Sent captain to us. Little king. Glad, all glad. All women, all girls for you. All glad!" And the young ladies smiled still broader, and contorted their bodies still more violently, while the tomtoms crashed louder than ever. It was clear the crowd expected something, and as it did not see any sign of what it desired, the old negro became yet more explicit both in speech and gesture. The populace actually expected me to provide them with a scion of the royal race! And the commander of the Favorite, Larrieu, flew at me instantly. "Come, Monseigneur," he cried, "here"s a chance of distinguishing yourself. n.o.blesse oblige!"
"My dear fellow," I replied, "I leave you to represent me," and I beat an ignominious retreat, which the crowd did not misunderstand, to judge by the grunts of disappointment I overheard.
That night I dined with Cha-Cha off silver plate, under the light shed by church candelabra and candlesticks; and the toasts of the King and Queen, and Prosperity to France, were each saluted by twenty-one guns, for Cha-Cha"s factory and harem, in which he was said to keep a thousand women, formed a real fortress, bristling with cannon, and with the additional natural defence of the lagoon before it. Most of Cha-Cha"s children were present at the dinner, and several captains of slave ships, brimful of stories of their adventures. Cha-Cha made me a present of a box of Havanas, the like of which the King of all the Spains had never smoked. I handed it over to Larrieu, and the next day I returned on board my ship, not without having one or two encounters.
The first of these was with the freshly-landed crews of the slavers which had been captured the week before, about fifty determined-looking men of all nationalities, who stopped me and requested in the most arrogant manner to be taken to some port where they might reengage--an impossible thing for me to do.
The second encounter was more painful. A crowd of lame or sickly slaves escaped from the barrac.o.o.ns and threw themselves at my feet, clinging to my clothes, wailing and beseeching me to buy them. The poor wretches, who had no market value, and whom therefore the King did not care to feed, expected to be sent shortly to Abomey for human sacrifices. There were hundreds of them--a most distressing sight.
After Widah our cruise took on a different aspect. We had come to that part of the coast called the Bights, consisting of the Gulfs of Biafra and Benin, between which lies the huge Niger Delta. The weather, which continued as scorching as ever, became excessively oppressive. The sky was always dark and the rain never ceased. Sometimes a rift was seen in the clouds in the distance, it would rapidly increase in size, taking a funnel shape, and then a tornado would burst, like a tempest in miniature, lasting only three or four hours, but of extraordinary violence. During one of these the Belle-Poule had to scud along under bare poles at the rate of twelve knots an hour. The weather was excessively unhealthy, but in the whole course of this long cruise I never lost but one man, who was carried off by a violent inflammation of the liver. I attribute this good fortune in the first place to the undoubted cleverness of our surgeon-major, Dr. Loze, whose whole career had been spent in tropical waters. His theory was that quinine was only absolutely efficacious if administered at a very fleeting moment in the course of the fever, between the hot and cold fits, and he always sat up with his patients himself, so as to catch the favourable opportunity. In the second place we took quite exceptional hygienic precautions, especially against the night damp. The crew wore their winter kit from sunset to sunrise. No man was allowed to lie down on deck during the night watches, especially while the dew was falling.
They had to walk up and down the whole time, under an awning, which was always kept up over the deck. In order to carry this out, we never had more than half watches on duty at night. We had to navigate carefully and slowly, being short of hands, but the result was well worth the temporary departure from the usual regulations for life on board a ship of war.
