The compact mass of humanity affection for Feruz Leghi; they three hundred yards away. The had fought together in the oncoming surging horde, some- mutiny of '97, and in numerthing resembling a steam-roller ous minor campaigns besides, out of control down a hill, and for the moment the Yuzcame to a sudden pause with basha saw red. He so far fora figurative grinding of brakes. got himself as to empty six Haganas Kuku's volleys had rounds from his Government found their target, and the revolver into the now stationsullen roar merged in a moment ary mass of tribesmen. into a shrill crescendo of shrieks. revolver was not a weapon he "Ma-ma, Ma-ma," cried the favoured, and the Commandant stricken steam-roller, as one had made some caustic remarks dancing, gesticulating form after about his last revolver pracanother gave a final contortion tice. Nevertheless, he reflected and subsided into itself, and that as this time the target was others fled into the safety of too big to miss, he could do no the bush. The wheels of the harm, and might even do good. steam-roller, so to speak, had Haganas Kuku maintains that broken away from the chassis, it was these six shots which which, losing its supports, be- saved the day. For it was at came inanimate and helpless. the very moment before he The Wa-giriama, in other words, fired them that some of the halted in confusion and terror, more daring of Mukoa's foluncertain whether to advance lowers, seeing that the opposor to retire. It was an anxious ing force was now reduced to moment for Haganas Kuku, eleven, had decided to fall upon for two thousand to sixteen is it and annihilate it utterly. long odds, whatever the com- But Haganas Kuku's shots pensations of the minority in made these bold spirits reconarms and ammunition, and sider their plans; again they Mukoa's archery, wild and ill- paused, then broke away into aimed as it had been, had the bush as a burst of firing taken serious toll of his small broke out from behind them force. Four askaris lay writh- and a column of smoke rose ing, and poor old Feruz Leghi, from the village on the hill. the Yuzbasha's orderly, was Assuredly the devil helped his literally transfixed by an arrow own, and the English were through his groin. The poi- greater than Mukoa, and with soned arrow of Africa is no screams of terror the remnants myth, and its effects are quick of Mukoa's army precipitated and deadly; in less than ten themselves hurriedly after their seconds his loyal old soul re- ringleaders, Haganas Kuku firceived its passport to the happy ing a parting volley to speed hunting-ground of the faithful, them on their way. Juma and his old parchment-like face Ahmed's flank attack and Hagasmiled a contorted farewell. nas' revolver practice had saved Haganas Kuku had a great the situation, which certainly at one moment had looked all smoke theories were not as ugly enough; Juma Ahmed unsound and as difficult to was now obviously in posses- demonstrate as his own. Juma sion of the village, and the Ahmed's report was most day was won. The Yuzbasha satisfactory; the Wa-giriama considered that the wounded had been taught their lesson, should now be attended to. Haganas Kuku's domiciliary Two of them had already joined visit was over, and it only old Feruz Leghi. The re- remained to bury the dead. maining two were wounded in Feruz Leghi and the two askaris the arm and leg respectively, were accordingly given burial and on them Haganas Kuku with full Mahommedan honproceeded to perform some ours, as befitted soldiers of operative surgery of a rough- Islam falling in action, and the and ready description. The campaign was over. process was simple, and consisted in cauterising the wounds with a penknife, and rubbing in permanganate of potash crystals from the medical haversack. The poison was probably of a less virulent nature than that of the three fatal arrows, and though the patients suffered excruciating agony, the drastic measures overcame the effects of the poison; they recovered, and when the time came, were even able to walk back to camp with assistance. Juma Ahmed now reappeared, his following augmented by a number of prisoners. He reported that he had met with strong resistance on entering the village, but again rifles had asserted their superiority over arrows,-he arrows, he had inflicted heavy casualties, secured a large number of prisoners, and finally set fire to the village, which, as the Yuzbasha could see, was by this time a roaring mass of flame. Mukoa himself was among the slain, but he had surely lived long enough to discover that 1 A few days later the Commandant sat in the Yuzbasha's banda 1 hearing the more unofficial details of the day. Haganas Kuku's narrative was a vigorous and picturesque one, and compelled attention, and it was only as the Commandant was rising to leave that he noticed a strange-looking object in the corner. It curiously resembled a human skull, and appeared to be full of tobacco. "You are certain," asked the Commandant, "that the chief Mukoa was amongst the slain in the village? "It is certain, Effendi," answered the Yuzbasha, "for as I myself doubted, I sent two askaris to see. They found him in the village, and Miskin Abdul brought proof. Therefore I know that the Chief Mukoa is dead, and that his words were foolish boasts have I proved also." At this point the Commandant left the banda. Further questions seemed superfluous. 1 Hut. P. C. NOT strictly accurate, the title. For we were sitting very comfortably in the diningroom of the little "Hôtel des Anges," our chairs dragged across the sanded floor, and clustered as close round the stove as possible, with the recollection of a good dinner and the prospect of a night in bed to content us. But the roar and crash of the Atlantic rollers tumbling over the outer reefs filled the room, as the sea itself fills the lives of all who live along that coast, and it was natural that our talk should have been of ships and the men who sail in them. The more natural, because it was a ship which had brought us all to that remote village, L'Aberwrach, north of Ushant, near the Ile de Vierge Light. The Blackhill, four thousand odd tons, Bilbao to the Tyne with iron ore, had contrived in some mysterious fashion to thread her way in fog through the network of the outlying rocks until she fetched up on an inner reef, where she lay, pierced throughout her length, the after-part of her covered every high water, exposed to the full force