OM RINGLES PR 5299 S6 T6 1894 M N jM,M. S , I , T I,9 F ..9. A k!f?. R .NIA SAN DIEGO 3 1822 01042 8522 ^ 1 i G i 1 LIBR/ ^ tlVLRS ALIt S kN Dl ->v PR 529") S6 Tb 18 THE CRUISE OF THE SPARK turned towards me, and I never shall forget the horrible expression of it. His healthy complexion had given place to a deadly blue, the eyes were wide open and straining in their sockets, the upper lip was drawn up, showing his teeth in a most frightful grin, the blood gushed from his mouth as if impelled by the strokes of a force-pump, while his hands gripped and dug into the sand. Before the sun set he was a dead man. C A neat morning's work, gentlemen,' thought I. The two surgeons came up, opened his dress, felt his pulse, and shook their heads ; the boats' crews grouped around them — he was lifted into his gig, the word was given to shove off, and — I re- turned to my broom-cutters. When we got on board, the gunner who had the watch was taking his fisherman's walk on the starboard side of the quarter-deck, and kept looking steadily at the land, as if to avoid seeing poor little Duncan's coffin, that lay on a grating near the gangway. The crew, assisted by thirty men from the flag-ship, were employed in twenty different ways, repairing damages, and were bustling about, laughing, joking, and singing, with small regard to the melancholy object before their eyes, when Mr. Douglas put his head up the ladder — ' Now, Jackson, if you please.' The old fellow's countenance fell, as if his heart was wrung by the order he had to give. ' Aloft there ! lie out, you Perkins, and reeve a whip on the starboard yard-arm to lower Mr. ' The rest stuck in his throat, but, as if ashamed of his soft-heartedness, he threw as much gruffness as he could into his voice as he sung out — ' Beat to quarters there ! — knock off, men ! ' l8 7 TOM CRINGLE'S LOG The roll of the drum stayed the confusion and noise of the people at work in an instant, who im- mediately ranged themselves, in their clean frocks and trousers, on each side of the quarter-deck. At a given signal, the white deal coffin, wrapped in its befitting pall, the meteor flag of England, swung high above the hammock-nettings between us and the bright blue sky, to the long clear note of the boatswain's whistle, which, soon ending in a short chirrup, told that it now rested on the thwarts of the boat alongside. We pulled ashore, and it was a sight perchance to move a woman, to see the poor little fellow's hat and bit of a dirk lying on his coffin, whilst the body was carried by four ship- boys, the eldest scarcely fourteen. I noticed the tears stand in Anson's eyes as the coffin was lowered into the grave — the boy had been wounded close to him, — and when we heard the hollow rattle of the earth on the coffin — an unusual sound to a sailor — he shuddered. ' Yes, Master Cringle,' he said in a whisper, 'he was as kind-hearted and as brave a lad as ever trod on shoe-leather. None of the larkings of the men in the clear moonlight nights ever reached the cabin through him ; nor was he the boy to rouse the watch from under the lee of the boats in bad weather, to curry with the lieutenant, while he knew the look-outs were as bright as beagles — and where was the man in our watch that wanted 'baccy while Mr. Duncan had a shiner left ? ' The poor fellow drew the back of his horny hand across his eyes, and grumbled out as he turned away, ' And here am 1, Bill Anson, such a swab as to be ashamed of being sorry for him.' We were now turned over into the receiving- 188 THE CRUISE OF THE SPARK ship, the old Shark, and fortunately there were captains enough in port to try us for the loss of the Torch) so we got over our court-martial speedily, and the very day I got back my dirk, the packet brought me out a lieutenant's commission. Being now my own master for a season, I determined to visit some relations I had in the island, to whom I had never yet been introduced ; so I shook hands with old Splinter, packed my kit, and went to the wharf to charter a wherry to carry me up to Kingston. The moment my object was perceived by the black boatmen, I was surrounded by a mob of them, pulling and hauling each other, and shouting forth the various qualifications of their boats, with such vehemence that I was nearly deafened. 'Massa, no see Pam be Civil, sail like a witch, tack like a dolphin ? ' 'Don't believe him, massa ; Ballahoo is de boat dat can beat him.' 'Big lie dat, as I am a gentleman!' roared a ragged black vagabond. 'Come in de Monkey, massa; no flying fis can beat she.' ' Don't boder de gentleman,' yelled a fourth — ' massa love de Sta?np-and-go — no so, massa ? ' as he saw me make a step in the direction of his boat. ' Oh yes, so get out of de way, you black rascals ' — the fellow was as black as a sloe himself — ' make room for man-of-war buccra ; him leetle just now, but will be admiral one day. 1 So saying, the fellow who had thus appropriated me, without more ado, levelled his head like a battering-ram and began to batter in breach all who stood in his way. He first ran a tilt against 189 TOM CRINGLE'S LOG Pam be Civil, and shot him like a rocket into the sea ; the Monkey fared no better ; the Ballahoo had to swim for it ; and having thus opened a way by main force, I at length got safely moored in the stern-sheets ; but just as we were shoving off, Mr. Callaloo, the clergyman of Port Royal, a tall yellow personage, begged for a passage, and was accord- ingly taken on board. As it was high water, my boatmen chose the five-foot channel, as the boat channel near to Gallows Point is called, by which a long stretch would be saved, and we were cracking on cheerily, my mind full of my recent promotion, when scur, scur, scur, we stuck fast on the bank. Our black boatmen, being little encumbered with clothes, jumped overboard in a covey like so many wild-ducks, shouting, as they dropped into the water, 'We must all get out — we must all get out;' whereupon Mr. Callaloo, a sort of Dominie Sampson in his way, promptly leaped overboard up to his waist in the water. The negroes were thunderstruck. 1 Massa Parson Callaloo, you mad surely, you mad ! ' 'Children, I am not mad, but obedient; you said we must all get out ' 'To be sure, massa, and you see we all did get out ? ' ' And did you not see that / got out too ? ' re- joined the parson, still in the water, and somewhat nettled. ' Oh, lud, Massa ! we no mean you — we meant poor nigger, not white man parson.' ' You said all, children, and thereupon I leaped,' pronouncing the last word in two syllables — ' be more correct in your grammar next time.' 190 SCENES IN JAMAICA The worthy but eccentric old chap then scrambled on board again, amidst the suppressed laughter of the boatmen, and kept his seat, wet clothes and all, until we reached Kingston. CHAPTER VII SCENES IN JAMAICA ' Excellent — why, this is the best fooling when all is done.' Twelfth Night. I confess that I did not promise myself much pleasure from my cruise ashore. Somehow or other I had made up my mind to believe that in Jamaica, putting aside the magnificence and natural beauty of the face of the country, there was little to interest me. I had pictured to myself the slaves — a miserable, squalid, half-fed, ill-clothed, over- worked race — and their masters, and the white inhabitants generally, as an unwholesome-looking crew of saffron-faced tyrants, who wore straw hats with umbrella brims, white trousers, and calico j'ackets, living on pepper-pot and land crabs, and drinking sangaree and smoking cigars the whole day — in a word, that all that Bryan Edwards and others had written regarding the civilisation of the West Indies was a fable. But I was agreeably undeceived ; for although I did meet with some extraordinary characters, and witnessed not a few rum scenes, yet, on the whole, I gratefully bear witness to the great hospitality of the inhabitants, 191 TOM CRINGLE'S LOG both in the towns and in the country. In Kings- ton the society was extremely good, as good, I can freely affirm, as I ever met with in any provin- cial town anywhere; and there prevailed a warmth of heart, and a kindliness, both in the males and females of those families to which I had the good fortune to be introduced, that I never experienced out of Jamaica. At the period I am describing, the island was in the hey-day of its prosperity, and the harbour of Kingston was full of shipping. I had never before seen so superb a mercantile haven ; it is completely land-locked, and the whole navy of England might ride in it commodiously. On the sea-face it is almost impregnable, for it would be little short of a miracle for an invading squadron to wind its way through the labyrinth of shoals and reefs lying off the mouth of it, amongst which the channels are so narrow and intricate that at three or four points the sinking of a sand barge would effectually block up all ingress ; but, independently of this, the entrance at Port Royal is defended by very strong works — the guns ranging the whole way across, while — a little further on, the attacking ships would be exposed to a cross fire from the heavy metal of the Apostles' Battery ; and, even assuming all these obstacles to be over- come, and the passage into the harbour forced, before they could pass the narrows, to get up to the anchorage at Kingston, they would