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Updated: June 29, 2025
Every now and then, too, he would rub his hands together as if in eager expectation, and would chuckle to himself as he glanced seaward. Of his own accord he gave orders to Sooka to get both the surf-boats ready for launching, and to make the boys put on their newest loin-cloths; and then, when everything was in readiness, he asked Bransome if he was going off to the steamer.
Here are three settlements, parted by narrow walls of 'bush. Edina, the northernmost, is said to do more business than any other port in the republic; she also builds fine, strong surf-boats of German and American type, carrying from one to five tons.
The spot is that on which now stands the flourishing commercial town of Port Elizabeth, styled, not inappropriately, by its inhabitants, the "Liverpool of South Africa." Standing near the stern of one of the surf-boats, his strong right hand grasping the gunwale, and his grave eyes fixed on the shore, one of the exiles from Scotland lifted his voice that day and said
Blake, by this time, was once more thinking lucidly. Some of the cases in those surf-boats, he remembered, held giant-caps and dynamite, and he knew what was likely to happen if a bullet struck them. He also remembered that he was still exposed to the carbine fire from behind the searchlight. He stretched out, flat on the deck-boards, and wormed his way slowly and ludicrously aft.
"Are you disembarking here?" he asked. Da Souza admitted the fact. "My brother will meet me," he said. "He is very afraid of the surf-boats, or he would have come out to the steamer. You remember him?" "Yes, I remember him," Trent answered. "He was not the sort of person one forgets." "He is a very rough diamond," Da Souza said apologetically.
On the shelving beach, where the troops must land, the great rollers were breaking in torrents of foam. The first lifeboats that attempted the landing were swamped, and the soldiers reached the land wet and chilled through. The surf-boats were stove in. The barges, which had been relied upon to land men in large numbers, proved unmanageable, and were towed away by the "Harriet Lane."
The wind had fallen, and the heavy surf-boats of the port could land us easily. We went on shore past the water-gate and the custom-house that stands on the site of the stores erected by the society of the Gremios Majores when Charles V. ruled Spain. Dár el Baida seemed to have straggled over as much ground as Tangier, but the ground itself was flat and full of refuse.
A place for landing was selected, and the vessels withdrew into the offing to spend the night. It was determined to begin the attack early the next day. The morning dawned clear, with a calm sea. At four o'clock the men were summoned to breakfast. At seven the operation of landing the troops was begun. All the surf-boats, barges, and lifeboats in the fleet were put to the work.
"I've no use for a fourth boat at all; but a boat of this model tops the business. I don't say the type's not common in these waters; it's as common as dirt; the traders carry them for surf-boats. But the Flying Scud? a deep-water tramp, who was lime-juicing around between big ports, Calcutta and Rangoon and 'Frisco and the Canton River? No, I don't see it."
The almost complete absence of landing equipment, in the shape of surf-boats, lighters, and launches, eventually proved, as I shall hereafter show, to be disastrous in the extreme; and if the navy had not come to the rescue, at Daiquiri and Siboney, it is not at all certain that General Shafter could have landed his army.
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