O'er Many Lands, on Many Seas

“I fear, sir, it would be but a choice of deaths.”

“Better die fighting for life, though,” said the captain, “than without a struggle.”

“Quite true,” said the other, “and once over the bar we could get round the point and shelter would be certain. But that terrible bar, sir!”

It was far on in the middle watch ere the storm that had been brewing came on at last. It came from the east, as the captain had feared it would. Clouds had first risen up and gradually obscured the stars. Among these clouds the lightning flashed and played incessantly, but for a long time no thunder was heard. This, at last, began to mutter, then roll louder and louder, nearer and nearer, then a bank of white was seen creeping along the sea’s surface towards the ship, and almost immediately after the wind was upon her, she was on her beam ends with the sea dashing through her rigging, and the storm seeming to hold her down, but gradually she righted and sprang forward like an arrow from a bow, and apparently into the very teeth of the wind.

The ship had been battened down and made ready in every way hours before the gale began, and well was it for all on board that preparations had thus been made.

She was headed as near to the wind as she would sail, but for some time it seemed impossible for her to keep off the shore. Gradually, however, the wind veered more to the south, and she made a good offing. But the storm increased rather than diminished; still the good ship struggled onwards through darkness and danger.

The royal masts had been got down early on the previous afternoon so as to reduce top-hamper to a minimum, but the pitching and rolling were frightful, yet she made but little water.

Towards morning, however, fire and wind and waves appeared to combine together for the destruction of the ship. The gale increased suddenly to all the fury of a hurricane, the roaring of the wind drowned even the rattle of the thunder, a ball of fire quivered for a moment over the fore-top-mast, then rent it into fragments, ran along a stay and splintered the bulwarks ere it reached the water, while at the same moment the whole ship was engulphed by a solid sea that swept over her bows, and carried away almost everything it reached, bulwarks, boats, and men.

Then, as if it had done its worst, the gale moderated, the sea became less furious, the thunder ceased to roll, the lightning to play, and in half an hour more the grey light of morning spread over the ocean, and on the eastern horizon a bank of lurid red showed where the sun was trying to struggle through the clouds.

With bulwarks ripped away and boats gone, the Niobe looked little better than a wreck, while, sad to relate, when the roll was called five men failed to answer. Five men swept away during the darkness and tempest, five brave hearts for ever stilled, five firesides at home in merrie England made to mourn for those whom their friends would sadly miss, but never, never see again!

But see: the gale begins once more with redoubled fury, and to the horror of that unhappy ship, the wind goes round to meet the sun.

“I fear, sir,” said the lieutenant to the captain, “that nothing can now save us. We must die like men.”

“That we will, I trust,” replied the captain, “but we will die doing our duty to the very last. Is there any one on board who knows this coast well?”

“The boatswain, sir, Mr Roberts.”

“Send for him.”

“Ay, ay, sir.”

“Mr Roberts, what think you of the outlook?”

“A very poor one, captain. But I have been looking at the land, sir, and hazy though it is I find we are right off the bar of Lamoo.”

“Why, then, we must have been driven back many many miles; we were off Brava last night.”

“I reckon, sir, we made up our leeway at times like, when there was a bit of a shift of wind, and lost it again when it veered. But our only chance now is to head for that bar, sir.”

“You’ve been over it?”

“I have, sir, many is the time; and I’ll try to pilot the good Niobe over it now.”

“Very well, Mr Roberts, you shall try; if you succeed, you are a made man, if you fail – ”

“All,” said the boatswain, “I knows what failure’ll mean, sir.”

Half an hour afterwards, stripped of nearly every inch of canvas save what sufficed to steer her, with four men at the wheel, and the sturdy pilot guiding them with hand movements alone – for his voice could not be heard amid the raging of the storm and awful roar of the breaking billows that were everywhere around them – the brave Niobe was rushing stem on through the mountain seas that rolled shorewards over the most dreaded bar on all the African coast.

It is impossible to describe the turmoil and strife of the waves when the vessel was once fairly on the bar; and to add to the terror of the scene more than once she struck the sandy bottom with a force that made every timber creak and groan. Next moment she would be swallowed up apparently in boiling, breaking, swirling water, but rising again on the crest of a wave, she would shake herself free and rush headlong on once more.

