JUDSON AND THE EMPIRE
Gloriana! The Don may attack us
Whenever his stomach be fain;
He must reach us before he can rack us . . .
And where are the galleons of Spain?
Dobson.
One of the many beauties of a democracy is its almost superhuman
skill in developing troubles with other countries and finding its
honour abraded in the process. A true democracy has a large
contempt for all other lands that are governed by Kings and Queens
and Emperors, and knows little and thinks less of their internal
affairs. All it regards is its own dignity, which is its King,
Queen, and Knave. So, sooner or later, an international difference
ends in the common people, who have no dignity, shouting the
common abuse of the street, which also has no dignity, across the
seas in order to vindicate their own dignity. The consequences may
or may not be war, but the chances do not favour peace.
An advantage in living in a civilised land which is really
governed lies in the fact that all the Kings and Queens and
Emperors of the continent are closely related by blood or marriage
- are, in fact, one large family. A wise head of them knows that
what appears to be a studied insult may be no more than some man's
indigestion or woman's indisposition to be treated as such, and
explained in quiet talk. Again, a popular demonstration, headed by
King and Court, may mean nothing more than that so-and-so's people
are out of hand for the minute. When a horse falls to kicking in a
hunt-crowd at a gate, the rider does not dismount, but puts his
open hand behind him, and the others draw aside. It is so with the
rulers of men. In the old days they cured their own and their
people's bad temper with fire and slaughter; but now that the fire
is so long of range and the slaughter so large, they do other
things, and few among their people guess how much they owe in mere
life and money to what the slang of the minute calls "puppets" and
"luxuries."
Once upon a time there was a little Power, the half-bankrupt wreck
of a once great empire, that lost its temper with England, the
whipping-boy of all the world, and behaved, as every one knows,
most scandalously. But it is not generally known that that Power
fought a pitched battle with England and won a glorious victory.
The trouble began with the people. Their own misfortunes had been
many, and for private rage it is always refreshing to find a vent
in public swearing. Their national vanity had been deeply injured,
and they thought of their ancient glories and the days when their
fleets had first rounded the Cape of Storms, and their own
newspapers called upon Camoens and urged them to extravagances. It
was the gross, smooth, sleek, lying England that was checking
their career of colonial expansion. They assumed at once that
their ruler was in league with that country, and consequently
they, his people, would forthwith become a Republic and colonially
expand themselves as a free people should. This made plain, the
people threw stones at the English Consuls and spat at English
ladies, and cut off drunken sailors of our fleet in their ports
and hammered them with oars, and made things very unpleasant for
tourists at their customs, and threatened awful deaths to the
consumptive invalids at Madeira, while the junior officers of the
Army drank fruit-extracts and entered into blood-curdling
conspiracies against their monarch, all with the object of being a
Republic. Now the history of all the South American Republics
shows that it is not good that Southern Europeans should be also
Republicans. They glide too quickly into military despotism; and
the propping of men against walls and shooting them in detachments
can be arranged much more economically and with less effect on the
death-rate by a hide-bound monarchy. Still the performances of the
Power as represented by its people were extremely inconvenient. It
was the kicking horse in the crowd, and probably the rider
explained that he could not check it. The people enjoyed all the
glory of war with none of the risks, and the tourists who were
stoned in their travels returned stolidly to England and told the
"Times" that the police arrangements of foreign towns were
defective.
This then was the state of affairs north of the Line. South it was
more strained, for there the Powers were at direct issue: England,
unable to go back because of the pressure of adventurous children
behind her, and the actions of far-away adventurers who would not
come to heel, but offering to buy out her rival; and the other
Power, lacking men or money, stiff in the conviction that three
hundred years of slave-holding and intermingling with the nearest
natives gave an inalienable right to hold slaves and issue half-
castes to all eternity. They had built no roads. Their towns were
rotting under their hands; they had no trade worth the freight of
a crazy steamer, and their sovereignty ran almost one musket-shot
inland when things were peaceful. For these very reasons they
raged all the more, and the things that they said and wrote about
the manners and customs of the English would have driven a younger
nation to the guns with a long red bill for wounded honour.
It was then that Fate sent down in a twin-screw shallow-draft
gunboat, designed for the defence of rivers, of some two hundred
and seventy tons' displacement, Lieutenant Harrison Edward Judson,
to be known for the future as Bai-Jove-Judson. His type of craft
looked exactly like a flat-iron with a match stuck up in the
middle; it drew five feet of water or less, carried a four-inch
gun forward, which was trained by the ship, and, on account of its
persistent rolling, was to live in three degrees worse than a
torpedo-boat. When Judson was appointed to take charge of the
thing on her little trip of six or seven thousand miles southward,
his first remark as he went to look her over in dock was, "Bai
Jove, that topmast wants staying forward!" The topmast was a stick
about as thick as a clothes-prop, but the flat-iron was Judson's
first command, and he would not have exchanged his position for
second post on the "Anson" or the "Howe". He navigated her, under
convoy, tenderly and lovingly to the Cape (the story of the
topmast came with him), and he was so absurdly in love with his
wallowing wash-tub when he reported himself, that the Admiral of
the station thought it would be a pity to kill a new man on her,
and allowed Judson to continue in his unenvied rule.
The Admiral visited her once in Simon's Bay, and she was bad, even
for a flat-iron gunboat strictly designed for river and harbour
defence. She sweated clammy drops of dew between decks in spite of
a preparation of powdered cork that was sprinkled over her inside
paint. She rolled in the long Cape swell like a buoy; her foc's'le
was a dog-kennel; Judson's cabin was practically under the water-
line; not one of her dead-bights could ever be opened; and her
compasses, thanks to the influence of the four-inch gun, were a
curiosity even among Admiralty compasses. But Bai-Jove-Judson was
radiant and enthusiastic. He had even contrived to fill Mr.
