Chapter One.
H.M.S. “Seafowl.”

“Dicky, dear boy, it’s my impression that we shall see no blackbird’s cage to-day.”

“And it’s my impression, Frank Murray, that if you call me Dicky again I shall punch your head.”

“Poor fellow! Liver, decidedly,” said the first speaker, in a mock sympathetic tone. “Look here, old chap, if I were you, I’d go and ask Jones to give me a blue pill, to be followed eight hours later by one of his delicious liqueurs, all syrup of senna.”

“Ugh!” came in a grunt of disgust, followed by a shudder. “Look here, Frank, if you can’t speak sense, have the goodness to hold your tongue.”

The speakers were two manly looking lads in the uniform of midshipmen of the Royal Navy, each furnished with a telescope, through which he had been trying to pierce the hot thick haze which pretty well shut them in, while as they leaned over the side of Her Majesty’s ship Seafowl, her sails seemed to be as sleepy as the generally smart-looking crew, the light wind which filled them one minute gliding off the next, and leaving them to flap idly as they apparently dozed off into a heavy sleep.

“There, don’t be rusty, old fellow,” said the first speaker.

“Then don’t call me by that absurd name —Dicky– as if I were a bird!”

“Ha, ha! Why not?” said Frank merrily. “You wouldn’t have minded if I had said ‘old cock.’”

“Humph! Perhaps not,” said the young man sourly.

“There, I don’t wonder at your being upset; this heat somehow seems to soak into a fellow and melt all the go out of one. I’m as soft as one of those medusae – jellyfish – what do you call them? – that float by opening and shutting themselves, all of a wet gasp, as one might say.”

“It’s horrible,” said the other, speaking now more sociably.

“Horrible it is, sir, as our fellows say. Well, live and learn, and I’ve learned one thing, and that is if I retire from the service as Captain – no, I’ll be modest – Commander Murray, R.N., I shall not come and settle on the West Coast of Africa.”

“Settle on the West Coast of Africa, with its fevers and horrors? I should think not!” said the other. “Phew! How hot it is! Bah!” he half snorted angrily.

“What’s the matter now?”

“That brass rail. I placed my hand upon it – regularly burned me.”

“Mem for you, old chap – don’t do it again. But, I say, what is the good of our hanging about here? We shall do no good, and it’s completely spoiling the skipper’s temper.”

“Nonsense! Can’t be done.”

“Oh, can’t it, Ricardo!”

“There you go again.”

“Pardon, mon ami! Forgot myself. Plain Richard – there. But that’s wrong. One can’t call you plain Richard, because you’re such a good-looking chap.”

“Bah!” in a deep angry growl.

“What’s that wrong too? Oh, what an unlucky beggar I am! But I say, didn’t you see the skipper?”

“I saw him, of course. But what about him? I saw nothing particular.”

“Old Anderson went up to him as politely as a first lieutenant could – ”

“I say, Frank, look here,” cried the other; “can’t you say downright what you have to say, without prosing about like the jolly old preface to an uninteresting book?”

“No, dear boy,” replied the young fellow addressed; “I can’t really. It’s the weather.”

“Hang the weather!” cried the other petulantly.

“Not to be done, dear boy. To hang calls for a rope and the yard-arm, and there’s nothing tangible about the weather. You should say – that is, if you wish to be ungentlemanly and use language unbecoming to an officer in His Majesty’s service – Blow the weather!”

“Oh, bosh, bosh, bosh! You will not be satisfied till I’ve kicked you, Frank.”

“Oh, don’t – pray don’t, my dear fellow, because you will force me to kick you again, and it would make me so hot. But I say, wasn’t I going to tell you something about old Anderson and the skipper?”

“No – yes! – There, I don’t know. Well, what was it?”

“Nothing,” said Frank Murray, yawning. “Oh, dear me, how sleepy I am!”

“Well, of all the aggravating – ”

“That’s right: go on. Say it,” said Murray. “I don’t know what you were going to call me, dear boy, but I’m sure it would be correct. That’s just what I am. Pray go on. I’m too hot to hit back.”

“You’re not too hot to talk back, Franky.”

“Eh? Hullo! Why, I ought to fly at you now for calling me by that ridiculous name Franky.”

“Bah! Here, do talk sense. What were you going to tell me about old Anderson and the skipper?”

“I don’t know, dear boy. You’ve bullied it all out of me, or else the weather has taken it out. Oh, I know now: old Anderson went up to him and said something – what it was I don’t know – unless it was about changing our course – and he snarled, turned his back and went below to cool himself, I think. I say, though, it is hot, Dick.”

“Well, do you think I hadn’t found that out?”

“No, it is all plain to see. You are all in a state of trickle, old chap. I say, though, isn’t it a sort of midsummer madness to expect to catch one of these brutal craft on a day like this?”

There was an angry grunt.

“Quite right, old fellow. Bother the slavers! They’re all shut up snugly in the horrible muddy creeks waiting for night, I believe. Then they’ll steal out and we shall go on sailing away north or south as it pleases the skipper. Here, Dicky – I mean, Dick – what will you give me for my share of the prize money?”