be blown out of the water by a raking fire from sixty pieces of large cannon on Fort Augusta, which is so situated that they would have to turn to windward for at least half-an-hour, in a strait which, at the widest, would not allow them to reach beyond musket- 192 SCENES IN JAMAICA shot of the walls. Fortunately, as yet Mr. Can- ning had not called his New World into existence, and the whole of the trade of Terra Firma, from Porto Cavello down to Chagres, the greater part of the trade of the islands of Cuba and San Domingo, and even that of Lima and San Bias, and the other ports of the Pacific, carried on across the Isthmus of Darien, centred in Kingston, the usual supplies through Cadiz being stopped by the advance of the French in the Peninsula. The result of this princely traffic, more magnificent than that of Tyre, was a stream of gold and silver flowing into the Bank of England, to the extent of three millions of pounds sterling annually, in return for British manufactures ; thus supplying the sinews of war to the Government at home, and, besides the advantage of so large a mart, employing an im- mense amount of British tonnage, and many thousand seamen, and in numberless ways open- ing up new outlets to British enterprise and capital. Alas ! alas ! where is all this now ? The echo of the empty stores might answer 1 Where ? ' On arriving at Kingston, my first object was to seek out Mr. , the admiral's agent, and one of the most extensive merchants in the place, in order to deliver some letters to him, and get his advice as to my future proceedings. Mr. Callaloo undertook to be my pilot, striding along abeam of me, and leaving in his wake two serpentine dottings on the pavement from the droppings of water from his voluminous coat-skirts, which had been thoroughly soaked by his recent ducking. Everything appeared to be thriving, and as we passed along, the hot sandy streets were crowded vol. i. 193 N TOM CRINGLE'S LOG with drays conveying goods from the wharfs to the stores, and from the stores to the Spanish Posadas. The merchants of the place, active, sharp-looking men, were seen grouped under the piazzas in earnest conversation with their Spanish customers, or perched on the top of the bales and boxes just landed, waiting to hook the gingham- coated, Moorish-looking Dons, as they came along with cigars in their mouths, and a train of negro servants following them with fire-buckets on their heads, filled with pesos fuertes. The appearance of the town itself was novel and pleasing; the houses, chiefly of two storeys, looked as if they had been built of cards, most of them being surrounded with piazzas from ten to fourteen feet wide, gaily painted green and white, and formed by the roofs project- ing beyond the brick walls or shells of the houses. On the ground floor these piazzas are open, and in the lower part of the town, where the houses are built contiguous to each other, they form a covered way, affording a most grateful shelter from the sun on each side of the streets, which last are unpaved and more like dry river-courses than thoroughfares in a Christian town. On the floor above, the balconies are shut in with a sort of movable blinds, called 'jalousies,' like large-bladed Venetian blinds, fixed in frames, with here and there a glazed sash to admit light in bad weather when the blinds are closed. In the upper part of the town the effect is very beautiful, every house standing- detached from its neighbour, in its little garden filled with vines, fruit-trees, stately palms, and cocoa-nut trees, with a court of negro houses and offices behind, and a patriarchal-looking draw-well in the centre, generally overshadowed by a magnificent wild 194 SCENES IN JAMAICA tamarind. When I arrived at the great merchant's place of business, I was shown into a lofty cool room, with a range of desks along the walls, where a dozen clerks were quill-driving. In the centre sat my man, a small, sallow, yet perfectly gentle- man-like personage. ' Dat is massa,' quoth my black usher. I accordingly walked up to him, and presented my letter. He never lifted his head from his paper, which I had half a mind to resent ; but at the moment there was a bustle in the piazza, and a group of naval officers, amongst whom was the admiral, came in. My silent friend was now alert enough, and profuse of his bows and smiles. ' Who have we here? Who is that boy, L ? ' said the admiral to his secretary. 4 Young Cringle, sir ; the only one except Mr. Splinter saved from the Torch ; he was first on the Admiralty list t'other day.' 4 What, the lad Willoughby spoke so well of? ' 4 The same, sir ; he got his promotion by last packet.' ' I know, I know. I say, Mr. Cringle, you are appointed to the Firebrand, do you know that ? ' — I did not know it, and began to fear my cruise on shore was all up. ' But I don't look for her from Havanna for a month ; so leave your address with L , that you may get the order to join when she does come.' It appeared that I had seen the worst of the agent, for he gave me a very kind invitation to stay some days with him, and drove me home in his ketureen — a sort of sedan-chair with the front and sides knocked out, and mounted on a gig body. r 95 TOM CRINGLE S LOG Before dinner we were lounging about the piazza, and looking down into the street, when a negro funeral came past, preceded by a squad of drunken black vagabonds, singing and playing on gumbies, or African drums, made out of pieces of hollow trees, about six feet long, with skins braced over them, each carried by one man, while another beats it with his open hands. The coffin was borne along on the heads of two negroes — a negro carries everything on his head, from a bale of goods to a wine-glass or tea-cup. It is a practice for the bearers, when they come near the house of any one against whom the deceased was supposed to have had a grudge, to pretend that the coffin will not pass by, and in the present case, when they came opposite to where we stood, they began to wheel round and round, and to stagger under their load, while the choristers shouted at the top of their lungs. ' We beg you, shipmate, for come along — do, broder, come away ; ' then another reel. c What, you no wantee go in a hole, eh ? You hab grudge 'gainst somebody lif here, eh ? ' Another devil of a lurch — ' Massa 's housekeeper, eh ? Ah, it must be ! ' — A tremendous stagger — c Oh, Massa , dollar for drink ; something to hold play,' negro wake, c in Spring-path,' the negro burying- ground ; ' Bediacko say him won't pass 'less you give it.' And here they began to spin round more violently than before ; but at the instant a drove of bullocks coming along, they got entangled amongst them, and down went body and bearers and all, the coffin bursting in the fall, and the dead corpse, with its white grave-clothes and black face, rolling over and over in the sand amongst 196 SCENES IN JAMAICA the feet of the cattle. It was immediately caught up, however, bundled in the coffin again, and away they staggered, drumming and singing as loudly as before. The party at dinner was a large one ; everything in good style, wines superb, turtle, etc., magnificent, and the company exceedingly companionable. A Mr. Francis Fyall (a great planting attorney — that is, an agent for a number of proprietors of estates who preferred living in England, and paying a commission to him for managing in Jamaica, to facing the climate themselves), to whom I had an introduction, rather posed me, by asking me during dinner if I would take anything in the long way with him, which he explained by saying he would be glad to take a glass of small beer with me. This, after a deluge of Madeira, Champagne, and all manner of light wines, was rather trying ; but I kept my countenance as well as I could. One thing I remember struck me as remarkable ; just as we were rising to go to the drawing-room, a cloud of winged ants burst in upon us through the open windows, and, had it not been for the glass-shades, would have extinguished the candles ; but when once they had settled on the table, they deliberately wriggled themselves free of their wings, as one would cast off a greatcoat, and crept away in their simple and more humble capacity of creeping things. Next day I went to wait on my relation, Mrs. Palma. I had had a confoundedly hot walk through the burning sandy streets, and was nearly blinded by the reflection from them, as I ascended the front stairs. There are no carpets in the houses in Jamaica ; but the floors, which are often of ma- 197 TOM CRINGLE'S LOG hogany, are beautifully polished, and shine like a well-kept dinner-table. They are, of course, very slippery, and require wary walking till one gets accustomed to them. The rooms are made ex- ceedingly dark during the heat of the day, accord- ing to the prevailing practice in all ardent climates. A black footman, very handsomely dressed, all to his bare legs (I thought at first he had black silk stockings on), preceded me, and when he reached the drawing-room door, asked my name. I told him, c Mr. Cringle,' — whereupon he sung out, to my dismay — c Massa Captain Ringtail to wait pan Misses.' This put me out a leetle — especially as I heard some one say — c Captain who ? — what a very odd name ! ' j But I had no time for reflection, as I had not blundered