I went up one of the arms by which the Niger pours it waters into the Gulf of Guinea on board the Fine, a schooner belonging to the station, commanded by Captain Lahalle. This arm, known as the Bonny River, is the trading branch, the one down which pa.s.ses all the produce which the mighty Niger--a completely navigable river, with neither cataracts nor rapids, the great future artery of Equatorial Africa--brings from the interior of the continent. A negro king of the name of Pepel, more intelligent than his fellows, had const.i.tuted himself broker to this important trade. The European merchantmen coming up the river anch.o.r.ed before his town, made over their cargoes to him, and shipped palm-oil, the chief riches of the country, in their stead. The drawback was that anything you do with negroes is slow work. Whether it was that the palm-oil, which came in canoes, and very irregularly, from high up the river, did not arrive in sufficient quant.i.ties, or whether it was deliberate delay on Pepel"s part, a year would sometimes elapse before the return cargo was completed, and sickness was meanwhile decimating the crews. Some cases there had been in which everybody had died, in others, ships had set sail in despair, without completing their full cargo, and Pepel had triumphed in his bad faith, until a man-of-war came and made him disgorge. Several times already the authorities oft the French station had had to chastise him, and it was a service to the trade of every nation to go and show him one"s teeth now and again.
This object it was, together with a certain amount of curiosity, which had brought us to the Niger River.
When we got to Pepel"s town we found eight large Liverpool merchantmen, partly dismantled, and covered with roofs made of plantain leaves, surrounded by canoes going incessantly to and from the sh.o.r.e, where hundreds of negroes loaded them with casks of palm-oil. There was a stir and commercial activity such as I had not yet seen anywhere on that coast. The whole trade was exclusively English. To avoid the mortality to their crews, the English captains had their ships dismantled as soon as they got into the river, roofed the decks over, and sent their sailors back to England. The unloading and loading of the ships were then done by negro labour, as soon as a ship"s cargo was completed, she was manned and sent back to Liverpool with the crew of some new arrival, and so on ad lib. It was very sensible, very well suited to the circ.u.mstances of the case; but to carry out such a plan the commercial houses must have had a great many ships, very large capital, and a spirit of consistency in business affairs no longer existing in our country. What with our unstable regime, and the invariably provisional conditions under which we live, we could never think of such a continuous struggle.
As soon as we had anch.o.r.ed and were preparing to go ash.o.r.e, a great uproar attracted my attention, and caused me to hurry out of my cabin on deck. An unhappy negro who had been bathing close to us, with numerous companions of both s.e.xes, had just been seized and carried off by a shark. We could still see the eddy above the spot where the monster was devouring him. It was the second time I had witnessed such a scene. These horrible creatures are "fetish" at the mouth of the Bonny, where its waters join those of the new Calabar River, and human sacrifices are offered to them. In other words, on certain days of the year, the people go in procession to the river bar and throw in some wretched children, who have been told they were being taken to a festival. The sharks have a fine feast, to the joy of the onlookers, and amid much beating of tom-toms. This Jew-Jew, or shark-worship, is one of the most abominable superst.i.tions I have ever met with. At Widah the snakes were "fetish." Here at Bonny it was the lizards, which is less cruel. Yet they are hideous enough, those Bonny lizards, huge creatures over a yard or a yard and a half long. They have temples of their own, where they are fed, and whence they sally out for walks, constantly waving their rose-coloured forked tongues, and walking all sideways, so as not to set their feet on their huge bellies, like great bags, which they drag after them like trawl nets. One has to go about with lanterns at night, for to step on these "fetish" gentry would excite the population into taking the law into its own hands.
During a visit to the English sea-captains, we heard that a French ship, the Julie of Bordeaux, had just sailed in despair, without having completed her cargo, paid for in advance, after waiting nine months in the river, and that Pepel, thinking that we had come on that account, was shaking in his shoes. But on making inquiries we could find no trace of any complaint, official or semi-official, having been made, and further, the Julie was accused of having tried to dabble in the slave trade. Here was a puzzle for us. What were we to do? Say nothing to Pepel? Then he would laugh us to scorn, for his conscience p.r.i.c.ked him, we knew. All his canoes had taken to flight when we arrived, and not a single negro had boarded us. Threaten him? But with what? And why? To tell how we got out of this hole would be to betray... a professional secret. All I can say is, that the next morning, in a huge straw hat, and with a big striped parasol in my hand, I performed the functions of dragoman to his Excellency Commander Lahalle, full lieutenant, representing France and the French navy.
