Volume One—Chapter Five.

Voyage across the Gulf of Arabia.

Eight bells were “making it twelve o’clock” on the 15th of May, when the boatswain piped all hands on deck to weigh the anchor, and within a few minutes the Honourable Company’s Brig-of-war “Euphrates,” having the Embassy on board, and commanded by one of its members (Lieutenant Barker, Indian Navy), set her white sails, and, followed by three large native crafts freighted with horses and baggage, stood across the Arabian Gulf. A favourable breeze pressed her steadily through the yielding bosom of the ocean. The salt spray flew under her gallant bows; and as the hospitable cadjan roofs on Steamer Point, first in order, and then the jagged pinnacles forming the spider skeleton of Aden, sank gradually astern, each individual of the party destined to traverse the unknown wilds of Ethiopia, took the pilgrim’s vow that the razor should pass no more over his beard, until his foot had again rested on civilised shores—an event not unreasonably conjectured to be far distant for all, and for some destined never to be realised.

The breeze increasing, the low sandy promontory of Ras Bír on the African coast became visible during the forenoon of the following day; and before evening, notwithstanding a delay of some hours, caused by an accident to the mainyard of one of the tenders, which obliged her to be taken in tow, the brig was passing a group of eight coral islands, elevated about thirty feet above the level of the sea. The remainder of the fleet having parted company during the night, were now perceived standing directly for Mushahh, the nearest of these islets, situated at the mouth of the Gulf of Tajúra, and divided from the Danákil coast by a fathomless channel of seven miles. An iron messenger despatched to bring the convoy to, ricochetted over the blue water, kicking up a column of white spray at every bound, and before the smoke of the gun had cleared the bulwarks, a bald pate protruded between the rigging, was followed by the swarthy person of Aboo Bekr, of the Somauli tribe Aboo Salaam, and commonly styled Durábili, or “the Liar.” Nákhuda of a small trading craft which had been employed as a pilot boat during the recent trigonometrical survey of the coast, he was well-known to the officers of the “Euphrates,” and was ascertained to be at this moment charged with despatches for Aden, which, whether important or otherwise, had been during three days lying safely at anchor off the island, to admit of enhanced profits by the collection of a cargo of wood.

“Salaam aleikum!” exclaimed the old Palinurus as soon as his foot had touched the deck; “Hamdu-lillah! Praise be unto God! it is you, after all. When I saw those two crazy tubs in your van, I believed that it could not be my old ship, although it loomed so vastly like her; but the moment you took in your studding-sails to let Aboo Bekr come alongside, I knew it must be the Capitan Báshi. Kayf hálut, how fares it with your health?”

The welcome visitor was forthwith accommodated with a chair on the poop; into which having squeezed himself with difficulty, he drew up his knees to his scanty beard, inserted a cigar into his mouth as a quid, and, sipping tea like a finished washerwoman, instituted a train of inquiries relative to the position of affairs in the British possessions across the water.

“Tayyib, tayyib,” he ejaculated, when thoroughly satisfied that Cape Aden was not again in the hands of the Arabs. “Marhábba, it is well. All, too, is as it should be at Tajúra. Misunderstandings are adjusted, and the avaricious chieftains have at last, the Lord be praised! got all the dirt out of their bellies. Their palms have been judiciously tickled, and it only now remains to be seen whether the old sultán, who is fully as fond of money as his neighbours—or his ancient rival, Mohammad Ali, is to have the honour of forwarding the English to King Sáloo. My boy has just returned from Hábesh, and shall escort you. Abroo has been twice in Bombay, as you know, Capitan. You have only to tell me if he should misbehave, and I’ll trounce the young scamp soundly.”

Meanwhile the bold mountain outline of the land of promise, forming a worthy barrier to the unexplored treasures of the vast continent of Africa, had been rapidly emerging from obscurity, and the brown forbidding bluff, styled Ras Dukhán, “the smoking promontory,” in height about five or six hundred feet, was now on the starboard quarter; its abrupt summit, as usual, surmounted by a coronet of fleecy clouds, from which, if not from the thermal well at its base, this Cape has probably derived its appellation. The brig was already standing up the bay of Tajúra; but darkness overtaking her, it was resolved to lay to until daybreak; and a gun fired in intimation of approach was presently answered by a display of rockets and blue lights from the Honourable Company’s schooner “Constance,” riding at anchor in the harbour.

