The Black Bar
Fenn George Manville
English
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Below is a summary of The Black Bar
The Black Bar, by George Manville Fenn.
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HMS Nautilus is on patrol off the west coast of Africa, intercepting
the American slave ships that were trying at that time to purchase
cargoes of slaves from the dealers, and then to take them across the
Atlantic in loathsome conditions. Slavery had been abolished in
British territories in 1772, many years before, and the British were
actively policing African waters in the hope of deterring the Americans
and the Portuguese from retaining the slave trade.
Nautilus has two midshipmen aboard, and one of these, Mark Vandean, is
the hero of the story. The book is in the usual Manville Fenn style,
with a succession of dreadful situations in which the hero finds
himself. "How ever does he extricate himself from this?" the reader is
continually asking. Of course he does, but it is often by means of
something quite unexpected.
A Black Bar is a device in heraldry, indicating that there is something
shameful in the wearer's ancestry. NH
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THE BLACK BAR, BY GEORGE MANVILLE FENN.
CHAPTER ONE.
TWO MIDDIES AND A MONKEY.
"We've done wrong, Van. There'll be a jolly row about it."
"Get out! What's the good of talking now? You were as ready to have
him as I was. Lie still, will you? or I'll pitch you overboard."
Two middies talking in the stern-sheets of the cutter belonging to Her
Majesty's fast little cruiser _Nautilus_, stationed on the west coast of
Africa "blackberrying," so the men called their duty, Tom Fillot, one of
their jokers, giving as the reason that the job was "black and berry
nasty." The sun shone as it can shine in the neighbourhood of the
equator, and the sea looked like so much glistening oil, as it slowly
heaved up and sank with the long ground swell, the light flashing from
the surface attacking the eyes with blinding power, bronzing the faces
of some, peeling the noses of others.
Setting aside the smart crew of the cutter in their white duck shirts
and trousers and straw hats, with faces, necks, and hands of a mahogany
brown, the two speakers may be taken as fair samples of what the sun
could do with a fresh-coloured English lad of sixteen or seventeen.
Mark Vandean, who leaned back and had wrenched himself round to sharply
adjure something behind him in the bottom of the boat, was burned of a
good warm Russian leather brown, while his companion, Bob Howlett, who
held the rudder-lines, displayed in addition to ruddy brown cheeks a
nose in a most disreputable state of rag.
The boat went swiftly through the water, as the men bent with regular
stroke, and made the tough ash blades of their oars curve ere they rose
and scattered the flashing drops, which seemed to brighten the scene
where all was flat and monotonous, and the view contracted by a dead
silvery haze of heat. Behind them was the low flat shore with a few
scattered white houses and factories behind a rough landing-stage.
There were palms of different kinds in a straggling line, and on either
side of the opening out of a muddy river, a bordering of dingy green
mangroves--tree cripples, Mark Vandean called them, because they all
looked as if standing up on crutches. A few boats lay in the mouth of
the river, a dissolute-looking brig with its yards unsquared was at
anchor higher up, and a sharp eye could detect a figure or two about the
beach. On either side, as far as eye could reach, there was a line of
surf.
That was all shoreward, while out to sea, a couple of miles or so away,
smart and business-like, with her tall spars and carefully squared yards
and rigging, cobweb-like in texture at that distance, lay at anchor in
the open road-stead HMS _Nautilus_ waiting to gather "blackberries" at
the first opportunity, and toward which smart little vessel the cutter
was being steadily propelled.
The object ordered to lie still under pain of being pitched overboard
did not lie, but crouched a little lower, and increased the wrinkles in
its deeply lined forehead, above which was a thin fringe of hair,
blinked its wondering eyes, and looked piteously at the speaker.
It was the face of an old man with enormous mouth pinched together, and
devoid of lips, but giving the idea that it was about to smile; nose
there was none, save a little puckering in its place, but as if to make
up for the want, the ears were largely developed, rounded, and stood out
on either side in a pronounced fashion. For it was the most human of
all the apes, being a chimpanzee about as big as a sturdy two-year-old
boy.
All at once the stroke oarsman ceased rowing, and began to wipe the
perspiration from his open, good-humoured face.
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