Davies, the second-class engine-room artificer, who was his chief
engineer, with the glow of his passion. The Admiral, who
remembered his own first command, when pride forbade him to
slacken off a single rope on a dewy night, and he had racked his
rigging to pieces in consequence, looked at the flat-iron keenly.
Her fenders were done all over with white sennit which was truly
white; her big gun was varnished with a better composition than
the Admiralty allowed; the spare sights were cased as carefully as
the chronometers; the chocks for spare spars, two of them, were
made of four-inch Burma teak carved with dragons' heads that was
one result of Bai-Jove-Judson's experiences with the Naval Brigade
in the Burmese war; the bow-anchor was varnished instead of being
painted, and there were charts more than the Admiralty scale
supplied. The Admiral was well pleased, for he loved a ship's
husband - a man who had a little money of his own and was willing
to spend it on his command. Judson looked at him hopefully. He was
only a Junior Navigating Lieutenant under eight years' standing.
He might be kept in Simon's Bay for six months, and his ship at
sea was his delight. The dream of his heart was to enliven her
dismal official gray with a line of gold-leaf and perhaps a little
scroll-work
at her blunt barge-like bows.
"There's nothing like a first command, is there?" said the
Admiral, reading his thoughts. "You seem to have rather queer
compasses, though. Better get them adjusted."
"It's no use, sir," said Judson. "The gun would throw out the Pole
itself. But - but I've got the hang of most of their weaknesses."
"Will you be good enough to lay that gun over thirty degrees,
please?" The gun was put over. Round and round and round went the
needle merrily, and the Admiral whistled.
"You must have kept close to your convoy?"
"Saw her twice between here and Madeira, sir," said Judson with a
flush, for he resented the slur on his seamanship. " It's - it's a
little out of hand, now, but she'll settle down after a while."
The Admiral went over the side, according to the rules of the
Service, but the Staff-Captain must have told the other men of the
squadron in Simon's Bay, for they one and all made light of the
flat-iron for many days. "What can you shake out of her, Judson?"
said the Lieutenant of the "Mongoose", a real white-painted, ram-
bow gunboat with quick-firing guns, as he came into the upper
verandah of the little naval Club overlooking the dockyard one hot
afternoon. It is in that Club as the captains come and go that you
hear all the gossip of all the Seven Seas.
"Ten point four," said Bai-Jove-Judson.
"Ah! That was on her trial trip. She's too deep by the head now. I
told you staying that topmast would throw her out of trim."
"You leave my top-hamper alone," said Judson, for the joke was
beginning to pall on him.
"Oh, my soul! Listen to him. Juddy's top-hamper! Keate, have you
heard of the flat-iron's top-hamper? You're to leave it alone.
Commodore Judson's feelings are hurt."
Keate was the Torpedo Lieutenant of the big "Vortigern", and he
despised small things. "His top-hamper," said he slowly. "Oh, ah
yes, of course. Juddy, there's a shoal of mullet in the bay, and I
think they're foul of your screws. Better go down, or they'll
carry away something."
"I don't let things carry away as a rule. You see I've no Torpedo
Lieutenant on board, thank God!"
Keate within the past week had so managed to bungle the slinging
in of a small torpedo-boat on the "Vortigern", that the boat had
broken the crutches in which she rested, and was herself being
repaired in the dockyard under the Club windows.
"One for you, Keate. Never mind, Juddy; you're hereby appointed
dockyard-tender for the next three years, and if you're very good
and there's no sea on, you shall take me round the harbour.
Waitabeechee, Commodore. What'll you take? Vanderhum for the 'Cook
and the captain bold, And the mate o' the Nancy brig, And the
bo'sun tight' (Juddy, put that cue down or I'll put you under
arrest for insulting the lieutenant of the real ship) 'And the
midshipmite, And the crew of the captain's gig."
By this time Judson had pinned him in a corner, and was prodding
him with the half-butt. The Admiral's Secretary entered, and saw
the scuffle from afar.
"Ouch! Juddy, I apologise. Take that - er topmast of yours away!
Here's the man with the bow-string. I wish I were a staff-captain
instead of a bloody lootenant. Sperril sleeps below every night.
That's what makes Sperril tumble home from the waist uppards.
Sperril, I defy you to touch me. I'm under orders for Zanzibar.
Probably I shall annex it!"
"Judson, the Admiral wants to see you!" said the Staff-Captain,
disregarding the scoffer of the "Mongoose".
"I told you you'd be a dockyard-tender yet, Juddy. A side of fresh
beef to-morrow and three dozen snapper on ice. On ice, you
understand, Juddy?"
Bai-Jove-Judson and the Staff-Captain went out together.
"Now, what does the Admiral want with Judson?" said Keate from the
bar.
"Don't know. Juddy's a damned good fellow, though. I wish to
goodness he was on the Mongoose with us."
The Lieutenant of the "Mongoose" dropped into a chair and read the
mail papers for an hour. Then he saw Bai-Jove-Judson in the street
and shouted to him. Judson's eyes were very bright, and his figure
was held very straight, and he moved joyously. Except for the
Lieutenant of the "Mongoose", the Club was empty.
"Juddy, there will be a beautiful row," said that young man when
he had heard the news delivered in an undertone. "You'll probably
have to fight, and yet I can't see what the Admiral's thinking of
to -"
"My orders are not to fight under any circumstances," said Judson.
"Go-look-see? That all? When do you go?"
"To-night if I can. I must go down and see about things. I say, I
may want a few men for the day."
