to get off with flying colours.
My old chum coached me up in the knotting and splicing of wire rope, of
which art he was a proficient, his father being a working smith, and
Larrikins himself having been intended originally for that trade, before
the superior attractions of the sea weaned him from the paternal
handicraft.

In the following year, however, matters became a trifle livelier on the
East coast.

The Somali, from the constant blockade we kept up along their territory
with our boats and cruisers, from Cape Guardafui down to the Equator,
thus putting a stop to their slave-dealings, capturing as we did all
their dhows and blocking all outlets from the coast, determined on
retaliatory measures; so, mustering all their forces and calling up the
assistance of the slave-dealers of the interior, they began to attack
various points of the British protectorate.

Possibly, had the Arabs only us to deal with, things might not have got
to this pass; but, very unluckily for this country, the Germans, who
have long been jealous of our colonial enterprise and commercial success
in Africa as elsewhere, took it into their heads, not long since, to
extend their trade on the eastern seaboard.

The ideas of Meinherr Von Sourkrout and his warlike Kaiser in respect of
the colonisation of this part of the Dark Continent, like those of our
French cousins on the West Coast, differ much from the more peaceful
plan pursued by England for several generations past--a plan that has
worked wonderfully well in the building up of our Empire, and the spread
of our manufactures over every land and sea!

Meinherr Sourkrout's method for extending trade, that is, according to
the experience of us bluejackets of the British Navy who have served on
the East African station, has been to shoot down the natives wherever
the flag of his Fatherland has ever been stuck up; and, when the men of
the negro tribes, objecting to such friendly advances, have bolted into
the bush, Meinherr, imitating the example of his great countryman
Marshal Haynau, took to flogging their wives and womenfolk in order to
coax the black gentlemen back.

The darkeys, somehow or other, didn't tackle to this treatment; and, the
Germans having thus roused them up to the south of our protectorate,
where, unfortunately for us, Meinherr Von Sourkrout and his domineering
compatriots have a territory far too close to our own, the natives,
being of the opinion that we were in sympath