CHRISTMAS ON MAJUBA STATION.

BY RICHARD BARRY.

December on the Majuba coast, and the day had been the hottest of the month, as the log-book entry showed.

It was a few minutes past sundown, and the awnings that had covered the decks of the old steam-frigate Sumter were being taken in to allow a freer passage for any air that might begin to stir with the nightfall.

The barefooted sailors trod gingerly about, carefully avoiding the metal-work on the hatch combings and the soft blotches of pitch that had bubbled up through the deck seams. The only sounds were the chattering of a large monkey that was swinging himself to and fro in the heat-slackened shrouds, and the discordant squawking of some tame parrots on the forecastle.

A group of officers lolled against the after-rail, and three or four youngsters, a little apart from them, had just finished a whispered conversation. But for some minutes there had not been a loud word spoken throughout the ship. There was one thought present in the minds and hearts of all, from the Captain, ill and half delirious with fever below in his close sweltering cabin, to Midshipman Bobby Seymour, who had had a lump in his throat for the past twenty-four hours—one thought, over and over—home, home, home.

It was the early evening of the night before Christmas. A sagging wind-sail, that hung down the forward hatchway like a huge empty trouser leg, swayed a little, and the movement caught the junior Lieutenant's eye.

"The land breeze! Feel it?" he said, lifting his hand as if to enforce silence.

Warm, and almost fetid with an indescribable odor, a breath had crept softly across the water from the low-lying African coast—a breath redolent of swamps, of strange unhealthy products of the overheated earth, suggestive of fever that burned into the bones.

"I don't like it," said Bobby Seymour, wriggling his small shoulders. He spoke in a half whisper. "I wish I was at Irvington with the river all iced up, the sleigh-bells jingling-jangling everywhere, and—"

"Oh, I say, quit, please, won't you?" interrupted the boy at his elbow. "It's hard enough to stand things as they are. What wouldn't we all give—" Then he shut his lips firmly without finishing his sentence. "Hear that surf!" he added, after a moment's silence.

Borne on the slight air from the eastward came a deep sound like the booming of a thousand giant drums.

"It doesn't look like any landing to-morrow," remarked Midshipman Seymour, wisely.

Just then the thin musical notes of a concertina drifted out from the forecastle.

"'Be it never so humble, there's no place like home,'"

chanted a voice.

"They have it there too," said Bobby Seymour to himself. "Why shouldn't they?"

But the song died away almost as soon as it had begun. In fact, it had been more like a deep-chested musical sigh than anything else.

"I wonder if we couldn't get the Kroomen to sing something jolly for us to-night?" suggested one of the larger midshipmen.

"I think the old man is too ill to stand much celebrating just now," spoke up another. "But I say, Remson, let's see if one of us can't get ashore to-morrow and get something fresh to eat. I'm sick of this old hooker, anyhow. Might as well be docked in Portsmouth, for all the good we're doing here."

This was fact. Watching for slave-traders under such restrictive orders from the government at Washington as precluded the faintest possibility of making a capture was far from exciting, and, besides, the goings on at home had produced a feeling of uneasiness on shipboard, for this was the troublous winter of '60-1.

It was little wonder that things were doleful on board the old Sumter this particular Christmas eve, and so it passed like the evening of any other day.

But Bobby Seymour, when he awakened the next morning, gazed up at the huge deck beams of the steerage, and suddenly remembered something.

He slid out of his hammock and scrambled over to the chest that had his initials on the lid. He opened it, and dug out a neatly tied package from a corner. It was addressed to him with his full title, and was inscribed "Not to be opened until Xmas day."

He crawled over to an open port, and sitting down on the deck, deftly undid the wrapping. But he paused for a minute before he looked to see what it contained, and his eyes took on the sightless expression of deep thoughts far away as he gazed out over the sea.

The sun was flaming above the tree-tops on the distant shore, and the warm morning breeze fluttered the hair of his tousled curly head.

But Bobby did not see the sun or feel the breeze. He saw a wide stretch of snow-covered lawn, with the pine branches that lined the driveway weighted down, and each elm and apple bough all a-sparkle in a case of ice, and the sleigh bells "jingle-jangling" everywhere. He knew how his skates looked, hanging up on the nail behind the door, and his hockey-stick, and his sled. He could smell the hot buckwheat cakes and hear his little sisters laughing.

"They'd just be taking down their stockings," he said, a quiver coming to his eyelid.

In truth, Midshipman Bobby Seymour was nothing but a boy, and not a very tall one. He looked even younger than he really was as he sat there on the deck hugging his bare knees up to his chin, the still unopened package held tightly under his arm, and if a tear did roll down his cheek, and all the way down his neck beneath his collar, it was nothing to be ashamed of.

"Mr. Seymour," broke in a voice that brought back the heat and the smell of the ship quite suddenly. "Mr. Jephson wishes to see you on deck as soon as possible, sir."

Bobby made a dash at his eyes with the back of his hand, and looked up at the big red-mustached orderly. "Very good; be up there right away," he answered.