of the weather, and certain to go to pieces in a few hours in the first gale. She represented £150,000 of underwriters' money; the month was October, and our business was salvage. She had gone ashore at the top of high-water springs, and it was necessary to jettison nearly two thousand tons of ore, as well as to patch the holes which the rocks had made, before we could hope to float her. However, floated she had been, the day before, just in time, and now was safely beached in the tiny harbour, behind the fort which Vauban built against the English. It was pleasant to drink our coffee in the warmth of the little room, more pleasant still to know that our race with the weather and the seas was ended, and that we should not spend the night picking our way laboriously along wet and cumbered decks to where the carbide flares threw their flickering light around the square of each hatch. For three weeks this had been our evening's programme. Night after night the fishermen and peasants had worked below in the holds, as others had worked all day, with pick and shovel filling the two-ton buckets with the iron ore, which we had soon come to detest, so intractable and allpervading was it, and so little did its bulk seem to diminish as a result of their labour. Night after night the winches seen better men than these The had rattled and the derricks creaked as the buckets came up above the coamings. derrick swung over, Amène cried the foreman to the man at the winch, down came the bucket, four men rushed at it, struggled desperately with it, capsized it, and the resulting splash told that the Blackhill was another two tons lighter, another two tons nearer safety. It had been a time of hard unceasing work, with the knowledge that if the weather should change suddenly we were likely to lose not only the ship and all and all our gear, our gear, but the lives of most of the hundred or so men on board of the wreck. Drive, drive, drive, from dawn to dark, and from dark to dawn again, and still the iron ore, set hard like cement, seemed inexhaustible. Tired out, we lived in iron ore, slept in iron ore; it filled our eyes, our hair, our food, and stained our clothes the colour of dried blood. And when the rising tide drove the men out of the holds and the sea began to come rolling over the after-part of the ship, the weary business, repeated every high water, of hoisting the motor-pumps out of the way to the ends of the derricks, began again. Hard work, and needing good men for it, who would work at the end of a long night as at the beginning. As to that, we had none of us Bretons. Through the half-open door we could hear them in the bar, discussing over their glasses of vin blanc, "Le sauvetage du Blackhill," as no doubt they will discuss it in L'Aberwrach for many years to come. However, "Le sauvetage du Blackhill " is another story, and even we had come to the end of it for the time being. The talk had turned to other ships, and particularly to the "Lochs," in which the three others had served their time, and there is the explanation of the title, for Masefield's "Loch Achray went running through my head as I listened : "The Loch Achray was a clipper tall With seven-and-twenty hands in all, Twenty to hand and reef and haul, A skipper to sail and mates to bawl 'Tally on to the tackle fall, Heave 'n' start her, heave 'n' pawl' (Hear the yarn of a sailor, An old yarn-learned at sea)." There was no lack of stories, for the Lochs were famous ships in their day, ships which, for all the trailing smudges of smoke that rim the horizon, have left the sea the emptier by their passing. Beauty and utility no longer sail hand in hand, and the "Lochs," with their towering topgallant masts and their spread of canvas, are gone, to lie rotting in some deserted basin, to be degraded into coal-hulks, or, greater degradation perhaps, to plod round the world, dirty and uncared-for, with their rig cut down, in the hands of a dago crew. They worked steadily through the list, with great attention to accuracy of names and dates, reminding each other of Patman and Martin, those famous skippers who swore that they would never stand in front of a funnel, and how Patman got his leg crushed off the Horn and amputated it himself with a penknife, and thought nothing of it. "A hard case." How the second mate and the bo'sun of the Loch S got three months in Melbourne for raiding a cemetery and stealing tombstones to make holystones for the decks. How each of them had deserted at different times in different ports, one to join the fire-brigade in Sydney, another to make his way to Klondike in the gold rush. They talked of the men and the girls they had known in various ships and places about the world; of the way, as apprentices, they had cut through the bulkhead into the store-room to steal sugar, and the hiding they had got for it; of the hard times they had had; of icy nights aloft when nails pulled off on the frozen canvas, and the flesh came off their fingers to the bone; of brutal Yankee mates, of ships that killed a man each voyage, of shanghaings in San Francisco in the old days, of quick passages and slow passages-all the usual yarns of sailormen. There was the tale of the bo'sun of the Loch, who had a habit of beginning slowly and consequentially: "In 1884, when I was bo'sun of a steamer," but, in the eighty odd days out to Australia, was never allowed to get any further; and the tale of the shipwrecked men in the open boat who killed and ate the boy the day before they were picked up. All kinds of tales. Gradually I dropped off to sleep, hearing dimly snatches of conversation, such as"There was a fellow I was shipmates with once that thought he was a don hand at killing pigs, and, of course, he being the cook, the pig would always come to him." Naturally, as third mate in those days, I had to do everything the men thought infra dig. or the boys wouldn't do without a hiding." "Steal! they'd steal your shoe-laces if you didn't keep walking," until I was awakened by Capt. Tsaying, "It was when I was in the Loch Torrens that I came across a real Romance of the Sea." T's experiences ranged from gun-running for the King of the Hedji to helping girls to escape from white - slave dealers in Buenos Ayres, and he was usually worth listening to. "We were lying in Rio," he said, "bound for Sydney. Martin was skipper, and I was an apprentice. I suppose it must have been my first or second voyage. It all started with the cook. |