Captain Mayne Reid
"The Boy Slaves"
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Chapter One.
The Land of the Slave.
Land of Ethiope! whose burning centre seems unapproachable as the frozen Pole!
Land of the unicorn and the lion, of the crouching panther and the stately elephant, of the camel, the camel-leopard, and the camel-bird! Land of the antelopes, of the wild gemsbok, and the gentle gazelle, land of the gigantic crocodile and huge river-horse, land teeming with animal life, and, last in the list of my apostrophic appellations—last, and that which must grieve the heart to pronounce it, land of the slave!
Ah; little do men think, while thus hailing thee, how near may be the dread doom to their own hearths and homes! Little dream they, while expressing their sympathy—alas! too often, as of late shown in England, a hypocritical utterance—little do they suspect, while glibly commiserating the lot of thy sable-skinned children, that hundreds, ay thousands, of their own colour and kindred are held within thy confines, subject to a lot even lowlier than these—a fate far more fearful.
Alas! it is even so. While I write, the proud Caucasian, despite his boasted superiority of intellect, despite the whiteness of his skin, may be found by hundreds in the unknown interior, wretchedly toiling, the slave not only of thy oppressors, but the slave of thy slaves!
Let us lift that curtain which shrouds thy great Saara, and look upon some pictures that should teach the son of Shem, while despising his brothers Ham and Japhet, that he is not master of the world.
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Dread is that shore between Susa and Senegal, on the western edge of Africa—by mariners most dreaded of any other in the world. The very thought of it causes the sailor to shiver with affright. And no wonder; on that inhospitable seaboard thousands of his fellows have found a watery grave; and thousands of others a doom far more deplorable than death!
There are two great deserts: one of land, the other of water—the Saara and the Atlantic—their contiguity extending through ten degrees of the earth’s latitude—an enormous distance. Nothing separates them, save a line existing only in the imagination. The dreary and dangerous wilderness of water kisses the wilderness of sand—not less dreary or dangerous to those whose misfortune it may be to become castaways on this dreaded shore.
Alas! it has been the misfortune of many—not hundreds, but thousands. Hundreds of ships, rather than hundreds of men, have suffered wreck and ruin between Susa and Senegal. Perhaps were we to include Roman, Phoenician, and Carthaginian, we might say thousands of ships also.
More noted, however, have been the disasters of modern times, during what may be termed the epoch of modern navigation. Within the period of the last three centuries, sailors of almost every maritime nation—at least all whose errand has led them along the eastern edge of the Atlantic—have had reason to regret approximation to those shores, known in ship parlance as the Barbary coast; but which, with a slight alteration in the orthography, might be appropriately styled “Barbarian.”
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Chapter Two.
Types of the Triple Kingdom.
Near the tip of this tongue, almost within “licking” distance, on an evening in the month of June, 18—, a group of the kind last alluded to—three or four castaways upon a spar—might have been seen by any eye that chanced to be near.
Fortunately for them, there was none sufficiently approximate to make out the character of that dark speck, slowly approaching the white sandspit, like any other drift carried upon the landward current of the sea.
It was just possible for a person standing upon the summit of one of the sand “dunes” that, like white billows, rolled off into the interior of the continent, it was just possible for a person thus placed to have distinguished the aforesaid speck without the aid of a glass; though with one it would have required a prolonged and careful observation to have discovered its character.
The sandspit was full three miles in length. The hills stood back from the shore another. Four miles was sufficient to screen the castaways from the observation of any one who might be straying along the coast.
For the individuals themselves it appeared very improbable that there could be any one observing them. As far as eye could reach—east, north, and south, there was nothing save white sand. To the west, nothing but the blue water. No eye could be upon them, save that of the Creator. Of his creatures, tame or wild, savage or civilised, there seemed not one within a circuit of miles: for within that circuit there was nothing visible that could afford subsistence either to man or animal, bird or beast. In the white substratum of sand, gently shelving far under the sea, there was not a sufficiency of organic matter to have afforded food for fish—even for the lower organisms of mollusca. Undoubtedly were these castaways alone; as much so as if their locality had been the centre of the Atlantic, instead of its coast!
