The Congo Rovers Part 3

I soon saw that my suspicion was well-founded. The rascal, instead of easing the boat and meeting the heavier seas as he ought to have done, was sailing the craft at top speed right through them, varying the performance occasionally by keeping the boat broad away when a squall struck her, causing her to careen until her gunwale went under, and as a natural consequence s.h.i.+pping a great deal of water.

At length he rather overdid it, a squall striking the boat so heavily that before he could luff and shake the wind out of the sail she had filled to the thwarts. I thought for a moment that we were over, and so did the crew of the boat, who jumped to their feet in consternation.

Being an excellent swimmer myself, however, I managed to perfectly retain my _sang-froid_, whilst I also recognised in the mishap an opportunity to take the c.o.xswain down a peg or two.

Lifting my legs, therefore, coolly up on the side seat out of reach of the water, I said:

"How long have you been a sailor, c.o.xswain?"

"Nigh on to seven year, sir. Now then, lads, dowse the sail smartly and get to work with the bucket."

"Seven years, have you?" I returned placidly. "Then you _ought_ to know how to sail a boat by this time. I have never yet been to sea; but I should be ashamed to make such a mess of it as this."

To this my friend in the rear vouchsafed not a word in reply, but from that moment I noticed a difference in the behaviour of the men all round. They found they had not got quite the greenhorn to deal with that they had first imagined.

When at last the boat was freed of the water and sail once more made upon her, I remarked to the c.o.xswain:

"Now, Tom--if that is your name--you have amused yourself and your s.h.i.+pmates at my expense--to your heart's content, I hope--you have played off your little practical joke upon me, and I bear no malice.

But--let there be no more of it--do you understand?"

"Ay ay, sir; I underconstumbles," was the reply; "and I'm right sorry now as I did it, sir, and I axes your parding, sir; that I do. Dash my b.u.t.tons, though, but you're a rare plucky young gentleman, you are, sir, though I says it to your face. And I hopes, sir, as how you won't bear no malice again' me for just tryin' a bit to see what sort o' stuff you was made of, as it were?"

I eased the poor fellow's mind upon this point, and soon afterwards we arrived alongside the _Saint George_.

I found the first lieutenant, and duly handed over my despatch, which he read with a curious twitching about the corners of the mouth.

Having mastered the contents, he retired below, asking me to wait a minute or two.

At that moment my attention was attracted to a mids.h.i.+pman in the main rigging, who, with exaggerated deliberation, was making his unwilling way aloft to the mast-head as it turned out. A certain familiar something about the young gentleman caused me to look up at him more attentively; and I then at once recognised my recent acquaintance, Lord Fitz-Johnes. At the same moment the second lieutenant, who was eyeing his lords.h.i.+p somewhat wrathfully, hailed him with:

"Now then, Mr Tomkins, are you going to be all day on your journey?

Quicken your movements, sir, or I will send a boatswain's mate after you with a rope's-end to freshen your way. Do you hear, sir?"

"Ay ay, sir," responded the _ci-devant_ Lord Fitz-Johnes--now plain Mr Tomkins--in a squeaky treble, as he made a feeble momentary show of alacrity. Just then I caught his eye, and, taking off my hat, made him an ironical bow of recognition, to which he responded by pressing his body against the rigging--pausing in his upward journey to give due effect to the ceremony--spreading his legs as widely apart as possible, and extending both hands toward me, the fingers outspread, the thumb of the right hand pressing gently against the point of his nose, and the thumb of the left interlinked with the right-hand little finger. This salute was made still more impressive by a lengthened slow and solemn twiddling of the fingers, which was only brought to an end by the second lieutenant hailing:

"Mr Tomkins, you will oblige me by prolonging your stay at the mast- head until the end of the afternoon watch, if you please."

As the answering "Ay ay, sir," came sadly down from aloft, I felt a touch on my arm, and, turning round, found my second acquaintance, Lord Tomnoddy, by my side. As I looked at him I felt strongly inclined to ask him whether _he_ also had changed his name since our last meeting.

"Oh, look here, Hawksbill," he commenced, "I'm glad you've come on board; I wanted to see you in order that I might repay you the sovereign you lent us the other day. Here it is,"--selecting the coin from a handful which he pulled out of his breeches pocket and thrusting it into my hand--"and I am very much obliged to you for the loan. I _really_ hadn't a farthing in my pocket at the time, or I wouldn't have allowed Tomkins to borrow it from you--and it was awfully stupid of me to let you go away without saying where I could send it to you."

"Pray do not say anything further about it, Mr --, Mr --."

