Part 13

I have since been to a great extent cured; but in my earlier African days, somewhere about eleven years ago, I was full of romantic ideas and intoxicated with the strange glamour and mystery that pervaded everything connected with the great Niger River and its unknown territories. Having tied up to a bank late one afternoon, half an hour before sunset, I took my gun--a sporting Martini--and set out from the little river launch, of which I was the sole white passenger, and made my way through the long grass skirting the banks of the stream, until I emerged into an open, ploughed field, with its lines of mounds about eighteen inches high, indicating guinea-corn or yam cultivation. My intention was to reach a backwater, some half a mile away, which I had noticed as we steamed up the river a short time before tying up. I hoped I might find hippo, or, at any rate, an alligator or two, hidden in the seclusion of this secret byway of the great river.

Crossing the field I entered a kind of copse, consisting of minor trees and scrub. Pushing my way through I found some clearer ground, carpeted with the gourd plant. Ahead of me I noticed that the land suddenly dipped to a large pool that might have been connected with the main river. This, I thought, would do as well as my backwater, especially as I heard just then the distant grunting roar of a hippo. Next moment, without warning, the solid ground gave way under my feet, and I went hurtling down into black darkness, bringing up with a tremendous shock that seemed to jar me from tip to toe.

When I had recovered from my utter astonishment, and had made certain that no bones were broken, I looked about and above me to see where I was and what had happened. Around and beneath me I could see nothing; everything was shrouded in impenetrable blackness. Above me, however, I saw the evening sky, gradually fading into night. My gun was gone. Where was I? What had happened? Had the earth opened and swallowed me up?

I decided to strike a light and see what kind of place I had fallen into. The blue spurt and the flickering flame, settling almost immediately into a thin, steady tongue of yellow fire, revealed to me the fact that I had fallen into some kind of trap--probably for hippo--and that this trap was some eight feet long by five broad and ten deep. At the bottom, at regular intervals, were placed pointed stakes about eighteen inches apart. Had I fallen prone I should have been impaled. I had apparently, then, something to be thankful for. As this thought struck me my match burnt the tips of my fingers and I dropped it. As it fell something caught my eye that froze my blood in my veins--some coiled black thing was slowly moving in the farther corner! Part of its body was enshrouded in the shadow of the stakes, but I saw sufficient to convince me that my companion was some kind of venomous snake. Have any of my readers known what it is to feel the heart stop dead still, after one fierce bound into the throat, the body go cold and clammy, like dank, damp clay--like the earth that I leaned up against in that moment of dumb, stricken terror? You that have know what I felt then, ten feet down in the bowels of the earth, imprisoned with that coiling thing. You that have not, pray that you never may, for it seems as though the life is passing from one in the cold sweat which oozes through every pore. I leant against the side of the pit trembling like an aspen leaf. Oh! for my gun and a steady light! At least I could then stake all in one try for life. My hands shaking violently, I lit another match and glanced in the direction of the horror. I might have spared my pains. The brute--a long, black, shiny snake, with a sort of hooded head--was actually at my feet, the sinuous body stretched across the rough floor among the pointed stakes!

I stood still as though paralyzed, the match burning like a tiny flare in my uplifted right hand. The snake came straight on without striking, and as the match went out it started to coil up my left leg. The sensation of that strange, gliding grip, which squeezed the muscles as it passed along, is impossible to describe. Up it came in the darkness, higher and higher still, feeling like a hawser of steel round my body--and heavy! Suddenly--to my dying day I shall never forget the horror of that moment--its cold, hard snout touched my chin. It was just a sort of gliding touch, with no attempt at striking. Obeying a mad impulse, I gripped straight for where the neck should be, judging by the feel of the snout on my chin, and with the strength of a maniac my fingers closed on the snake just behind the head. Feeling my advantage, I forced my two thumbs deep into its throat. Then I tripped forward in my excitement, the coils of the snake suddenly contracting with a fierce pressure as I strengthened my grip. Down I went, tearing myself badly on two stakes as I fell, gashing my right leg above the knee--the scar remains to this day--and receiving a nasty bruise on my left shoulder. In spite of my fall, however, I had enough presence of mind to keep the terrible head at arm's length, and now, once on the ground, in spite of cuts, bruises, and the twining coils round my arm, I got on to my knees and banged and dashed that deadly head on the hard earth and against the stakes I could feel on either side. How long I kept on in my wild, frenzied fury I don't know, but gradually the fierce-gripping coils relaxed, until at last the limp form hung from my bleeding hands, lifeless and harmless.