We are privileged to approach them near enough to comprehend their character, and learn the cause that has thus isolated them so far from the regions of animated life.
There are four of them, astride a spar; which also carries a sail, partially reefed around it, and partially permitted to drag loosely through the water.
At a glance a sailor could have told that the spar on which they are supported is a topsail-yard, which has been detached from its masts in such a violent manner as to unloose some of the reefs that had held the sail—partially releasing the canvas. But it needed not a sailor to tell why this had been done. A ship has foundered somewhere near coast. There has been a gale two days before. The spar in question, with those supported upon it, is but a fragment of the wreck. There might have been other fragments, other of the crew escaped, or escaping in like manner, but there are no others in sight. The castaways slowly drifting towards the sandspit are alone. They have no companions on the ocean, no spectators on its shore.
It would have required a very learned ethnologist to have told to which of his three companions he was compatriot; though there could be no doubt about his being either English, Irish, or Scotch.
Strange to say, his tongue did not aid in the identification of his nationality. It was not often heard; but even when it was, its utterance would have defied the most linguistic ear; and neither from that, nor other circumstance known to them, could any one of his three companions lay claim to him as a countryman. When he spoke—a rare occurrence already hinted—it was with a liberal misplacement of “h’s” that should have proclaimed him an Englishman of purest Cockney type. At the same time his language was freely interspersed with Irish “ochs” and “shures”; while the “wees” and “bonnys”, oft recurring in his speech, should have proved him a sworn Scotchman. From his countenance you might have drawn your own inference and believed him any of the three; but not from his tongue. Neither in its accent, nor the words that fell from him, could you have told which of the three kingdoms had the honour of giving him birth.
Whichever it was, it had supplied to the Service a true British tar: for although you might mistake the man in other respects, his appearance forbade all equivocation upon this point.
His costume was that of a common sailor, and, as a matter of course, his name was “Bill”. But as he had only been one among many “Bills” rated on the man-o’-war’s books (now gone to the bottom of the sea) he carried a distinctive appellation, no doubt earned by his greater age. Aboard the frigate he had been known as “Old Bill”; and the soubriquet still attached to him upon the spar.
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Chapter Three.
The Serpent’s Tongue.
The presence of a ship’s topsail-yard thus bestridden plainly proclaimed that a ship had been wrecked—although no other evidence of the wreck was within sight. Not a speck was visible upon the sea to the utmost verge of the horizon; and if a ship had foundered within that field of view, her boats and every vestige of the wreck must either have gone to the bottom, or in some other direction than that taken by the topsail-yard, which supported the three midshipmen and the sailor Bill.
A ship had gone to the bottom—a British man-of-war,—a corvette on her way to her cruising ground, on the Guinea coast. Beguiled by the dangerous current that sets towards the seaboard of the Saara, in a dark stormy night she had struck upon a sand-bank; got bilged; and sank almost instantly among the breakers. Boats had been got out, and men had been seen crowding hurriedly into them; others had taken to such rafts, or spars, as could be detached from the sinking vessel; but whether any of these, or the overladen boats, had succeeded in reaching the shore, was a question which none of the four astride the topsail-yard were able to answer.
They only knew that the corvette had gone to the bottom—they saw her go down, shortly after drifting away from her side; but saw nothing more until morning, when they perceived themselves alone upon the ocean. They had been drifting throughout the remainder of that long, dark night, often entirely under water, when the sea swelled over them—and one and all of them many times on the point of being washed from their frail embarkation.
By daybreak the storm had ceased, and was succeeded by a clear, calm day; but it was not until a late hour that the swell had subsided sufficiently to enable them to take any measures for propelling the strange craft that carried them. Then, using their hands as oars, or paddles, they commenced making some way through the water.
There was nothing in sight, neither land nor any other object, save the sea, the sky, and the sun. It was the east which guided them as to direction. But for it there could have been no object in making way through the water; but, with the sun now sinking in the west, they could tell the east; and they knew that in that point alone land might be expected.
After the sun had gone down, the stars became their compass, and throughout all the second night of the shipwreck they had continued to paddle the spar in an easterly direction.
