CHAPTER XIX.

THE ROCK AND THE CAPE.

THE providential success of Playfair in the Cambridgeshire of ’72 had released more than one of our clique from the jaws of the usurer, and Bill Stourton, by the judicious investment of a fiver, was in expectation of being the proud owner of £300 on the following Monday.

Dashing down to Somersetshire overflowing with filial duty and in anticipation of our early embarkation for Gibraltar, a considerable scare was created one morning by a groom running up to the house and reporting that the sheriff’s carriage and two grimy beaks from Taunton had pulled up at the “George” and were making tender inquiries as to Mr. William’s whereabouts.

All this occurred on Monday, when, as it happened, Billy was speeding towards London to realise at Tattersall’s the result of his sagacity at Newmarket. And so, when the oleaginous visitors inquired at the ancestral porch, the reply they received was discouraging in the extreme.

“That is Mr. William’s bedroom,” pointing to a window, was the ingenuous servitor’s reply; “you can go and examine it if you wish; but I give you my word he left for London this morning.” And so it came to pass that the astute “Fitch and Son,” of Southwark, failed to serve the capias, and the rascally Israelite who had made “affidavit” as to his intention of “leaving the kingdom” (as embarking with the regiment might certainly be construed by a quibble) had to pay the cost of the imposing coach that had been provided for his conveyance to Taunton.

The faithful butler had omitted to add that the young reprobate was returning the same evening, and that the dog-cart was to meet him at nine.

But the reprieve was not of long duration, and within a year Bill had sold his commission and become a full private in the Blues.

Passing into the Horse Guards one day a former brother officer chanced to inquire of the sentry the way to the military secretary’s, and was considerably startled by the reply, “First door to the left, Polly.”

The sentry was ex-Lieutenant Stourton.

Gibraltar then—as now—was a favourite winter resort, and the “Club House Hotel” opposite the main guard did a roaring trade.

Here Lady Herbert of Lea and her youthful son, the present Lord Pembroke, sojourned for some weeks in the Sixties, and it was to the inquiring turn of mind of the young nobleman’s tutor that Gibraltar was almost indebted for a very promising row.

In one room, it appears, a cantankerous Irishman and his wife were staying, in the next the tutor, and whilst the Irishman positively swore he had one morning seen the prying tutor’s face glued to the fanlight as vehemently did the pedagogue swear on a sack of bibles that he had never glued his nose to a fanlight in his life.

What there was to peep at was not quite clear, for the supposed “object” in any costume was not fair to look upon, and so after mutual recriminations and mutual apologies the affair was hushed up, and expectant Gibraltar was robbed of a lawful excitement.

A fly-leaf that appeared weekly—why, no one could explain—although less original than one might have wished, yet possessing a symbolism that was unquestionable, on one occasion appeared with a verbatim extract from a Spanish paper of the escapades of an adventurer who was exploiting the neighbourhood of Madrid.

Weeks apparently had elapsed before it had caught the eye of our lynx-eyed editor, and one day when Ansaldo invited certain of us to compare a recent resident at his hotel with the description in the very latest “local intelligence” it became apparent to all that a lately departed wayfarer was the redoubtable personage referred to. “By Jove! I lost fifty to him last week at loo, and then gave him a shakedown,” remarked one; and, “D—d if I didn’t lend him my horse to go as far as Cadiz, and it’s not to be back till to-morrow,” added another; and then the local tailor came running down to the Club House, and Ansaldo remembered he had paid his hotel bill by a cheque, and within a week a dozen victims realised that they had assisted in one way or another to make the gentleman’s Mediterranean trip a pleasant one.

But money at the Rock was literally a drug, thanks to the existence of Sacconi, a Genoese grocer. This extraordinary man was everybody’s banker; if one lost at the races it was Sacconi who settled the account; mess bills were paid by Sacconi; fifty—one hundred Isabels—were only to be asked for to be obtained by initialling the amount at the shop.