"I am Lord Southdown, at your service--_not_ Lord Tomnoddy, as my whimsical friend Tomkins dubbed me the other day. It is perfectly true," he added somewhat haughtily, and then with a smile resumed: "but I suppose I must not take offence at your look of incredulity, seeing that I was a consenting party to that awful piece of deception which Tomkins played off upon you. Ha, ha, ha! excuse me, but I really wish you could have seen yourself when that mischievous friend of mine accused you of--of--what was it? Oh, yes, of playing fast and loose with the affections of the fict.i.tious Lady Sara, or whatever the fellow called her. And then again, when he remarked upon your extraordinary resemblance to Lord--Somebody--another fict.i.tious friend of his, and directed attention to your 'lofty intellectual forehead, your proud eagle-glance, your--' oh, dear! it was _too_ much."

And off went his lords.h.i.+p into another paroxysm of laughter, which sent the tears coursing down his cheeks and caused me to flush most painfully with mortification.

"Upon my word, Hawksbill--" he commenced.

"My name is Hawkesley, my lord, at your service," I interrupted, somewhat angrily I am afraid.

"I beg your pardon, Mr Hawkesley; the mistake was a perfectly genuine and unintentional one, I a.s.sure you. I was going to apologise--as I _do_, most heartily, for laughing at you in this very impertinent fas.h.i.+on. But, my dear fellow, let me advise you as a friend to overcome your very conspicuous vanity. I am, perhaps, taking a most unwarrantable liberty in presuming to offer you advice on so delicate a subject, or, indeed, in alluding to it at all; but, to tell you the truth, I have taken rather a liking for you in spite of--ah--ahem--that is--I mean that you struck me as being a first-rate fellow notwithstanding the little failing at which I have hinted. You are quite good enough every way to pa.s.s muster without the necessity for any attempt to clothe yourself with fict.i.tious attributes of any kind. Of course, in the ordinary run of events you will soon be laughed out of your weakness--there is no place equal to a man-of-war for the speedy cure of that sort of thing--but the process is often a very painful one to the patient--I have pa.s.sed through it myself, so I can speak from experience--so _very_ painful was it to me that, even at the risk of being considered impertinent, I have ventured to give you a friendly caution, in the hope that your good sense will enable you to profit by it, and so save you many a bitter mortification. Now I _hope_ I have not offended you?"

"By no means, my lord," I replied, grasping his proffered hand. "On the contrary, I am very sincerely obliged to you--"

At this moment the first lieutenant of the _Saint George_ reappeared on deck, and coming up to me with Mr Austin's letter open in his hand, said:

"My friend Mr Austin writes me that you are quite out of eggs on board the _Daphne_, and asks me to lend him a couple of dozen." (Here was another take-down for me; the important despatch with which I--_out of all the mids.h.i.+pmen on board_--had been intrusted was simply a request for the loan of two dozen eggs!) "He sends to me for them instead of procuring them from the sh.o.r.e, because he is afraid you may lose some of your boat's crew." (Evidently Mr Austin had not the high opinion of me that I fondly imagined he had.) "I am sorry to say I cannot oblige Mr Austin; but I think we can overcome the difficulty if you do not mind being delayed a quarter of an hour or so. I have a packet which I wish to send ash.o.r.e, and if you will give Lord Southdown here--who seems to be a friend of yours--a pa.s.sage to the Hard and off again, he will look after your boat's crew for you whilst you purchase your eggs."

I of course acquiesced in this proposal; whereupon Lord Southdown was sent into the captain's cabin for the packet in question; and on his reappearance a few minutes later we jumped into the boat and went ash.o.r.e together, his lords.h.i.+p regaling me on the way with sundry entertaining anecdotes whereof his humorous friend Tomkins was the hero.

We managed to execute our respective errands without losing any of the boat's crew; and duly putting Lord Southdown on board the _Saint George_ again, I returned triumphantly to the _Daphne_ with my consignment of eggs and handed them over intact to Mr Austin. After which I dived below, just in time to partake of the first dinner provided for me at the expense of His Most Gracious Majesty George IV.

For the remainder of that day and during the whole of the next, until nearly ten o'clock at night, we were up to our eyes in the business of completing stores, etcetera, and, generally, in getting the s.h.i.+p ready for sea; and at daybreak on the second morning after I had joined, the fore-topsail was loosed, blue peter run up to the fore royal-mast head, the boats hoisted in and stowed, and the messenger pa.s.sed, after which all hands went to breakfast. At nine o'clock the captain's gig was sent on sh.o.r.e, and at 11 a.m. the skipper came off; his boat was hoisted up to the davits, the canvas loosed, the anchor tripped, and away we went down the Solent and out past the Needles, with a slas.h.i.+ng breeze at east-south-east and every st.i.tch of canvas set, from the topgallant studding-sails downwards.

CHAPTER FOUR.

A BOAT-EXCURSION INTO THE CONGO.