"Anything on the "Mongoose" is at your service. There's my gig
come in now. I know that coast, dead, drunk, or asleep, and you'll
need all the knowledge you can get. If it had only been us two
together! Come over with me!"
For one whole hour Judson remained closeted in the stern cabin of
the "Mongoose", listening, poring over chart upon chart and taking
notes, and for an hour the marine at the door heard nothing but
things like these: "Now you'll have to put in here if there's any
sea on. That current is ridiculously under-estimated, and it sets
west at this season of the year, remember. Their boats never come
south of this, see? So it's no good looking out for them." And so
on and so forth, while Judson lay at length on the locker by the
three-pounder, and smoked and absorbed it all.
Next morning there was no flat-iron in Simon's Bay, only a little
smudge of smoke off Cape Hangklip to show that Mr. Davies, the
second-class engine-room artificer, was giving her all she could
carry. At the Admiral's house, the ancient and retired bo'sun, who
had seen many Admirals come and go, brought out his paint and
brushes and gave a new coat of pure raw pea-green to the two big
cannon-balls that stood one on each side of the Admiral's
entrance-gate. He felt dimly that great events were stirring.
And the flat-iron, constructed, as has been before said, solely
for the defense of rivers, met the great roll off Cape Agulhas and
was swept from end to end and sat upon her twin-screws and leaped
as gracefully as a cow in a bog from one sea to another, till Mr.
Davies began to fear for the safety of his engines, and the Kroo
boys that made the majority of the crew were deathly sick. She ran
along a very badly-lighted coast, past bays that were no bays,
where ugly flat-topped rocks lay almost level with the water, and
very many extraordinary things happened that have nothing to do
with the story, but they were all duly logged by Bai-Jove-Judson.
At last the coast changed and grew green and low and exceedingly
muddy, and there were broad rivers whose bars were little islands
standing three or four miles out at sea, and Bai-Jove-Judson
hugged the shore more closely than ever, remembering what the
Lieutenant of the "Mongoose" had told him. Then he found a river
full of the smell of fever and mud, with green stuff growing far
into its waters, and a current that made the flatiron gasp and
grunt.
"We will turn up here," said Bai-Jove-Judson, and they turned up
accordingly; Mr. Davies wondering what in the world it all meant,
and the Kroo boys grinning. Bai-Jove-Judson went forward to the
bows and meditated, staring through the muddy waters. After six
hours of rooting through this desolation at an average rate of
five miles an hour, his eyes were cheered by the sight of one
white buoy in the coffee-hued mid-stream. The flat-iron crept up
to it cautiously, and a leadsman took soundings all around it from
a dinghy, while Bai-Jove-Judson smoked and thought, with his head
on one side.
"About seven feet, isn't there?" said he. "That must be the tail
end of the shoal. There's four fathom in the fairway. Knock that
buoy down with axes. I don't think it's picturesque somehow." The
Kroo men hacked the wooden sides to pieces in three minutes, and
the mooring-chain sank with the lasst splinters of wood. Bai-Jove
Judson laid the flat-iron carefully over the site, while Mr.
Davies watched, biting his nails nervously.
"Can you back her against this current?" said Bai-Jove-Judson. Mr.
Davies could, inch by inch, but only inch by inch, and Bai-Jove-
Judson sat in the bows and gazed at various things on the bank as
they came into line or opened out. The flatiron dropped down over
the tail of the shoal, exactly where the buoy had been, and backed
once before Bai-Jove-Judson was satisfied. Then they went up
stream for half an hour, put into shoal water by the bank and
waited, with a slip-rope on the anchor.
"Seems to me," said Mr. Davies deferentially, "like as if I heard
some one a-firing off at intervals, so to say."
There was beyond doubt a dull mutter in the air. "Seems to me,"
said Bai-Jove-Judson, "as if I heard a screw. Stand by to slip her
moorings."
Another ten minutes passed and the beat of engines grew plainer.
Then round the bend of the river came a remarkably prettily built
white-painted gunboat with a blue and white flag bearing a red
boss in the centre.
"Unshackle abaft the windlass! Stream both buoys! Easy, astern.
Let go, all!" The slip-rope flew out, the two buoys bobbed in the
water to mark where anchor and cable had been left, and the flat-
iron waddled out into midstream with the white ensign at her one
mast-head.
"Give her all you can. That thing has the legs of us," said
Judson. "And down we go!"
"It's war - bloody war. He's going to fire," said Mr. Davies,
looking up through the engine-room hatch.
The white gunboat without a word of explanation fired three guns
at the flat-iron, cutting the trees on the banks into green chips.
Bai-Jove-Judson was at the wheel, and Mr. Davies and the current
helped the boat to an almost respectable degree of speed.
It was an exciting chase, but it did not last for more than five
minutes. The white gunboat fired again, and Mr. Davies in his
engine-room gave a wild shout.
"What's the matter? Hit?" said Bai-Jove-Judson.
"No, I've just seized of your roos-de-gare. Beg y' pardon, sir."
"Right 0! Just the half a fraction of a point more." The wheel
turned under the steady hand, as Bai-Jove-Judson watched his marks
on the bank coming in line swiftly as troops anxious to aid. The
flat-iron smelt the shoal water under her,
checked for an instant, and went on. "Now we're over. Come along,
you thieves, there!"
The white gunboat, too hurried even to fire, was storming in the
wake of the flat-iron, steering as she steered. This was
unfortunate, because the lighter craft was dead over the missing
buoy.
"What you do here?" shouted a voice from the bows.
"I'm going on. Hold tight. Now you're arranged for!"
