and we knew the exact bearing of the spot where the other boats lay hidden; but we already knew also how complicated and confusing was the set of the currents in the river, and how hopeless would consequently be any attempt to find our friends in that thick fog. We therefore did not make the attempt, but, pushing off into the stream until we were clear of the mosquitoes and other winged plagues that had been tormenting all hands for so many hours, let go our anchor in one and a half fathoms of water, and proceeded to take a meal prior to turning-in for the night.

Our first business, after once more joining forces, was to pull into the creek and call upon his Majesty, King Olomba; but, upon interviewing that potentate, through the medium of Cupid, who acted as interpreter, it at once became evident that our worthy skipper had been made the victim of an elaborate hoax--even more elaborate, indeed, than we at the moment expected; for the king not only vigorously disclaimed any propensity toward slave-hunting or slave-dealing, but went the length of strenuously denying that the river was ever used at all by slavers; also he several times endeavoured to divert the conversation into another channel by pointedly hinting at his readiness to accept a cask of rum as a present, to which hint the skipper of course turned a deaf ear. Then, having got out of the old boy all the information that we could extract--which, when we came to analyse it, amounted to just nothing--we carefully searched the bush in the neighbourhood of the town, to see if we could discover anything in the nature of a barracoon, but found no trace whatever of any such thing.

Having drawn the creek blank, the skipper next determined to search a spot known as the Camma Lagoon, some twelve miles farther up the river; and, the sea-breeze having by this time set in, we stepped the masts and made sail upon the boats, creeping up the river close to its northern bank in order to dodge the current as much as possible.

Upon reaching the lagoon we found it to be in reality a sort of bay in the north bank of the river, some five and a half miles long by about three and three-quarter miles wide, with an island in the centre of it occupying so large an extent of its area that at one spot the creek behind was barely wide enough to allow the passage of a vessel of moderate tonnage. The eastern extremity of this creek, however, widened out until it presented a sheet of water some two miles long by about a mile and a half in width, with a depth of water ranging from two to three fathoms. Furthermore, the island itself and the adjacent banks of the river were thickly wooded, affording perfect concealment, behind which half a dozen slavers might lurk undetected; and altogether it wore, as seen from the river, the aspect of an exceedingly promising spot. We therefore lowered the boats' sails, unshipped their masts, and, keeping a bright look-out all round us, pulled warily into the lagoon at its eastern extremity.

For the first mile of our passage we detected nothing whatever of a suspicious character; but upon rounding the eastern extremity of the island and entering the widest part of the lagoon we sighted two large canoes paddling furiously up the creek, about a mile ahead of us. The captain at once brought his telescope to bear upon these craft, and with its aid discovered that each canoe was manned by about forty black paddlers, while the after end of each craft was occupied by some ten or a dozen men in European dress, most of whom appeared to be armed with muskets. These men had the appearance of being either Portuguese or Spaniards, and their presence in such a spot could mean but one thing, namely, that there was a barracoon somewhere near at hand. The skipper accordingly gave the order to chase the two canoes, to which the boats' crews responded with a cheer, and laid themselves down to their oars with such a will that they almost lifted the boats out of the water. But we had scarcely traversed a distance of half a dozen boats' lengths when, upon opening up a little indentation in the shore of the mainland, we saw before us a substantial wharf, long enough to accommodate two fair-sized craft at once, with a wide open space at the back of it upon which stood some eight or ten buildings, one of which was unmistakably a barracoon of enormous size.

With another cheer the course of the boats was at once diverted toward the wharf; and we had arrived within less than a hundred yards of it when the deathlike silence which had hitherto prevailed ashore was pierced by a shrill whistle, in response to which the whole face of the bush bordering the open space at once began to spit flame, while the air around us hummed and whined to the passage of a perfect storm of bullets and slugs, among which could be detected the hum of round shot, apparently nine-pounders, the gig weathered the storm unscathed; but upon glancing back I saw that the other boats had been less fortunate, there being a gap or two here and there where a moment before a man had sat, while certain of the oars were at that moment slipping through the rowlocks to trail in the water by their lanyards a second later. Here and there, too, could be seen a man hastily binding up a wounded limb or head, either his own or that of a shipmate.

The skipper sprang to his feet in the stern-sheets of the gig, and drew his sword.

"Hurrah, lads!" he shouted. "Give way, and get alongside that wharf as quickly as you can. Then let every man run his hardest for the shelter of the buildings, carrying his musket and ammunition with him. One hand remain in each boat as boat-keeper, who must crouch down under the shelter of the wharf face. Mr Fortescue, stick close alongside me, please; I shall probably want you to carry messages for me."

"Ay, ay, sir," I answered; and the next moment the voice of the coxswain pealed out: "Oars! rowed of all!" followed by the clatter of the long ash staves as they were laid in on the thwarts, and the gig, still leading the other boats, swept up alongside the low wharf and hooked on.

With a yell of fierce delight, and eyes blazing with excitement, Cupid, the Krooboy, bounded up on the wharf, and extended one great black paw to assist the skipper, while in the other he grasped his favourite weapon, an axe, the edge of which he had carefully ground and honed until one could have shaved with it; in addition to which he wore a ship's cutlass girded about his waist. Moreover he had "cleared for action," by stripping off the jacket and shirt which he usually wore, and stowing them carefully away in the stern-sheets of the boat; so that his garb consisted simply of a pair of dungaree trousers rolled up above his knees and braced tight to his waist by the broad belt from which hung his cutlass.

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