Henry Adams - Hair-Breadth Escapes - The Adventures of Three Boys in South Africa

To the Rev. G.G. Ross, D.C.L., Principal of St. Andrew’s College, Grahamstown, Cape Colony.

My dear Ross,

I dedicate this Tale to you for two reasons: first, because it is, in some sort, a souvenir of a very interesting visit to South Africa, rendered pleasant by the kind hospitality shown us by so many in Grahamstown, and by no one more than yourself. Secondly and chiefly, because it gives me the opportunity of expressing publicly to you my sympathy in the noble work you are carrying on, under the gravest difficulties – difficulties which (I am persuaded) many would help to lighten, who possess the means of doing so, were they but acquainted with them.

H.C. Adams.

Dry Sandford, August 1876 .

It was the afternoon of a day late in the November of the year 1805. His Majesty’s ship Hooghly , carrying Government despatches and stores, as well as a few civil and military officers of the East India Company’s service, was running easily before the trade wind, which it had caught within two days’ sail of Madeira – and was nearing the region of the tropics. The weather, which had been cold and stormy, when the passengers left England some weeks before, had been gradually growing bright and genial; until for the last three or four days all recollections of fog and chill had vanished from their minds. The sky was one vast dome of the richest blue, unbroken by a single cloud, only growing somewhat paler of hue as it approached the horizon line. The sea stretched out into the distance – to the east, an endless succession of purple wavelets, tipped here and there with white; to the west, where the sun was slowly sinking in all its tropical glory, one seething mass of molten silver.

It was indeed a glorious sight, and most of our readers will be of opinion that those who had the opportunity of beholding it, would – for the time at least – have bestowed little attention on anything else. But if they had been at sea as long as Captain Wilmore, they might perhaps have thought differently. Captain Wilmore had been forty years a sailor; and whether given, or not given, to admire brilliant skies and golden sunsets in his early youth, he had at all events long ceased to trouble himself about them. He was at the outset of this story sitting in his cabin – having just parted from his first lieutenant, Mr Grey – and was receiving with a very dubious face the report of an old quartermaster. A fine mastiff was seated by the captain’s chair, apparently listening with much gravity to what passed.

“Well, Jennings, Mr Grey tells me you have something to report, which he thinks ought to be brought straight to me, in order that I may question you myself about it. What is it? Is it something about these gentlemen we have on board? Are they dissatisfied, or has Lion here offended them?”

“No, cap’en,” said the old sailor; “I wish ’twas only something o’ that sort. That would be easy to be disposed of, that would.”

“What is it, then? Is it the men, who are grumbling – short rations, or weak grog, or what?”

“There’s more rations and stronger grog than is like to be wanted, cap’en,” said Jennings, evasively, for he was evidently anxious to escape communicating his intelligence, whatever it might be, as long as possible.

“What do you mean, Jennings?” exclaimed Captain Wilmore, roused by the quartermaster’s manner. “More rations and stronger grog than the men want? I don’t understand you.”

“Well, cap’en, I’m afraid some on ’em won’t eat and drink aboard this ship no more.”

“What, are any of them sick, or dead – or, by heaven, have any of them deserted?”

“I’m afeared they has, cap’en. You remember the Yankee trader, as sent a boat to ask us to take some letters to Calcutta?”

“Yes, to be sure; what of him?”

“Well, I’ve heard since, as his crew was going about among our chaps all the time he was aboard, offering of ’em a fist half full of guineas apiece, if they’d sail with him, instead of you.”

“The scoundrel!” shouted Captain Wilmore. “If I’d caught him at it, I’d have run him up to the mainyard, as sure as he’s alive.”

“Ay, cap’en; and I’d have lent a hand with all my heart,” said the old seaman. “But you see he was too cunning to be caught. He went back to his ship, which was lying a very little way off, for there wasn’t a breath of wind, if you remember. But he guessed the breeze would spring up about midnight, so he doesn’t hoist his boats up, but hides ’em under his lee, until – ”

“I see it all plain enough, Jennings,” broke in the captain. “How many are gone?”

“Well, we couldn’t make sure for a long time, Captain Wilmore,” said Jennings, still afraid to reveal the whole of his evil tidings. “Some of the hands had got drunk on the rum fetched aboard at Madeira, and they might be lying about somewhere, you see – ”

“Well, but you’ve found out now, I suppose?” interjected his questioner sharply.

“I suppose we has, cap’en. There’s Will Driver, and Joel Grigg, and Lander, and Hawkins, and Job Watson – not that he’s any great loss – and Dick Timmins, and – ”

“Confound you, Jennings! how many?” roared the captain, so fiercely, that the dog sprang up, and began barking furiously. “Don’t keep on pottering in that way, but tell me the worst at once. How many are gone? Keep quiet, you brute, do you hear? How many, I say?”

“About fifteen, cap’en,” blurted out the quartermaster, shaking in his shoes. “Leastways there’s fifteen, or it may be sixteen, as can’t be found, or – ”

“Fifteen or sixteen, or some other number,” shouted the skipper. “Tell me the exact number, you old idiot, or I’ll disrate you! Confound that dog! Turn him out.”

“Sixteen’s the exact number we can’t find,” returned Jennings, “but some of ’em may be aboard, and turn up sober by-and-by.”

“Small chance of that,” muttered the captain. “Well, it’s no use fretting; the question is, What’s to be done? We were short-handed before – so you thought, didn’t you, Jennings?”

“Well, cap’en, we hadn’t none too many, that’s sartain; and we should have been all the better for half a dozen more.”

“That comes to the same thing, doesn’t it?” said the skipper, who, vexed and embarrassed as he was, could not help being a little diverted at the old man’s invincible reluctance to speaking out.

“Well, I suppose it does, sir,” he answered, “only you see – ”

“I don’t see anything, except that we are in a very awkward scrape,” interposed the other. “It will be madness to attempt to make the passage with such a handful as we have at present. If there came a gale, or we fall in with a French or Spanish cruiser – ” He paused, unwilling to put his thoughts into words.

“’Twouldn’t be pleasant, for sartain,” observed Jennings.

“But, then, if we put back to England – for I know no hands are to be had at Madeira, we should be quite as likely to encounter a storm, or a Frenchman.”

“A good deal more like,” assented the quartermaster.

“And there would be the loss and delay, and the blame would be safe to be laid on me,” continued the captain, following out his own thoughts rather than replying to his companion’s observations. “No, we must go on. But then, where are we to pick up any fresh hands?”