Apparently indifferent to risk, the astute Italian was, however, working on a certainty. Immediately a regiment was under orders for the Rock, a list of every officer’s “length of tether” was transmitted by Perkins, his London agent, a city knight; whilst, in addition to the value of one’s commission, the impossibility of leaving the Rock without his knowledge, and the “Moorish Castle” frowning on the heights, enabled Sacconi to amass a huge fortune, to marry his daughters to officers of the garrison, and be an honoured guest in after years at the “Convent,” the Governor’s official residence.

But all this was in the days of purchase.

Meeting the ex-Governor, Sir William Codrington, one day in Bond Street on the point of being run over, he jocosely remarked, as I went to his assistance, “Different from Gibraltar, eh?”

To any but enthusiasts of riding, Gibraltar was (and probably is) a most overrated station, with nothing to recommend it but its proximity to London. Every afternoon was devoted to couples riding to the Cork woods, and returning from its shaded glades just before gun-fire.

No one ever dreamt of riding with his own wife; indeed, so accepted was this custom that on one occasion a couple having been seen riding together, an excited newsmonger rushed about inquiring, “What’s up? Holroyd has been seen riding with his own wife!”

But the advent of Fitzroy Somerset gave an immense fillip to sport, and when, later, six couples of cast hounds came direct from Badminton every jack-pudding purchased a screw and became an ardent fox-hunter.

A German apothecary, who had not straddled a quadruped since he left the Vaterland, became an enthusiastic rider, and thrilled the less daring horsemen by descriptions of runs, and how “der ’orse svearved to him right, and I ’it ’im on the ’ead to his left, and den he svearved to the left, and I ’it ’im on the ’ead to his right,” till everybody became more or less horsy, and not to keep a crock with four legs, or three, was tantamount to an admission that one was literally past praying for.

Every youngster purchased a quadruped—some vicious and young, others blind and in the last stage of senile decay—and Staines, an assistant surgeon, was so frequently sent whirling into space that his animal was christened “Benzine-Collas,” because it was “warranted to remove Staines.”

Here, too, was a fox-hunting chaplain known as “Tally-ho Jonah,” who ended his days as shepherd of a peculiarly desirable flock amidst the rich pastures of the Midlands.

On his death-bed some years ago, his valet consoled him with the assurance that he was going to a better land, to which the worthy divine replied: “John, there’s no place like old England.” R.I.P.

But the mania by no means ended here, and Grant, the Principal Medical Officer—a bony Scot with the largest feet ever inflicted on man—literally paralysed a group who one day saw him in the distance leisurely approaching on horseback.

“Great heavens!” was the universal exclamation as he came nearer, “why, it’s ‘Benzine-Collas’ going as quiet as a lamb,” and it was agreed that the fiery little Mogador stallion was being imposed upon by old Grant, under the impression that he was between the shafts.

Across the bay was Tangier, and many found an inexhaustible store of delight in visiting that most Oriental of towns.

Within four days of Paris, it seemed incredible that here was a spot that civilisation had apparently overlooked, and which still retained all the barbaric pomp of a thousand years ago. Fowls with their throats cut lay about the streets awaiting preparation for pilau; malefactors for the most trifling offences had their hands hacked off in the leading thoroughfares; whilst under the windows of the Sherif of Wazan’s palace half a dozen naked musicians blew their insides out from morning to night, and discoursed a series of diabolical sounds that made the contemplation of anything but their music impossible.

Here Martin—late messman of the _Racoon_—had started the “Royal Hotel,” and after providing his visitors with an excellent dinner, favoured them with morceaux on a flute, of which he prided himself on being a virtuoso.

Martin was as black as the blackest hat, and from the suspicious slits in his ears justified the assumption that he was a liberated West Indian slave. The music he emitted with eyes closed, possibly the most soulful, was certainly the most doleful, and had evidently been picked up when watching the anchor being weighed on H.M.S. _Racoon_.

“Where do you come from, Martin?” on one occasion inquired an inquisitive officer.

“Devonshire,” was the unexpected reply; “but I left home in my infancy.”

He had made this assertion so often that there is no doubt he believed it.

