Various
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 68, No 420, October 1850
"A steep bank of rock had checked the progress of those horsemen who had fled to the left. Several alighted, and, jerking their horses with the bridle, surmounted the obstacle. Only one of them rode at a walk along the foot of this rocky wall. The whiteness of his garments and beauty of his equipments marked him as a chief. Siquot, a corporal of chasseurs, and Captain Cassaignoles, rode after him. The ground was very bad, full of impediments. The corporal was the first to reach him; just as his horse's nose touched the crupper of the Arab's charger, the horseman, turned round with the utmost coolness, took aim, and laid him dead on the spot. At the same moment Siquot came up and wounded the Arab, but received a pistol-ball through his left arm, the same shot killing the horse of Captain Cassaignoles, who was a little lower down the slope. The tall cavalier then rose in his stirrups, and struck Siquot on the head with his heavy pistol-butt, when Corporal Gerard of the Chasseurs, riding up on the top of the bank, shot him through the breast. The horse was caught; it was a splendid animal, which a wound in the shoulder had alone prevented from saving its master's life. 'See if that Arab is blind of an eye,' cried Captain Cassaignoles. They looked; an eye was wanting. 'It is Sidi-Embarek; let his head be cut off.' And Gerard, with a knife, separated the head from the body, that the Arabs might not have a doubt of his death. Then all obeyed the recall, which was sounding. The chase was over; the regulars were broken and destroyed; cruel fatigue had been rewarded by complete success. General Tempoure returned to Mascara, and a month later each man received, according to the Arab expression, the testimony of blood, the cross so glorious to the soldier.
"The chances of war then separated us from the Caïd: I also learned the return of Siquot to France, where, by an odd coincidence, he received from his Paris friends the same surname as from his African comrades. As to the German lansquenet, he marked every corner of the province of Oran by some daring feat, and always fortunate, invariably escaped unhurt. Within three years of service, he was five times named in orders, and passed through the noncommissioned grades to the rank of cornet. When I next met with him in 1846, Tom, the horse, the Chica, formed, as before, his whole family. Poor Chica, who in all her life had never had but one ambition, that of wearing a silk dress! In garrison, Tom was purveyor; he and his master started at daybreak and returned at night, weary but content, and with a well-filled game-bag. The Chica, who had passed the day singing, laid the table, and the three friends supped together.
"Some months later, after an absence of three weeks, one of our squadrons returned to Mascara from the outposts. We were moving down the street that leads to the cavalry barracks, when we saw the officers of the garrison assembled before the Caïd's little house. They advanced to greet and shake hands with us, and they told us that the Chica, the Caïd's companion, the friend of all, was dead.
"The poor little thing had suffered for some time; the evening before, however, she had got up. There was a bright warm sun, and the air was full of perfume. 'Chico,' said she to the Caïd, 'give me your arm, I should like to see the sun once more.' She took a few steps, wept as she gazed on the budding foliage and the beauty of the day: then, as she returned to her arm-chair, 'Ah! Chico,' she exclaimed, 'I am dying!' And in sitting down she expired, without agony or convulsion, still smiling and looking at the Caïd.
"At this moment the Chica's coffin was borne out of the house; all present uncovered their heads, and we joined the officers who followed her to her grave.
"The cemetery of Mascara, planted with olive and forest trees, is situated in the midst of gardens: everything there breathes peace, calm, and repose. The Chica's grave had been dug under a fig-tree. The Spahis who carried her stopped, all present formed a circle; two soldiers of the Engineers took the light bier, and lowered the poor Chica into her final dwelling-place. The Caïd was at the foot of the grave. One of the soldiers presented him with the spadeful of earth: the Spahi's hard hand trembled as he took it; and when the earth, falling on the coffin, made that dull noise so melancholy to hear, a big tear, but half suppressed, glistened in his eyes.
"Thenceforward Tom, whom the Chica loved, was the Caïd's only friend."
