"Then you advise our putting up the helm and running for Zanzibar?"
"Aye."
The cutter was rigged with a dipping lug and a spritsail; so, no sooner had crusty old Draper given his laconic answer to Mr Chisholm, than the latter sang out to Larrikins, who was in the bows.
"Look out there forrud!" he cried. "Stand by to dip!"
This is considered one of the smartest things in boat-sailing, the men having to be specially stationed for the purpose; but, as we had been living in the cutter now for three months, and had experience of her under any and every change of wind and sail, the operation did not occasion much difficulty to us.
Larrikins, who was bowman, pressed out the fore part of the lug as soon as the yard was half lowered, while two other hands gathered the sheet of the sail forwards, and pa.s.sed it round the mast as soon as Draper had put the helm up; when I and another chap who was aft with me, unhooked the sheet to port and then rehooked it to the starboard side, which was to windward now on the cutter"s head coming round, as she went off on the other tack.
Gathering way in a minute or two as we eased off the sheet of the lug, the cutter went ahead at a great pace, making much better weather of it running before the wind, as was the case now, than she had lately, before we came about, when beating up to Bagamoyo; skimming over the broken surface of the sea, her bows and the deadwood of her keel forwards being clean out of the water sometimes as she jumped from wave to wave, and sending the spray she threw up as she came down bash on the top of some billow, right inboard, wetting us to the skin, and leaving a wake behind her like a millrace.
We were steering almost due north now; and, looking ahead under the leech of the lugsail, I could see that the clouds we had observed before banked up on the horizon had crept up towards the zenith, spreading out laterally on either side, until half of the heavens was obscured.
Then, all of a sudden, the wind dropped, as if done with a turn of the hand.
"Look out there for your sheet!" cried old Draper, in a warning tone, a.s.suming the direction of affairs and taking command of the boat unconsciously in the emergency, over the head of his officer, Mr Chisholm. "Let go your sheet, I say!"
Bouncer the seaman, who sat on the after thwart and had charge of this, bungled about the job, having taken a turn with the end of the rope round the cleat, instead of holding it in his fist as he should have done; and the c.o.xswain"s harsh repet.i.tion of the order in such an imperative tone seemed to flurry him, making him all the slower.
"Hang it all, man!" shouted Mr Chisholm, taking up the cry, "let go the sheet at once!"
Seeing what a fog Bouncer was in, besides which the sail was just then beginning to bulge back as the wind headed us, the boat rocking for an instant and then canting over as if she was going to capsize, I drew my knife and rushed to where he sat in the bottom of the boat, struggling with the sheet!
CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE.
THE ARAB STRONGHOLD.
At that moment the wind lulled for an instant, and I was just able to make a slash with the sharp edge of my knife across the rope, severing it instanter, and thus saving poor bungling Bouncer all further trouble; when, a terrific gust came, this time right astern, carrying sail and mast and all, the latter snapping off like a carrot close to the thwart where it was stepped, over the heads of all in the boat forwards, high in air--just as if the lot were the remnants of a big kite that had parted its supporting string, the sail ultimately disappearing in the distance, swallowed up by the angry waves.
These latter were now boiling up round the cutter on every side, our little pigmy of a craft seeming lost in the seething caldron of broken water; but, she was buoyant as a cork, and, although half rilled, breasted the billows in fine style and running before wind and sea at a tearing rate with not a rag of sail on her now, nor an oar, save one Mr Chisholm and I rigged out over the stern by Draper"s direction, this being better to steer her by than the rudder, which we then unshipped.
It was a good job for us that our old c.o.xswain had got wounded, and that Draper had taken his place just then temporarily while Hoskins was on the sick-list; for, though Draper was the oldest petty officer on board the ship--his promotion to a higher grade having been delayed, I believe, through his natural crustiness of temper, which he really could not help--there was no doubt that he knew the East Coast of Africa well, and the management of a boat the better of the two, especially in a stormy sea.
Ay, and it was stormy now!
Far as the eye could reach, the mad waves dashed and clashed against each other as they raced along, borne onward before the blast; throwing up their white crests, all lashed into foam, in showers of spray and spindrift that fell back over us in the boat, wetting us to the skin and blinding those that had to face it.
The horizon, too--what we could see of it, that is, through the spray-- was covered with a ma.s.s of inky clouds, almost blue-black in hue, that covered by degrees the whole of the heavens, with the exception of a round spot right overhead that looked like a gigantic eye.
Mr Chisholm, who, young though he was, had the sight of a hawk, spotted this at once.
"Hullo, Draper!" he cried, pointing aloft. "What"s that up there-- anything more brewing up for us, d"ye think?"
The c.o.xswain, who had all his work cut out to keep the boat from being swamped by the heavy following seas that came rolling up astern of us, threatening every minute to engulf the cutter and carry her down bodily below, gave an uneasy squint in the direction whither the young officer pointed his finger.
"Lord-sakes, sir," he exclaimed, shaking his head in a very grave way, "that be a h"ox-eye!"
"Ox-eye!" Mr Chisholm repeated after him in a quizzing tone, with a grin on his face. "I"ve heard of ox-tongues before--those tinned ones ain"t bad eating sometimes for lunch on a pinch; but an ox-eye--what is that, Draper?"