Returning from Tangier on one occasion, I brought with me a quantity of Kuss-Kuss cloth, which catching the eye of a voracious brother subaltern he inquired where I had got it.

“Oh,” I said, “the Sherif of Wazan sent it over for distribution in return for the guard of honour we supplied last month when he was here.”

“Then I’m entitled to some?” he remarked.

“I’m afraid it’s all been claimed,” I replied, and to keep up the illusion I got half a dozen youngsters to cross and re-cross the square with a piece under their arms and deposit it somewhere, for another to fetch it and leave it elsewhere. It seemed, indeed, that the traffic was never to end, and next morning an official complaint was made by the aggrieved one, and he discovered he had been the victim of a practical joke.

Apropos of this class of grumbler, an amusing story was once told me by the captain of a P. and O. It was in the days that the skipper “messed” the passengers, and it was this officer’s habit to have a saucerful of porridge every morning about seven on the bridge.

The feeding on a P. and O. is proverbially liberal, yet not content with the enormous breakfast provided, certain grumblers complained that considering the price they paid they surely were entitled to porridge. Inwardly chuckling, the skipper reluctantly consented, with the result (as he told me) that instead of devouring two mutton chops, eggs, and marmalade _ad libitum_ at eight, he was a considerable gainer by the satisfying effect of two-pennyworth of porridge at seven.

During my two years at Gibraltar cholera appeared, and anything more terrible than such a visitation in such a circumscribed spot can hardly be conceived. With a strict “cordon” established, there was no getting away from it, and men who the night before were in rude health were often buried at gun-fire.

To be afraid of it was tantamount (so doctors asserted) to courting it, and so regimental bands were ordered to play daily on the Alameda by way of diverting the public mind, and not a drum was heard at the numerous military funerals that wended their way towards the north front.

By night the “corpse-lights” over the burial ground emitted a weird glow, and many a subaltern visiting the sentries before daylight would shiver and his teeth rattle as he skirted the unearthly illumination.

To such an extent did downright funk seize upon some that an officer now living in London—a C.B. of overwhelming interest—asked everybody the best preventive, and jokes were indulged in at his expense, and he swallowed tablespoonfuls of salt and raw porpoise liver, as this or the other prescribed.

Distracted, one afternoon he sought consolation by proceeding to the house of a fair scorpion (persons born on the Rock) he had known in happier days, and literally collapsed as he met her coffin emerging from her door.

Apropos of this terrible scourge, an instance that many can vouch for occurred some years previously in India.

My regiment was being decimated by cholera, and corpses were hurriedly placed in an outhouse that was infested with rats.

The sentries had orders to periodically tap with their rifles on the door, and on one occasion tapping too hard, the door opened, and the Armourer Sergeant, who had been brought in a few hours previously, was seen sitting up on the trestle.

Years after I saw the man daily, and he completed his twenty-one years’ service instead of being buried alive, as many a poor wretch has been.

Colonel Zebulon Pike was by way of being a consul representing the United States in South Africa and the most amusing liar I have ever had the good fortune to meet.

The embodiment of generosity, no yarn he ever spun could have injured a fly; that there never was a word of truth in them was an accepted axiom.

“Yes, sir,” as he invariably prefixed his remarks, “it was when I was commanding my regiment during the rebellion that Captain Crusoe reported to me he had captured a spy. ‘Bring him before me,’ I said sternly, and when the rascal appeared I pointed to the sun, saying: ‘Before yon luminary disappears behind yon hills you die’; and turning to Crusoe, I added: ‘Remove him, Colonel Crusoe.’ ‘Colonel, sir?’ inquired he. ‘Yes, sir,’ said I, ‘you’re colonel from this very moment.’”

The Colonel once expressed a desire to attend the Governor’s levée; but bewailing the fact that he had not brought his uniform, he proceeded to describe it.

“The pants, sir, are a rich blue, with a broad lace stripe down their sides; my tunic is also blue, and my breast is covered with medals—I have a drawerful of them. Around my waist, sir, is a crimson sash, and in my hat a long ostrich feather sweeps down to my shoulder.”