three steps out of the glare of the piazza into the palpable obscure of the darkened drawing room, black as night from the contrast, when I capsized headlong over an ottoman in the middle of the apartment, and floundered right into the centre of a group of young ladies, and one or two lapdogs, by whom it was conjointly occupied. Trying to recover myself I slipped on the glass-like floor, and came down stern foremost ; and being now regu- larly at the slack end, for I could not well get lower, I sat still, scratching my caput in the midst of a gay company of morning visitors, enjoying the gratifying consciousness that I was distinctly visible to them, although my dazzled optics could as yet distinguish nothing. To add to my pleasurable sensations, I now perceived, from the coldness of the floor, that in my downfall the catastrophe of my unmentionables had been grievously rent, 198 SCENES IN JAMAICA but I had nothing for it but sitting patiently still amidst the suppressed laughter of the company, until I became accustomed to the twilight, and they, like bright stars, began to dawn on my be- wildered senses in all their loveliness ; and prodigi- ously handsome women some of them were, for the Creoles, so far as figure is concerned, are generally perfect, while beautiful features are not wanting, and my travel had reconciled me to the absence of the rose from their cheeks. My eldest cousin Mary (where is there a name like Mary ?) now approached ; she and I were old friends, and many a junketing we used to have in my father's house during the holidays, when she was a board- ing-school girl in England. My hardihood and self-possession returned under the double grati- fication of seeing her, and the certainty that my blushes (for my cheeks were glowing like hot iron) could not have been observed in the subdued green light that pervaded the room. c Well, Tom, since you are no longer dazzled, and see us all now, you had better get up, hadn't you — you see mamma is waiting there to embrace you ? ' c Why, I think myself I had better ; but when I broached-to so suddenly, I split my lower canvas, Mary, and I cannot budge until your mother lends me a petticoat.' ' A what ? you are crazy, Tom ' ' Not a whit, not a whit, why, I have split my — ahem. This is speaking plain, an't it ? ' Away tripped the sylph-like girl, and in a twinkling reappeared with the desired garment, which in a convulsion of laughter she slipped over my head as I sat on the floor ; and having fastened 199 TOM CRINGLE S LOG it properly round my waist, I rose and paid my respects to my warm-hearted relations. But that petticoat — it could not have been the old woman's, there could have been no such virtue in an old woman's petticoat; no, no, it must either have been a charmed garment, or — or — Mary's own ; for from that hour I was a lost man, and the devoted slave of her large black eyes, and high pale forehead. 'Oh, murder — you speak of the sun dazzling ; what is it to the lustre of that same eye of yours, Mary ! ' In the evening I escorted the ladies to a ball (by the way, a West India ball-room being a perfect lantern, open to the four winds of heaven, is cooler, notwithstanding the climate, than a ball- room anywhere else), and a very gay affair it turned out to be, although I had more trouble in getting admittance than I bargained for, and was witness to as comical a row (considering the very frivolous origin of it, and the quality of the parties engaged in it) as ever took place even in that peppery country, where, I verily believe, the temper of the people, generous though it be in the main, is hotter than the climate, and that, God knows ! is sudoriferous enough. I was walking through the entrance saloon with my fair consin on my arm, stepping out like a hero to the opening crash of a fine military band, towards the entrance of the splendid ball-room filled with elegant company, brilliantly lighted up and ornamented with the most rare and beautiful shrubs and flowers, which no European conservatory could have furnished forth, and arched overhead with palm-branches and a pro- fusion of evergreens, while the polished floor, 200 SCENES IN JAMAICA like one vast mirror, reflected the fine forms of the pale but lovely black-eyed and black-haired West Indian dames, glancing amidst the more sombre dresses of their partners, while the whole group was relieved by being here and there spangled with a rich naval or military uniform. As we approached, a constable put his staff across the doorway. 1 Beg pardon, sir, but you are not in full dress.' Now, this was the first ni2;ht whereon I had sported my lieutenant's uniform, and with my gold swab on my shoulder, the sparkling bullion glancing in the corner of my eye at the very moment, my dress-sword by my side, gold buckles in my shoes, and spotless white trousers, I had, in my innocence, considered myself a deuced killing fellow, and felt proportionately mortified at this address. c No one can be admitted in trousers, sir,' said the man. 1 Shiver my timbers ! ' I could not help the exclamation, the transactions of the morning crowding on my recollection, ' shiver my tim- bers ! is my fate in this strange country to be for ever irrevocably bound up in a pair of breeches ? ' My cousin pinched my arm. ' Hush, Tom ; go home and get mamma's petticoat.' The man was peremptory ; and as there was no use in getting into a squabble about such a trifle, I handed my partner over to the care of a gentle- man of the party, who was fortunately accoutred according to rule, and, stepping to my quarters, I equipped myself in a pair of tight nether integu- ments, and returned to the ball-room. By this 201 TOM CRINGLE'S LOG time there was the devil to pay ; the entrance saloon was crowded with military and naval men, high in oath, and headed by no less a person than a general officer, and a one-armed man, one of the chief civil officers in the place, and who had been a sailor in his youth. I was just in time to see the advance of the combined column to the door of the ball-room, through which they drove the picket of constables like chafF, and then halted. The one- armed functionary, a most powerful and very handsome man, now detached himself from the phalanx, and strode up to the advanced guard of stewards clustered in front of the ladies, who had shrunk together into a corner of the room, like so many frightened hares. The place being now patent to me, I walked up to comfort my party, and could see all that passed. The champion of the Excluded had taken the precaution to roll up the legs of his trousers, and to tie them tightly at the knee with his garters, which gave him the appearance of a Dutch skipper ; and in all the consciousness of being now properly arrayed, he walked up to one of the men in authority — a small pot-bellied gentleman — and set himself to intercede for the attacking column, the head of which was still lowering at the door. But the little steward speedily inter- rupted him. ' Why, Mr. Singlefist, rules must be main- tained, and let me see,' — here he peered through his glass at the substantial supporters of our friend, — 'as I live, you yourself are inadmissible.' The giant laughed. 'Damn the body, he must have been a tailor ! — Charge, my fine fellows, and throw the constables 202 SCENES IN JAMAICA out of the window, and the stewards after them. Every man his bird ; and here goes for my Cock Robin.' With that he made a grab at his Lilli- putian antagonist, but missed him, as he slid away amongst the women like an eel, while his pursuer, brandishing his wooden arm on high, to which I now perceived for the first time that there was a lara;e steel hook appended, exclaimed, in a broad Scotch accent, ' Ah, if I had but caught the creature^ I would have clapt this in his mouth, and played him like a salmon.' At this signal, in poured the mass of soldiers and sailors ; the constables vanished in an instant ; the stewards were driven back upon the ladies ; and such fainting and screaming, and swearing and threatening, and shying of cards, and fixing of time and place for a cool turn in the morning, it had never been my good fortune to witness before or since. c My wig ! ' thought I, 'a precious country, where a man's life may be perilled by the fashion of the covering to his nakedness ! ' Next day, Mr. Fyall, who I afterwards learned was a most estimable man in substantiate, although somewhat eccentric in small matters, called and invited me to accompany him on a cruise amongst some of the estates under his management. This was the very thing I desired ; and three days after- wards I left my kind friends in Kingston, and set forth on my visit to Mr. Fyall, who lived about seven miles from town. The morning was fine as usual, although about noon the clouds, thin and fleecy and transparent at first, but gradually settling down more dense and heavy, began to congregate on the summit of the Liguanea Mountains, which rise about four 203 TOM CRINGLE'S LOG miles distant, to a height of near 5000 feet, in rear of the town. It thundered, too, a little now and then in the same direction, but this was an every- day occurrence in Jamaica at this season ; and as I had only seven miles to go, off I started in a gig of mine host's, with my portmanteau well secured under a tarpaulin, in defiance of all