We began by crossing a swamp, covered with huge mangrove trees, through which small ca.n.a.ls had been cut to allow of the canoes getting up to the houses. Under the dark mangrove shadows the long canoes, full of fierce-looking stark-naked blacks, looked like huge crocodiles, ready to fly at us. After a time we came alongside Pepel"s house, a sort of labyrinth of clay and straw-built huts. I announced his Excellency the Commander to a negro who spoke Spanish. We were invited to sit down, a crowd of blacks a.s.sembled, and the elders of the tribe arrived. Lastly appeared a tall young man wearing a blue cotton shirt and trousers, with amulets strung round his neck, and a sceptre covered with a tigerskin in his hand. This was Pepel himself. He understood English and spoke it a little. We had what is called in those parts a palaver with him. I spoke very slowly, and the King answered me. We went over a great many subjects. We were severe--but just! Nothing concerning the result of this conference ever transpired, but the diplomatic action of France made itself felt. Something else made itself felt as well, and that was the horrible smell in Pepel"s town, a filthy place, inhabited by a numerous and hideous population.
When I got outside it I stopped short before a striking sight--a semi-circular clump of trees so huge that men looked like pigmies beneath them, giving me much the same impression as the mosque of St.
Sophia at Constantinople had formerly made on me. The trunks of these trees were like the pillars of some strange cathedral, and it was as dark beneath them as in some ancient church. The bare sandy soil swarmed with women, some naked, some clothed, and all tattooed and painted and striped in various colours, sc.r.a.ping up the earth to find fresh water, the rarest of all commodities on the African coast. It was a picture worth painting.
On leaving the Niger (which is British, irrevocably British), fierce tornadoes drove us swiftly to Fernando Po, a lovely island covered with forests, over which rises a huge peak, much like the Peak of Teneriffe, and like it too, almost always lost in the clouds. I anch.o.r.ed close in sh.o.r.e in an excellent haven, and seized the opportunity to send my crew to amuse themselves and do their washing on sh.o.r.e. A pretty stream, which tumbled in one waterfall after another through the ma.s.ses of tropical growth, was soon the scene of numerous laundry operations, in which all the negresses in the neighbourhood insisted on joining, incited thereto no doubt by the desire of seeing how my four hundred strapping fellows set about their work.
[Ill.u.s.tration with caption: CITIZEN OF FERNANDO PO.]
From the top of the hill to its foot there rose one great Africo-European shout of laughter and shriek of delight, which it was a downright pleasure to listen to.
Officially speaking, Fernando Po was a Spanish possession But not a single Spaniard lived on the island, and no Spanish flag floated over it. The English indeed had landed several cargoes of their "liberated Africans" on it, and an individual, whether official or not I cannot tell, had also come to govern them. He had built himself a comfortable house, before which he had planted a flagstaff, from which the Union Jack waved. After a time he had a.s.sumed the style and t.i.tle of governor, and I was requested to call on him as such, which I absolutely refused to do. On my return to Europe, chancing to meet Comte Bresson, our amba.s.sador in Spain, I mentioned the state of matters at Fernando Po to him, and soon after received a letter from him from Madrid, in which he told me the Spanish Government had just despatched a warship to retake possession of the island. It was well worth while, for if the British Niger, the German Cameroons, and the French Gaboon are some day to develop commercially and colonially, as they seem to give promise of doing, Fernando Po, with its insular position, its comparatively healthy climate, and its excellent anchorage, lying as it does at an equal distance from the three centres of activity, cannot fail to become a most important place both from the commercial and the military point of view.
I speak of the FRENCH Gaboon. It was not French at the time of my visit, but it was soon to become so. We had important commercial interests there, and the idea of forming a colonial station was already entertained.
Commander Bouet, who had preceded me on the coast, had taken his gunboat up the river, and had earnestly pressed me to do the same thing with the Belle-Poule, so as to prove its navigability for the largest ships, which, once acknowledged, would stamp it as a first-cla.s.s naval station. I resolved to make the attempt, though I had no charts, no levels nor surveys, and the low sh.o.r.es offered no landmarks nor distinctive signs, not even a tree to guide one. Bouet had merely warned me that there were dangerous sandbanks to be avoided. "Pooh!
you"ll find your way amongst them all right." And so we did indeed, but it was a regular voyage of discovery.