“But that’s all easily arranged, Colonel,” we explained, and on the eventful day we proceeded to truss him.

Never was a more imposing sight, and as the guard of honour marched down to Government House the Colonel stood on the pavement, immovable as a rock, with hand to his feathered billycock. And the men (as had been arranged) came to the “carry,” and passed him with all the “honours of war.”

“My God, sir, it brought tears to my eyes,” he afterwards told us in his pride, “to see yon fine fellows swinging past; it reminded me of my own regiment. I thank you, gentlemen, for the compliment you paid a comrade.”

These colonial levées of the past were often held of an evening to enable the introduction of refreshments, without which the attendance would certainly have been meagre.

The local grandees liberally prepared for the coming feast, and having eaten to repletion proceeded to fill their pockets.

“You may as well have the sauce,” once interposed an irate A.D.C. as he saw a native pocketing a fowl, and he deliberately poured the contents of a tureen into his lap.

At these “go-as-you-please” functions, speeches more or less impromptu invariably took place, and it was then that the “Colonel” was literally in his element.

Panting for his opportunity, it was only after some wag had proposed his health, and described how we had “one amongst us who had seen the mighty buffalo on its native prairie” (which he assuredly never had), etc., that the Colonel rose and delighted his hearers with a string of most amusing lies.

Lady Shand, the wife of the Chief Justice, once sitting near him, after one of his flowery orations, began to tell him of her own native home in Scotland, and of the loch that stretched for miles before the ancestral hall, and was considerably surprised by the Colonel’s rejoinder: “Aye, and the swans; I can see them now.”

“But there were no swans, Colonel,” she gently corrected; but henceforth held her peace when the staggering retort was given: “Oh, yes there were; at least, in my time.”

No function was considered complete without “the Colonel,” and he was a frequent guest at one place or another. Apparently capable of dispensing with sleep, no matter how late the night’s orgy daylight found him on the verandah with a green cigar, after which he proceeded towards the Grand river ostensibly to bathe.

“Can’t do without my morning swim,” he once told a man who met him with a bath-towel over his arm; but the towel showed no signs of having been used, and it was recognised that the Colonel never stripped, and that his ablutions were primitive to a degree.

But the Cape Town of to-day has undergone quite as much change as our modern Babylon, and where a railway station as big as St. Pancras now exists, a wooden shanty with a single line fifty miles long was all that represented railway enterprise in the long-ago sixties.

It was by the courtesy of Captain Mills, the Assistant Colonial Secretary—afterwards Sir Charles Mills, agent general in London—that a delightful party was organised for the shooting of the “Sicker Vlei,” a vast expanse of water in the vicinity of Wellington.

This magnificent lake is the resort of every kind of wild beast and bird. Strings of flamingoes wade leisurely about it, whilst wild geese and swans of enormous proportions float lazily over one’s head; antelopes and buck of every description come down to water, and the Cape leopard—the most treacherous and cowardly of four-footed creatures—is to be met with in considerable numbers as day begins to break. The procedure that obtains is similar to that in all ordinary mountain loch shooting, with the solitary exception that it necessitates a start about 3 a.m., so that every one is posted amongst the rushes at two hundred yards’ intervals an hour before daybreak. The excitement, the delight, the profound silence of that hour when Nature seems to rouse itself for its daily routine of activity, requires an abler pen than mine to describe.

With a rifle in hand and a shot gun at one’s side, there is, however, nothing for it but to wait for daybreak, wondering whether buck or antelope, cheetah or wild fowl will be the first to come within range.

“Trekking” with our span of oxen to a farmhouse, where only two cots were available, it was our nightly custom to play “nap” as to who should occupy the beds and who the kitchen table and dresser, and the excitement ran just as high as it did in the days when fifties and hundreds were at stake in the card room of the old Raleigh.

But the losers did not lose much, for almost before one was asleep it was time to be up for our usual 3 a.m. start.