There was a crash and a clatter as the white gunboat's nose took
the shoal, and the brown mud boiled up in oozy circles under her
forefoot. Then the current caught her stem by the starboard side
and drove her broadside on to the shoal, slowly and gracefully.
There she heeled at an undignified angle, and her crew yelled
aloud.
"Neat! Oh, damn neat!" quoth Mr. Davies, dancing on the engine-
room plates, while the Kroo stokers grinned.
The flat-iron turned up-stream again, and passed under the hove-up
starboard side of the white gunboat, to be received with howls and
imprecations in a strange tongue. The stranded boat, exposed even
to her lower strakes, was as defence-less as a turtle on its back,
without the advantage of the turtle's plating. And the one big
blunt gun in the bows of the flat-iron was unpleasantly near.
But the captain was valiant and swore mightily. Bai-Jove-Judson
took no sort of notice. His business was to go up the river.
"We will come in a flotilla of boats and ecrazer your vile
tricks," said the captain with language that need not be
published.
Then said Bai-Jove-Judson, who was a linguist: "You stay o where
you are o, or I'll leave a hole-o in your bottom o that will make
you much os perforatados."
There was a great deal of mixed language in reply, but Bai-Jove-
Judson was out of hearing in a few minutes, and Mr. Davies,
himself a man of few words, confided to one of his subordinates
that Lieutenant Judson was "a most remarkable prompt officer in a
way of putting it."
For two hours the flat-iron pawed madly through the muddy water,
and that which had been at first a mutter became a distinct
rumble.
"Was war declared?" said Mr. Davies, and Bai-Jove-Judson laughed.
"Then, damn his eyes, he might have spoilt my pretty little
engines. There's war up there, though."
The next bend brought them full in sight of a small but lively
village, built round a whitewashed mud house of some pretensions.
There were scores and scores of saddle-coloured soldiery on duty,
white uniforms running to and fro and
shouting round a man in a litter, and on a gentle slope that ran
inland for four or five miles something like a brisk battle was
raging round a rude stockade. A smell of unburied carcasses
floated through the air and vexed the sensitive nose of Mr.
Davies, who spat over the side.
"I want to get this gun on that house," said Bai-Jove-Judson,
indicating the superior dwelling over whose flat roof floated the
blue and white flag. The little twin screws kicked up the water
exactly as a hen's legs kick in the dust before she settles down
to a bath. The little boat moved un easily from left to right,
backed, yawed again, went ahead, and at last the gray blunt gun's
nose
was held as straight as a rifle-barrel on the mark indicated. Then
Mr. Davies allowed the whistle to speak as it is not allowed to
speak in Her Majesty's service on account of waste of steam. The
soldiery of the village gathered into knots and groups and
bunches, and the firing up the hill ceased, and every one except
the crew of the flatiron yelled aloud. Something like an English
cheer came down wind.
"Our chaps in mischief for sure, probably," said Mr. Davies. "They
must have declared war weeks ago, in a kind of way, seems to me."
"Hold her steady, you son of a soldier!" shouted Bai-Jove-Judson,
as the muzzle fell off the white house.
Something rang as loudly as a ship's bell on the forward plates of
the flat-iron, something spluttered in the water, and another
thing cut a groove in the deck planking an inch in front of Bai-
Jove-Judson's left foot. The saddle-coloured soldiery were firing
as the mood took them, and the man in the litter waved a shining
sword. The muzzle of the big gun kicked down a fraction as it was
laid on the mud wall at the bottom of the house garden. Ten pounds
of gunpowder shut up in a hundred pounds of metal was its charge.
Three or four yards of the mud wall jumped up a little, as a man
jumps when he is caught in the small of the back with a knee-cap,
and then fell forward, spreading fan-wise in the fall. The
soldiery fired no more that day, and Judson saw an old black woman
climb to the flat roof of the house. She fumbled for a time with
the flag halliards, then finding that they were jammed, took off
her one garment, which happened to be an Isabella-coloured
petticoat, and waved it impatiently. The man in the litter
flourished a white handkerchief, and Bai-Jove-Judson grinned. "Now
we'll give 'em one up the hill. Round with her, Mr. Davies. Curse
the man who invented those floating gun platforms. Where can I
pitch in a notice without slaying one of those little devils?"
The side of the slope was speckled with men returning in a
disorderly fashion to the river front. Behind them marched a small
but very compact body of men who had filed out of the stockade.
These last dragged quick-firing guns with them.
"Bai Jove, it's a regular army. I wonder whose," said Bai-Jove-
Judson, and he waited developments. The descending troops met and
mixed with the troops in the village, and, with the litter in the
centre, crowded down to the river, till the men with the quick-
firing guns came up behind them. Then they divided left and right
and the detachment marched through.
"Heave these damned things over!" said the leader of the party,
and one after another ten little gatlings splashed into the muddy
water. The flatiron lay close to the bank.
"When you're quite done," said Bai-Jove-Judson politely, "would
you mind telling me what's the matter? I'm in charge here."
"We're the Pioneers of the General Development Company," said the
leader. "These little bounders have been hammering us in lager for
twelve hours, and we're getting rid of their gatlings. Had to
climb out and take them; but they've snaffled the lock-actions.
Glad to see you."
"Any one hurt?"
"No one killed exactly, but we're very dry."
"Can you hold your men?"
The man turned round and looked at his command with a grin. There
were seventy of them, all dusty and unkempt.
"We sha'n't sack this ash-bin, if that's what you mean. We're
mostly gentlemen here, though we don't look it."
"All right. Send the head of this post, or fort, or village, or
whatever it is, aboard, and make what arrangements you can for
your men."
