Medical Life in the Navy by Gordon Stables (the dot read aloud .txt) 📕

daily, with this difference,--the former pay for theirs, while the

latter do not.

It was a dark-grey cloudy forenoon when we "up anchor" and sailed from

Simon's Bay. Frequent squalls whitened the water, and there was every

indication of our being about to have dirty weather; and the tokens told

no lies. To our little craft, however, the foul weather that followed

seemed to be a matter of very little moment; for, when the wind or waves

were in any way high, she kept snugly below water, evidently thinking

more of her own convenience than our comfort, for such a procedure on

her part necessitated our leading a sort of amphibious existence, better

suited to the tastes of frogs than human beings. Our beds too, or

matresses, became converted into gigantic poultices, in which we nightly

steamed, like as many porkers newly shaven. Judging from the amount of

salt which got encrusted on our skins, there was little need to fear

danger, we were well preserved--so much so indeed, that, but for the

constant use of the matutinal freshwater bath, we would doubtless have

shared the fate of Lot's wife and been turned into pillars of salt.

After being a few days at sea the wind began to moderate, and finally

died away; and instead thereof we had thunderstorms and waves, which, if

not so big as mountains, would certainly have made pretty large hills.

Many a night did we linger on deck till well nigh morning, entranced by

the sublime beauty and terrible grandeur of those thunderstorms. The

roar and rattle of heaven's artillery; the incessant _floods_ of

lightning--crimson, blue, or white; our little craft hanging by the bows

to the crest of each huge inky billow, or next moment buried in the

valley of the waves, with a wall of black waters on every side; the wet

deck, the slippery shrouds, and the faces of the men holding on to the

ropes and appearing so strangely pale in the electric light; I see the

whole picture even now as I write--a picture, indeed, that can never,

never fade from my memory.

Our cruising "ground" lay between the island and town of Mozambique in

the south, to about Magadoxa, some seven or eight degrees north of the

Equator.

Nearly the whole of the slave-trade is carried on by the Arabs, one or

two Spaniards sometimes engaging in it likewise. The slaves are brought

from the far interior of South Africa, where they can be purchased for a

small bag of rice each. They are taken down in chained gangs to the

coast, and there in some secluded bay the dhows lie, waiting to take

them on board and convey them to the slave-mart at Zanzibar, to which

place Arab merchants come from the most distant parts of Arabia and

Persia to buy them. Dhows are vessels with one or two masts, and a

corresponding number of large sails, and of a very peculiar

construction, being shaped somewhat like a short or Blucher boot, the

high part of the boot representing the poop. They have a thatched roof

over the deck, the projecting eaves of which render boarding exceedingly

difficult to an enemy.

Sometimes, on rounding the corner of a lagoon island, we would quietly

and unexpectedly steam into the midst of a fleet of thirty to forty of

these queer-looking vessels, very much to our own satisfaction, and

their intense consternation. Imagine a cat popping down among as many

mice, and you will be able to form some idea of the scramble that

followed. However, by dint of steaming here and there, and expending a

great deal of shot and shell, we generally managed to keep them together

as a dog would a flock of sheep, until we examined all their papers with

the aid of our interpreter, and probably picked out a prize.

I wish I could say the prizes were anything like numerous; for perhaps

one-half of all the vessels we board are illicit slaveholders, and yet

we cannot lay a finger on them. One may well ask why? It has been

said, and it is generally believed in England, that our cruisers are

sweeping the Indian Ocean of slavers, and stamping out the curse. But

the truth is very different, and all that we are doing, or able at

present to do, is but to pull an occasional hair from the hoary locks of

the fiend Slavery. This can be proved from the return-sheets, which

every cruiser sends home, of the number of vessels boarded, generally

averaging one thousand yearly to each man-o'-war, of which the half at

least have slaves or slave-irons on board; but only two, or at most

three, of these will become prizes. The reason of this will easily be

understood, when the reader is informed, that the Sultan of Zanzibar has

liberty to take any number of slaves from any one portion of his

dominions to another: these are called household slaves; and, as his

dominions stretch nearly all along the eastern shores of Africa, it is

only necessary for the slave-dealer to get his sanction and seal to his

papers in order to steer clear of British law. This, in almost every

case, can be accomplished by means of a bribe. So slavery flourishes,

the Sultan draws a good fat revenue from it, and the Portuguese--no

great friends to us at any time--laugh and wink to see John Bull paying

his thousands yearly for next to nothing. Supposing we liberate even

two thousand slaves a year, which I am not sure we do however, there are

on the lowest estimate six hundred slaves bought and sold daily in

Zanzibar mart; two hundred and nineteen thousand in a twelvemonth; and,

of our two thousand that are set free in Zanzibar, most, if not all,

by-and-bye, become bondsmen again.