"Nothin" to larf about," grunted out our crusty c.o.xswain, bracing his body against the loom of the oar with which he was steering and slewing the boat"s head aside to avoid a cross sea that nearly broke at that very moment over our bows. "If ye"d be"n as long on this coast as me, sir, ye"d know when ye seed one o" them things up there--it means, "Look out!" Ay, by the Lord too, we must look out now! Stand by there--all hands lie down in the bottom of the boat; it"s yer only chance, if ye values yer lives!"
"Down, men!" Mr Chisholm cried, endorsing Draper"s words of warning with his command. "Do as the c.o.xswain tells you--down for your lives!"
Our chaps who were seated on the thwarts forwards and amidships at once scrambled down on the bottom boards, while we in the sternsheets, including Mr Chisholm himself, squatted on the grating, only old Draper sitting up still at his post aft with both hands holding the loom of the steering oar in a firm grip.
"Bend yer heads," muttered this worthy the next moment; "it"s a-comin"
now!"
As the words pa.s.sed his lips and we all bowed down below the level of the gunwale, the roar of the sea seemed hushed in the dead stillness that ensued; and then, with a wild shriek that sounded like the moaning of some lost soul from the bottomless pit, the wind, which had been gathering up all its strength in the interim, burst upon us, burying the cutter"s bows as it struck her right under water.
Bouncer, frightened out of his life, made a movement to rise as he lay alongside me on the stern grating; but old Draper gave him a kick in the ribs with the toe of his heavy boot.
"Lie still, you beggar!" he cried, bringing, with a tremendous pull of his arms, the oar-rudder hard over. "The boat"s rightin" all right.
We"ve seed the wust on it if yer"ll only bide still!"
Fortunately, we had a weather cloth over the bow, which prevented the sea from pouring in and swamping us when the cutter dipped under; while, as all of us remained quiet and our dead weight was more towards the stern than forwards, the boat"s natural buoyancy prevailed and she rose up like a cork.
The worst might have been over, as Draper had said; still, we were not "out of the wood" yet, gust after gust a.s.sailing us, and the waves racing up madly astern, when, dividing, they would tower up on either side of our frail craft, threatening destruction for the moment ere they rolled onward again--we, all the while, fleeing before the fury of the storm we knew not whither, powerless alike to shape a course or guide our boat.
All that our skilful c.o.xswain could do was to prevent the cutter from shipping a sea, no matter how the wind took us, or whether we ran with the billows or athwart them, as sometimes happened from the sudden shift of the gale, at whose beck and call we were; for, one moment going north or west into the open sea, the next recklessly careering eastwards, right in upon the rocks of the mainland, or dashing south amongst the mazy little islands and islets round and about Zanzibar, where our plight would be as perilous.
We had been boxing the compa.s.s like this for some four or five hours, without the weather showing any signs of a mend, it being now late in the afternoon; and our head turned towards Bagamoyo again for about the fifth time that day since we began our circling experiences, when, just as it was beginning to grow darker, though there had not been much light about since noon, a ship hove in sight.
She was dead ahead of us, riding out the gale under steam.
The smoke of her funnels was trailing away to leeward and so mixing up with the clouds that were banked on the horizon that old Draper, who was looking out as well as steering, for he would not allow any of us to sit on the thwarts, said he could not tell "t"other from which."
Presently, however, as we surged onwards, carried down upon her at the rate of twelve knots or more, Draper could distinguish the smoke from the clouds; ay, and the ship herself.
"By the Lord!" he cried, looking at Mr Chisholm, his face all aglow and his voice heartier than I ever heard him speak before, "it"s the _Mermaid_, sir."
"The _Mermaid_, c.o.xswain!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Mr Chisholm, at once jumping to his feet and taking a sight himself, shading his eyes with his hand.
"Yes, it is the _Mermaid_, hurrah!"
"Steady there, sir," said Draper, warningly putting his hand on the young officer"s arm; "we ain"t aboard her yet, sir; and if yer don"t keep cool, sir, beggin" yer pardon, sir, it"s precious little we"ll see of her this night, or ever ag"en, fur that matter!"
"But, how shall we get alongside?"
"Keep cool, sir. I"ll tell "ee when the time comes," rejoined the c.o.xswain, in a soothing tone that took off the impertinence of his thus speaking to his officer. "You leave it to me, sir, and I"ll find a way, if man can do it, to get alongside our old hooker; "sides them aboard "ll be on the lookout, too, and between the pair on us we ought fur to manage it comf"ably!"
While "old crusty" was laying down the law in this fashion, though continuing to mind his steering as smartly as he had done all along, the cutter was nearing the cruiser every instant, the wind taking her along in a series of mad leaps and bounds through the water and over the water, jumping from the top of one wave to that of another, and sometimes almost in mid-air, until we seemed about to hop on board the _Mermaid_, all standing like some of those flying-fish I have seen in the tropics, or else smash ourselves all to pieces against her iron hull.
But, in the nick of time, when only some twenty or thirty yards off her sharp ram bow, which would have cut into the cutter as easily as a knife goes into b.u.t.ter in summer-time, Draper gave a tug to his steering oar; and, Captain Hankey "making a lee" for us by porting his helm, we glided into comparatively calm water under the cruiser"s starboard counter.
A dozen ropes were thrown to us from men already stationed in the rigging for the purpose, a dozen hands and more held out to help us up the side; and almost before any of us well knew where we were, there we stood, safe and sound on the deck of our old ship again, the cutter being then hoisted up to the davits.