Read Explorers of the Nile: The Triumph and Tragedy of a Great Victorian Adventure Online

Authors: Tim Jeal

Tags: #Non-Fiction, #Travel, #Adventure, #History

Explorers of the Nile: The Triumph and Tragedy of a Great Victorian Adventure (9 page)

BOOK: Explorers of the Nile: The Triumph and Tragedy of a Great Victorian Adventure
2.28Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

In the meantime, it vexed Speke to have nothing to do while Stroyan and Herne were being sent to Berbera with orders to detain the Emir of Harar’s caravan should Burton be held captive in the ‘forbidden city’. So rather than be left kicking his heels, Speke ‘volunteered to travel in any direction [his] commandant might think proper to direct’. Burton decided to send him to a region known as the Wadi Nogal, where he was to collect specimens of flora and fauna, and buy camels for the journey south to Zanzibar.
12
Since collecting specimens was what he would have been doing had Brigadier Outram allowed him to go to Somaliland on his own, Speke was mollified, until Burton ordered Herne, Stroyan and him to wear Arab clothing. Speke’s huge turban and long close-fitting gown were intolerably hot, and because he looked so odd in them they seemed likely
to endanger his life rather than preserve it. But because Burton believed that he would never be allowed to enter Harar unless disguised, ‘he thought it better,’ wrote Speke sardonically, that ‘we should appear as his disciples’.
13

Somaliland and the Horn of Africa.

 

Burton had laughed at Speke’s donkey boys; but if Speke had engaged them, they could hardly have performed worse as guides than Sumunter and Ahmed, the duo chosen to be his
abbans
by Burton. From time immemorial in Somaliland, guides for foreigners had been called
abbans
– the word meaning protector, as well as guide. Since the only language Speke shared with Sumunter was Hindustani, in which neither of them was even moderately fluent, communication was haphazard. In no time, Sumunter tried to fleece Speke so blatantly that the young officer was forced to stand and defend his ‘date and rice bags with his gun’. Various locals were then incited to join in robbing
him. Soon Speke knew he was never going to reach the Wadi Nogal. But, realising that his present mission was really a test of his fitness to be chosen to accompany Burton on any future Nile expedition, Speke kept up his journal and pressed on with his collecting, eventually securing a new species of snake, some rare fossils and numerous antelope heads and specimens of indigenous birds.
14

After two months of what Speke described as ‘this useless journey’, he rejoined his colleagues at the coast and sailed to Aden to re-supply for the expedition’s second and more important phase. Although Speke was eager to forget his humiliation by his insubordinate
abban,
Burton decided that Sumunter must be prosecuted, since he had treated other travellers in the same way. The
abban
was duly tried, found guilty, and sentenced to two months in prison. After the trial, Burton sounded off in public about the system of
abban
-ship being ripe for abolition.
15
Both the
abban
’s trial and Burton’s remarks caused great indignation among Somalis in Aden and news of the vengeful behaviour of the British officers spread swiftly to Berbera and the Somali coast. Colonel R. L. Playfair (Outram’s political assistant) would later describe Burton’s criticism of
abban
-ship
as
‘the
termina causa
of all the mishaps which befell the expedition’.
16

But for the moment, Speke was worried only by his failure to reach the Wadi Nogal. He felt all the worse because Burton had successfully entered Harar and had returned to tell the tale – or as much of it as he thought consistent with striking a heroic pose. Unknown to Speke, Harar had disappointed his commander architecturally, culturally, and as ‘a forbidden city’. Far from being threatened and imprisoned, Burton had been allowed to leave the decaying place as freely as he had been permitted to enter it. If Burton had ever let Speke know that he judged his own mission a failure, Speke would have been less upset by his leader’s condescending remarks about his failure to reach the wretched Wadi Nogal.

