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ON leaving South Africa, our
number was raised
from four to five by our second boy, born at Cape
Town. We had our choice between returning by a
sailing ship, or by a Union liner as we went out. I
preferred the sailing ship because I hoped the longer
voyage would be good for my health. The barque
"Chatham," Captain Thurtle, which had been doing
transport of troops work in India, was lying in the
bay repairing some damage it had suffered in a
storm off Cape Agulhas. I went on board to see
what kind of quarters we should have in it. It's
poop cabins were comfortable, and the stern one,
with two broad windows, which my wife and I were
to have, was a nice square room in which a bed was
set up for my wife and the baby, while I slept on
the bulkhead under the two windows. My bed was
comfortable, except on stormy nights, when I was
liable, with blankets and mattress, to be thrown
out on the floor, which was only a foot below the
bulkhead. Having settled our few small affairs,
and sold our house furniture at a heavy loss, we
embarked, bag and baggage, when the captain
thought we would sail in two days, as his Admiralty
case concerning the damages suffered in the storm
was concluded. But he was deceived. Some hitch
occurred, and the decision was postponed for a fort-
night. We did not much grudge the delay ; for we
amused ourselves by fishing from the deck. It was
the high time for the mosquito nuisance on shore,
and the little plagues did not venture out on the
bay. I discovered that I could, while stretched on
my mattress reading a book, fish in a lazy way by
sending my lines out through the stern windows. I
had a pail beside me in which to throw the caught
fish, some of which were of the sardine kind, and
others of a much larger sort. The snook, a fish of
salmon size and shape, did not come often further
than the breakwater, where it was in shoals, but
stray specimens of the species paid us visits, and
escaped capture because we were not looking for
them.
We sailed at last, and in
starting lost an anchor,
which loss the captain took quite philosophically,
although he was apt to lose his temper about trifles.
There were but two passengers besides ourselves,
Dr Burlinson, from Mauritius, and young Mr Scarborough from the Oliphant River Valley, whose
stepfather had been striving to carry out a vast
scheme of agricultural improvement, and showing
the Boers what they might do if they took to soil
cultivation. He did not, unfortunately, reap the
reward he deserved, and the Boers stuck to their
old easy-going pastoral ways. We left Table Bay
in fair weather, but got into a rough gale before we
parted company with the sea birds, or lost sight of
the Lion's Head and Table Mountain. We scudded
before that gale for several days on our way to St
Helena, but did not suffer from sea sickness as we
would certainly have done in a steamer. Barring
loss of time and risks from storm, one enjoys the sea
far more in a sailing ship than in the most up-to-
date and luxurious liner, with its moving hotel
company.
On coming out on deck one
morning, after a
rainy night, I saw that we were sailing close to the
rough, abrupt, and barren cliffs of St Helena, which
looked as sooty black as if they had in the long ago
been crowded stacks of chimneys for Vulcan's under-
ground furnaces. There is plenty of lava and scoriae
scattered about on the surface of St Helena, and
plenty evidence of extinct volcanoes, but the sooty
cliffs owe their forbidding colour to their own
basaltic substance. We passed one narrow valley
and then came to another, at the mouth of which is
Jamestown, the capital of the island. In front of it
is the roadstead, where, among the other shipping,
we cast anchor. The roadstead has good anchorage,
which is fortunate, for the island has no harbour,
and even here the landing on the stairs is not easy
when the Atlantic rollers are being driven by wind.
From the sea, St Helena has the appearance of
having been intended to be a towering mountain like
Ascension, and to having stopped in elevation at
half the intended height, with a tableland top. I
would not think it, in my Highland walking years, a
long journey to go round its circumference of little
more than thirty miles in one sun-lit day.
Almost as soon as we
anchored, the Governor
sent notice that the "Chatham" was wanted for
Government service, and must await orders. The
captain was delighted, and neither Dr Burlinson
nor we were sorry about the fortnight's stay. The
service required was to take home old artillery guns,
with shells, round shot, and chain-shot, old muskets,
and other obsolete military and naval accoutrements
which had been sent out when George the Third was
king. In the fortnight of detention we had ample
time for exploring the little island, with its hot,
tropical, narrow valleys, and its pleasant tableland.