threatening appearances, crowding sail, and urging the noble roan that had me in tow close upon thirteen knots. I had not gone above three miles, however, when the sky in a moment changed from the intense glare of a tropical noontide to the deepest gloom, as if a bad angel had suddenly overshadowed us, and interposed his dark wings between us and the blessed sun ; indeed, so instantaneous was the effect, that it reminded me of the withdrawing of the foot- lights in a theatre. The road now wound round the base of a precipitous spur from the Liguanea Mountains, which, instead of melting into the level country by gradual decreasing un- dulations, shot boldly out nearly a mile from the main range, and so abruptly, that it seemed mor- tised into the plain, like a rugged promontory running into a frozen lake. On looking up along the ridge of this prong, I saw the lowering mass of black clouds gradually spread out, and detach themselves from the summits of the loftier moun- tains, to which they had clung the whole morning, and begin to roll slowly down the hill, seeming to touch the tree tops, while along their lower edges hung a fringe of dark vapour, or rather shreds of cloud in rapid motion, that shifted about, and shot out and shortened like streamers. As yet there was no lightning nor rain, and in the expectation of escaping the shower, as the wind 204 SCENES IN JAMAICA was with me, I made more sail, pushing the horse into a gallop, to the great discomposure of the negro who sat beside me. 'Massa, you can't escape it, you are galloping into it ; don't massa hear de sound of de rain coming along against de wind, and smell de earthy smell of him like one new-made grave ? ' 'The sound of the rain.' In another clime, lono;, long ago, I had often read at my old mother's knee, 'And Elijah said unto Ahab, " There is a sound of abundance of rain, prepare thy chariot, and get thee down, that the rain stop thee not ; " and it came to pass, in the meanwhile, that the heaven was black with clouds and wind, and there was a great rain.' I looked, and so it was ; for in an instant a white sheet of the heaviest rain I had ever seen (if rain it might be called, for it was more like a waterspout) fell from the lower edge of the black cloud, with a strong rushing noise, that increased as it approached to a loud roar like that of a waterfall. As it came along, it seemed to devour the rocks and trees, for they disappeared behind the watery screen the instant it reached them. We saw it ahead of us for more than a mile coming along the road, pre- ceded by a black line from the moistening of the white dust, right in the wind's eye, and with such an even front, that I verily believe it was descend- ing in bucketsful on my horse's head, while as yet not one drop had reached me. At this moment the adjutant-general of the forces, Colonel F , of the Coldstream Guards, in his tandem, drawn by two sprightly blood bays, with his servant, a light boy, mounted Creole fashion on the leader, was coming up in my wake at a spot where the road 205 TOM CRINGLE'S LOG sank into a hollow, and was traversed by a water- course already running knee-deep, although dry as a bone but the minute before. I was now drenched to the skin, the water pour- ing out in cascades from both sides of the vehicle, when, just as I reached the top of the opposite bank, there was a flash of lightning so vivid, accompanied by an explosion so loud and tremendous, that my horse, trembling from stem to stern, stood dead still ; the dusky youth by my side jumped out, and buried his snout in the mud, like a porker in Spain nuzzling for acorns, and I felt more queerish than I would willingly have confessed to. I could have knelt and prayed. The noise of the thunder was a sharp ear-piercing crash, as if the whole vault of heaven had been made of glass, and had been shivered at a blow by the hand of the Almighty. It was, I am sure, twenty seconds before the usual roar and rumbling reverberation of the report from the hills, and among the clouds, was heard. I drove on, and arrived just in time to dress for dinner ; but I did not learn till next day that the flash which paralysed me had struck dead the Colonel's servant and leading horse, as he ascended the bank of the ravine, by this time so much swollen that the body of the lad was washed oft the road into the neighbouring gully, whe-e it was found, when the waters subsided, entirely covered with sand. I found the party congregated in the piazza around Mr. Fyall, who was passing his jokes, without much regard to the feelings of his guests, and exhibiting as great a disregard of the 206 SCENES IN JAMAICA common civilities and courtesies of life as can well be imagined. One of the party was a little red-faced gentleman, Peregrine Whiffle, Esquire, by name, who, in Jamaica parlance, was desig- nated an extraordinary master in Chancery ; the overseer of the pen, or breeding farm, in the great house, as it is called, or mansion-house in which Mr. Fyall resided ; and a merry, laughing, intelli- ligent, round, red -faced man ; he was either Fyall's head clerk, or a sort of first lieutenant ; these personages and myself composed the party. The dinner itself was excellent, although rather of the rough and round order ; the wines and food intrinsically good ; but my appetite was not increased by the exhibition of a deformed, bloated negro child, about ten years old, which Mr. Fyall planted at his elbow, and, by way of practical joke, stuffed to repletion with all kinds of food and strong drink, until the little dingy brute was carried out drunk. The wine circulated freely, and by and by Fyall indulged in some remarkable stories of his youth — for he was the only speaker — which I found some difficulty in swallowing, until at length, on one thumper being tabled, involving an impossi- bility, and utterly indigestible, I involuntarily ex- claimed ' By Jupiter ! ' ' You want any ting, massa ? ' promptly chimed in the black servant at my elbow, a diminutive, kiln-dried old negro. 'No,' said I, rather caught. ' Oh, me tink you call for Jupiter.' I looked in the baboon's face — 'Why, if I did, what then ? ' 'Only me Jupiter, at massa sarvice, dat all.' 207 TOM CRINGLE'S LOG ' You are no great shakes of a Thunderer, eh ? and who is that tall square man standing behind your master's chair ? ' ' Daddy Cupid, massa.' ' And the old woman who is carrying away the dishes in the piazza ? ' 'Mammy Weenus.' ' Daddy Cupid and Mammy Weenus — Shade of Homer ! ' Jupiter, to my surprise, shrunk from my side, as if he had received a blow, and the next moment I could hear him communing with Venus in the piazza. ' For true, dat leetle man-of-war buccra must be Obeah man ; how de debil him come to sabe dat it was stable-boy Homer who broke de candle shade on massa right hand, dat one wid de piece broken out of de edge ? ' and here he pointed towards it with his chin — a negro always points with his chin. I had never slept on shore out of Kingston before ; the night season in the country in dear old England, we all know, is usually one of the deepest stillness — here it was anything but still ; — as the evening closed in, there arose a long humming noise, a compound of the buzzing, and chirping, and whistling, and croaking of number- less reptiles and insects, on the earth, in the air, and in the water. I was awakened out of my first sleep by it, not that the sound was disagreeable, but it was unusual ; and every now and then a beetle, the size of your thumb, would bang in through the open window, cruise round the room with a noise like a humming-top, and then dance a quadrille with half a dozen bats ; while the fire- 208 SCENES IN JAMAICA flies danced like sparks, spangling the folds of the muslin curtains of the bed. The croak of the tree-toad, too, a genteel reptile, with all the usual lovable properties of his species, about the size of the crown of your hat, sounded from the neighbouring swamp like some one snoring in the piazza, blending harmoniously with the nasal concert got up by Jupiter, and some other heathen deities, who were sleeping there almost naked, excepting the head, which every negro swathes during the night with as much flannel and as many handkerchiefs as he can command. By the way, they all slept on their faces — I wonder if this will account for their flat noses. Next morning we started at daylight, cracking along at the rate of twelve knots an hour in a sort of gig, with one horse in the shafts, and another hooked on abreast of him to a sort of studdingsail-boom, or outrigger, and followed by three mounted servants, each with a led horse and two sumpter mules. In the evening we arrived at an estate under Mr. Fyall's management, having passed a party of maroons immediately before. I never saw finer men — tall, strapping fellows, dressed exactly as they should be and the climate requires; wide duck trousers, over these a loose shirt, of duck also, gathered at the waist by a broad leathern belt, through which, on one side, their short cutlass is stuck, while on the other hangs a leathern pouch for ball, and a loose thong across one shoulder supports, on the opposite hip, a large powder-horn and haversack. This, with a straw hat, and a short gun in their hand, with a sling to be used on a march, completes their equipment — in better