Nor did Speke have any idea that Burton’s experiences on the way to Harar had destroyed an important part of his self-image:
namely his faith in his talent for disguising himself as ‘a native’. On this occasion, his Somali servants had rumbled him with ease and had broadcast his identity to strangers along the way.
17
Rather than become a figure of fun, Burton had rapidly discarded his turban. If he could not pass himself off as a Somali, he would fail hopelessly among darker-skinned Africans, so in future he knew he would have to travel as a British officer. Some years later he admitted with uncharacteristic honesty that he had gone to Harar principally ‘for display of travelling
savoir faire’
but he had actually ‘displayed’ the reverse.
18

‘Privately and
entre nous,’
he told Norton Shaw of the RGS, thinking of the epic journey which he hoped would follow this one, ‘I want to settle the question of Krapf and “eternal snows”. There is little doubt of the White Nile being thereabouts. And you will hear with pleasure that there is an open route through Africa to the Atlantic. I heard of it at Harar.’
19

Burton arrived at Berbera on 7 April 1855 in time for him and his companions to link up with the Ogaden caravan, before it headed south from Berbera in the second week of April. Yet most unfortunately, soon after his arrival, he changed his mind about doing this, preferring to run the risk of going south on his own. The reason he gave for remaining encamped outside Berbera was the desirability of hanging on there long enough to take delivery of the ‘instruments and other necessaries [arriving] by the mid-April mail from Europe’. But another consideration influenced him more. This was his desire ‘to witness the close of the Berbera fair’ – a memorable event, to be sure, attended by thousands of buyers and sellers of slaves, camels, ivory, cloth, metal, beads and rhinoceros horn, but hardly a spectacle worth risking life and limb to see.
20

So, while the immense Ogaden caravan was snaking away southward – with several thousand camels, 500 chained slaves, and 3,000 head of cattle – the four British officers remained in their tents, strung out in a line by the small seaside village of Kurrum outside Berbera.
21
Here, they continued to make leisurely preparations for their eventual departure. Behind a superficial
friendliness, the local people hid a deep antipathy. In their eyes, the Englishmen had come to collect information about the slave trade, probably in preparation for its suppression – an outcome certain to impoverish the whole region. Many locals were still smarting from Burton’s public criticism of the system of
abban
-ship. But neither he, nor any of his officers, suspected that they were in danger. Speke knew perfectly well that Somalis visiting Aden were considered so dangerous that the authorities regularly disarmed them, but bizarrely neither he nor Burton considered posting more than two sentries at night. It seemed inconceivable to them that the locals would dare attack them and bring upon themselves a naval blockade of the port of Berbera.
22
How wrong the young Englishmen were.

At about 2.00 a.m. on 19 April, their camp was invaded by about 200 armed Somalis. ‘Hearing a rush of men, like a stormy wind’, Burton sprang up, and yelled at a servant to bring his sabre. Herne was sent out into the darkness to investigate and darted back into the tent having fired a few shots at the advancing attackers with his Colt. In his separate tent, Speke heard Burton calling to Stroyan to get up, and he also heard shots, but at first he thought these were being fired at imaginary intruders by trigger-happy sentries. But hearing footsteps immediately outside, he leapt from his bed and sprinted to Burton’s tent. While trying to do the same, Stroyan was slashed across the head with a sword, and then killed by a single spear-thrust to the heart.
23

Burton and Herne, in their shared tent, were soon fighting for their lives as Somalis fired shots into the canvas and threw heavy javelins through the entrance. Although Burton was a formidable swordsman, his sabre was no help, and as Speke arrived with his revolver, it fell to him to defend the tent. Herne’s powder was exhausted and he could neither find his flask, nor any alternative weapon.
24

At this point, Speke, who had been keeping the attackers back from the entrance with his Adams five-shot revolver, was hit on the knee by a stone. Because his view was obstructed by the fly of the tent, he ducked down under this flap to get a clearer
view of his assailant. Misconstruing his sudden movement, Burton roared at him: ‘Don’t step back, or they’ll think we are running.’
25
Enraged by what he thought was a veiled accusation of cowardice, Speke, according to his own account, ‘stepped boldly to the front and fired at close quarters into the first man before [him]’. He did the same, he said, to two more men in his path, and then placed the muzzle of his gun ‘against the breast of the largest man before him and pulled the trigger, but pulled in vain; the cylinder would not rotate’. Just then a club struck his chest, knocking him to the ground. ‘In another instant … a dozen Somalis were on top of [him].’
26