While we were creeping along with all due caution, a fleet of canoes joined us from the right bank of the river, where Libreville now stands, with Qua-Ben, king of the right bank, and his suite, on board.
The chief boarded us, came and greeted me, and then with a self-important air, established himself, accompanied by the whole of his suite, on the p.o.o.p of my frigate. He was a small deformed man, with a countenance betraying all the spitefulness usual among dwarfs and humpbacked people. He was huddled into a British naval officer"s uniform. Taken up as I was with the management of my ship, I paid no attention at all to him. Presently a top man just come down out of the mizzentop approached me and whispered, "Captain, that king is an awful rascal. I was here last year with a ship from Nantes, and he stripped us of everything."
"Are you quite sure?"
"Perfectly, sir, it"s Qua-Ben. I know him quite well"
"Very good, call the master-at-arms...Master-at-arms, take that king over there, and put him in irons!"
Four pairs of sinewy arms lifted up his sable majesty, under the orders of the master-at-arms, the police officer of the ship, and thus carried, and followed by his dismayed attendants, the king disappeared below. He yelled like a dog who has had his paw trodden on, and I fancied I heard the words "Bouet! Bouet!" here and there. That was indeed the name he was invoking. When he had once been laid out on his plank couch, we extracted a complete confession of his misdeeds through the medium of several interpreters, and we learnt also the fact, which a summary investigation confirmed, that Commander Bouet had already chastised him and made him disgorge his plunder once. So I had him set at liberty, and advised him to meditate on his second warning, and behave accordingly for the future.
He lost no time in taking himself off, while the Belle-Poule cast anchor near the left bank of the river, before a town belonging to another native king known as Denis. This Denis was by no means an ordinary individual. Some of his predecessors, too, had been ill.u.s.trious in their way. His father, who had been kidnapped when very young and taken to Europe, had played the Chinese bells in a military band under the first Napoleon"s empire, had returned to his own country, and had finally been called to the highest place in the State.
His son had inherited his father"s honours. He was a fine-looking negro, with grizzled woolly pate, who spoke French fairly well, and seemed much inclined to come to an understanding with us and open up his country to trade and civilisation. He came to call on me in great state, dressed in the handsome uniform of a general of the French Republic, the cast-off garments of some performer at the Cirque Olympique. He had a tricolour plume in his hat, a gold laced coat with lapels turned back on the chest, white breeches, and top boots. He wore the decoration of the Legion of Honour, which he had been given for some service or other he had done our fleet in those waters; and a large gold medal of Queen Victoria, given him by the English, hung down on a thick chain between his knees. His son--who lived close to the landing-stage in a big hut with a h.o.a.rding round it, like what you see in Paris round pulled-down houses, on which was written, instead of the usual warning, "Pet.i.t Denis, Fils du Roi" (Little Denis, the King"s Son) in letters a foot high--was anxious to come too. He had a Hussar uniform, but not knowing how to put it on, he sent at the last moment to ask for somebody to go and help him to get into it. I lost no time in detailing the midshipmen of the frigate for this duty, which they performed with the greatest gusto, dressing up "Pet.i.t Denis" just as the tailor"s a.s.sistants dress up M. Jourdain in the Bourgeois Gentil-homme. But the scamps tightened him up to such an extent in his jacket and belts that he was more dead than alive, and on the brink of an apopletic attack, by the time he got on board. We gave the royal family the best welcome at our command. My bandmaster, M. Paulus, entertained them with his noisiest tunes; but whenever the band stopped the king cried "Encore! encore!" When the bandsmen got tired out I shut his majesty up in a little cabin with the three ship"s drummers, and told them to keep rolling till he had enough of it. But the drummers gave out in their turn, and I had to send the insatiable melomaniac and his family on sh.o.r.e at last, whether he would or no.