I don't remember what happened then, but I think I lost consciousness for a time. All I know for certain is that I was hauled out of that hole some time later--about 8 p.m., to be exact--by two of the coloured deck-hands, who had tracked me through the field and the bushes, and, ultimately, to the edge of the hippo trap. They guessed that I had fallen in, and the lowering of a lamp that they carried proved this to be the case. My gun lay where it had fallen, close to the edge.

Why that snake never struck me I do not know to this day, unless it was that, seeing me in the sudden light of the match leaning up against the opposite wall, it had attempted to get out of the pit--into which it also must have dropped by accident like myself--by using my body as a ladder. For all I know the skeleton of the creature still lies in that ten-foot-deep hole. I have not since been there to inquire, nor do I intend to do so in the future; the very thought of the place is nightmare enough.

This incident occurred about four miles below Abutshi, the trading station near Onitsha, before one comes to the shallows that make that part of the Niger so difficult in the dry season.

THE CRUISE OF THE "CROCODILE."

+By Commander R. Dowling, R.N.R. (Captain in the Imperial Ottoman Navy).+

In December, 1900, I left Port Said for London in command of a small "hopper." For the benefit of the uninitiated, I should explain that this is a vessel with a bottom which opens out and allows the contents of the hold to fall into the sea. The "hopper" had formerly been employed in widening the Suez Canal, but had since been converted into a tank steamer for carrying oil. I had undertaken to bring her to England in tow of another steamer of some seven thousand tons burden.

I got the crew together with some difficulty. When I explained the project to English-speaking seamen, they all refused, in a most emphatic manner, to have anything to do with it, and in the end I had to fall back on a number of men to whom I was unable to explain it at all properly. They were one Swede, the mate; a Greek and a Frenchman, whom I understood to be engineers; four Italian seamen and four Greek firemen, and an Italian cook. Excepting the Swede, who understood English with difficulty, not one of the crew could make out a word I said, so that during the first part of the voyage I was compelled to give orders to the ship's company in a kind of pantomimic dumb-show.

We managed to bend on two five-inch hawsers to the other steamer and started on our voyage, using our own engines to assist the towing ship. The engineer was full of zeal, which he showed by repeatedly "ramming" our consort, through his failure to understand the orders sent below through the tube--we had no telegraph--and this, needless to say, caused a great deal of unpleasantness, shown chiefly in personal abuse of myself from the big vessel, though I repeatedly tried to gesticulate explanations as to the position.

The Italian cook turned out an utter fraud, giving repeated proofs of his incapacity. I endeavoured to instruct him by practical demonstration in the art of boiling pork and cabbage, but it came on to blow and, the sea rising rapidly as it does in the Mediterranean, the galley was washed out and the cooking difficulty disposed of for ever, for we had to live on cocoa, biscuit, and onions during nearly the whole of that eventful voyage.

The seas grew bigger and bigger, and the _Crocodile_ rolled horribly. Finally we had to abandon the quarters forward for fear of being washed overboard. I had twice tried to get to my cabin, for I had stowed away all the medical comforts, my sextant, cigars, and so forth in my bunk. At the first attempt I got knocked down and nearly had my leg broken by a heavy sea; at the second I came as close to being washed overboard as possible. By a desperate effort, however, I finally got down to my cabin, where I found everything--my clothes included--washing about in a depth of bilge water and oil, while my precious sextant was smashed. I managed to rescue the barometer--an excellent one, lent me by the towing ship, but useless under the circumstances--but I was obliged to let everything else go.

When I clambered back on deck I found the crew simply torpid with fright. Our two little engines raced as we lifted in such a way as to threaten a smash-up of the whole of the machinery. In spite of all my threats, and even some muscular persuasion, I was unable to induce a single man of the crew, with the exception of the mate, to stir. The ship, I may remark, was an awkward one to handle; she had no bulwarks, except a small piece forward and aft, with a single chain in between. Bunker lids were being continually washed off, but, as the men were too scared to reship them, the mate and myself had to do this ourselves to prevent our going down.

In the middle of the night, the weather growing steadily worse, one of the anchors got adrift. By a mingling of menace and persuasion I got one of the Italians to go forward with me to secure it. The mate, dead beat, was lying asleep on the engine-room gratings. We watched our time and made a rush for it, when a tremendous sea came over, simply burying us in water. I smashed my left toe against a pump, got a big piece taken out of one forefinger, and felt blood running into my eyes from a wound in my head. Looking round, I saw the Italian overboard, hanging on convulsively to a rail, and made a rush to his rescue. I managed to get hold of him, and finally hauled him on deck--and an awful bundle he was, having seemingly put all the clothes he had in the world on his back. However, we contrived to pass a lashing round the anchor and secure it as well as could be done under the circumstances. We were also successful in getting back aft, though the luckless Italian was bowled over and rolled about beneath another heavy sea, but the clothes he had on seemed to protect him, and he got to the stokehold uninjured.