“Bah!” ejaculated the youth addressed. “Can’t you be quiet, Frank? Buss, buss, buss! It’s just for the sake of talking. Can’t you realise the fact?”

“No, dear boy; it’s too hot to realise anything?”

“Well, then, let me tell you a home truth.”

“Ah, do! Anything about home and the truth would be delicious here. Wish I could have an ice!”

“There you go! I say, can’t you get tired of talking?”

“No, dear boy. I suppose it is my nature to. What is a fellow to do? You won’t.”

“No, I’m too hot. I wish every slaver that sails these muddy seas was hung at the yard-arm of his own nasty rakish schooner.”

“Hee-ah, hee-ah, hee-ah! as we say in Parliament.”

“Parliament! Parler, to talk!” grunted the other. “That’s where you ought to be, Frank, and then you’d be in your element.”

“Oh, I say! I was only politely agreeing with you. That was a splendid wish. The beasts! The wretches! But somehow they don’t get their deserts. Here have we been two months on this station, and I haven’t had so much as a squint of a slaver. I don’t believe there are any. All myths or fancies – bits of imagination.”

“Oh, there are plenty of them, lad, but they know every in and out of these mangrove-infested shores, and I’ll be bound to say they are watching us day by day, and as soon as we are lost in one of these foggy hazes it’s up with their lug sails, and they glide away like – like – like – here, what do they glide away like? I’m not as clever as you. I’m at a loss for words. Give me one – something poetic, Frank.”

“Steam out of a copper.”

“Bah!”

“What, won’t that do?”

“Do? No! There – like a dream.”

“Brayvo! Werry pretty, as Sam Weller said. Oh, here’s Tommy May – Here, Tom, what do you think of the weather?” said the lad, addressing a bluff-looking seaman.

“Weather, sir?” said the man, screwing up his face till it was one maze of wrinkles. “Beg pardon, sir, but did you mean that as one of your jokes, sir, or was it a conundydrum?”

“Oh, don’t ask questions, Tom, but just tell us plainly what you think of the weather.”

“Nothing, sir; it’s too hot to think,” replied the man.

“Quite right, May,” said the other midshipman. “Don’t bother the poor fellow, Murray. Here, May, what do you fellows before the mast think about the slavers?”

“Slippery as the mud of the river banks, sir.”

“Good,” said Murray. “Well spoken, Tom. But do you think there are any about here?”

“Oh yes, sir,” said the man; “no doubt about it. They on’y want catching.”

“No, no,” cried Murray. “That’s just what they don’t want.”

“Right you are, sir; but you know what I mean.”

“I suppose so,” said Murray; “but do you chaps, when you are chewing it all over along with your quids, believe that we shall come upon any of them?”

“Oh yes, sir; but do you see, they sail in those long, low, swift schooners that can come and go where they like, while we in the Seafowl seem to be thinking about it.”

“Poor sluggish sloop of war!” said Roberts.

“Nay, nay, sir,” said the man, “begging your pardon, she’s as smart a vessel as ever I sailed in, with as fine a captain and officers, ’specially the young gentlemen.”

“Now, none of your flattering gammon, Tom.”

“Begging your pardon, gentlemen,” said the man sturdily, “that it arn’t. I says what I says, and I sticks to it, and if we only get these here blackbird catchers on the hop we’ll let ’em see what the Seafowl can do.”

“If!” said Roberts bitterly.

“Yes, sir, if. That’s it, sir, and one of these days we shall drop upon them and make them stare. We shall do it, gentlemen, you see if we shan’t.”

“That’s what we want to see, Tom,” said Murray.

“Course you do, gentlemen, and all we lads forrard are itching for it, that we are – just about half mad.”

“For prize money?” said Roberts sourly.

“Prize money, sir?” replied the man. “Why, of course, sir. It’s a Bri’sh sailor’s nature to like a bit of prize money at the end of a v’y’ge; but, begging your pardon, sir, don’t you make no mistake. There arn’t a messmate o’ mine as wouldn’t give up his prize money for the sake of overhauling a slaver and reskying a load o’ them poor black beggars. It’s horrid; that’s what it just is.”

“Quite right, May,” said Roberts.

“Thankye, sir,” said the man; “and as we was a-saying on’y last night – talking together we was as we lay out on the deck because it was too stuffycatin’ to sleep.”

“So it was, May,” said Roberts.

“Yes, sir; reg’lar stifler. Well, what we all agreed was that what we should like to do was to set the tables upside down.”

“What for?” said Murray, giving his comrade a peculiar glance from the corner of his eye.

“Why, to give the poor niggers a chance to have a pop at some of the slavers’ crews, sir, to drive ’em with the whip and make ’em work in the plantations, sir, like dumb beasts. I should like to see it, sir.”

“Well said, Tom!” cried Murray.

“Thankye, sir. But it’s slow work ketching, sir, for you see it’s their swift craft.”

“Which makes them so crafty, eh, Tom?” cried Murray.

“Yes, sir. I don’t quite understand what you mean, sir, but I suppose it’s all right, and – ”

“Sail on the lee bow!” sang out a voice from the main-top.