In return for my handsome behaviour to him he invited me to join him in an elephant hunt. These animals were very numerous in the vicinity, and were devastating the plantations. But the season was particularly unhealthy, everybody was ill; we should have had to spend the night in pestilential marshes, where we were certain to get fever, and as I had hardly got clear of that we had caught in the Cazamanze River, I had to refuse the tempting offer. We spent several days in the Gaboon, amongst a race of negroes who struck me as being more intelligent and more easy to civilise than any others on the coast. The women, too, had better features than most negresses. Aquiline noses were to be seen among them and lips of moderate size, and some had an almost European look. Their necks and arms and waists were loaded with necklaces and bracelets of sh.e.l.ls or metal, which rattled every time they moved, a somewhat idle precaution, inspired, so it was said, by the excessive jealousy of their lords and masters. On the whole I carried away a very good impression of the future possibilities of the Gaboon, both naval and colonial.
When the Belle-Poule had finished her cruise along the Guinea Coast she had orders to go to Brazil; so we set sail for Rio de Janeiro. On our way thither we touched at He du Prince, a Portuguese possession entirely covered with coffee plantations, the produce of which connoisseurs reckon to be the best in the world. Almost the whole of the island belonged to one lady, who did all in her power to induce our purser to give up his profession and come and manage her immense property for her. Failing in this endeavour she sent him a keepsake, in the shape of a pair of braces embroidered by her own fair hands, just as we were departing. We took in water at Ile du Prince, and as we had used up all our stores during our long cruise, I shipped a boat-load of yams to take the place of potatoes, and completed my victualling, during a stay of a few hours at Ascension, by taking a large number of turtle on board. They weighed about six hundred pounds each, and did us quite well instead of fresh meat.
A sudden change came over my life at Rio de Janeiro, one which my parents had long desired. I married. My bride was the second daughter of the Emperor Dom Pedro, Princess Francoise, whose acquaintance I had made some six years previously, during my first visit to Brazil. The official request for the princess"s hand was made in the King"s name by the Baron de Langsdorff, who was sent over as amba.s.sador extraordinary for that purpose in the Ville de Ma.r.s.eilles. The wedding was celebrated at the San Cristofero Palace, and a few days afterwards we started for Brest, which place we reached after a slow pa.s.sage of seventy-two days against contrary winds.
On my arrival I had to give up the command of the Belle-Poule, and I did not part from the old ship, which had carried me so well and safely through so many adventures, without a pang of emotion. I felt, when I clasped my officers" hands in hearty farewell, that I was sure (THEN, at least) of meeting them again in the course of my professional career. The painful leave-taking was when I had to say good-bye to my brave crew, a happy family, in which discipline had been so strictly established from the very outset of the voyage, that punishment had become unknown, and whose universal sense of duty had engendered that mutual affection between officers and men which is the foundation of true professional zeal and self-sacrifice.
The fine body of fighting men which four years of care and unvaryingly consistent management had brought to the highest pitch of perfection, all the brave fellows of whom I felt I could ask anything and be certain it would be performed, were to be scattered, every man to his own home. I was never to see them again, except a few, one here and one there. Nowadays even, after the lapse of fifty years, if chance takes me anywhere upon the seacoast, I sometimes see some old sailor"s eye fixed on me, altered as I am, as though he were searching the far depths of his memory. All at once one hand goes up to his cap, and the other is stretched out to me with a friendly look, and the words "Do you remember such a one, topman of the maintop--such a storm--such an escape?"
Then my heart swells, and I say to myself, as I could go on saying for ever, "There is nothing you cannot do with Frenchmen when they are once saturated with the spirit of obedience, discipline, and duty!"