Throughout the grim days and black nights that followed we laboured incessantly, led by the two hawsers that held us to the other ship. These hawsers had to be watched incessantly, and pieces of wood kept under the places where they came on board to prevent them from being cut. There was not a chair, or a stool, or a dry rag on board the ship. The crew spent their time praying or lamenting, and when we wanted to sleep the only place on which we could lie was the engine-room gratings, from which we got up as black as sweeps with coal-dust and grime. The seas were constantly washing over us from stem to stern, though the ship ahead had been dropping oil for three days to make things better for us. She herself was in difficulties, as we could see from the seas which continually rushed out from her water ports and scuppers.

About daybreak on the fourth day a loud report sounded through the din of wind and weather, and I saw our port hawser snap close up to the towing ship. We were then, of course, towing the broken part astern, and for hours I was in dread that it would foul our propeller. Luckily the weather moderated somewhat, and the larger vessel eased up, endeavouring to drop a line down to our end of the hawser so that we might heave it aboard. Owing to the drift to leeward, however, we found it impossible to do anything in this way, so, after waiting some hours longer, the towing vessel launched a boat to bring in the end. The boat was stove in as soon as it touched the water, and it was hauled on board again only just in time to save the crew from drowning. In the meantime I started to get out one of our own small steel boats. For four hours we laboured at this task, for the steamer rolled so much that at one moment the boat would be hanging over the water quite a distance from the side, and at another threatening to knock the funnel off. In the end we managed to launch her, pick up the end of the broken hawser, connect up again, and make a fresh start. But I defy anyone who has not gone through it to realize the labour, the difficulties, and danger we went through. Tossed about by mountainous seas, expecting every moment to be capsized, to fish up a five-inch steel hawser trailing deep below the surface, and pull back with it to the towing vessel, is a labour the arduousness of which my pen is utterly unable to describe. At last we got started again, and two days later, one lovely clear morning, we arrived at Algiers, the first port of call on our voyage.

Here the captain of the towing ship went ashore with me to obtain two Manila hawsers, these having more "give" and "spring" in them than wire ropes. We ransacked Algiers in vain, and accordingly cabled home for instructions. These were to the effect that the "hopper" was to be brought to England under her own steam, and I was given twenty-four hours to decide whether I would undertake the task. I made up my mind, now I had got so far, to see the thing through.

Most of the crew had cleared off at Algiers the moment they had the chance, and it was with the greatest difficulty that I managed to get another lot together. Having seen my friend the towing ship off, I started myself two days later for Gibraltar.

Scarcely had we got to sea again when we began to encounter the same diabolical weather as before. I made a discovery, too, that disconcerted me more almost than anything that we had already experienced--I found we had no instruments! During the voyage from Port Said all the navigation, of course, was done by the towing vessel, and the necessity of independent navigation, in consequence of the altered arrangements, had never entered our heads. I had neither a chronometer nor sextant; only a small-scale chart and a very questionable and erratic compass on the bridge. After much cogitation I found the only thing I could do was to get the bearing of the North Star, and this I did by laying a broomstick along the top of the compass and pointing it as straight as possible. By this I was able to shape a course to Cape de Gat, the south-east corner of Spain, making due allowance for wind and current.

But trouble soon began. At Algiers I had picked up a French engineer who was in perpetual trouble with his engines. He spoke no English, I spoke no French; so that after various altercations in our own languages I was obliged to intimate to him, in a fashion it was difficult for him to misunderstand, that further discussions were useless. One morning, however, when between blowing and pitching it was hard to stand upright, the engineer came tumbling on deck frantic with excitement, gesticulating madly and shouting, "Monsieur le Commandant, oily, oily!" while he pointed a quivering forefinger below.

I rushed down and found the starboard engine bearings grinding away just about red-hot for want of oil, the stench and steam being indescribable. I cursed him for an idiot, for he might have known we were half full of oil, and he promptly shut off steam. During this time our tiny vessel (she was only a hundred and thirty-five tons), having but little way on her, was tossed about like a chip, and the rest of the crew lay in a jumble in the stokehold--sick, praying and groaning--neither persuasion nor kicks having the least effect on them. It was under these cheerful conditions that, having restarted the engines, we reached Gibraltar a day or two later.

The Officer of Health at Gibraltar received my account of the voyage, first with incredulity, and then astonishment. He heard my proposal to navigate home under the prevailing conditions with a stare of stupefaction, and then remarked, significantly, "Well, rather you than me, captain."

