The following evening, as the twilight was falling, the lads again gathered round the old sailor.
"Well, lads," he began, "just as this other affair I was telling you about happened further down south, so the other was a goodish bit to the north. We were bound for the Persian Gulf, and I fancy the captain got wrong with his reckonings. He had had trouble before we sailed; had lost his wife sudden, I heard, and, more's the pity, he took to drink. He was the first and last captain as ever I sailed under as did it; for Godstone & Son were always mighty particular with their masters, and would not have a man, not for ever so, who was given to lifting his elbow. Anyhow, we went wrong; and it is a baddish place to go wrong, I can tell you, is the Mozambique Channel. There was a haze on the water and a light breeze, and just about eight bells in the morning we went plump ashore—though none of us thought we were within a hundred miles of land. There was a pretty to-do, as you might fancy; but we had to wait until morning to see where we were; then we found, when the mist lifted a bit that we were on a low sandy coast.
"We had no doubt that we should get her off so we got the boats out and the hatches off, and began to get up the cargo. We worked hard all day, and thought we had got pretty well enough out of her, and were just going to knock off work[181] and carry out a couple of anchors and cables astern to try and heave her off, when there was a yell, and two or three hundred black fellows came dashing down on us with spears. They crept up so close before they showed, that we had no time to tumble into the boats before they were upon us. We made the best sort of fight we could, but that wasn't much. We had brought ashore muskets and cutlasses, but they had been left in the boats, and only a few of us had time to get hold of them before they were upon us. I cut and slashed as well as I could, but it was not for long; for a spear lodged in my shoulder just at the moment when a big native caught me a clip over the head with a club, and down I went.
"I fancy I was some time before I got my senses again. When I did I found that I was tied hand and foot, and was lying there on the sands, with three or four of our fellows in the same plight as myself. They all belonged to the jolly-boat in which I had come ashore. The other boat had made a shift to push off with some of its hands and get back to the ship; but I did not know that until afterwards, for I was lying down behind a hillock of sand and could not get a view of the sea. There were lots of natives about, and they seemed mighty excited. I could hear a dropping fire of muskets, and guessed that those on board were keeping up a fire on any who so showed themselves on the beach. The natives got more and more excited, and kept jabbering together and pointing away along the coast; and I guessed that some of their own craft were coming to attack the ship.
"Presently I heard one of the guns, then another and[182] another. The shot didn't come whistling our way, so I had no doubt that the ship was attacked. For a quarter of an hour the firing went on—cannon and musketry. I could hear the yells of the natives and the shouts of our men, though I could see nothing. The natives round me were pretty near out of their minds with excitement; then they began to dance and yell, and all at once the firing ceased, and I knew that the niggers had taken the ship. I was afraid it would come to that; for you see they had lost pretty well a third of their crew in the fight on shore, and the niggers would never have ventured to attack if they had not been ten to one against them.
"We lay there all that night, and I believe I should have died of thirst if a nigger wench had not taken compassion on us and given us a drink. The next morning our ropes were undone. Our first look when we got up was naturally towards the ship. There she lay, with a dozen native craft round her. Her decks were black with niggers, and they were hard at work stripping her. No one paid much attention to us, for there was nowhere we could run to; and we sat down together and talked over our chances. We saw nothing of our shipmates; and whether they were all killed, or whether some of them were put aboard the native craft, I never knew. They were some days unloading and stripping the ship, and they had big quarrels over the division of the spoil. I think the fellows with boats did our natives out of their share, beyond what fell into their hands when they first attacked us. However, at last it was all done; then two chiefs came and had[183] a look at us, and one took me and Tom Longstaff, and another took the other two.
"We had not done badly for eating while we were on shore, for there was several barrels of pork and biscuits among the lot we had landed, and we were free to take as much as we wanted. The other bales and boxes were all broken open and the contents made up into packets, and Tom and I and about sixty niggers, each with as much as he could stagger under, started away from the shore. It wasn't a long march, for their village lay only about six miles away. We knew it could not be far, because the women and children had come down to the beach two or three hours after the fight was over. We stopped here about a month, and then one morning the chief and four of his men started off with Tom and me. We made three days' marches, such marches as I never want to do again. Tom and I did our best to keep up; but the last day we were quite worn out, and if it hadn't been that they thumped us with their spears and prodded us up, we should never have done it.
"The place we got to was a deal bigger than the first village. We were left outside the biggest hut with the four fellows to guard us, while the chief went inside. Presently he came out again with a chap quite different to himself. He was brown instead of being black, and dressed quite different; and having been trading up in the Persian Gulf I knew him to be an Arab. He looked us over as if we had been bullocks he intended to buy, and then went into the hut again. A few minutes later our chief came out and made signs to us that[184] we belonged to the Arab now, and then went away with his men, and we never saw him again. We had an easy time of it for the next week, and then the Arab started with a number of carriers laden with goods for the interior.
"You would scarcely believe, lads, what we went through on that 'ere journey. Many a time Tom and I made up our minds to bolt for it; and we would have done it if we had had the least idea which way to go or how we were to keep alive on the journey. We had agreed when we started that we would do our best, and that we would not put up with any flogging. We didn't much care whether they killed us or not, for we would just as leave have died as passed our lives in that country with all its beastly ways. Well, a couple of days after we had started, a big nigger driver who had been laying on his stick freely on the backs of the slaves came along, and let Tom and me have one apiece. Tom, who was nearest to him, chucked down his load and went right at him, and knocked him over like a ninepin.
"Well, some of the other drivers or guards, or whatever they call them, ran up, and there was a tidy skrimage, I can tell you. It was ten minutes, I should say, before they got the best of us; and there was not one among them but was badly damaged about the figure-head. When they had got us down they laid it on to rights, and I believe they would have finished us if the Arab had not come up and stopped it.
"'Look here,' said I, when I was able to get up on to my feet again; 'we are ready to work just as[185] far as men can work, but if one of those niggers lays a finger on us we will do for him. You may cut us in pieces afterwards, but we will do for him.'
"I don't know whether the Arab understood just what I said, but I think he got the gist of it. He spoke sharp to his men, and they never touched us afterwards. I could not quite make out what they were taking us for, because I can say honestly we were not much good at carrying—not half as good as one of the slaves. The first day or two we carried a good manful load. Then our shoes went to pieces, and we got that footsore and bad we could scarcely crawl along, let alone carrying loads. Tom said he thought that the Arab was a-taking us to sell as curios to some fellow who had never seen white men before, and it turned out as he was right. After we had been travelling for nigh a month we came to a big village; and there was great excitement over our coming, and for two days there were feastings, while the Arab sold part of his goods to the people for gold dust and ivory.
"The chief had come to look at us the day we arrived, and we had been packed away together in a little hut. The third day he came again with the Arab, and made signs that I was his property now, while the Arab told Tom to go out and start with his caravan. It was a big wrench for us, but it were no good struggling again............