Some may suspect M. de Castellane of giving a romantic tint to his African experiences. We do not partake the suspicion. Even in the nineteenth century, generally esteemed prosaic and matter-of-fact, there is far more romance in real life than in books; and the Prussian-Arab Osman is but one of scores, perhaps hundreds, of military adventurers who have fought in various services during the last twenty years, and the events of whose career, truly noted, would in many cases be set down by the supporters of circulating libraries as overstrained and improbable fiction. In that chapter of M. de Castellane's work which consists of the journal of an officer of Zouaves, we find an account of another singular wanderer, who in the year 1840 deserted from the Arabs, (having previously served with the French,) and came into the town of Medeah, where the Zouaves were in garrison. He was a very young man, a Bavarian, of the name of Glockner, son of a former commissary in the service of France, and nephew of a Bavarian officer of the highest rank. "A cadet at the military school at Munich, he was sent, in consequence of some pranks he played, to serve in a regiment of light dragoons; but his ardent imagination and love of adventure led him to fresh follies; he deserted into France. Coldly received, as all deserters are, he was enrolled in the foreign legion. He had hardly reached Africa when he became disgusted with the service, and, yielding to the craving after novelty which constantly tormented him, he deserted to the Arabs. He remained with them three years. Kidnapped at first by the Kabyles, he was taken to a market in the interior, and sold to a chief of the tribe of the Beni-Moussa. After being his servant for a year, he managed to escape from his master's tent, and, with legs bare, a burnous on his shoulders, a camel rope round his waist, and a pilgrim's staff in his hands, he marched at random in a southerly direction. In this manner he reached the Desert, passing his nights with the different tribes he encountered, amongst whom he announced himself by the Mussulman's habitual salutation, 'Eh! the master of the Douar! A guest of God!' Thereupon he was well received; food and shelter were given him, and he departed the next morning unquestioned as to his destination. It concerned no one, and no Arab ever asked the question. He followed his destiny. Thus did Glockner cross a part of the Sahara, and reach the town of Tedjini, Aïn Mhadi; thence he went to Boghar, Taza, Tekedempt, Mascara, Medeali, and Milianah; then, enrolled by force amongst the regulars of El Berkani, he made the campaigns of 1839 and 1840 in their ranks. Decorated by Abd-el-Kader in consequence of a wound received the 31st December 1839 – a wound inflicted, as he believes, by a captain of the 2d Light Infantry – he again returned to us, after other adventures, like the prodigal child, lamenting his follies, weeping at thoughts of his family, especially of his father, and entreating as a favour to be received as a French soldier. They talked of sending him back to the foreign legion, but he begged to be admitted into the Zouaves, and was accordingly enlisted as an Arab, under the name of Joussef. He was then but one-and-twenty years old, was fresh as a child, timid as a young girl, and marvellously simple in his bearing and language." The end of this young fellow's history, as far as M. de Castellane became acquainted with it, is on a par with its commencement. "In the Zouaves his conduct was admirable. In every engagement in which he shared, his name deserved mention. Made a corporal, then a sergeant, he was sent to Tlemcen on the formation of a third battalion of Zouaves. Recommended by Colonel Cavaignac to General Bedeau, he rendered great services by his intelligence and knowledge of the Arab tongue. His father, to whom they had written in Bavaria, had confirmed the truth of his story. He was happy, and treated with consideration, when, one fine morning, he took himself off with a political prisoner who had just been set at liberty, and deserted into Morocco. He remained there a long time; then he went to Tangiers, and, denounced by the French consul as a deserter, he was going to be tried by a court-martial, when, in consideration of his former services, they continued to treat him as an Arab. His mania for rambling is really extraordinary; and he declares that he cannot approach a strange country without being seized with a desire to explore it."
It is surprising that the African campaigns have not been more prolific of military sketches and memoirs from the pens of French officers. Although tolerably familiar for many years past with French literature, we can remember but few such works. La Captivité d'Escoffier, noticed, in conjunction with an English volume upon an analogous subject, in a former Number,22 is the only French book of the kind we have met with for a long time; and that was of inferior class, and of less authentic appearance, than M. de Castellane's agreeable Souvenirs. We should have thought the war in Africa, the adventurous and often severe marches of the troops, the exploits of the hunting-field, the humours of garrison life, and the tales of the bivouac, would have found innumerable chroniclers amongst the better educated portion of French officers. The French soldier is a good study for painter or humourist; whether as the stolid recruit with the ploughman's slouch and the smell of the furrow still hanging about him, or the smart and wide-awake trooper of four or five years' service, or the weather-beaten old sergeant, all bronze and wrinkles, with his grizzled moustache, his scrap of red ribbon, his tough yarns and his mixture of simplicity and shrewdness, his lingering prejudices against English and Germans, and his religious veneration of Napoleon the Great. We believe M. de Castellane would be successful in portraiture of French military character and eccentricities, and we regret he has been so sparing of it. Here and there we find a characteristic bit of camp-life, or a pleasant sketch by the watch-fire.