Here plants and trees of temperate and hot countries
flourish well together. We happened to arrive at
the end of the early rain, and when vegetation was
reviving. The early St Helena rain comes in
January and February, and the late one in July or
August. I never saw a hay-stack at the Cape, but
on the tableland of St Helena there were not a few
of them, and the grazing fields were like English
ones. So were the homes of the farmers, and the
villas of the traders, who wanted to breathe cooler
air than they had in Jamestown. This island is,
notwithstanding its small size and its tropical
position between the African Coast and Brazil,
wonderfully well watered all the year round, thanks
to the rain clouds which so often visit and bedew it.
The steam era had already
partly put an end to
St Helena's old importance as a place of call, but in
1867 it was a rendezvous for the Americans who
prosecuted the Antarctic whale fishing, and also for
the squadron which watched the African Coast for
putting down the slave trade; and it had then, and
for years afterwards, a small British garrison
to man its strong fortifications. Its resident population were of many races and shades of colour, but
there was no mistake in this lone isle of the ocean
about British supremacy. Like all visitors to St
Helena, we went to see Napoleon's empty grave,
and Longwood, where he lived and died, the doctor
and captain on horseback, and my wife and I in a
small phaeton drawn by smart little ponies. How
refreshing it felt after the stifling heat of the
narrow valley to breathe the upland air and to look
out on the surrounding ocean and hear the thunder
of its huge waves dashing themselves high against
the black, barren, frowning cliffs! Napoleon III.
was on the throne of France, and naturally cherished
the memory of his uncle. The Crimean war brought
him into close alliance with our country, and it
pleased him to be allowed to guard Longwood and
the empty tomb, whence years before Louis Philippe
had, to his own dynastic detriment, transported
Napoleon's body to Paris, "to repose on the banks
of the Seine among the people he had loved so
well." So we found Longwood and the valley, or
depression of the tomb, guarded as sacred by
courteous French soldiers.
The valley of the tomb was a
lovely place to be
buried in. The willow under which Napoleon used,
when alive, to stop and meditate was close to the
tomb, and vigorously flourishing. Canary birds were
flitting among the samphire bushes, and we started
on our way a covey of partridges. Longwood has a
delightful situation. The house is very like many
residences of small farming proprietors or yeomen
in England, comfortable, with good rooms, and of
no great size. The room in which Napoleon died
had been put back into precisely the same state in
which it was when he breathed his last there on the
5th of May, 1821. Longwood might well have
been an ideal residence for a modern philosopher, or
for a brotherhood of mediaeval monks who cultivated
the fruitful soil and served future generations by
writing annals and transcribing precious ancient
manuscripts. To the restless greatest leader of
hosts the world had ever seen, Longwood was a
prison, and the whole island a cage against whose
bars the captured eagle was perpetually Happing its
wings, and tearing with beak and talons in impotent
rage. It was shabby on the part of the Allies to
refuse him the title of Emperor. Russia, Austria,
and France again under the Bourbons sent
representatives to St Helena to see to it that he
was kept by Britain in safe custody. Well was it
for the prisoner of Europe that he had not been
placed in the hands of any one of the other three
Powers, and that his captivity was in no worse
place than St Helena. But, excusably, he and
his devoted partisans were constantly plotting a
repetition of the escape from Elba, and Napoleon
personally got some amusement out of the nervous
anxiety in which he kept Governor Sir Hudson
Lowe. Could Napoleon have seen himself as after
ages see him, he would surely not have acted like a
lion changed into a cat, which tormented a caught
mouse by playing with it before dispatching it.
Before descending to
Jamestown we dined the
four of us in the cool of the evening, in the Rose
and Crown Inn, which is at the top of the steep
ascent, and in the neatly kept lawn of which there
were camellias that grew to the size of small trees.
I have a camellia walking stick and a little twig
from Napoleon's tomb as St Helena memorials to
this day. A chief item of the well-cooked dinner
was the delicate fish called bullseye. St Helena is
well furnished with many kinds of fine, and less
good, eatable fish, and the names by which the
various sorts have got ticketed, such as bullseyes,
old wives, soldiers, five fingers, hogs-in -armour, are
even more curious than the fish themselves. The
large conger eels, so ugly to the eyes, are splendid
to eat. The rocks and stones in or on the edge of
the sea are covered with active black crabs which
scuttle out of sight when people approaches. Boys
in boats come out with ground bait to fish among
the shipping. Bonita, a fish nice to look at and
poor to eat, was a frequent capture of theirs. We
had aldermanic turtle soup on board the "Chatham"
one or more days. The fishermen had just caught
some turtles, one of which was excessively big,
which had floated in with a gale from Ascension,
and Captain Thurtle bethought him of giving us a
treat. He always kept a good board, but at St
Helena he was doing a profitable business, and was
extra liberal.