vol. i. 209 o TOM CRINGLE'S LOG keeping with the climate than the padded coats, heavy caps, tight cross-belts, and ponderous muskets of our regulars. As we drove up to the door, the overseer began to bawl, c Boys, boys ! ' and kept blowing a dog-call. All servants in the country in the West Indies, be they as old as Me- thuselah, are called boys. In the present instance, half a dozen black fellows forthwith appeared to take our luggage, and attend on 'massa' in other respects. The great man was as austere to the poor overseer as if he had been guilty of some misdemeanour, and after a few short crabbed words, desired him to get supper, ' do you hear ? ' The meat consisted of plantation fare — salted fish, plantains and yams, and a piece of goat mutton. Another 'observe,' — a South-Down mutton, after sojourning a year or two here, does not become a goat exactly, but he changes his heavy warm fleece, and wears long hair ; and his progeny after him, if bred on the hot plains, never assume the wool again. Mr. Fyall and I sat down, and then in walked four mutes, stout young fellows, not over-well dressed, and with faces burnt to the colour of brickdust. They were the bookkeepers, so called because they never see a book, their province being to attend the negroes in the field, and to superintend the manufacture of sugar and rum in the boiling and distilling-houses. One of them, the head bookkeeper, as he was called, appeared literally roasted by the intensity of the sun's rays. 4 How is Baldy Steer ? ' said the overseer to this person. 210 SCENES IN JAMAICA * Better to-day, sir, — I drenched him with train- oil and sulphur.' 'The devil you did,' thought I — 'alas! for Baldy.' 'And Mary, and Caroline, and the rest of that lot?' ' Are sent to Perkins Red Rover, sir ; but I believe some of them are in calf already by Bull- finch — and I have cut Peter for the lampas.' The knife and fork dropped from my hands. ' What can all this mean ? is this their boasted kindness to their slaves ? One of a family drenched with train oil and brimstone, another cut for some horrible complaint never heard of before, called lampas, and the females sent to the Red Rover, some being in calf already ! ' But I soon preceived that the baked man was the cowboy or shepherd of the estate, making his report of the casualties among his bullocks, mules, and heifers. 'Juliet Ridge will not yield, sir,' quoth another. ' Who is this next ? a stubborn concern she must be ? ' ' The liquor is very poor.' Here he helped himself to rum and water, the rum coming up about an inch in the glass, regular half and half, fit to float a marlingspike. ' It is more than yours is,' thought I ; and I again stared in wonderment, until I perceived he spoke of the juice of a cane patch. At this time a tall, lathy gentleman came in, wearing a most original cut coatee. He was a most extraordinary built man ; he had absolutely no body, his bottom being placed between his shoulders ; but what was wanted in corpus was 211 TOM CRINGLE'S LOG made up in legs ; indeed, he looked like a pair of compasses, buttoned together at the shoulders, and supporting a yellow phiz half a yard long, thatched with a fell of sandy hair, falling down lank and greasy on each side of his face. Fyall called him Buckskin, which, with some other circumstances, made me guess that he was neither more nor less than an American smuggler. After supper, a glass of punch was filled for each person ; the overseer gave a rap on the table with his knuckles, and oft started the bookkeepers like shots out of shovels, leaving the Yankee, Mr. Fyall, the overseer, and myself, at table. I was very tired, and reckoned on going to bed now — but no such thing ; Fyall ordered Jupiter to bring a case from his gig-box, containing some capital brandy. A new brewage of punch took place, and I found about the small hours that we were all verging fast towards drunkenness, or some- thing very like that same. The Yankee was specially plied by Fyall, evidently with an object, and he soon succeeded in making him helplessly drunk. The fun now ' grew fast and furious,' — a large wash-tub was ordered in, placed under a beam at the corner of the room, and filled with water ; a sack and a three-inch rope were then called for, and promply produced by the blackies, who, apparently accustomed to Fyall's pranks, grinned with delight. — Buckskin was thrust into the sack, feet foremost ; the mouth of it was then gathered round his throat with a string, and I was set to splice a bight in the rope, so as to fit under his arms without running, which might have choked him. All things being prepared, the slack end was 212 SCENES IN JAMAICA thrown over the beam. He was soused in the tub, the word was given to hoist away, and we ran him up to the roof, and then belayed the rope round the body of the overseer, who was able to sit on his chair, and that was all. The cold bath, and the being hung up to dry, speedily sobered the American, but his arms being within the sack, he could do nothing for his own emancipation : he kept swearing, however, and entreating, and dancing with rage, every jerk drawing the cord tighter round the waist of the overseer, who, unaware of his situation, thought himself bewitched as he was drawn with violence by starts along the floor, with the chair as it were glued to him. At length the patient extricated one of his arms, and laying hold of the beam above him, drew himself up, and then letting go his hold suddenly, fairly lifted the drunken overseer, chair and all, several feet from the ground, so as to bring him on a level with himself, and then, in mid-air, began to pummel his counterpoise with right good-will. At length, fearful of the consequences from the fury into which the man had worked him- self, Fyall and I dashed out the candles, and fled to our rooms, where, after barricading the doors, we shouted to the servants to let the gentle- men down. The next morning had been fixed for duck- shooting, and the overseer and I were creeping along amongst the mangrove bushes on the shore to get a shot at some teal, when we saw our friend, the pair of compasses, crossing the small bay in his boat, towards his little pilot-boat-built schooner, which was moored in a small creek opposite, the brushwood concealing everything but her masts. 213 ' TOM CRINGLE'S LOG My companion, as wild an Irishman as I ever knew, hailed him. 'Hillo,Obediah — Buckskin — you Yankee rascal, heave-to. Come ashore here — come ashore.' Obed, smoking his pipe, deliberately uncoiled himself — I thought as he rose there was to be no end of him — and stood upright in the boat like an ill-rigged jurymast. c / say, Master Turn mas, you ben't no friend of mine, I guess, a'ter last night's work ; you hears how I coughs ? ' and he began to wheezle and crow in a most remarkable fashion. ' Never mind,' rejoined the overseer ; c if you go round that point, and put up the ducks — by the piper, but I '11 fire at you ! ' Obed neighed like a horse expecting his oats, which was meant as a laugh of derision. c Do you think your birding-piece can touch me here away, Master Tummas ? ' And again he nickered more loudly than before. ' Don't provoke me to try, you yellow snake, you ! ' 4 Try, and be d d, and there 's a mark for thee,' unveiling a certain part of his body. The overseer, or busha^ to give him his Jamaica name, looked at me and smiled, then coolly lifted his long Spanish barrel and fired. Down dropped the smuggler, and ashore came the boat. ' I am mortally wounded, Master Tummas,' quoth Obed ; and I was confoundedly frightened at first, from the unusual proximity of the injured part to his head ; but the overseer, as soon as he could get off the ground, where he had thrown himself in an uncontrollable fit of laughter, had the man stripped and laid across a log, where he 214 SCENES IN JAMAICA set his servant to pick out the pellets with a pen- knife. Next night I was awakened out of my first sleep by a peculiar sort of tap, tap, on the floor, as if a cat with walnut shells had been moving about the room. The feline race, in all its varieties, is my detestation, so I slipped out of bed to expel the intruder ; but the instant my toe touched the ground, it was seized as if by a smith's forceps. I drew it into bed, but the annoyance followed it ; and in an agony of alarm and pain I thrust my hand down, when my thumb was instantly manacled to the other suffering member. I now lost my wits altogether, and roared murder, which brought a ser- vant in with a light, and there I was, thumb and toe, in the clinch of a land-crab. I had been exceedingly struck with the beauty of the negro villages on the old-settled estates, which are usually situated in the most picturesque spots, and I determined to visit the one which lay on a sunny bank full in view from my window, divided on two sides from the cane pieces by a pre- cipitous ravine, and on the other two by a high logwood hedge, so like hawthorn that I could scarcely tell the difference, even when close to it. At a distance it had the appearance of one entire orchard of fruit-trees, where were mingled together the pyramidal orange, in fruit and in flower, the former in all its stages, from green to dropping ripe, — the citron, lemon, and lime-trees, the stately, glossy-leaved star-apple, the golden shaddock