"During our marches, we were never weary of admiring the constancy of the infantry-man, so heavily loaded that, in mockery of himself, he has taken the surname of the Soldat-chameau. It was really wonderful to see them make those long marches, under a burning sun, across frightful mountains, always gay and cheerful, and amusing themselves with the merest trifle… It is on their arrival at the bivouac that their industry is displayed to the greatest advantage. Pause beside this little tent, and watch the chief of the squad; they bring him crabs, tortoises, water serpents, all manner of creatures that have no name, but a flavour, and which experience teaches may be eaten without danger. Or they bring a mess-kettle full of bullock's blood. Thrice boiled and suffered to grow cold, bullock's blood forms a sort of black cheese. Spread upon biscuit, with a little salt, this is tolerable food, and a precious resource for famished stomachs." In presence of such messes as these, it is easy to understand the popularity of a general who, like Changarnier, classed a greasy haversack amongst a soldier's first necessaries, and rarely allowed his men to lack mutton, of either Arab or Kabyle growth. For the loss of their flocks and herds the natives retaliated, when opportunity offered, by the theft of French horses. "In the night we had an alarm; we were in a friendly district, but our friends were not the less arrant thieves. Two horses were taken away. According to their custom, some bold fellows, stark naked and well anointed with grease, so as to slip through detaining fingers, glided between the tents, crawling like snakes. On coming to two fine horses, they cut the thongs that shackled them, jumped on their backs, and were off at a gallop, clearing all obstacles and crouched upon the animals' necks to avoid the bullets of the advanced sentries. A few hours later, another of these gentry was less fortunate. The soldier on guard over the piled muskets, remarked, as he perambulated his beat, a bush of dwarf palm. It was upon his right hand. A minute afterwards the bush had changed its place, and stood upon his left. This struck the sentry as looking like mischief. He took no notice, but quietly cocked his musket and continued his walk. The bush continued to change its place, gaining ground little by little; suddenly it made a rapid advance, and a Kabyle, dagger in hand, sprang upon the soldier; but the soldier received him on the point of his bayonet. The thrust was mortal, and the living bush rose no more." The Kabyles might have taken lessons from the Thugs of India and the Red men of North America. On a large scale, as well as in petty details, stratagem was a prominent feature of the war in Africa. Beneath the spacious tent of one of the Arab allies of the French, M. de Castellane listened one evening, in an atmosphere fragrant with the vapours of pipes and coffee, to the extempore stanzas of a native poet. When the improvisatore had come to an end, and had received his tribute of praise, an old sergeant of the Spahis of Orleansville narrated the death of the Aga of Ouarsenis.
"It was on the 20th July of this year," he said; "Hadj Hamet had gone, with his goum23 and twenty Spahis, to seek at Mazouna the betrothed of his son. His heart was joyful, and happiness reigned around him, when the young girl was delivered to him. After a night of rejoicing, the escort set out. On arriving at Oued-Meroui, we saw at a distance a goum of Arabs. Hadj Hamet thought it was the Aga of the Sbehas, advancing with his horsemen to perform the fantasia before the bride, and at a sign from him his followers formed in two lines, to give the strangers free passage. The troop came up at a gallop, dashed in between the double row of horsemen, and then, turning right and left, sent a volley into their faces. It was Bon Maza in person. Thus unexpectedly attacked, the goum broke and fled; the Spahis alone stood by old Hadj Hamet, who defended his daughter until loss of blood, which already flowed from several wounds, left him no longer strength. At last he fell dead. Of the twenty Spahis, ten had fallen; all was over; the other ten cut their way through, and reached Orleansville."