It happened, fortunately for
Captain Thurtle,
that when he anchored in the roadstead, the islanders
had exhausted their supply of sugar, and that he
had Mauritian sugar, intended for England when he
bought it, to sell to them, and that, at the same
time, the St Helena Government had a cargo of old
war stores to give him for taking home. Sugar
went and the old war stores came in, and our "old
man" was in the best of humours. He, therefore,
made no objection to fit out and man one of his
boats for conveying himself, the doctor, and me,
with a band of the island officials, for whom there
was no room in their own boat, on a fishing excursion to guano rock-islets some nine miles away from
the anchorage. Provisions, solid and liquid, for
luncheon on the rocks were stowed in our boat, and
on the other boat likewise, yet when far on and
passing nearly away from the other corner of St
Helena, it was discovered that there was not a
frying-pan in either; but, with difficulty, our sailors
managed to guide the boat through the surf near
enough for the revenue man stationed there to let a
frying-pan down upon us. On our return in the
evening the sea was calmer, and the frying-pan was
landed with less trouble than it had been embarked.
On approaching our destination, we saw a Scotch
vessel from Aberdeen, I think moored close to
the biggest rock of the group, and its crew busily
engaged in lading it with guano. The stuff they
gathered seemed too white and new to be of the
best quality, but had no doubt a good manurial
market value. Although the greater number of the
birds must then have been out at sea foraging for
their daily food, a screeching cloud of them fluttered
in a disturbed state about the rocks, in no thankful
mood of mind regarding the intruding humans who,
for their own ends, were scraping and cleaning their
polluted residence. We took our boats to a rock
which had been cleaned out previously, and round it
many sorts of fish were swimming, ready to swallow,
or suck any bait. We had fishing there to our
hearts' content. Our rock had a hollow in the
middle of it, and in this hollow our black cook and
his assistants built a fire, placed the borrowed
frying-pan over it on an improvised tripod, and
cooked to perfection, for our sumptuous luncheon, as
many as could be consumed of the fish freshly
landed. The heat was excessive, but we came
prepared for it, and also for the coolness that would
come with the evening breeze and the setting sun.
When we left the guano islets, we turned in to the
false bay or snip in the St Helena coast, where we
had to land the frying-pan. Here we had such a
catch of big conger-eels that we did not leave until
night closed in around us.
Anchored a little away from
us on the Jamestown
roadstead was quite a large squadron of wooden
sailing vessels some small and some of large size
which had been condemned, and were in process of
being broken up, because of the way in which
strength and safety had been stealthily eaten out of
them by white ants. They were vessels which had
been employed in the trade of the West African
coast. I am not sure, yet I think I was told that
the white ants were not indigenous pests of St
Helena, but were imported there by the West Coast
trading ships. At any rate they had got by 1867 a
strong hold on the capital of St Helena, and spread
beyond. On going to the public library one day, I
saw that both it and the other buildings near were
being gutted, because every bit of timber in them
had been hollowed and ruined by these wretched
pests, which conceal their ravages by hiding them-
selves in the heart of the beams or posts, or anything
else that is wooden, on which they prey, leaving the
outside untouched. In the gutted and re-roofed
buildings at Jamestown they were putting in iron
instead of the eaten-out wooden beams.
But I am lingering too long
over the pleasant
time we stayed at St Helena. Let us now be off to
England. After hoisting sail, and setting off, we
had a favouring breeze and quick passage to Ascension, the conical mountain
island, which lifts its tall bully's head to the sky, and has little more
than its turtle beds to recommend it. The scorched, dark grey, barren rocks of the base of this mighty hill
made it by contrast refreshing to think of Ben
Lawers covered with snow. But I was told that
the top of Ascension was pretty cool, and well
watered in the dry season by catching the passing
clouds, and that on it lived in peace and comfort a
small colony of pensioned naval and military
veterans, who raised crops and garden vegetables
and fruits. Ascension was placed under the British
flag, as an outpost to St Helena, the year before
Napoleon had been sent there. Although of small
area and small account, in the event of war, these
lonely islands might turn out to be possessions of
much value to the British Empire. At the Ascension sea birds, which were numerous and divided
into companies, we shot with ball from small bore
rifles. The many that were frightened suddenly
dived, while the two or three which were killed
floated away on the surface of the sea.