"We'll find some barrack accommodation somewhere. Hullo! You in
the litter there, go aboard the gunboat." The command wheeled
round, pushed through the dislocated soldiery, and began to search
through the village for spare huts.
The little man in the litter came aboard smiling nervously. He was
in the fullest of full uniform, with many yards of gold lace and
dangling chains. Also he wore very large spurs; the nearest horse
being not more than four hundred miles away. "My children," said
he, facing the silent soldiery, "lay aside your arms."
Most of the men had dropped them already and were sitting down to
smoke. "Let nothing," he added in his own tongue, "tempt you to
kill these who have sought your protection."
"Now," said Bai-Jove-Judson, on whom the last remark was lost,
"will you have the goodness to explain what the deuce you mean by
all this nonsense?"
"It was of a necessitate," said the little man. "The operations of
war are unconformible. I am the Governor and I operate Captain.
Be'old my little sword."
"Confound your little sword, sir. I don't want it. You've fired on
our flag. You've been firing at our people here for a week, and
I've been fired at coming up the river."
"Ah! The 'Guadala'. She have misconstrued you for a slaver
possibly. How are the 'Guadala'?"
"Mistook a ship of Her Majesty's navy for a slaver! You mistake
any craft for a slaver! Bai Jove, sir, I've a good mind to hang
you at the yard-arm!"
There was nothing nearer that terrible spar than the walking-stick
in the rack of Judson's cabin. The Governor looked at the one mast
and smiled a deprecating smile.
"The position is embarrassment," he said. "Captain, do you think
those illustrious traders burn my capital? My people will give
them beer."
"Never mind the traders, I want an explanation."
"Hum! There are popular uprising in Europe, Captain - in my
country." His eye wandered aimlessly round the horizon.
"What has that to do with -"
"Captain, you are very young. There is still uproariment. But I" -
here he slapped his chest till his epaulets jingled -" I am
loyalist to pits of all my stomachs."
"Go on," said Judson, and his mouth quivered.
"An order arrive to me to establish a custom-houses here, and to
collect of the taximent from the traders when she are come here
necessarily. That was on account of political understandings with
your country and mine. But on that arrangement there was no money
also. Not one damn little cowrie. I desire damnably to extend all
commercial things, and why? I am loyalist and there is rebellion -
yes, I tell you - Republics in my country for to just begin. You
do not believe? See some time how it exist. I cannot make this
custom-houses and pay the so high-paid officials. The people too
in my country they say the king she has no regardance into Honour
of her nation. He throw away everything - Gladstone her all, you
say, pay?"
"Yes, that's what we say," said Judson with a grin.
"Therefore they say, let us be Republics on hot cakes. But I - I
am loyalist to all my hands' ends. Captain, once I was attach‚ at
Mexico. I say the Republics are no good. The peoples have her
stomach high. They desire - they desire - a course for the bills."
"What on earth is that?"
"The cock-fight for pay at the gate. You give something, pay for
see bloody row. Do I make its comprehension?"
"A run for their money - is that what you mean? Gad, you're
sporting, Governor."
"So I say. I am loyalist, too." He smiled more easily. "Now how
can anything do herself for the customs-houses; but when the
Company's mens she arrives, then a cock-fight for pay at gate that
is quite correct. My army he says it will Republic and shoot me
off upon walls if I have not give her blood. An army, Captain, are
terrible in her angries - especialment when she are not paid. I
know, too," here he laid his hand on Judson's shoulder, "I know
too we are old friends. Yes! Badajos, Almeida, Fuentes d'Onor -
time ever since; and a little, little cock-fight for pay at gate
that is good for my king. More sit her tight on throne behind, you
see? Now," he waved his hand round the decayed village, "I say to
my armies, Fight! Fight the Company's men when she come, but fight
not so very strong that you are any deads. It is all in the
raporta that I send. But you understand, Captain, we are good
friends all the time. Ah! Ciudad Rodrigo, you remember? No?
Perhaps your father, then? So you see no one are deads, and we
fight a fight, and it is all in the raporta, to please the people
in our country, and my armies they do not put me against the
walls. You see?"
"Yes; but the 'Guadala'. She fired on us. Was that part of your
game, my joker?"
"The 'Guadala'. Ah! No, I think not. Her captain he is too big
fool. But I think she have gone down the coast. Those your
gunboats poke her nose and shove her oar in every place. How is
'Guadala'?"
"On a shoal. Stuck till I take her off."
"There are any deads?"
"No."
The Governor drew a breath of deep relief. "There are no deads
here. So you see none are deads anywhere, and nothing is done.
Captain, you talk to the Company's mens. I think they are not
pleased."
"Naturally."
"They have no sense. I thought to go backwards again they would. I
leave her stockade alone all night to let them out, but they stay
and come facewards to me, not backwards. They did not know we must
conquer much in all these battles, or the king, he is kicked off
her throne. Now we have won this battle - this great battle," he
waved his arms abroad, "and I think you will say so that we have
won, Captain. You are loyalist also. You would not disturb to the
peaceful Europe? Captain, I tell you this. Your Queen she know
too. She would not fight her cousins. It is a - a hand-up thing."
"What?"
"Hand-up thing. Jobe you put. How you say?"
"Put-up job?"
"Yes. Put-up job. Who is hurt? We win. You lose. All righta?"
Bai-Jove-Judson had been exploding at intervals for the last five
minutes. Here he broke down completely and roared aloud.
"But look here, Governor," he said at last, "I've got to think of
other things than your riots in Europe. You've fired on our flag."
"Captain, if you are me, you would have done how? And also, and
also," he drew himself up to his full height, "we are both brave
men of bravest countries. Our honour is the honour of our King,"
here he uncovered, "and of our Queen," here he bowed low. "Now,
Captain, you shall shell my palace and I shall be your prisoner."