Formidable as many of the Arabs are – owing to their excellent horsemanship and skill in arms – in single-handed conflicts, in large bodies they rarely await the charge even of far inferior numbers of disciplined cavalry. Near the confluence of the Cheliff and the Mina, on an October day in 1845, two squadrons of dragoons, under Colonel Tartas, were in quest of the aforesaid Bou Maza, who had been committing razzias upon tribes friendly to the French. Reinforced by a native ally, Sidi-el-Aribi, with a handful of horsemen, and notwithstanding the heavy load of four days' rations for man and horse, they pressed on at a rapid pace, and on surmounting a ridge of ground, beheld, "numerous as the sands on the sea-shore, the hostile Arabs firmly waiting our attack. In the centre floated an immense green banner, and the wings, forming a horse shoe, seemed ready to enclose us. "Walk!" cried Colonel Tartas, and we advanced at a walk, sabre in scabbard. In his loud parade-voice, the colonel then gave his orders, and the squadrons formed front, each keeping a division in reserve. Between the two squadrons marched the colonel and his standard; at his side was Sidi-el-Aribi; behind him a little escort; on our flanks, the handful of Arab horse. "Where is the rallying place?" asked the adjutant. "Behind the enemy, round my standard," replied the colonel; and then, connected as by a chain, the squadrons broke into a trot, with sabres still sheathed. At musket-shot distance, "Draw swords!" shouted the colonel; and the two hundred and fifty sabres were drawn as by one hand. A hundred paces further we changed to a gallop, still in line like a wall. Suddenly, on beholding this hurricane of iron, so calm and so strong, advancing towards them, our innumerable foe hesitated; a dull noise, like the sound of the waves in a storm, arose in the midst of the multitude. They crowded together, wavered to and fro, and suddenly disappeared like dust before the gale. In a quarter of an hour we drew bridle. A hundred of the enemy were on the ground; and our Arab allies, pursuing the fugitives, secured much spoil. As for us, without hospital train, without troops to support us, at three leagues and a half from all assistance, the least hesitation would have been perdition. Coolness and audacity had saved us; and there, where our only hope was a glorious death, we obtained a triumph.
"Pressing round Colonel Tartas, near his standard, which two balls had rent, all these men of great tent,24 all these bronze-complexioned Arab chiefs, their eyes lighted up by the excitement of the fight, thanked him as their saviour. At their head, Sidi-el-Aribi, with that majestic dignity which never deserted him, lavished expressions of gratitude upon the colonel; whilst around them, like a frame to the picture, the foaming horses, the dragoons leaning on their saddles, the arms and floating garments of the Arabs, the heads which some of them had fastened to their saddle-bows, and a nameless something in the air which told of victory, combined to give to the scene somewhat of the noble and savage grandeur of primitive times."
We will not contrast with the picture thus vividly painted by M. de Castellane, the less romantic episodes of grubbing for silos, (buried stores of corn,) driving cattle, or smoking unfortunate Arab families out of their caves of refuge. Of all these matters the chasseur speaks, if not altogether admiringly, yet as necessities of that war, and stands forth with plausible sophisms in defence of the barbarities of the razzia system. We did not take up his sketches with disputatious intentions, and are quite content with the interest and amusement we have extracted from them, without attempting to drive their author from positions which, we suspect, he would find it as difficult to defend as the Arabs did to maintain those assailed by the gallant charges of the African Chasseurs.
THE GREEN HAND.
A "SHORT YARN."