But look at her now: she is on the very top of a curling avalanche, and speeding shorewards with it, her jibboom and bowsprit, and even part of her bows, hang clear over that awful precipice of water, and if the ship moves faster than the breaker beneath her then her time is come.

It is a moment of awful suspense, but it is only a moment, for in shorter time than pen takes to describe it, the billow seems to sink and melt beneath her; again she bumps on the sand, but next minute amidst a chaos of snowy foam she is hurled into the deep water beyond.

An hour afterwards the Niobe is lying snugly at anchor in a little wooded bay, with all her sails furled, and nothing to tell of the dangers she has just come through, save the splintered mast, the ragged rigging, and sadly-torn bulwarks.

But the wind goes moaning through the mangrove forest, where birds and beasts are crouching low for shelter among the gnarled boughs and roots, and although the water around the Niobe is calm enough, the storm roars through her upper rigging, and she rocks and rolls as if out at sea.

The youthful sergeant is sitting beside the cot within the screen, but his head is bowed down with grief, and a sorrow such as men feel but once in a life-time is rending his heart. The little white hand of his wife still lies on the coverlet, but it is cold now as well as white. The heart that loved him had ceased to beat —

“And closed for aye the sparkling glance
That dwelt on him sae fondly.”

All his bright visions of yesterday have fled away, all his hopes are crushed, his very soul seems dead within him.

At the very time the gale was raging its fiercest, and the sea threatening every minute to engulph the ship, the lady’s life had passed away, and he who sits here pen in hand was left without a mother’s care. Born on the stormy ocean, rocked in infancy on the cradle of the deep, no wonder he loves the sea, and can look back with pleasure even to the dangers he has encountered and gone through.

As the sea on which he was born, so stormy has been the life of him who tells this tale.

Chapter Two

“Majestic woods of every vigorous green,
Stage above stage, high waving o’er the hills;
Or to the far horizon wide diffused,
A boundless deep immensity of shade.”

    Thomson’s “Seasons.”
“Hearts of oak!” our captain cried, “when each gun
From its adamantine lips,
Spread a death-shade round the ships,
Like the hurricane eclipse of the sun.”

    Campbell.
There are two events in the history of a man, of which he himself in writing his autobiography can hardly be expected to give any very clear account, namely, his birth and his death. To describe the former, he would require to be born with his eyes very wide open indeed, and instead of a silver spoon in his mouth, which they tell me some children are born with, a silver pencil-case behind his ear; to describe the latter, a man would need to be a prophet in reality. How is it then, it may be asked, that I, Niobe Radnor, am able with truthfulness and accuracy to give an account of the occurrences that were taking place around me when I first made my appearance on “the stage of life.” For the ability to do so, I am indebted to the only father I ever knew, my true and trusty old friend Captain (formerly boatswain) Ben Roberts, who supplies me with the facts.

Yonder he is, sitting out on the rose lawn there, as I write, book in hand, his white beard glittering in the spring sunshine, and his jolly old round red face surmounted by an immensity of straw hat – just as if his complexion could be spoiled, just as if a complexion that has borne the brunt of a thousand storms, been scathed and scarred in battle, blistered by many a fierce and scorching summer sun, and reddened by the snows of many a hard and stormy winter, could be spoiled.

Ah! dear old Ben! he is getting old, wearing up towards the threescore years and ten —

” – That form
That short allotted span.
That binds the few and weary years
Of pilgrimage to man.”

Yes, Ben is getting old. As oaks get old, so is my faithful friend getting old. As oaks in age are hard and tough, and defiant of the gales that rage through the forest, uprooting mighty trees, so is Ben my friend; and for all the storms he has weathered, I trust I shall have him by me yet for years and years to come. Ben is so buoyant and fresh, it always instils new blood into my veins merely to talk to him. “Ben, my boy,” I often say, “you are, by your own confession, some twenty years my senior, and yet I believe you feel as young and even younger than I do.”

“Well, Nie,” he replies, “I believe it’s the heart that does it, you know.