I had literally to hold the chief engineer down at starting in order to frustrate his frantic struggles to get overboard. We made for Cape St. Vincent, the weather being bad, though endurable, thence I steered for Cape Roca and the Burlings, but made neither. Finally we picked up Cape Finisterre and were in the Bay of Biscay, where, sure enough, we caught it. It blew hard from the north-west, and the vessel at times nearly stood on end. Nevertheless, we had to be continually shifting coal and water to keep the propeller under water. In the middle of the night the second engineer crawled along to me on the bridge to tell me the piston packings of the port engine had blown out, and those of the other engine were leaking so badly that they were expected to blow out also at any moment.

Now, if the engine had gone, there was not a spar or a sail of any kind on the vessel to keep her before the wind, and our fate, had we once been cast into the trough of the sea, would have been certain. Accordingly we had to keep one engine running at half speed while we patched up the other with some valuable hose which had been used for pumping oil out. When we had finished one we turned to the other, and managed to make a tolerable job of both. This kept us going for nearly two days.

On the fourth day from Finisterre, about one in the morning, we sighted a light. At first I thought it was the coast of France, but after a while I saw the familiar stump of the Eddystone, and then I knew where I was. On receiving the joyful news the crew worked up some sort of enthusiasm, and I determined to put out to sea again and face it. The firemen threw their hearts into their work and we breasted the waves gallantly. Soon, however, I heard a muffled report and yells from the engine-room, and, rushing below, found we had to stop the port engine for a time; so we went on with the starboard one pretty comfortably for about twenty-four hours, when the repairs were roughly completed. Then the wind rose again to almost hurricane force, and the ship rolled and pitched quite in her best style. Even this was not the worst, for near Dungeness a heavy sea threw a water-tank on top of me, and when I was hauled out I found I had broken a bone in my left wrist, in addition to other injuries. At that point, too, the electric light went out. The ship was now in total darkness; we had no mast or side-lights, and presently, to crown all, a dense fog settled upon us. At that moment a nautical Mark Tapley would have been hard put to it to muster up any cheerfulness worth mentioning.

However, to make an end to a long story, we worried through our troubles somehow or other, got a pilot on board, and at last arrived off the Royal Albert Docks, where very thankfully we made fast to the Galleon buoys on December 22nd. To show one difficulty I had to contend with during this ever-memorable voyage I may mention that the compass was so untrue that to make a true east course I had to steer south a quarter west.

For ten days after our arrival I was laid up and unable to get off to the ship. When I did I found that nearly the whole of my things had been stolen. I received from the owners, in recognition of the danger and arduousness of the voyage, a gratuity of ten pounds!

Propitiating the Weather.

+By Mrs. Herbert Vivian.+

In various parts of Europe the simple peasant-folk observe some extraordinary customs--strange blendings of religion and superstition--in their attempts to avert drought and hailstorms and obtain favourable weather for harvesting their crops. This chatty article deals with a number of the most curious methods employed.

In many parts of the world the peasant and the countryman are dependent for a whole year's daily bread on the sort of weather Providence is good enough to send them. In England we are perhaps more independent than any other land, for our much-abused climate seldom runs to wild extremes. A drought makes a serious difference certainly, but it rarely ruins the entire crop. In the great plains of Hungary and Roumania, however, a winter without plentiful snow means a miserable harvest, and under the blazing sun of summer a drought there is a very much more tragic affair than it is with us. In parts of Northern Italy and the Tyrol what they most dread is not drought, but the terrible hailstorms and tempests which sweep down with sudden and relentless fury upon the country-side, doing irreparable damage in an incredibly short time.

It is interesting to notice the different ways in which country-folk meet these trials. In England after long drought we pray for rain in our churches, and in most Roman Catholic countries processions and pilgrimages are the order of the day. In Macedonia the Greeks organize great demonstrations in dry summers. A procession of children visits all the local wells and springs, accompanied by a maiden covered with garlands and masses of flowers. This sounds as romantic as our Queen of the May, and it could surprise no one if, like Tennyson's heroine, she came to a sad end, for at each of the stopping-places the poor dear is drenched with water, whilst the children sing a rhyming prayer for rain.

The Russian peasants say prayers to Elisha, whom they consider a very potent rain-producer. In some countries the images of the saints are immersed in water when rain is wanted. On the other hand, sometimes more rain falls than is needed, and in parts of Westphalia they say that it is fatal to kill a swallow, for such a crime will bring at least four weeks' deluge. Swallows are considered lucky birds in that part of the world, and if they are driven away all the vegetables of the neighbourhood are sure to be destroyed by frost.