and grape-fruit, with their slender branches bending under their ponderous yellow fruit, — the cashew, with its apple like those of the cities of the plain, fair to look at, but acrid to the 215 TOM CRINGLE'S LOG taste, to which the far-famed nut is appended like a bud, — the avocada, with its Brobdingnag pear, as large as a purser's lantern, — the bread-fruit, with a leaf, one of which would have covered Adam like a bishop's apron, and a fruit for all the world in size and shape like a blackamoor's head ; while for underwood you had the green, fresh, dew-spangled plantain, round which, in the hottest day, there is always a halo of coolness, — the coco root, the yam and granadillo, with their long vines twining up the neighbouring trees and shrubs like hop-tendrils, — and peas and beans, in all their endless variety of blossom and of odour, from the Lima bean, with a stalk as thick as my arm, to the mouse pea, three inches high, — the pine-apple, literally growing in, and constituting, with its prickly leaves, part of the hedgerows, — the custard-apple, like russet bags of cold pudding, — the cocoa and coffee bushes, and the devil knows what all that is delightful in nature besides ; while aloft, the tall, graceful cocoa-nut, the majestic palm, and the gigantic wild cotton-tree, shot up here and there like minarets far above the rest, high into the blue heavens. I entered one of the narrow winding footpaths, where an immense variety of convolvuli crept along the penguin fences, disclosing their delicate flowers in the morning freshness (all that class here shut shop at noon), and passion-flowers of all sizes, from a soup-plate to a thumb-ring. The huts were substantially thatched with palm leaves, and the walls woven with a basket-work of twigs, plastered over with clay, and whitewashed ; the floors were of baked clay, dry and comfortable. They all consisted of a hall and a sleeping-room off each side of it : in many of the former I noticed 216 SCENES IN JAMAICA mahogany sideboards and chairs, and glass decanters, while a whole lot of African drums and flutes, and sometimes a good gun, hung from the rafters ; and it would have gladdened an Irishman's heart to have seen the adjoining piggeries. Before one of the houses an old woman was taking care of a dozen black infants, little, naked, glossy, black guinea- pigs, with party-coloured beads tied round their loins, each squatted like a little Indian pagod in the middle of a large wooden bowl, to keep it off the damp ground. While I was pursuing my ramble, a large conch- shell was blown at the overseer's house, and the different gangs turned in to dinner j they came along, dancing and shouting, and playing tricks on each other in the little paths, in all the happy anticipation of a good dinner, and an hour and a half to eat it in, the men well clad in Osnaburg frocks and trousers, and the women in baize petti- coats and Osnaburg shifts, with a neat printed calico short-gown over all. 4 And these are slaves,' thought I, ' and this is West Indian bondage ! Oh that some of my well- meaning anti-slavery friends were here, to judge from the evidence of their own senses ! ' The following night there was to be a grand play or wake in the negro houses, over the head cooper, who had died in the morning, and I deter- mined to be present at it, although the overseer tried to dissuade me, saying that no white person ever broke in on these orgies ; that the negroes were very averse to their doing so ; and that neither he nor any of the white people on the estate had ever been present on such an occasion. This very interdict excited my curiosity still more ; so I rose about 217 TOM CRINGLE'S LOG midnight, and let myself gently down through the window, and shaped my course in the direction of the negro houses, guided by a loud drumming, which, as I came nearer, every now and then sunk into a low murmuring roll, when a strong bass voice would burst forth into a wild recitative ; to which succeeded a loud piercing chorus of female voices, during which the drums were beaten with great vehemence ; this was succeeded by another solo, and so on. There was no moon, and I had to thread my way along one of the winding foot- paths by starlight. When I arrived within a stone- cast of the hut before which the play was being held, I left the beaten track, and crept onwards, until I gained the shelter of the stem of a wild cotton-tree, behind which I skulked unseen. The scene was wild enough. Before the door a circle was formed by about twenty women, all in their best clothes, sitting on the ground and sway- ing their bodies to and fro, while they sung in chorus the wild dirge already mentioned, the words of which I could not make out ; in the centre of the circle sat four men playing on gumbies, or the long drum formerly described, while a fifth stood behind them, with a conch-shell, which he kept sounding at intervals. Other three negroes kept circling round the outer verge of the circle of women, naked all to their waist-cloths, spinning about and about with their hands above their heads, like so many dancing dervishes. It was one of these three that from time to time took up the recitative, the female chorus breaking in after each line. Close to the drummers lay the body in an open coffin, supported on two low stools or trestles ; a piece of flaming resinous wood was 218 ' SCENES IN JAMAICA stuck in the ground at the head, and another at the feet ; and a lump of kneaded clay, in which another torchlike splinter was fixed, rested on the breast. An old man, naked like the solo singer, was digging; a grave close to where the body lay. The follow- ing was the chant : — ' I say, broder, you can't go yet.' THEN THE CHORUS OF FEMALE VOICES. 'When de morning star rise, den we put you in a hole.' CHORUS AGAIN. ' Den you go in a Africa, you see Fetish dere.' CHORUS. ' You shall nyam goat dere ? wid all your family.' CHORUS. ' Buccra can't come dere ; say, dam rascal, why you no work ? ' CHORUS. ' Buccra can't catch Duppy, 1 no, no.' CHORUS. Three calabashes, or gourds, with pork, yams, and rum, were placed on a small bench that stood close to the head of the bier, and at right angles to it. In a little while, the women, singing-men, and drummers, suddenly gave a loud shout, or rather yell, clapped their hands three times, and then rushed into the surrounding cottages, leaving the old grave-digger alone with the body. He had completed the grave, and had squatted himself on his hams beside the coffin, swinging his body as the women had done, and uttering a low moaning sound, frequently ending in a loud peck, like that of a paviour when he brings down his rammer. I noticed he kept looking towards the east, 1 Duppy, Ghost. 219 TOM CRINGLE'S LOG watching, as I conjectured, the first appearance of the morning star, but it was as yet too early. He lifted the gourd with the pork, and took a large mouthful. 4 How is dis ? I can't put dis meat in Ouacco's coffin, dere is salt in de pork ; Duppy can't bear salt,' another large mouthful — ' Duppy hate salt too much,' — here he ate it all up, and placed the empty gourd in the coffin. He then took up the one with boiled yam in it, and tasted it also. ' Salt here too — who de debil do such a ting ? — must not let Duppy taste dat.' He discussed this also, placing the empty vessel in the coffin, as he had done with the other. He then came to the calabash with the rum. There is no salt here, thought I. ' Rum ! ah, Duppy love rum — if it be well strong, let me see — Massa Niger, who put water in dis rum, eh ? Duppy will never touch dat' — a long pull — ' no, no, never touch dat.' Here he finished the whole, and placed the empty vessel beside the others ; then gradually sank back on his hams with his mouth open, and his eyes starting from the sockets, as he peered up into the tree, ap- parently at some terrible object. I looked up also, and saw a large yellow snake, nearly ten feet long, let itself gradually down directly over the coffin, between me and the bright glare (the outline of its glossy mottled skin glancing in the strong light, which gave its dark opaque body the appearance of being edged with flame, and its glittering tongue that of a red-hot wire), with its tail round a limb of the cotton-tree, until its head reached within an inch of the dead man's face, which it licked with its long forked tongue, uttering a loud hissing noise. 220 SCENES IN JAMAICA I was fascinated with terror, and could not move a muscle ; at length the creature slowly swung itself up again, and disappeared amongst the branches. Ouashie gained courage, as the rum began to operate, and the snake to disappear. c Come to catch Quacco's Duppy, before him get to Africa, sure as can be. De Metody parson say de debil old sarpant — dat must be old sarpant, for I never see so big one, so it must be de debil.' He caught a glimpse of my face at this moment; it seemed that I had no powers of fascination like the snake, for he roared out, ' Murder, murder, de debil, de debil, first like a sarpant, den like him- self; see him white face behind de tree ; see him white face behind de tree ; ' and then, in the ex- tremity of his fear, he popped head foremost into the grave, leaving his quivering legs and feet sticking upwards, as if he had been planted by the head, like a forked parsnip reversed. At this uproar, a number of negroes ran out of the nearest houses, and, to my surprise, four white seamen appeared suddenly amongst them, who, the moment they got sight of my uniform, as I ran away, gave chase, and having overtaken me, as I stumbled in the dark path, immediately pinioned me. They were all armed, and I had no doubt were part of the crew of the smuggling schooner, and that they had a depot amongst the negro houses. c Yo ho, my hearty, heave-to, or here goes with a brace of bullets.' I told them who I was, and that curiosity alone brought me there. 