With me was placed dear old Arthur Barkly, the worst shot and most passionate of good fellows, last Governor of Heligoland, and long since gone over to the majority, and it evokes a smile when even now I think of how, having missed with both barrels two huge wild geese that leisurely floated twenty yards over his head, he threw a cartridge box and then a ramrod in his passion at the unoffending birds.

But the shot had scared other denizens of the plain, and bang, bang in every direction indicated that all our guns were in action as cheetahs and antelopes might be seen scuttling on all sides. Nothing further being left for us, we proceeded to count our bag and return to the farmstead.

After a few days devoted to “braying” the skins and “curing” the antelope meat for future consumption, we resumed our dreary bumping “trek” into the interior in the hope of meeting with big game.

Lions are occasionally, but rarely, met with in these parts, and it is with reference to a dramatic incident that might have ended fatally that I will confine my present remarks. Returning one evening to our location, with literally only three ball cartridges amongst us, one of the Kaffir boys descried in the distance a lion and lioness and three cubs. With bated breath and excitement running high, a council of war was hastily convened, and the pros and cons., the direction of the wind, and the dearth of ammunition having been variously discussed, it was decided that to attack them would be unwise, if not absolutely foolhardy. A wounded lion or lioness with its cubs is probably as dangerous as a man-eating tiger; yet, despite all our entreaties to the contrary, one daring spirit determined to attempt to stalk them.

Loading both barrels of his rifle with ball, with the other solitary cartridge placed handily in his pocket, and divested of all other impediments, he hastily retired to make a circuit and so get within shot against the wind.

Suddenly we heard the sharp report of his rifle, and then, after a second, we saw the lion make for the spot whence the smoke had come, whilst the lioness and the cubs scampered off in the opposite direction.

Again there was a report, and next we saw Fellowes running with all his might, followed by the lion.

What ensued may best be given in his own words, as narrated to us that night.

“I had evidently missed my first shot, and whilst putting in my other cartridge, I saw the brute making for me; again I fired, and I saw it staggered him, but still he came on, and seeing a small pond a few yards off I decided to make for that. Barely had I risen to my feet when, with a roar, the brute was close behind me, and at the very moment I dashed into the pond he aimed a blow at me which grazed my forehead, and I fell prostrate into it. On recovering I cautiously peeped, and there the brute stood on the edge within three yards of me. Again I submerged, but every time I moved for air he roared, although afraid to enter the water. This went on for an hour, when conceive my delight at seeing him roll over from loss of blood.

“Cautiously approaching, I found he was stone dead.”

Fellowes had literally escaped death by a hair’s breadth; but the scar he carried with him to his grave affected his brain, and he was never the same man again. Had the lion been one inch nearer his skull would have been smashed like an egg shell. Years after I saw the lion’s head and shoulders at a well-known naturalist’s in Piccadilly, depicted life-like dashing out of the rushes that encircled the African pond.

Our excitement for big game being temporarily satiated after our comrade’s narrow escape, we decided to direct our steps towards more peaceful pastures in the neighbourhood of Stellenbosch. Here large ostrich farms exist, and it was a unique experience to watch drafts of these huge birds being transferred from one farm to another. The procedure is original. Two or three mounted Kaffirs with long driving whips circle round and round the twenty or thirty birds, lashing them unmercifully on their bare legs till they start into a trot, which eventually ends in a pace that the riders at full gallop have difficulty in keeping up with. In my search for information I was assured that the feathers so much in demand for “matinee hats” were moulted from the birds; but this I found to be not strictly accurate, and much cruel “plucking” passed under my own observation. Ostrich egg omelette is delicious; six of us breakfasted off _one_ egg, and my sensations were as if I had swallowed an omnibus.

But perhaps the most ridiculous experience to be obtained in South Africa is associated with the (apparently) inoffensive penguin. Any one looking at these sedate creatures at the Zoological Gardens would hardly believe that they can bite and take a piece out of one’s calf with the dexterity of a bull-terrier. It was shortly after the experience above related that we turned our steps towards Penguin Island, which lies to the south of Table Bay. We had been offered a “cast over” in one of the fishing boats that proceed there periodically in the interests of the lessee who, renting this valuable island for a few pounds a year, makes an enormous income by the sale of the guano.