Then he arose and hurried into his things, only glancing into the package, and catching sight of two or three letters and some mysterious objects done up in tissue-paper.

As he came on deck he walked quietly aft and touched his cap. Mr. Jephson, the executive officer, saw him.

"Ah, Mr. Seymour, merry Christmas!" he remarked, much as if it was the usual thing to say. "I have some work for your boat's crew, sir. Just step here a minute."

Bobby hastened to the quarter-deck.

"There, do you see that," said the Lieutenant, pointing towards the dark green line of coast—"that white thing floating there, a mile or more from shore?"

"Yes, sir," said Bobby, squinting his little sleepy eyes.

Mr. Jephson picked up his sea-glasses. "In my mind it will help clear up the meaning of that glare to the westward two nights ago," he said. "I think it's a bit of wreckage, or an overturned boat that is drifting in." The Lieutenant spoke slowly as he adjusted the binoculars. Then he turned, and added, quickly:

"Get your coffee; see that the men get theirs; lower away the cutter; pick that up or find out what it is, and come back to the ship. You will be here by breakfast-time."

"Aye, aye, sir," Bobby answered.

All hands were turning out as he entered the steerage, but he heard few "Merry Christmases," and the coffee tasted bitterer than ever. All at once an idea seized him, and he thrust the precious package into his jacket. He could read the letters anyhow as he rowed back to the ship. In another moment he was stepping through the gangway.

"Don't go too close to the white water, youngster," said one of the junior officers, who had come on deck, "or you'll be a Robinson Crusoe before you know it."

"Thank you, sir," replied Bobby, as he hastened down the companion ladder. He had to make a leap of it into the cutter, where the men were waiting for him, in no pleasant frame of mind at the prospect of a long pull so early. In another minute they were heading shorewards. On board the ship, so used had every one become to the slow rolling, that it was hard to believe that such a sea was running. But from the boat the ground-swells seemed great hills, so smooth that an oar left a swirl in the green water as a paddle might in a mill-pond.

They had rowed some distance, now climbing up slowly, then coasting down with a rush, before Bobby caught sight of the floating object gleaming on the top of a great lift of sea a mile nearer the shore; he pointed it out to the coxswain, and sat down to read his letters.

As he drew the package from his breast he became conscious that it would not be quite comfortable to open it with twelve pairs of curious eyes gazing at him, so he brought forth only two of the letters with an affectation of carelessness, tied up the rest of the little bundle, and thrust it back into his jacket again.

Sitting there in the stern-sheets of the cutter, with the scorching African sun overhead, and the "thrim-thrum" of oars in his ears, once more his thoughts jumped back to the snow and the sleigh-bells as he opened the first little note. It was written in lead-pencil on very fancy paper, all posies and forget-me-nots. Nor was it written exactly. Most of the words were printed in capital letters, the I's carefully dotted, and the T's laboriously crossed. The lump came into Bobby's throat as he read it slowly.

"Dear Brother Robert" [it began],—"I made this for you all myself. Merry Christmas. I have a kitten and its name is—"

The boat had given such a sickening downward swoop that Bobby looked up suddenly. Never had he seen such a wave in all his short experience. And the sensation! It reminded him of the time he was tossed in a blanket at Annapolis. Yet the water's surface was smooth and oily—not the sound of a ripple—dead silence.

The men slackened in their stroke as another came on astern and raised them upwards. When at its summit Bobby looked towards the shore.

Nothing but a succession of green ridges. But suddenly a line of white like a rip in a great cloth stretched along against the mass of foliage above the beach. Then down the cutter raced.

Midshipman Seymour felt that the eyes of his crew were all upon him; he had detected a frightened glance or two, and the bowmen were looking over their shoulders.

"Steady, there!" he said, crumpling the letters into his pocket as he stood up. Then his spirits rose. Only a few hundred feet further on floated the mysterious object, rising in plain sight; it was a heavy chest, with lettering of some sort on it.

"Oars!" he shouted, and the men rested, glancing uneasily at their companions on the thwarts. Bobby looked back at the ship.

It scorned incredible that they could have covered that distance in such a space of time.

"In bow there, with your boat-hooks!" he shouted. But before the men could get to their feet an expression of horror crossed every face. Three or four cried out in fear. Once more Bobby turned, and a sick feeling came all over him.

The coxswain leaned forward. "We're going to catch it, sir," he whispered, and he made as if to kick off his shoes.

Full half a mile seaward one of the tall waves had broken at its height, and widening and frothing, it spread out in a mass of glistening smother. The sight made the little midshipman think of an army of white horses rising at a great green hedge.

The water around the boat began to clop noisily against the gunwales, and the wave crests on either hand danced and tottered uneasily. Then, pitching down into a hollow, the white horses disappeared for an instant, and nothing could be seen but a green wall in front. But the charge was coming—nearing; they could hear the roaring of it now.

"Steady, men!" said Bobby. "Coxswain, it's too late to turn her; we'll have to ride it in." Even to himself his voice sounded strange and deep. He forgot he was a boy. Was not he responsible? Were not they all looking to him to bring them safely through? He was an officer.