A favouring breeze sent us
out of sight of Ascension, at our highest rate of steed ten or twelve knots
an hour. When it deserted us, a few days afterwards, we found ourselves
becalmed in the Doldrums, that space about the Equator where there is a gap,
sometimes wide, and sometimes narrow, between the two trade-winds. It
happened to be wide when we fell into it, and was a perfect trap for sailing
vessels. We found one vessel held up before us, and more came up as the
detention was prolonged, until we were seven, all so close together, that a
project of mutual visits and entertainments was just about to be carried out when a
sudden breeze dispersed us as if by a magician's
wand. Water-spouts, porpoises, and flying fish are
in this equatorial, middle of the Atlantic region,
but we saw no birds but a few Mother Carey
chickens. It is certainly a lonesome place to be
held up in. Like "painted ships upon a painted
ocean," the seven were kept there for upwards of a
week, drifting a little forward and backward with
the turns of the tide, and always coming back to
their old positions. The rising of the sun out of the
sea in the morning, and its sinking into it at night,
was a grand sight. At noon, when it was right
overhead, it seemed small, and glittering down on us
like an evil eye. But under covering the heat was
not so excessive as it is occasionally felt in the
height of summer at Cape Town, because of the
effect on the city of the bare cliffs of Table Mountain, which keeps its own head cool by the table-
cloth of morning mist.
When we left Table Bay I
forthwith began to
write a story called "Uncle George." The plot
which I had in mind to begin with was never fully
developed but merely indicated, for the thing
became a gallery of character sketches mingled with
various speculations. The writing of it made the
time fly, and caused forgetfulness of the pain of my
knee, which, although never absent, was less on
board than it was on land, both before and afterwards. Most of the story was written on deck, but
on stormy days I lay on my bulkhead bunk and
contentedly scribbled on. The only time when I
stopped was when the dead lights were on the stern
cabin windows. My scanty supply of what I called
civilised copy paper gave out long before the story
could be wound up, however abruptly, and the end
of it was written OH the backs of old ship papers
which the captain kindly rummaged out for me.
This story was first published in the South African
Magazine, a shilling monthly brought out by Mr
William Foster, M.P. for Namaqualand, who succeeded me as editor of the Standard. After
appearing in the magazine, it was brought out as a
separate volume of upwards of 600 octavo pages.
Mr Foster threw up a good commercial situation to
launch out in newspaper and literary undertakings,
in. which I think he might have succeeded if his
business methods had been more careful and his
views less sanguine. I got .46 out of the story.
Before I left Cape Town Mr Foster engaged me
to act on reaching England as a monthly home
correspondent of the Standard; which meant
that I should send out monthly a summary, with
comments, of British and Continental events, that
would form a sort of European supplement to
the Standard. I did so for years, until the
Standard was amalgamated with another Cape
newspaper. I liked Mr Foster very much, for he
was a cultured gentleman with high ideals, but
always disposed to expend money on things which
were more showy than profitable or absolutely
necessary. The Standard had a good circulation,
and made on the face of its books a good income.
But it cost, in days of mail cart and other slow
travelling, a big sum to collect accounts over the
whole colony. It was not a small item of expenditure to keep a boat for boarding every ship that
came into the bay, and to pay my friend the imaum,
for interpreting and reporting services connected
with Malay evidence in the Supreme Court. Mr
Foster, who was the son of King Leopold's steward
at Claremont, did not study the small economies,
and the consequence of this was that, after a gallant
fight, he ultimately came to financial grief, and his
paper passed into other hands.