1 Gammon, tell that to the marines ; you 're a 221 TOM CRINGLE'S LOG spy, messmate, and on board you go with us, so sure as I be Paul Brandywine.' Here was a change with a vengeance. An hour before I was surrounded by friends, and resting comfortably in my warm bed, and now I was a prisoner to a set of brigands, who were smugglers at the best, and what might they not be at the worst ? I had no chance of escape by any sudden effort of strength or activity, for a piece of a hand- spike had been thrust across my back, passing under both of my arms, which were tightly lashed to it, as if I had been trussed for roasting, so that I could no more run with a chance of escape than a goose without her pinions. After we left the negro houses, I perceived with some surprise that my captors kept the beaten track, leading directly to and past the overseer's dwelling. ' Come, here is a chance, at all events,' argued I to myself. ' If I get within hail, I will alarm the lieges, if a deuced good pipe don't fail me.' This determination had scarcely been formed in my mind, when, as if my very thoughts had been audible, the smuggler next me on the right hand drew a pistol, and held it close to my starboard ear. c Friend, if you tries to raise the house, or speaks to any niger, or other person we meets, I'll walk through your skull with two ounces of lead.' 'You are particularly obliging,' said Ij 'but what do you promise yourselves by carrying me oft? Were you to murder me, you would be none the richer ; for I have no valuables about me, as you may easily ascertain by searching me.' ' And do you think that freeborn Americans 222 SCENES IN JAMAICA like we have kidnapped you for your dirty rings, and watch, and mayhap a few dollars, which I takes you to mean by your "waluboles," as you calls them ? ' 1 Why, then, what in the devil's name, have you kidnapped me for ? ' And I began to feel my choler overpowering my discretion, when Mr. Paul Brandywine, who I now suspected to be the mate of the smuggler, took the small liberty of jerking the lanyard that had been made fast to the middle of the handspike, so violently, that I thought both my shoulders were dislocated ; for I was fairly checked down on my back, just as you may have seen a pig-merchant on the Fermoy road bring an uproarious boar to his marrowbones ; while the man who had previously threatened to blow my brains out knelt beside me, and civilly insinuated that 'if I was tired of my life, he calculated I had better speak as loud again.' There was no jest in all this ; so I had nothing for it but to walk silently along with my escort, after having gathered myself up as well as I could. We crept so close under the windows of the over- seer's house, where we picked up a lot of empty ankers, slung on a long pole, that I fancied I heard, or really did Hear, some one snore — oh, how I envied the sleeper ! At length we reached the beach, where we found two men lying on their oars, in what, so far as I could distinguish, appeared to be a sharp swift-looking whale-boat, which they kept close to, with her head seaward, however, to be ready for a start should anything suspicious appear near to them. The boat-keeper hailed promptly, 'Who goes there ? ' as they feathered their oars. 223 TOM CRINGLE'S LOG c The tidy little WaveJ was the answer. No more words passed ; and the men, who had in the first instance pulled a stroke or two to give the boat way, now backed water and tailed her on to the beach, when we all stepped on board. Two of my captors now took each an oar ; we shoved off, and glanced away through the darkness, along the smooth surface of the sparkling sea, until we reached the schooner, by this time hauled out into the fairway at the mouth of the cove, where she lay hove short, with her mainsail hoisted up, riding to the land-wind, and apparently all ready to cant and be off the moment the boat returned. As we came alongside, the captain of her, my friend Obediah, as I had no difficulty in guessing, from his very out-of-the-way configuration, dark as it was, called out, c I says, Paul, who have you got into the starn-sheets there ? ' 1 A bloody spy, captain ; he who was with the overseer when he peppered your sheathing t 'other morning.' 4 Oho, bring him on board — bring him on board. I knows there be a man-of-war schooner close aboard of the island somewheres hereabouts. I sees through it all, smash my eyes ! — I sees through it. But what kept you; Paul ? Don't you see the morning star has risen ? ' By this time I stood on the deck of the little vessel, which was not above two feet out of the water ; and Obediah, as he spoke, pointed to the small dark pit of a companion, for there was no light below, nor indeed anywhere on board except in the binnacle, and that carefully masked, indicat- ing, by his threatening manner, that I was to get below as speedily as possible. 224 THE CHASE OF THE SMUGGLER C Don't you see the morning star, sir ? Why, the sun will be up in an hour, I calculate, and then the sea-breeze will be down on us before we get anything of an offing.' The mention of the morning star recalled vividly to my recollection the scene I had so recently witnessed at the negro wake ; it seemed there was another person beside poor Quacco, likely to be crammed into a hole before the day broke, and to be carried to Africa too, for what I knew; but one must needs go when the devil drives, so I slipped down into the cabin, and the schooner, having weighed, made sail to the northward. CHAPTER VIII THE CHASE OF THE SMUGGLER ' Would I were in an alehouse in London ! 1 would give all my fame for a pot of ale and safety.' — King Henry V. The crib in which I was confined was as dark as pitch, and as I soon found, as hot as the Black-hole in Calcutta. I don't pretend to be braver than my neighbours, but I would pluck any man by the beard who called me coward. In my small way I had in my time faced death in various shapes ; but it had always been above board, with the open heaven overhead, and generally I had a goodly fellowship in danger, and the eyes of others were upon me. No wonder, then, that the sinking of the heart within me, which I now experienced for the first time, was bitter exceedingly, and grievous to be borne. Cooped up in a small suffocating vol. i. 225 P TOM CRINGLE'S LOG cabin, scarcely eight feet square, and not above five feet high, with the certainty of being mur- dered, as I conceived, were I to try to force my way on deck ; and the knowledge that all my earthly prospects, all my dreams of promotion, were likely to be blasted, and for ever ruined by my sudden spiriting away, not to take into the heavy tale the misery which my poor mother and my friends must suffer, when they came to know it — and ' Who will tell this to thee, Mary ? ' rose to my throat, but could get no further for a cursed bump that was like to throttle me. Why should I blush to own it — when the gipsy, after all, jinked an old rich goutified coffee-planter at the eleventh hour, and married me, and is now the mother of half a dozen little Cringles or so ? However, I made a strong effort to bear my misfortunes like a man, and, folding my arms, I sat down on a chest to abide my fate, whatever that might be, with as much composure as I could command, when half a dozen cockroaches flew flicker-flicker against my face. For the information of those who have never seen this delicious insect, I take leave to mention here that, when full-grown, it is a large, dingy, brown-coloured beetle, about two inches long, with six legs, and two feelers as long as its body. It has a strong, anti-hysterical flavour, something between rotten cheese and assafoetida, and seldom stirs abroad when the sun is up, but lies concealed in the most obscure and obscene crevices it can creep into ; so that, when it is seen, its wings and body are thickly covered with dust and dirt of various shades, which any culprit who chances to fall asleep with his mouth open is sure to reap the 226 THE CHASE OF THE SMUGGLER benefit of, as it has a great propensity to walk into it, partly for the sake of the crumbs adhering to the masticators, and also, apparently, with a scien- tific desire to inspect, by accurate admeasurement with the aforesaid antennae, the state and condition of the whole potato-trap. At the same time I felt something gnawing the toe of my boot, which I inferred to be a rat — another agreeable customer for which I had a special abhorrence ; but as for beetles of all kinds, from my boyhood up, they had been an abomina- tion unto me, and a cockroach is the most abomin- able of all beetles ; so between the two I was speedily roused from my state of supine, or rather dogged endurance ; and, forgetting the geography of my