Our skipper's instructions were to the effect that he was, in the first instance, to report himself to the governor of Sierra Leone; and it was to that port, therefore, that we now made the best of our way.

The breeze with which we started carried us handsomely down channel and half-way across the Bay of Biscay, and the s.h.i.+p proving to be a regular flyer, everybody, from the skipper downwards, was in the very best of spirits. Then came a change, the wind backing out from south-west with squally weather which placed us at once upon a taut bowline; and simultaneously with this change of weather a most disagreeable discovery was made, namely, that the _Daphne_ was an exceedingly crank s.h.i.+p.

However, we accomplished the pa.s.sage in a little over three weeks; and after remaining at Sierra Leone for a few hours only, proceeded for the mouth of the Congo, off which we expected to fall in with the _Fawn_, which s.h.i.+p we had been sent out to relieve. Proceeding under easy canvas, in the hope of picking up a prize by the way--in which hope, so however, we were disappointed--we reached our destination in twenty- three days from Sierra Leone; sighting the _Fawn_ at daybreak and closing with her an hour afterwards. Her skipper came on board the _Daphne_ and remained to breakfast with Captain Vernon, whom--our skipper being a total stranger to the coast--he posted up pretty thoroughly in the current news, as well as such of the "dodges" of the slavers as he had happened to have picked up. He said that at the moment there were no s.h.i.+ps in the river, but that intelligence--whether trustworthy or no, however, he could not state--had reached him of the daily-expected arrival of three s.h.i.+ps from Cuba. He also confirmed a very extraordinary story which had been told our skipper by the governor of Sierra Leone, to the effect that large cargoes of slaves, known to have been collected on sh.o.r.e up the river, awaiting the arrival of the slavers, had from time to time disappeared in a most mysterious manner, at times when, as far as could be ascertained, no craft but men-o'-war were anywhere near the neighbourhood. At noon the _Fawn_ filled away and bore up for Jamaica--whither she was to proceed preparatory to returning home to be paid off--her crew manning the rigging and giving us a parting cheer as she did so; and two hours later her royals dipped below the horizon, and we were left alone in our glory.

On parting from the _Fawn_ we filled away again upon the starboard tack, the wind being off the sh.o.r.e, and at noon brought the s.h.i.+p to an anchor in nine fathoms of water off Padron Point (the projecting headland on the southern side of the river's mouth) at a distance of two miles only from the sh.o.r.e. The order was then given for the men to go to dinner as soon as that meal could be got ready; it being understood that, notwithstanding the _Fawn's_ a.s.surance as to there being no s.h.i.+ps in the river, our skipper intended to satisfy himself of that fact by actual examination. Moreover, the deserted state of the river afforded us an excellent opportunity for making an unmolested exploration of it--making its acquaintance, so to speak, in order that at any future time, if occasion should arise, we might be able to make a dash into it without feeling that we were doing so absolutely blindfold.

At 1:30 p.m. the gig was piped away; Mr Austin being in charge, with me for an _aide_, all hands being fully armed.

The wind had by this time died away to a dead calm; the sun was blazing down upon us as if determined to roast us as we sat; and we had a long pull before us, for although the s.h.i.+p lay only two miles from the sh.o.r.e, we had to round a low spit, called, as Mr Austin informed me, Shark Point, six miles away, in a north-easterly direction, before we could be said to be fairly in the river.

For this point, then, away we stretched, the perspiration streaming from the men at every pore. Fortunately the tide had begun to make before we started, and it was therefore in our favour. We had a sounding-line with us, which we used at frequent intervals; and by its aid we ascertained that at a distance of one mile from the sh.o.r.e the shallowest water between the s.h.i.+p and Shark Point was about three and a half fathoms at low water. This was at a spot distant some three and a half miles from the point. Half a mile further on we suddenly deepened our water to forty-five fathoms; and at a distance of only a quarter of a mile from the point as we rounded it, the lead gave us fifteen fathoms, shortly afterwards shoaling to six fathoms, which depth was steadily maintained for a distance of eight miles up the river, the extent of our exploration on this occasion. On our return journey we kept a little further off the sh.o.r.e, and found a corresponding increase in the depth of water; a result which fully satisfied us that we need have no hesitation about taking the _Daphne_ inside should it at any time seem desirable so to do.

Immediately abreast of Shark Point is an extensive creek named Banana Creek; and hereabouts the river is fully six miles wide. On making out the mouth of this creek it was our first intention to have explored it; but on rounding the point and fairly entering the river, we made out so many snug, likely-looking openings on the southern side that we determined to confine our attention to that side first.

In the first place, immediately on rounding Shark Point we discovered a bay at the back of it, roughly triangular in shape, about four miles broad across the base, and perhaps three miles deep from base to apex.