Burton thought Speke had panicked and had no idea that he had dashed ahead, firing left and right, in response to his spur-of-the-moment words. Terrible things were about to happen to both men, but, for Speke, Burton’s rebuke would be his most painful recollection.
27
As the Somalis tried to flatten the tent, intending to tangle Burton and Herne in its folds, the two Englishmen dashed out, Burton slashing right and left with his sabre. In the darkness, Burton mistook his Somali factotum for an attacker and was about to cut him down when the man’s cry of alarm made his master freeze. ‘That instant’s hesitation allowed a spearman to step forward, and leave his javelin in my mouth,’ wrote Burton. The spear entered on one side of Burton’s face and came out on the other, cleaving the roof of his mouth and smashing out two molars. Struggling against increasing faintness caused by pain and loss of blood, Burton somehow reached the shore where a vessel – whose crew had brought him mail from Aden two days earlier – remained moored. Here at last the javelin was removed from his mouth and his wound was dressed.
28

On the ground, gasping for breath, with men binding his hands behind his back, Speke could feel fingers exploring around his genitals:

I felt as if my hair stood on end; and not knowing who my opponents were, I feared that they belonged to a tribe called Eesa, who are notorious for the unmanly mutilations they delight in. Indescribable
was my relief when I found that the men were in reality feeling whether, after an Arab fashion, I was carrying a dagger between my legs …
29

 

At dawn, the Somalis pillaged the camp, while Speke was held by a rope. Later, he described how, without warning, the man keeping him tethered ‘stepped up close to me, and coolly stabbed me with his spear’. Further jabs were aimed at his shoulder, one narrowly missing his jugular. He only prevented a stab to the heart by blocking it with his tied wrists, which were cut to the bone deflecting the weapon’s point. The next lunge was to his thigh, and he heard the spearhead grind against the bone. To save himself, Speke grabbed the spear, but a whack on the arm with a club sent it clattering to the ground. He saw his captor:

… [drop] the rope-end, walk back a dozen paces, and rush on me with savage fury, plunging his spear through the thick part of my right thigh into the ground, passing it between the thigh-bone and the large sinew below … Seeing that death was inevitable if I remained lying there a moment longer, I sprang upon my legs, and gave the miscreant such a sharp back-hander in the face with my double-bound fists that he lost his presence of mind and gave me a moment’s opportunity to run away … I was almost naked and quite bare upon the feet, but I ran over the shingly beach towards the sea like wildfire. The man followed me a little way, but finding I had the foot of him, threw his spear like a javelin, but did not strike me … he then gave up the chase. Still I had at least forty more men to pass, who were scattered about the place, looking for what property they could pick up … However I dodged them all by turns … bobbing as they threw their spears after me, until I reached the shore.
30

 

Burton would describe Speke’s escape as ‘in every way wonderful’, which it certainly was.
31
The three surviving officers (Herne being the only one unscathed) sailed for Aden the following day in the small sailing vessel, to which they had managed to stagger after the attack. During the voyage, Stroyan’s corpse began to smell so offensively that the crew persuaded Burton to bury him at sea, rather than bring him back to Aden, as he had wished.
32
The death of a colleague, who had been a friend in India, was very painful for Burton. Not least because it
was obvious to all that, if he had stuck to his original plan to join the Ogaden caravan, Stroyan would still be alive, and he and Speke would not be lying wounded on the vessel’s poop deck. On Speke’s arrival in the colony, the civil surgeon looked at the deep wounds and lacerations to his limbs, which were now contracted into grotesque positions, and predicted that it would take three years for him to recover fully. The same surgeon expected Burton to heal more swiftly. In fact Speke would be walking with a stick by the time he sailed for England three weeks later, and Burton would be an invalid for several months.
33

BOOK: Explorers of the Nile: The Triumph and Tragedy of a Great Victorian Adventure
2.28Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

The Pyramid Builders by Saxon Andrew
Lies and Misdemeanours by Rebecca King
Dreams Ltd by Melan, Veronica
Death of a Wine Merchant by David Dickinson
Shades of Truth by Naomi Kinsman
The Summer of Me & You by Hachton, Rae
Holiday Sparks by Shannon Stacey