Day again dawned upon them; but without gratifying their eyes by the sight of land, or any other object, to inspire them with a hope.
Famished with hunger, tortured with thirst, and wearied with their continued exertions, they were about to surrender to despair when, as the sun once more mounted up to the sky, and his bright beams pierced the crystal water upon which they were floating, they saw beneath them the sheen of white sand. It was the bottom of the sea, and at no great depth, not more than a few fathoms below their feet.
Such shallow water could not be far from the shore. Reassured, and encouraged by the thought, they once more renewed their exertions, and continued to paddle the spar, taking only short intervals of rest throughout the whole of the morning.
They had scarce made this discovery before another of like pleasant nature came under their attention. That was, that they were touching bottom! Their legs, bestriding the spar, hung down on each side of it; and, to the joy of all, they now felt their feet scraping along the sand.
As if actuated by one impulse all four dismounted from the irksome seat they had been so long compelled to keep; and, bidding adieu to the spar, they plunged on through the shoal water, without stop or stay, until they stood high and dry upon the extreme point of the peninsula.
By this time the sun had gone down; and the four dripping forms, dimly outlined in the purple twilight, appeared like four strange creatures who had just emerged from out the depths of the ocean.
“Where next?”
This was the mental interrogatory of all four; though by none of them shaped into words.
“Nowhere to-night” was the answer suggested by the inclination of each.
Impelled by hunger, stimulated by thirst, one would have expected them to proceed onward in search of food and water to alleviate this double suffering. But there was an inclination stronger than either, too strong to be resisted—sleep: since for fifty hours they had been without any; since to have fallen asleep on the spar would have been to subject themselves to the danger, almost the certainty, of dropping off, and getting drowned; and, notwithstanding their need of sleep, increased by fatigue, and the necessity of keeping constantly on the alert—up to that moment not one of them had obtained any. The thrill of pleasure that passed through their frames as they felt their feet upon terra firma for a moment aroused them. But the excitement could not be sustained. The drowsy god would no longer be deprived of his rights; and one after another, though without much interval between, sank down upon the soft sand, and yielded to his balmy embrace.
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Chapter Four.
’Ware the tide!
Through that freak, or law, of nature by which peninsulas are shaped, the point of the sandspit was elevated several feet above the level of the sea; while its neck, nearer the land, scarce rose above the surface of the water.
It was this highest point, where the sand was thrown up in a “wreath” like snow in a storm, that the castaways had chosen for their couch. But little pains had been taken in selecting the spot. It was the most conspicuous, as well as the driest; and, on stepping out of the water, they had tottered towards it, and half mechanically chosen it for their place of repose.
Simple as was the couch, they were not allowed to occupy it for long. They had been scarce two hours asleep, when one and all of them were awakened by a sensation that chilled, and, at the same time, terrified them. Their terror arose from a sense of suffocation: as if salt water was being poured down their throats, which was causing it. In short, they experienced the sensation of drowning; and fancied they were struggling amid the waves from which they had so lately escaped.
All four sprang to their feet, if not simultaneously, at least in quick succession, and all appeared equally the victims of astonishment, closely approximating to terror. Instead of the couch of soft, dry sand, on which they had stretched their tired frames, they now stood up to their ankles in water, which was soughing and surging around them. It was this change in their situation that caused their astonishment; though the terror quick following sprang from quite another cause.
The former was short-lived: for it met with a ready explanation. In the confusion of their ideas, added to their strong desire for sleep, they had forgotten the tide. The sand, dust-dry under the heat of a burning sun, had deceived them. They had lain down upon it, without a thought of its ever being submerged under the sea; but now to their surprise they perceived their mistake. Not only was their couch completely under water; but, had they slept a few minutes longer, they would themselves have been quite covered. Of course the waves had awakened them; and no doubt would have done so half an hour earlier, but for the profound slumber into which their long watching and weariness had thrown them. The contact of the cold water was not likely to have much effect: since they had been already exposed to it for more than forty hours. Indeed, it was not that which had aroused them; but the briny fluid getting into their mouths, and causing them that feeling of suffocation that very much resembled drowning.