A WIND-UP
"No, Westwood," said I, "it can't be the right one – nor any of these, indeed!" And on looking at the chart, which was one not meant for anything but navigation in open water, with the channels laid down clearly enough, but evidently rather off-hand as to the islands, Jones himself seemed to get uncertain about the matter; partly owing to the short glimpse he'd had of the other chart, and partly to its being, as he thought, an old one made for a purpose, by a hand that knew the islands well. After two or three days' sail, we were getting into the thick of the Maldives, where the reefs and sand-banks stretching out on every side, and beginning to lap in upon each other, made it more and more dangerous work; but at any rate the islands we saw were either very small, or else low and muddy-like, with a few scrubby-looking cocoas upon them, like bulrushes growing out of a marsh. No runaway sailors would ever think of taking up their quarters hereabouts, even if we hadn't caught sight of a smoke now and then, and once of some native craft with a couple of brown mat-sails and an out-rigger, that showed the clusters hereaway to have people about them. Besides there was no pretext any Indiaman could have for steering near enough to such a jungle of mud and water, to give a boat the chance of making towards it with any certainty. I saw at once that the spot in question must lie tolerably for the course of a ship to western India, otherwise they wouldn't have appeared so sure of their mark as Jones said they did. All this, at the same time, kept me the more bent on searching the matter out ere I did aught else, seeing that in fact the Indiaman's attempt to get rid of the schooner was the very thing likely to bring her on this track; fancying, as she would, that we were either in chase of her toward Bombay, or off on our own course again. Now, on the one hand, nothing could fit better for the said runaway scheme of Harry Foster's; and on the other hand, nothing would have pleased me more, and greatly eased my mind too, than to catch him and his chums on their spree ashore. The worst of it was, that I began to have my doubts of Jones again. He was the only man that could put us on the right scent; yet he seemed either to have lost it, or to have something creeping on his mind that made him unwilling to carry it out. "Mr Jones," said I, as the schooner was hove to, and he stood musing gloomily by the binnacle, with a glance now and then in at the compass, and out at the chart again, "if you're at a loss now, sir, just say – and I shall try my own hand for want of better!" "No, Lieutenant Collins!" answered he suddenly, in a husky voice – "no, sir, that's not it, but – God help me! no, there's no use standing against fate, I see. Whatever it costs me, Mr Collins," he went on, firmly, "I'm with you to the end of it; but – there is something horrible about all this!" "How! what do you mean?" said I, startled by the difference in his manner, and the quiver of his lip. "Oh," said he, "as for the present matter, there may be nothing more in it than what I heard on the ship's boom yonder. The truth is, I didn't know at first but this cluster here might have been the one – though I see now there is only one island in the whole chain that can answer the description, and that is not here." With that he pointed to another piece of the chart, showing no more than a few spots upon the paper, not to speak of shades in it standing for reefs and shoals, towards the "Head" of the Maldives; one spot lying away from the rest, with the single name of Minicoy for them all. I asked him hastily enough what it was called, and all about it, for the whole affair made me more and more uneasy; but on this point Jones seemed inclined to keep close, plainly not liking the topic, except that I found it went by several names, one of which I had heard before, myself – White-water Island. About the time I was a boy in a merchantman's forecastle, 'twas a sort of floating yarn amongst some seamen, this White-water Island, I remembered; but I never met with a man that had seen it, every one having had it from a shipmate last voyage, though a terrible place it had been, by all accounts, without one's knowing exactly where it was. One craft of some kind had gone to find out a treasure that was buried in it, and she never was heard of more; a man took a fancy to live ashore in it, like Robinson Crusoe, and he went mad; while the reason there were no "natives" was owing to the dreadful nature of it, though at the same time it was as beautiful as a garden. The right name, however, according to Jones, was Incoo. "There's no good in blinding one's self to it, Mr Collins," he went on – "that's the island the men meant; only their chart set me wrong owing to the greater size of it – you had better beat out of this at once, and keep up for the eight-degrees channel there."
We were in open sea again, out of sight of land from the mast-head, steering for somewhere about north-north-east, with a very light breeze from nearly the monsoon quarter, and sometimes a flying squall, sometimes no more than a black pour of rain, that left it hotter than before. The clear deep blue of the Indian ocean got to a sickly heavy sort of dead colour towards noon, like the bottoms of old bottles, and still we were standing on without signs of land, when, almost all at once, I noticed the water in the shadow of the schooner had a brown coffee-like tint I had never exactly seen hitherto; indeed, by the afternoon, it was the same hue to the very horizon, with a clean seaboard on all sides. I had the deep-sea lead-line hove at length, and found no soundings with a hundred and fifty fathoms; there was neither land nor river, I knew, for hundreds and hundreds of miles to the coast of Arabia; as for current, no trial I could think of showed any; and there were now and then patches of small glittering sea-jellies