We had landed cheerily, and were roaring at the absurd attitudes taken up under every ledge and stone by these pompous old birds, when poor Bobby, going a little too close, was seized by the leg with the grip of a rat-trap.

When the guano parties visit the island they combine another industry, and collect some thousands of eggs, which are considered a delicacy by the Africander gourmets.

Personally, I found them too strong, although I plead guilty to having massacred some fifty penguins by knocking them on the head for the sake of their breasts. The oil that exhales from them for months, despite the alum and sifted ashes, is incredible; but they will repay the trouble, and after scientific manipulation by a London furrier are highly appreciated for muffs and boas.

The albatross that swarm in the vicinity of Table Bay, and which are caught in large numbers by the Malay fishermen, enabled me to create a new industry. Finding that the flesh only was used by the Malays, I offered the handsome price of one penny for every pair of pinion bones duly delivered at the barracks; these I forthwith filed off at each end, and tying them into bundles, stuffed them into ants’ nests. Within a week they were as clear as whistles, and within a month I possessed a fagot of some hundreds. The recital of an absurd sequel may not be amiss. Albatross quills of twelve and fifteen inches are a popular species of pipe stem, which, when encircled with a threepenny silver band attached to a shilling amber mouthpiece, may be seen in leading tobacconists’ labelled twenty shillings. Entering a palatial establishment in Regent Street on my return home, I got the proprietor into conversation, and was assured that they were very difficult things to procure, and that he would gladly “pay anything” if only he could get some more. Having thoroughly compromised him, I returned next day with a cab full, and although exceptionally long and perfect, I was surprised to hear they were by no means up to the mark, and in my desperation accepted a box of cigars in exchange for what he probably cleared £50 on.

Yet another experience—not strictly of a sporting character—was connected with sticks. On my return home I brought with me some hundreds of the rarest specimens from Ceylon, Mauritius, and the Cape. Conceive my disappointment, after an animated barter with Briggs, of St. James’s Street, to be grateful to accept any three of my own sticks mounted to order in exchange for what must have supplied half the golden calves of the West End with sticks varying from two to three guineas a-piece.

The above two incidents exemplify what is described as the encouragement of British industries.

At the risk of wearying the reader I will give an absurd incident that once occurred in India. We had organised a party to hunt up a tiger that had been seen near the village of Dharwar, not far from Belgaum. On our way to the rendezvous—where the serious search was to commence—one of our party who had wandered a little out of his course rushed frantically up to us, exclaiming: “I came suddenly within thirty yards of the brute fast asleep at the foot of the nullah.”

“Well,” we all asked, “why didn’t you shoot him?”

“’Pon my word, I had half a mind to,” was the heartfelt reply—“but, so help me bob, I funked it.”

Touching the fringe of these vast hunting grounds will, I hope, be forgiven me, for although six thousand miles from London, they nevertheless bring up very happy memories of the long-ago sixties.

Sir John Bissett, afterwards commanding the Infantry Brigade at Gibraltar, but at the time a resident at Grahamstown, was the Great Nimrod of the Cape.

It was he that organised the elephant hunts for the Duke of Edinburgh, at one of which the Prince shot the immense beast whose head confronted one on entering Clarence House. Although I did not actually see it shot, I was not far distant at the time.

It was weeks after our party’s return to Cape Town that Colonel Zebulon Pike brought me two splendid stuffed specimens of the boatswain bird, the rarest of the gull tribe.

As I admired their mauve and white plumage and the two long scarlet feathers that constitute their tail, I could not resist remarking: “Why, Colonel, where did you get these?” To which he replied: “I shot them one morning after bathing, before you fellows were up.”

There was not a boatswain bird within fifty miles of where we had been, and the specimens had evidently been cured for years.

It was only a righteous lie, such as the generous “Colonel” could never resist.