At the further end of the base of this triangular bay we descried the mouth of the creek; and at the apex or bottom of the bay, another. The latter of these we examined first, making the discovery that the mouth or opening gave access to _three_ creeks instead of one; they were all, however, too shallow to admit anything drawing over ten feet, even at high-water; and the land adjoining was also so low and the bush so stunted--consisting almost exclusively of mangroves--that only a partial concealment could have been effected unless a s.h.i.+p's upper spars were struck for the occasion. A low-rigged vessel, such as a felucca, would indeed find complete shelter in either of the two westernmost creeks-- the easternmost had only three feet of water in it when we visited it; but the sh.o.r.es on either side consisted only of a brownish-grey fetid mud, of a consistency little thicker than pea-soup; and the facilities for embarking slaves were so utterly wanting that we felt sure we need not trouble ourselves at any future time about either of these creeks.

The other creek, that which I have described as situated at the further end of the base of the triangle forming the bay, was undoubtedly more promising; though, like the others, it could only receive craft of small tonnage, having a little bar of its own across its mouth, on which at half-tide, which was about the time of our visit, there was only seven feet of water. Its banks, however, were tolerably firm and solid; the jungle was thicker and higher; though little more than a cable's length wide at its mouth, it was nearly a mile in width a little further in; and branching off from it, right and left, there were three or four other snug-looking little creeks, wherein a s.h.i.+p of light draught might lie as comfortably as if in dry-dock, and wherein, by simply sending down topgallant-masts, she would be perfectly concealed. Mr Austin would greatly have liked to land here and explore the bush a bit on each side of the creek; but our mission just then was to make a rough survey of the river rather than of its banks, so we reluctantly made our way back once more to the broad rolling river.

A pull of a couple of miles close along the sh.o.r.e brought us to the entrance of another creek, which for a length of two miles averaged quite half a mile wide, when it took a sharp bend to the right, or in a southerly direction, and at the same time narrowed down to less than a quarter of a mile in width. For the first two miles we had plenty of water, that is to say, there was never less than five fathoms under our keel; but with the narrowing of the creek it shoaled rapidly, so that by the time we had gone another mile we found ourselves in a stream about a hundred yards wide and only six feet deep. The mangrove-swamp, however, had ceased; and the gra.s.sy banks, shelving gently down to the water on each side, ended in a narrow strip of reddish sandy beach. The bush here was very dense and the vegetation extremely varied, whilst the foliage seemed to embrace literally all the colours of the rainbow.

Greens of course predominated, but they were of every conceivable shade, from the pale delicate tint of the young budding leaf to an olive which was almost black. Then there was the ruddy bronze of leaves which appeared just ready to fall; and thickly interspersed among the greens were large bushes with long lance-shaped leaves of a beautifully delicate ashen-grey tint; others glowed in a rich ma.s.s of flaming scarlet; whilst others again had a leaf thickly covered with short white sheeny satin-like fur--I cannot otherwise describe it--which gleamed and flashed in the sun-rays as though the leaves were of polished silver.

Some of the trees were thickly covered with blossoms exquisite both in form and colour; while as to the pa.s.sion-plant and other flowering creepers, they were here, there, and everywhere in such countless varieties as would have sent a botanist into the seventh heaven of delight.

That this vast extent of jungle was not tenantless we had frequent a.s.surance in the sudden sharp cracking of twigs and branches, as well as other more distant and more mysterious sounds; an occasional glimpse of a monkey was caught high aloft in the gently swaying branches of some forest giant; and birds of gorgeous plumage but more or less discordant cries constantly flitted from bough to bough, or swept in rapid flight across the stream.

We were so enchanted with the beauty of this secluded creek that though the time was flitting rapidly away Mr Austin could not resist the temptation to push a little further on, notwithstanding the fact that we had already penetrated higher than a s.h.i.+p, even of small tonnage, could possibly reach; and the men, nothing loath, accordingly paddled gently ahead for another mile. At this point we discovered that the tide was met and stopped by a stream of thick muddy fresh water; the creek or river, whichever you choose to call it, had narrowed in until it was only about a hundred feet across; and the water had shoaled to four feet. The trees in many places grew right down to the water's edge; the roots of some, indeed, were actually covered, and here and there the more lofty ones, leaning over the stream on either side, mingled their foliage overhead and formed a leafy arch, completely excluding the sun's rays and throwing that part of the river which they overarched into a deep green twilight shadow to which the eye had to become accustomed before it was possible to see anything. A hundred yards ahead of us there was a long continuous _tunnel_ formed in this way; and, on entering it, the men with one accord rested on their oars and allowed the boat to glide onward by her own momentum, whilst they looked around them, lost in wonder and admiration.