and sea-lice to be seen amongst a stalk or two of weed on the soft heave of the water, going the way of the breeze. A dozen or so of Portuguese men-of-war, as they call them, held across our bows one time; little pink blubbers, with their long shining roots seen hanging down in the clear of the surface, and their little blue gauze sails with the light through them, ribbed like leaves of trees, as they kept before the wind. Westwood and I both fancied we could feel a queer sulphury smell as we leant over the side, when a surge came along the bends. Not a single fish was to be seen about us, either, except the long big black-fish that rose one after the other at a distance, as the wind got lighter. One while you heard them groaning and gasping in the half-calm, as if it were the breathing of the sea far and wide every time it swelled; another, one saw them in a cluster of black points against the bright sky-line, like so many different-shaped rocks with the foam round them, or a lot of long-boats floating bottom up, with their back-horns for humps on the keel. As for Jones, he looked graver and graver, till all of a sudden we saw him go below; but after a little he came up with an almanac in his hand, and his finger fixed where the time of the next new moon was given, as I found when I took it from him, for he seemed not inclined to speak. "Why, what has that to do with the thing?" I said; "we are heading fair for the Minicoy cluster, I think." "Yes, sir," said he; "if one needed anything to prove that, he has only to look at the sea – at this season, I knew how it would turn out." "Well, that's what I can't understand, Mr Jones," said I; "the water seems as deep as St Paul's Cathedral thrice over!" "Do you not know then, sir, why that island is called – what it is?" was the answer, – "but wait – wait – till night!" and with that Jones turned round to the bulwarks, leaning his arms on the rail. In the mean time, Jacobs and some of the men had drawn a bucket of water, which we noticed them tasting. A pannikin full of it was handed along to the quarterdeck, and the taste struck you at once, owing to the want of the well-known briny twang of real blue-water, and instead of that a smack as it were of iron, though it was as clear as crystal. Every one had a trial of it but Jones himself: indeed, he never once looked round, till it had occurred to me to pour the tin of water into a glass and hold it with my hand over it inside the shade of the binnacle, when I thought I made out little specks and sparks shooting and twisting about in it, as if the water had a motion of itself; then it seemed to sink to the bottom, and all was quiet. Just then I looked up and caught Jones' scared restless sort of glance, as if he were uneasy. There was a strange life in that man's brain, I felt, that none could see into; but owing as it plainly was to something far away from the present matter, I knew it was best to let him alone. In fact, his doing as he did showed well enough he meant fair by ourselves. Nothing on earth ever gave me more the notion of a wreck in a man, than the kind of gaze out of Jones' two eyes, when he'd turn to the light and look at you, half keen, half shrinking, like a man that both felt himself above you, and yet, somehow or other, you'd got him under you. I'm blessed if I didn't trust him more because he had been too desperate a character in his deeds beforehand to turn his mind to little ones now, than for anything good in him; being one of those fellows that work their way from one port to another in ships' forecastles, and get drunk ashore, though, all the time, you'd say there wasn't one aboard with them, from the skipper to the chaplain, knew as much or had flown as high some time. Some day at sea the hands are piped round the grating, hats off, and the prayer-book rigged, – down goes "Jack Jones" with a plash and a bubble to his namesake, old "Davy," and you hear no more of him!
Well, just after sundown, as the dusk came on, Westwood and I left the deck to go down to supper with the Planter, the midshipman being in charge. There was nothing in sight, sail or land; indeed, the queer dark-brown tint of the horizon showed strongly against the sky, as if it had been the mahogany of the capstan-head inside its brass rim; the night was cloudy, with a light breeze, and though the stars came out, I expected it to get pretty dark. As I went down the companion, I heard nothing but the light wash of the water from her bows, and the look-out stepping slowly about betwixt her knightheads on the forecastle: while it struck me the smooth face of the sea seemed to show wonderfully distinct into the dusk, the completer it got, as if a sort of light rose up from off it. Down below we felt her stealing pleasantly through all, and Tom and I sat for I didn't know how long, trying to settle our differences on the main point – about the Seringapatam, of course, and which way she was likely to be gone. Tom plumed himself mightily on his common-sense view of a thing, and having by this time got back a good deal of his cheerfulness, he and Mr Rollock almost laughed me over to his line of thinking.
We agreed that the ship must be at present edging up on one side or other of the Maldives, but both of them thought the less we had to say to her the better. "I say, though," exclaimed the Planter, whose face was turned the opposite way to ours, "I'd no idea it was moonlight!" "Moonlight! – there's no moon till morning," I said. "Look into the stern-cabin there, then!" said Rollock; and I turned round, seeing into the door of the after-cabin, where, to my no small surprise, there was a bright white glare through the little square stern-light, gleaming on the rim of the sill, and seemingly off both the air and the water beyond. Quite confounded, as well as wondering what Snelling could be about, I hurried up the companion, the Planter and Westwood hard at my heels.