It was not customary for the regular crew of any ship to make a landing on this part of the African coast. For this service a tribe of hardy blacks, Kroomen they were called, provided expert boatmen to any ship on coast station. They knew how to ride the surf, and the best man-o'-war's man was but a novice to them. But for the last three days even the blacks had declared the surf too heavy for safe landing, and now Bobby and his cutter were going to try it, much against their wills.

As the broken roaring water rushed down upon them the noise drowned even his thoughts, and as it caught the boat full astern each man held his breath. But the oars pulling furiously kept the cutter's nose in the right direction, and catching the impetus, she tore shoreward like a runaway engine. After the first shock it was exciting. Bobby even forgot the danger. He noticed the unlucky chest turning over and over in the foam, and peering ahead he became aware for the first time that they were nearing the outlet of a small river that debouched into the sea.

The surf was running high up on the beach, and frothing across a bar at the river's mouth, where a little island made a delta on each side. No sooner had he noticed this when he saw something else—a score of naked black figures running up the sand. Now the Majuba tribes are cannibals. Bobby's heart stood still. To provide a Christmas dinner to a lot of hungry savages was not a pleasant prospect.

"Pull, port! hold, starboard!" shouted the young commander. The men bent to their oars, and, wonder of wonders, with a great heave and a twist the cutter crossed the bar, and shot up on a wave between the green shelving banks of an unknown river, where a white man's boat had never been before. Keeping well to the centre of the stream, the cutter at last reached smooth water, and Bobby found himself standing up, his knees trembling slightly, and not one hundred yards away a horde of the evilest-looking wild black men he had ever set his eyes on. Something had to be done, and to take advantage of their surprise was his first thought. "Why not sing?" he murmured out loud. They were waiting for some demonstration, evidently.

But as the rest of this narrative would make a long story in itself, it is best to let Midshipman Seymour tell it shortly, as he did in the letter to his sister Dorothy, which he wrote three days later.

"Dear little Sis [it ran]—You will have to write again and tell me the name of the kitten, for I have lost your beautiful letter before I could finish reading it. And the fine bead-work pin-cushion, full of the very sharpest pins, I had to give away, and Jack's six-bladed knife, and Nell's fancy-work purse, and mother's silk handkerchief, and grandma's silk gloves, and the package of rock-candy; in fact, everything you sent me now belongs to a great ugly cannibal king whose name is Matagoolah. But all this means a story, so I will tell it as quickly as I can. On Christmas day I was sent out from the ship with my boat's crew to pick up something that was floating in the water. It proved to be a chest from the slaver Nightingale that had burned up 'way out to sea. As we rowed along we were caught in the surf, and by good luck were carried up a little river that no one knew existed. I tell you your red-headed brother was very badly frightened when he saw a lot of savages standing on the bank. I thought, 'Oh, if grandma could only see me now!' The savages were so astonished that they did not do anything, and I thought I'd make believe I came to see them on purpose.

"So I signaled out an old fellow who appeared to be a chief, and making my very best bow, I began to sing, very solemnly and loudly, 'Haul the bow-line; well I love my darling,' and the men all joined in the chorus. Then I thought of the only presents I had—which were yours—and rowing up close, I had four of the crew carry me ashore, where I presented everything I had to the chief, singing the only thing that came into my head—'Hail Columbia!'—at the top of my voice. It was quite funny. When he saw the pin-cushion he was so delighted; and as he received one thing after another he began to grin and chatter. But the rock-candy! My! when he tasted it I was afraid he was going to eat me up for joy! He gave some orders, and all of his men threw down their spears and fell flat on their faces. So I ordered my crew to come ashore, which they did, pretty well frightened.

"Now what to do I did not know; but looking towards the ship, which was some three miles out to sea, I saw a puff of smoke, and I knew they were firing one of the big guns as a signal to call back the other boats, so I lifted up my hands and waved them; then as the report came I bent down low, and all of my men did the same. This time the chief himself fell on his knees! But what will you suppose I saw also? The big chest that I had started out to get! It was rolling up in the surf near the beach. At once I began to make motions as if I were hauling something in with a rope, and told four of my crew to go fetch the chest from the sea. When they plunged in and brought it out the savages looked scared to death. And breaking it open, what do you suppose it contained? Why, beads and knives and trinkets, a big brass crown—in fact, a complete trader's outfit, enough to have bought fifty slaves and more. That settled it. The king would have given me the heads of half his people.

"Well, to make it short, we were feasted and treated, and I am afraid prayed to for two days. I kept a flag flying from a tree-top; the trees are not tall, but I knew they could see it from the ship, and yesterday they managed to land three boats with more presents for my black friends, and took us off. But I really believe that it was your 'Merry Xmas' pin-cushion that saved our lives. Make me another, tell me the name of the kitten, and whether you are having good coasting; and take lots of love and kisses for all.

"From your loving brother, "Rob."

And this is the story of a rather unusual Christmas day, and explains the reason why Bobby Seymour was given the title of "Envoy Extraordinary to his Majesty King Matagoolah, Ruler of the Majubas."