"Skittles!" said Bai-Jove-Judson. "I can't shell that old
hencoop."
"Then come to dinner. Madeira, she are still to us, and I have of
the best she manufac."
He skipped over the side beaming, and Bai-Jove-Judson went into
the cabin to laugh his laugh out. When he had recovered a little
he sent Mr. Davies to the head of the Pioneers, the dusty man with
the gatlings, and the troops who had abandoned the pursuit of arms
watched the disgraceful spectacle of two men reeling with laughter
on the quarter-deck of a gunboat.
"I'll put my men to build him a custom-house," said the head of
the Pioneers, gasping. "We'll make him one decent road at least.
That Governor ought to be knighted. I'm glad now that we didn't
fight 'em in the open, or we'd have killed some of them. So he's
won great battles, has he? Give him the compliments of the
victims, and tell him I'm coming to dinner. You haven't such a
thing as a dress-suit, have you? I haven't seen one for six
months."
That evening there was a dinner in the village - a general and
enthusiastic dinner, whose head was in the Governor's house, and
whose tail threshed at large throughout all the streets. The
Madeira was everything that the Governor had said, and more, and
it was tested against two or three bottles of Bai-Jove-Judson's
best Vanderhum, which is Cape brandy ten years in the bottle,
flavoured with orange-peel and spices. Before the coffee was
removed (by the lady who had made the flag of truce) the Governor
had sold the whole of his governorship and its appurtenances, once
to Bai-Jove-Judson for services rendered by Judson's grandfather
in the Peninsular War, and once to the head of the Pioneers, in
consideration of that gentleman's good friendship. After the
negotiation he retreated for a while into an inner apartment, and
there evolved a true and complete account of the defeat of the
British arms, which he read with his cocked hat over one eye to
Judson and his companion. It was Judson who suggested the sinking
of the flat-iron with all hands, and the head of the Pioneers who
supplied the list of killed and wounded (not more than two
hundred) in his command.
"Gentlemen," said the Governor from under his cocked hat, "the
peace of Europe are saved by this raporta. You shall all be
Knights of the Golden Hide. She shall go by the 'Guadala'."
"Great Heavens!" said Bai-Jove Judson, flushed but composed, "that
reminds me I've left that boat stuck on her broadside down the
river. I must go down and soothe the commandante. He'll be blue
with rage. Governor, let us go a sail on the river to cool our
heads. A picnic, you understand."
"Ya - as, everything I understand. Ho! A picnica! You are all my
prisoner, but I am good gaoler. We shall picnic on the river, and
we shall take all the girls. Come on, my prisoners."
"I do hope," said the head of the Pioneers, staring from the
verandah into the roaring village, "that my chaps won't set the
town alight by accident. Hullo! Hullo! A guard of honour for His
Excellency the most illustrious Governor!"
Some thirty men answered the call, made a swaying line upon a more
swaying course, and bore the Governor most swayingly of all high
in the arms as they staggered down to the river. And the song that
they sang bade them, "Swing, swing together their body between
their knees"; and they obeyed the words of the song faithfully,
except that they were anything but "steady from stroke to bow."
His Excellency the Governor slept on his uneasy litter, and did
not wake when the chorus dropped him on the deck of the flat-iron.
"Good-night and good-bye," said the head of the Pioneers to
Judson; "I'd give you my card if I had it, but I'm so damned drunk
I hardly know my own club. Oh, yes! It's the Travellers. If ever
we meet in Town, remember me. I must stay here and look after my
fellows. We're all right in the open, now. I s'pose you'll return
the Governor some time. This is a political crisis. Good-night."
The flat-iron went down stream through the dark. The Governor
slept on deck, and Judson took the wheel, but how he steered, and
why he did not run into each bank many times, that officer does
not remember. Mr. Davies did not note anything unusual, for there
are two ways of taking too much, and Judson was only ward-room,
not foc's'le drunk. As the night grew colder the Governor woke up,
and expressed a desire for whiskey and soda. When that came they
were nearly abreast of the stranded "Guadala", and His Excellency
saluted the flag that he could not see with loyal and patriotic
strains.
"They do not see. They do not hear," he cried. "Ten thousand
saints! They sleep, and I have won battles! Ha!"
He started forward to the gun, which, very naturally, was loaded,
pulled the lanyard, and woke the dead night with the roar of the
full charge behind a common shell. That shell mercifully just
missed the stern of the "Guadala", and burst on the bank. "Now you
shall salute your Governor," said he, as he heard feet running in
all directions within the iron skin. "Why you demand so base a
quarter? I am here with all my prisoners."
In the hurly-burly and the general shriek for mercy his
reassurances were not heard.
"Captain," said a grave voice from the ship, "we have surrendered.
Is it the custom of the English to fire on a helpless ship'?"
Surrendered! Holy Virgin! I go to cut off all their heads. You
shall be ate by wild ants -flogged and drowned. Throw me a
balcony. It is I, the Governor! You shall never surrender. Judson
of my soul, ascend her insides, and send me a bed, for I am
sleepy; but, oh, I will multiple time kill that captain!"
"Oh!" said the voice in the darkness, "I begin to comprehend." And
a rope-ladder was thrown, up which the Governor scrambled, with
Judson at his heels.
"Now we will enjoy executions," said the Governor on the deck.
"All these Republicans shall be shot. Little Judson, if I am not
drunk, why are so sloping the boards which do not support?"
The deck, as I have said, was at a very stiff cant. His Excellency
sat down, slid to leeward, and was asleep again.