I am not an advocate for slavery, and would like to see a wholesale raid

made against it, but I do not believe in the retail system; selling

freedom in pennyworths, and spending millions in doing it, is very like

burning a penny candle in seeking for a cent. Yet I sincerely believe,

that there is more good done to the spread of civilisation and religion

in one year, by the slave-traffic, than all our missionaries can do in a

hundred. Don't open your eyes and smile incredulously, intelligent

reader; we live in an age when every question is looked at on both

sides, and why should not this? What becomes of the hundreds of

thousands of slaves that are taken from Africa? They are sold to the

Arabs--that wonderful race, who have been second only to Christians in

the good they have done to civilisation; they are taken from a state of

degradation, bestiality, and wretchedness, worse by far than that of the

wild beasts, and from a part of the country too that is almost unfit to

live in, and carried to more favoured lands, spread over the sunny

shores of fertile Persia and Arabia, fed and clothed and cared for;

after a few years of faithful service they are even called sons and feed

at their master's table--taught all the trades and useful arts, besides

the Mahommedan religion, which is certainly better than none--and, above

all, have a better chance given them of one day hearing and learning the

beautiful tenets of Christianity, the religion of love.

I have met with few slaves who after a few years did not say, "Praised

be Allah for the good day I was take from me coontry!" and whose only

wish to return was, that they might bring away some aged parent, or

beloved sister, from the dark cheerless home of their infancy.

Means and measures much more energetic must be brought into action if

the stronghold of slavedom is to be stormed, and, if not, it were better

to leave it alone. "If the work be of God ye cannot overthrow it; lest

haply ye be found to fight even against God."

It might have been that our vessel was launched on a Friday, or sailed

on a Friday; or whether it was owing to our carrying the devil on board

of us in shape of a big jet-black cat, and for whom the lifebuoy was

thrice let go, and boats lowered in order to save his infernal majesty

from a watery grave; but whatever was the reason, she was certainly a

most unlucky ship from first to last; for during a cruise of eighteen

months, four times did we run aground on dangerous reefs, twice were we

on fire--once having had to scuttle the decks--once we sprung a bad leak

and were nearly foundering, several times we narrowly escaped the same

speedy termination to our cruise by being taken aback, while, compared

to our smaller dangers or lesser perils, Saint Paul's adventures--as a

Yankee would express it--wern't a circumstance.

On the other hand, we were amply repaid by the many beautiful spots we

visited; the lovely wooded creeks where the slave-dhows played at hide

and seek with us, and the natural harbours, at times surrounded by

scenery so sweetly beautiful and so charmingly solitary, that, if

fairies still linger on this earth, one must think they would choose

just such places as these for their moonlight revels. Then there were

so many little towns--Portuguese settlements--to be visited, for the

Portuguese have spread themselves, after the manner of wild

strawberries, all round the coast of Africa, from Sierra Leone on the

west to Zanzibar on the east. There was as much sameness about these

settlements as about our visits to them: a few houses--more like tents--

built on the sand (it does seem fanny to see sofas, chairs, and the

piano itself standing among the deep soft sand); a fort, the guns of

which, if fired, would bring down the walls; a few white-jacketed

swarthy-looking soldiers; a very polite governor, brimful of hospitality

and broken English; and a good dinner, winding up with punch of

schnapps.

Memorable too are the pleasant boating excursions we had on the calm

bosom of the Indian Ocean. Armed boats used to be detached to cruise

for three or four weeks at a time in quest of prizes, at the end of

which time they were picked up at some place of rendezvous. By day we

sailed about the coast and around the small wooded islets, where dhows

might lurk, only landing in sheltered nooks to cook and eat our food.

Our provisions were ship's, but at times we drove great bargains with

the naked natives for fowls and eggs and goats; then would we make

delicious soups, rich ragouts, and curries fit for the king of the

Cannibal Islands. Fruit too we had in plenty, and the best of oysters

for the gathering, with iguana most succulent of lizards, occasionally

fried flying-fish, or delicate morsels of shark, skip-jack, or devilled

dolphin, with a glass of prime ram to wash the whole down, and three

grains of quinine to charm away the fever. There was, too, about these

expeditions, an air of gipsying that was quite pleasant. To be sure our

beds