Embroidery work kept my wife
as fully employed
as I was with my scribbling. Mr Barry gave me a
goat at Cape Town which furnished our two children
and the cabin tea with milk. Kate milked the goat
twice a day, and she and, indeed, all the sailors had
to watch our elder boy, whose ambition was to climb
the poop deck, whence a roll of the ship would have
thrown him into the sea. One day he was lost
sight of. An alarm was raised, but the supposed
lost one came out of the captain's cabin with a
banana in his hand, quite unconscious of the com-
motion he had raised. Our Afrikander baby, who
was beginning to feel that feet were for standing
and walking, spent his days mainly in trying to pull
himself up to the brass capstan by the loose end of
its cable, and took all his falls, when the ship rolled,
like a small philosopher. But he made up for the
capstan's good behaviour by having a noisy fight
with his mother about being put to bed before
he felt inclined. The whole of us on board the
"Chatham" formed a fair approach to a happy
family. Captain Thurtle could, I believe, have been
as promptly energetic as Captain Kettle himself in
a dire emergency. He was of the old school of
skippers, while the mate, Mr Marsden, was of the
new. The cook was an Irishman, and the rest of
the crew were English, except three shipwrecked
foreigners who were working their passage home
from the Far East. One of them, Mr Lyons, was a
quiet Dutchman, who acted as second mate, and
thought much about his wife and children in
Holland. The second was a small Breton French-
man of fiery mein and temper, whom the Dutchman
kept under stern control. The third was a big,
good-natured Dane, who always went about his
work with a smile on his face and top-boots on his
legs. He and his boots were so inseparable that
Dr Burlinson would wish us to believe that he slept
in them.
When we got out of the
Doldrums, Captain
Thurtle had to mark our course on a new chart section, and by a careless
matching of the old with the new section, about which he was afterwards very
angry with himself, he began his fresh markings on a wrong degree of
longitude. We, therefore, to the captain's surprise and vexation, found
ourselves, one rather stormy morning, in the Sargasso Sea, sailing among
large and small heaving islands of weeds, by which, as far as we could see,
the water around us was all covered. The channels between these islands were
often closing, and new ones were often opening, so that it was impossible to
keep the ship clear of the clogging masses of mysterious weeds. A lunar
observation told us where we were, and then the charts were overhauled and
the cause of our wandering into the Sargasso Sea was discovered. We had
rough weather among the weeds, and then such
calm weather that when we neared Flores, the
doctor and I persuaded the captain to call there and
let us have a run ashore, while he did trading with
the islanders. But an hour later, a high gale set in,
and before daylight the "Chatham" swept far past
Flores, and was going down into valleys, between
mountain waves, and rising like a duck out of what
looked like a pit of destruction. The storm was a
long continued one, and the ship was so strained
that pumping was never afterwards wholly neglected.
As we were swept past Flores
in the dark by the
gale, which developed into a prolonged storm that
caused many vessels to be lost on the British,
French, Spanish, and Portuguese coasts, we saw no
land between Ascension and the mouth of the
Channel; and what we first saw there was not laud
but St Mary's lighthouse in the Scilly Isles. The
sea was still heaving with the after-swell of the
recent storm, and the little islands lay so low amidst
the high waves that the lighthouse appeared to
stand on the sea, and almost to be swaying like a
floating edifice. It was not quite dark when we
passed the Eddystone lighthouse, and got among
the crossing and passing-out and coming-in ships.
Further up the Channel we found ourselves in a
dead calm, and for three or four days could not get
out of sight of the Ventnor cliff and its flagstaff.
We sent letters ashore, and waited impatiently for a
breeze. At last it came, dispersed the fog, and one
wet morning we passed Dover and Margate, and ere
mid-day reached the mouth of the Thames, and cast
anchor at Sheerness. There I and mine landed, and
took train to London. But before leaving the old
"Chatham," for which we had contracted a sort of
home affection, the Captain gave us a parting
dinner, for which his last fattened goose had been
killed and cooked to perfection.
My father-in-law, Mr George
Aspinall, one of the
kindest and best of the sons of men, met us in
London and took care of us all. His little namesake,
the Africkander boy, found his feet in Mrs Cordeau's
quiet hotel. A steady floor suited him better than
the rolling deck and the capstan cable. Our elder
boy, John, three years, had become absurdly
nautical. He called the banks of deep railway
cuttings shores; when we stopped at a station asked
where were the boats, and when taken upstairs to
be put to bed, called it going up-a-deck. We were
two or three days in London, and it \vas on one of
these days that a riotous mob pulled down the Hyde
Park railings. My troublesome knee swelled for the
first time when we were becalmed in the Channel.
I could still walk, and perhaps I walked about more
than was good for me in London. At any rate there
was no doubt about its having got worse then, and
of my being nearly disabled for walking when we
reached Bradford, and were welcomed and sheltered
by my wife's father and mother. In my journey
through life I have met with kindness from all sorts
of people, but theirs exceeded all, and it was heartily
shown in time of need, when I was more helpless
than I had ever been before, or ever have been since.
Little did I think in that time of trial that I should
live to eighty years and upwards, and do my full
man's share of work in the journalistic vocation, into
which I had happened to drift. |