The Arabs lay claim to the invention of the compass; and Aboo Bekr, who believed himself in truth a second Anson, was provided with one, which must certainly have been the first ever constructed. Age having impaired the dilapidated needle, it was forced off its pivot by a quantity of pepper-corns, which are here considered highly efficacious in the restoration of decayed magnetic powers. From the native navigators in the Indian Ocean he had borrowed a primitive nautical instrument for determining the latitude; nor was he a little vain of his practical skill as an observer. Through a perforation in the centre of a plane of wood in size and shape like a playing card, was passed a knotted whipcord, and the distance from each knot was so regulated that the subtended angle should equal the altitude of the polar star at some frequented point on the coast. The knot having been placed between the teeth, and the lower margin of the plane brought in optical contact with the horizon, the position of Polaris must be observed with reference to the upper edge; when, if it be above, the desired haven is known to be to the southward—if below, to the northward, and the course is shaped accordingly.

“I’ll take you in this very night, Capitan Báshi, if you so please,” resumed the pilot, whose packet had by this time escaped his recollection altogether. “Only give me the order, and, praise be unto Allah! there is nothing that Aboo Bekr cannot do. My head, as you see, is bald, and I may perhaps be a little old-looking now, but wait until we get on shore, and my new wig is bent; Inshállah! I shall look like a child of five years among the youngest of them.”

“Now if we had but Long Ali of Zeyla on board,” continued the old man, whose merry tongue knew no rest; “if we had only Two-fathom Ali here, you would not make all these difficulties. When they want to lay out an anchor, they have nothing else to do but to hand it over to Ali, and he walks away with it into six or eight feet without any ado. I went once upon a time in the dark to grope for a berth on board of his buggalow, and stumbling over some one’s toes, inquired to whose legs they belonged; ‘All’s,’ was the reply. ‘And whose knees are these?’ said I, after walking half across the deck; ‘Ali’s.’ ‘And this head in the scuppers, pray whose is it?’ ‘Ali’s to be sure,’ growled a sleepy voice; ‘what do you want with it?’ ‘Subhán Allah, Ali again!’ I exclaimed; ‘then I must even look for stowage elsewhere.’”

Dawn of the 17th revealed the town of Tajúra, not a mile distant, on the verge of a broad expanse of blue water, over which a gossamer-like fleet of fishing catamarans already plied their busy craft. The tales of the dreary Teháma, of the suffocating Shimál, and of the desolate plains of the bloodthirsty Ada?el, were in that moment forgotten. Pleasure sparkled in every eye, and each heart bounded with exultation at the near prospect of fulfilling the benevolent schemes in design, and of adding one mite to the amelioration of Afric’s swart sons.

Those who are conversant with Burchell’s admirable illustration of an encampment of Cape farmers, with their gigantic waggons scattered about in picturesque confusion, will best understand the appearance of the group of primitive habitations that now presented itself on the sea-beach. Exceeding two hundred in number, and rudely constructed of frames of unhewn timber, arranged in a parabolic arch, and covered in with date matting, they resembled the white tilts of the Dutch boors, and collectively sheltered some twelve hundred inhabitants. The bold grey mountains, like a drop scene, limited the landscape, and, rising tier above tier, through coral limestone and basaltic trap, to the majestic Jebel Goodah, towering five thousand feet above the ocean, were enveloped in dirty red clouds, which imparted the aspect of a morning in the depth of winter. Verdant clumps of date and palm trees embosomed the only well of fresh water, around which numerous Bedouin females were drawing their daily supply of the precious fluid. These relieved the humble terraced mosque of whitewashed madrepore, whence the voice of the muezzin summoned the true believer to matin prayer; and a belt of green makanni, a dwarf species of mimosa with uniform umbrella tops, fringing the sandy shore, completed a pleasant contrast to the frowning blocks of barren black lava which fortify the Gibraltar whereupon the eye had last rested.

As the ship sailed into the harbour, the appearance of a large shark in her wake caused the tongue of the pilot again to “break adrift.” “A certain friend of mine,” said he, “Nákhuda of a craft almost as fast a sailer as my own, which is acknowledged to be the best in these seas, was once upon a time bound from this port to Mocha, with camels on board. When off Jebel Ján, the high table-land betwixt the Bay of Tajúra and the Red Sea, one of the beasts dying, was hove overboard. Up came a shark, ten times the size of that fellow, and swallowed the carcass, leaving one of the hinder legs protruding from his jaws; and before he had time to think where he was to find stowage for it, up came a second tremendous monster, and bolted his messmate, camel, leg, and all.”

In return for this anecdote, the old man was treated to the history of the two Kilkenny cats in the sawpit, which fought until nothing remained of either but the tail and a bit of the flue. “How could that be?” he retorted seriously, after turning the business over in his mind. “Now, Capitan Báshi, you are spinning yarns, but, by Allah, the story I have told you is as true as the holy Korán, and if you don’t choose to believe me, there are a dozen persons of unblemished veracity now in Tajúra, who are ready to vouch for its correctness.”