The captain of the "Guadala" bit his moustache furiously, and
muttered in his own tongue: "This land is the father of great
villains and the stepfather of honest men. You see our material,
Captain. It is so everywhere with us. You have killed some of the
rats, I hope?"
"Not a rat," said Judson genially.
"That is a pity. If they were dead, our country might send us men;
but our country is dead too, and I am dishonoured on a mud-bank
through your English treachery."
"Well, it seems to me that firing on a little tub of our size
without a word of warning, when you know that the countries were
at peace, is treachery enough in a small way."
"If one of my guns had touched you, you would have gone to the
bottom, all of you. I would have taken the risk with my
Government. By that time it would have been -"
"A Republic? So you really did mean fighting on your own hook?
You're rather a dangerous officer to cut loose in a navy like
yours. Well, what are you going to do now?"
"Stay here. Go away in boats. What does it matter? That drunken
cat" - he pointed to the shadow in which the Governor slept -" is
here. I must take him back to his hole."
"Very good. I'll tow you off at daylight if you get steam ready."
"Captain, I warn you that as soon as she floats again I will fight
you."
"Humbug! You'll have lunch with me, and then you'll take the
Governor up the river."
The captain was silent for some time. Then he said: "Let us drink.
What must be, must be; and after all we have not forgotten the
Peninsula. You will admit, Captain, that it is bad to be run upon
a shoal like a mud-dredger?"
"Oh, we'll pull you off before you can say knife. Take care of His
Excellency. I shall try to get a little sleep now."
They slept on both ships till the morning, and then the work of
towing off the "Guadala" began. With the help of her own engines,
and the tugging and puffing of the flat-iron, she slid off the
mud-bank sideways into the deep water, the flatiron immediately
under her stern, and the big eye of the four-inch gun almost
peering through the window of the captain's cabin.
Remorse in the shape of a violent headache had overtaken the
Governor. He was uneasily conscious that he might, perhaps, have
exceeded his powers; and the captain of the "Guadala", in spite of
all his patriotic sentiments, remembered distinctly that no war
had been declared between the two countries. He did not need the
Governor's repeated reminders that war, serious war, meant a
Republic at home, possible supersession in his command, and much
shooting of living men against dead walls.
"We have satisfied our honour," said the Governor in confidence.
"Our army is appeased, and the raporta that you take home will
show that we were loyal and brave. That other captain? Bah! he is
a boy. He will call this a - a-. Judson of my soul, how you say
this is - all this affairs which have transpirated between us?"
Judson was watching the last hawser slipping through the fairlead.
"Call it? Oh, I should call it rather a lark. Now your boat's all
right, Captain. When will you come to lunch?"
"I told you," said the Governor, "it would be a larque to him."
"Mother of the Saints! then what is his seriousness?" said the
captain. "We shall be happy to come when you please. Indeed, we
have no other choice," he added bitterly.
"Not at all," said Judson, and as he looked at the three or four
shot-blisters on the bows of his boat a brilliant idea took him.
"It is we who are at your mercy. See how His Excellency's guns
knocked us about."
"Senior Captain," said the Governor pityingly, "that is very sad.
You are most injured, and your deck too, it is all shot over. We
shall not be too severe on a beat man, shall we, Captain?"
"You couldn't spare us a little paint, could you? I'd like to
patch up a little after the - action," said Judson meditatively,
fingering his upper lip to hide a smile.
"Our store-room is at your disposition," said the captain of the
"Guadala", and his eye brightened; for a few lead splashes on gray
paint make a big show.
"Mr. Davies, go aboard and see what they have to spare - to spare,
remember. Their spar-colour with a little working up should be
just our freeboard tint."
"Oh, yes. I'll spare them," said Mr. Davies savagely. "I don't
understand this how-d'you-do and damn-your-eyes business coming
one atop of the other in a manner o' speaking. By all rights,
they're our lawful prize."
The Governor and the captain came to lunch in the absence of Mr.
Davies. Bai-Jove-Judson had not much to offer, but what he had was
given as by a beaten foeman to a generous conqueror. When they
were a little warmed - the Governor genial and the captain almost
effusive - he explained, quite casually, over the opening of a
bottle that it would not be to his interest to report the affair
seriously, and it was in the highest degree improbable that the
Admiral would treat it in any grave fashion.
"When my decks are cut up" (there was one groove across four
planks), "and my plates buckled" (there were five lead patches on
three plates), "and I meet such a boat as the 'Guadala', and a
mere accident saves me from being blown out of the water -"
"Yes. A mere accident, Captain. The shoal-buoy has been lost,"
said the captain of the 'Guadala'.
"Ah? I do not know this river. That was very sad. But as I was
saying, when an accident saves me from being sunk, what can I do
but go away - if that is possible? But I fear that I have no coal
for the sea voyage. It is very sad." Judson had compromised on
what he knew of the French tongue as a working language.
"It is enough," said the Governor, waving a generous hand. "Judson
of my soul, the coal is yours, and you shall be repaired - yes,
repaired all over of your battle's wounds. You shall go with all
the honours of all the wars. Your flag shall fly. Your drum shall
beat. Your, ah! - jolly boys shall spoke their bayonets. Is it not
so, Captain?"
"As you say, Excellency. But the traders in the town. What of
them?"
The Governor looked puzzled for an instant. He could not quite
remember what had happened to those jovial men who had cheered him
over night. Judson interrupted swiftly: "His Excellency has set
them to forced works on barracks and magazines, and, I think, a
custom-house. When that is done they will be released, I hope,
Excellency."
"Yes, they shall be released for your sake, little Judson of my
heart." Then they drank the health of their respective sovereigns,
while Mr. Davies superintended the removal of the scarred plank
and the shot-marks on the deck and the bow-plates.
