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What he then called the Cape of Storms, King John II of Portugal in a more optimistic vein rechristened the Cape of Good Hope. Following in the wake of Diaz, Vasco da Gama rounded the Cape in 1497, and then, continuing on his own way, he sailed up the east coast to Malindi, where he found a pilot able to guide his course eastward through the Indian Ocean to India.
So no sooner had the echo of our ringing cheer died away amidst the hills beyond Malindi, now purpling with the shades of evening, ere, turning round as well as he could with his bandaged limbs, still sitting in the easy-chair in which he had been brought up from below, he hailed the signalman and told him to make the Merlin's number, calling Mr Gresham at the same time to his side, the two of them confabulating together.
The river has its source at the foot of snow-crowned Kilima N'jaro, whence it flows for about eighty miles in a northerly direction until it joins the Athi River, about seven miles below Tsavo Station. From this point the united streams take the name of Sabaki and flow more or less eastwards until they reach the Indian Ocean at Malindi, some seventy miles north of Mombasa.
The admiral informed our captain that he was about to proceed inland through the province of Teita with this formidable column; and that he, `old Hankey Pankey, was to assemble as strong a force as he could muster from the ships under his command and with a second column thus formed he was to start from Malindi and work in a south-westerly direction, when the two bodies would meet, completely hemming in the Arabs.
Two or three days later the Merlin, which reported having had a long chase after the senior officer, going almost as far as Zanzibar and back to Mombassa before she picked him up, returned to Malindi, in company with the Bullfinch, another small cruiser attached to the East African squadron.
This place was only some sixty miles to the northward of Mombassa; and all the arrangements for our landing having been completed, and `old Hankey Pankey' settled his plan of operations with Captain Oliver of the Merlin, we did not hurry on the passage to Malindi, timing ourselves to arrive about daybreak, casting anchor in front of the town, as near in as we could get without shoaling our water, at Six Bells in the morning watch to the minute.
We had retreated in this fashion for about a mile or so, changing front continually and facing the Somalis, who pressed us hard every inch of the way; until, coming to an open space on the main road that had been cut in a sort of zigzag through the bush from Malindi up to Uganda, the captain determined to make a stand here and teach our pursuers a lesson, the more particularly as we now had with us all our little nine-pounder boat-guns.
But, albeit conquerors in this our last stand, the victory came too late to cheer us; and it was with greatly saddened hearts and drooping faces, thus offering a strongly marked contrast to the bright enthusiasm with which we all had started up country in the morning, we now slowly retraced our way to the shore, to the south of Malindi.
Brazil, where a squadron under Cabral had touched as early as 1502, was by 1550 a prosperous colony, and in later centuries a chief source of wealth. Mozambique, Mombassa, and Malindi, on the southeastern coast of Africa, were taken and fortified as intermediate bases to protect the route to Asia.
The bluejackets and marines belonging to the admiral's division then rejoined their ships at Mombassa; while our contingent, led still by `old Hankey Pankey, who was none the worse for the fray, retraced their steps through Teita and the `baboon valley' where, I may add, I met no second mishap to Malindi.
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