CHAPTER XI
1844
I had hardly got back to Paris when I was shot on to the Admiralty Board. A great honour it was, no doubt, for a junior like myself to be a.s.sociated with such veterans in the profession as numbers among its members were. But this gathering of experienced men was merely a body of advisers placed at the disposal of the Minister of Marine, to a.s.sist him with its counsel on any questions he chose to submit to them. The committee possessed no initiative of its own, and I felt myself misplaced upon it. I had indeed, and always have preserved, the deepest respect for its eminent qualities. It has contributed not a little, by its consistent action and permanent character, to the preservation of our naval organisation--the worth of which has been proved everywhere, in the Crimea, on the battlefields in 1870, in Tunis, and in China--from the results of the conceited ignorance of mushroom politicians. But in the year 1843 we were on the brink of the inevitable revolution worked in naval matters by the introduction of steam. The great object for us was to create, and that rapidly, under pain of being outstripped by others, a new naval force, more appropriate, perhaps, than our former one, to our national genius and resources. Pa.s.sionately interested as I was in the greatness of my country, having leisure time to dispose of, since nothing called on me to plunge into the paltry bargain-making of electoral politics in which that country was wallowing, having no love of red tape nor excess of experience to hold me back, I was ardently anxious to be employed where I could actively a.s.sist in creating a powerful element in the national strength. I therefore merely pa.s.sed through the Admiralty Board.
My only recollection of it is of having been present at some very long sittings in a room in the Ministry of Marine, the windows of which look on to the Rue Royale, which apartment one of my colleagues, Admiral de Bougainville, had turned into a sort of stovehouse by means of hot-air pipes, sandbags, screens, and foot m.u.f.fs. We all nearly died of the heat, and when another colleague of mine, Baron Charles Dupin, made us long speeches, I had the greatest difficulty in keeping myself awake.
The Minister of Marine decided, at my entreaty, to appoint a special naval commission on steam, of which I was a member. The chief commission did nothing, or scarcely anything--but a sub-commission did good work. There were five of us--a captain in the navy, M. de Verninac (who was afterwards Minister of Marine under General Cavaignac); a very clever engineer, formerly Superintendent at Indret, M. Rossin; an artillery colonel, M. Durbec; M. Touchard, a naval lieutenant; and myself. I will not give the full story of our work, and of the constant battle we had to fight with obstinate habit and dread of responsibility. All those early attempts of ours at transforming our navy seem almost childish, looked at from the distance of the half-century which has since elapsed. And indeed, though my recollection of them is clear enough, I have no means of verifying it, all my notes and reports, and all my correspondence relating to the undertakings in question, having pa.s.sed out of my hands, in the following manner:--
Some months after the Revolution in 1848, while I was residing in England, at Claremont, a visitor"s name was brought up to me. The name, de X., was that of a good family, well known in Normandy and in the political and scientific world. But instead of one of the faces I was prepared to see, I beheld that of a most unsatisfactory member of the family, whom I instantly remembered having seen in Algeria, wearing a Belgian uniform, and acting as reporter for the Const.i.tutionnel newspaper. He entered the room and said:
"Do you remember me?"
"Perfectly."
"Well, I"ve just arrived from your part of the world."
"What do you mean?"
"After the Tuileries were captured, on February 24th (you were in Algiers just then), I took up my quarters in your rooms. They are very comfortable rooms. I stayed in them for two months. They were rather upside down, as you may fancy. Everything worth taking had been carried off, but the floor was littered with books and papers and a whole heap of things that everybody had trodden upon. I amused myself by settling them all up, especially your letters and papers, which I sorted. I arranged them into several cla.s.ses. Everything referring to your missions and to political matters I sent to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and everything touching the navy to the Ministry of Marine. In fact, I disposed of everything. But I put aside a few doc.u.ments regarding the Princesse de Joinville"s business matters in Brazil and your own private journals of your sea-voyages, and brought them with me here."
He smilingly showed me a packet he held in his hand, then went on:
"But my journey has cost me a lot of money." "Then say how much you want, in plain English."
"A hundred louis."
I went and fetched the money, and then showed him the door without another word, though I could hardly resist kicking him through it. Thus it was that I learnt what had become of my papers on naval subjects. I greatly regretted the loss of my private correspondence, and more especially that of my letters from M. Dupuy de Lome, a most talented young engineer, much in advance of his times, with whom I had been in daily intercourse.