"Oh, this is too bad," said Judson when they went on deck. "That
idiot has exceeded his instructions, but - but yow must let me pay
for this!"
Mr. Davies, his legs in the water as he sat on a staging slung
over the bows, was acutely conscious that he was being blamed in a
foreign tongue. He smiled uneasily, and went on with his work.
"What is it?" said the Governor.
"That thick-head has thought that we needed some gold-leaf, and he
has borrowed that from your storeroom, but I must make it good."
Then in English, "Stand up, Mr. Davies. What the - in - do you
mean by taking their gold-leaf? My -, are we a set of pirates to
scrape the guts out of a Levantine bumboat? Look contrite, you
butt-ended, broad-breeched, bottle-bellied, swivel-eyed son of a
tinker, you! My Soul alive, can't I maintain discipline in my own
ship without a blacksmith of a boiler-riveter putting me to shame
before a yellow-nosed picaroon. Get off the staging, Mr. Davies,
and go to the engine-room. Put down that leaf first, though, and
leave the books where they are. I'll send for you in a minute. Go
aft!"
Now, only the upper half of Mr. Davies's round face was above the
bulwarks when this torrent of abuse descended upon him; and it
rose inch by inch as the shower continued: blank amazement,
bewilderment, rage, and injured pride chasing each other across it
till he saw his superior officer's left eyelid flutter on the
cheek twice. Then he fled to the engine-room, and wiping his brow
with a handful of cotton-waste, sat down to overtake
circumstances.
"I am desolated," said Judson to his companions, "but you see the
material that you give us. This leaves me more in your debt than
before. The stuff I can replace" (gold-leaf is never carried on
floating gun-platforms), "but for the insolence of that man how
shall I apologise?"
Mr. Davies's mind moved slowly, but after a while he transferred
the cotton-waste from his forehead to his mouth and bit on it to
prevent laughter. He began a second dance on the engine-room
plates. "Neat! Oh, damned neat!" he chuckled. "I've served with a
good few, but there never was one so neat as him. And I thought he
was the new kind that don't know how to put a few words, as it
were!"
"Mr. Davies, you can continue your work," said Judson down the
engine-room hatch. "These officers have been good enough to speak
in your favour. Make a thorough job of it while you are about it.
Slap on every man you have. Where did you get hold of it?"
"Their storeroom is a regular theatre, sir. You couldn't miss it.
There's enough for two first-rates, and I've scoffed the best half
of it."
"Look sharp, then. We shall be coaling from her this afternoon.
You'll have to cover it all."
"Neat! Oh, damned neat!" said Mr. Davies under his breath, as he
gathered his subordinates together, and set about accomplishing
the long-deferred wish of Judson's heart.
It was the "Martin Frobisher", the flag-ship, a great war-boat
when she was new, in the days when men built for sail as well as
for steam. She could turn twelve knots under full sail, and it was
under that that she stood up the mouth of the river, a pyramid of
silver beneath the moon. The Admiral, fearing that he had given
Judson a task beyond his strength, was coming to look for him, and
incidentally to do a little diplomatic work along the coast. There
was hardly wind enough to move the "Frobisher" a couple of knots
an hour, and the silence of the land closed about her as she
entered the fairway. Her yards sighed a little from time to time,
and the ripple under her bows answered the sigh. The full moon
rose over the steaming swamps, and the Admiral, gazing upon it,
thought less of Judson and more of the softer emotions. In answer
to the very mood of his mind, there floated across the silver
levels of the water, mellowed by distance to a most poignant
sweetness, the throb of a mandolin, and the voice of one who
called upon a genteel Julia - upon Julia, and upon love. The song
ceased, and the sighing of the yards was all that broke the
silence of the big ship.
Again the mandolin began, and the commander on the lee side of the
quarter-deck grinned a grin that was reflected in the face of the
signal-midshipman. Not a word of the song was lost, and the voice
of the singer was the voice of Judson.
"Last week down our alley came a toff,
Nice old geyser with a nasty cough,
Sees my missus, takes his topper off,
Quite in a gentlemanly way " -
and so on to the end of the verse. The chorus was borne by several
voices, and the signal-midshipman's foot began to tap the deck
furtively.
"'What cheer!' all the neighbours cried.
''Oo are you going to meet, Bill?
'Ave you bought the street, Bill?'
Laugh? - I thought I should ha' died
When I knocked 'em in the old Kent Road."
It was the Admiral's gig, rowing softly, that came into the midst
of that merry little smoking-concert. It was Judson, the
beribboned mandolin round his neck, who received the Admiral as he
came up the side of the "Guadala", and it may or may not have been
the Admiral who stayed till two in the morning and delighted the
hearts of the Captain and the Governor. He had come as an unbidden
guest, and he departed as an honoured one, but strictly unofficial
throughout. Judson told his tale next day in the Admiral's cabin
as well as he could in the face of the Admiral's gales of
laughter, but the most amazing tale was that told by Mr. Davies to
his friends in the dockyard at Simon's Town from the point of view
of a second-class engine-room artificer, all unversed in
diplomacy.
And if there be no truth either in my tale, which is Judson's
tale, or the tale of Mr. Davies, you will not find in harbour at
Simon's Town to-day a flat-bottomed twin-screw gunboat, designed
solely for the defence of rivers, about two hundred and seventy
tons' displacement and five feet draught, wearing in open defiance
of the rules of the Service a gold line on her gray paint. It
follows also that you will be compelled to credit that version of
the fray which, signed by His Excellency the Governor and
despatched in the "Guadala", satisfied the self-love of a great
and glorious people, and saved a monarchy from the ill-considered
despotism which is called a Republic.