position, I sprang to my feet, whereby I nearly fractured my skull against the low deck above. I first tried the skylight — it was battened down ; then the companion hatch — it was locked ; but the ladder leading up to it being cooler than the noisome vapour bath I had left, I remained standing in it, trying to catch a mouthful of fresh air through the joints of the door. All this while we had been slipping along shore, with the land- wind on our beam, at the rate of five or six knots, but so gently and silently that I could distinctly hear the roar of the surf, as the long smooth swell broke on the beach, which, from the loudness of the noise, could not be above a mile to wind- ward of us. I perceived, at the same time, that the schooner, although going free, did not keep away, nor take all the advantage of the land-wind to make his easting, before the sea-breeze set down, that he might have done, so that it was evident that he did not intend to beat up, so as to fetch the 227 TOM CRINGLE'S LOG Crooked Island Passage, which would have been his course, had he been bound for the States ; but was standing over to the Cuba shore, at that time swarming with pirates. It was now good daylight, and the terral gradually died away, and left us rolling gunwale under, as we rose and fell on the long seas, with our sails flapping, bulkheads creaking and scream- ing, and mainboom jig-jigging, as if it would have torn everything to pieces. I could hear my friend Obed walking the deck, and whistling manfully for the sea-breeze, exclaiming from time to time in his barbarous lingo, 'Souffle, souffle, San Antonio.' But the saint had no bowels, and there we lay roasting until near ten o'clock in the fore- noon. During all this period Obed, who was shortsighted, kept desiring his right arm, Paul Brandywine, to keep a bright look-out for the sea- breeze to windward, or rather to the eastward, for there was no wind — c because he knowed it often- times tumbled down right sudden and dangerous at this season about the corner of the island here- abouts ; and the pride of the morning often brought a shower with it, fit to level a maize-plat smooth as his hand.' ' No black clouds to windward yet, Paul ? ' Paul could see nothing, and the question was repeated three or four times. ' There is a small black cloud about the size of my hand to windward, sir, right in the wake of the sun, just now, but it won't come to anything ; I sees no signs of any wind.' ' And Elijah said to his servant, Go up now, and look towards the sea ; and he went up, and looked, and said, There is nothing. And he said, 228 THE CHASE OF THE SMUGGLER Go again seven times ; and it came to pass the seventh time, that he said, Behold, there ariseth a little cloud out of the sea, like a man's hand.' I knew what this foreboded, which, as I thought, was more than friend Obed did ; for he shortened no sail, and kept all his kites abroad, for no use as it struck me, unless he wished to wear them out by flapping against the masts. He was indeed a strange mixture of skill and carelessness ; but, when fairly stirred up, one of the most daring and expert and self-possessed seamen I had ever seen, as I very soon had an ugly opportunity of ascertaining. The cloud on the horizon continued to rise rapidly, spreading over the whole eastern sky, and the morning began to lower very ominously ; but there was no sudden squall, the first of the breeze coming down as usual in cats'-paws, and freshen- ing gradually ; nor did I expect there would be, although I was certain it would soon blow a merry capful of wind, which might take in some of the schooner's small sails, and pretty considerably bother us, unless we could better our ofHng speedily, for it blew right on shore, which, by the setting in of the sea-breeze, was now close under our lee. At length the sniffler reached us, and the sharp little vessel began to speak, as the rushing sound through the water is called ; while the wind sang like an iEolian harp through the taut weather- rigging. Presently I heard the word given to take in the two gaff-topsails and flying jib, which was scarcely done when the moaning sound roughened into a roar, and the little vessel began to yerk at the head seas, as if she would have cut through them, in place of rising to them, and to lie over, as 229 TOM CRINGLE'S LOG if Davy Jones himself had clapperclawed the mast- heads, and was in the act of using them as levers to capsize her; while the sails were tugging at her, as if they would have torn the spars out of her, so that I expected every moment, either that she would turn over, keel up, or that the masts would snap short off by the deck. All this, which I would without the smallest feeling of dread, on the contrary with exhilaration, have faced cheerily on deck in the course of duty, proved at the time, under my circumstances, most alarming and painful to me ; a fair-strae death out of the maintop, or off the weather yard-arm, would to my imagination have been an easy exit compara- tively ; but to be choked in this abominable hole, and drowned darkling like a blind puppy — the very thought made me frantic, and I shouted and tumbled about, until I missed my footing and fell backwards down the ladder, from the bottom of which I scuttled away to the leeside of the cabin, quiet, through absolute despair and exhaustion from the heat and closeness. I had remarked that from the time the breeze freshened the everlasting Yankee drawling of the crew, and the endless confabulation of the captain and "his mate, had entirely ceased, and nothing was now heard on deck but the angry voice of the raging elements, and at intervals a shrill piercing word or two from Obed, in the altered tone of which I had some difficulty in recognising his pipe, which rose clear and distinct above the roar of the sea and wind, and was always answered by a prompt, sharp, ' Ay, ay, sir,' from the men. There was no circumlocution, nor calculating, nor guess- ing now, but all hands seemed to be doing their 230 THE CHASE OF THE SMUGGLER duty energetically and well. ' Come, the vaga- bonds are sailors after all, we shan't be swamped this turn ; ' and I resumed my place on the com- panion ladder with more ease of mind, and a vast deal more composure, than when I was pitched from it when the squall came on. In a moment after I could hear the Captain sing out, loud even above the howling of the wind and rushing of the water. c There it comes at last — put your helm hard-a-port— down with it, Paul, down with it, man — luff, and shake the wind out of her sails, or over she goes, clean and for ever.' Everything was jammed, nothing could be let go, nor was there an axe at hand to make short work with the sheets and halyards ; and for a second or two I thought it was all over,the water rushing half-way up her decks, and bubbling into the companion through the crevices ; but at length the lively little craft came gaily to the wind, shaking her plumage like a wild duck ; the sails were got in, all to the fore- sail, which was set with the bonnet off, and then she lay-to, like a sea-gull, without shipping a drop of water. In the comparative stillness I could now distinctly hear every word that was said on deck. 1 Pretty near it ; rather close shaving that same, captain,' quoth Paul, with a congratulatory chuckle; 'but I say, sir, what is that wreath of smoke rising from Annotta Bay over the headland ? ' ' Why, how should I know, Paul ? Negroes burning brush, I guess.' 4 The smoke from brushwood never rose and flew over the bluff with that swirl, I calculate ; it is a gun, or I mistake.' And he stepped to the companion for the purpose, as I conceived, of taking out the spy- 231 TOM CRINGLES LOG glass, which usually hangs there in brackets fitted to hold it : he undid the hatch and pushed it back, when I popped my head out, to the no small dismay of the mate ; but Obed was up to me, and while with one hand he seized the glass, he ran the sliding top sharp up against my neck, till he pinned me into a kind of pillory, to my great annoyance ; so I had to bcff to be released, and once more slunk back into my hole. There was a long pause ; at length Paul, to whom the skipper had handed the spy-glass, spoke. ' A schooner, sir, is rounding the point.' As I afterwards learned, the negroes who had witnessed my capture, especially the old man who had taken me for his infernal majesty, had raised the alarm, so soon as they could venture down to the overseer's house, which was on the smuggling boat shoving off, and Mr. Fyall immediately despatched an express to the lieutenant commanding the Gleam, then lying in Annotta Bay, about ten miles distant, when she instantly slipped and shoved out. 'Well, I can't help it if there be,' rejoined the captain. Another pause. 'Why, I don't like her, sir; she looks like a man-of-war — and that must have been the smoke of the gun she fired on weighing.' ' Eh ? ' sharply answered Obed, 'if it be, it will be a hanging matter if we are caught with this young splice on board ; he may belong to her, for what I know. Look again, Paul.' A long, long look. ' A man-of-war schooner, sure enough, sir ; I can see her ensign and pennant, now that she is clear of the land.' 232 THE CHASE OF THE SMUGGLER c Oh Lord, oh Lord ! ' cried Obed, in great perplexity, * what shall we do ? ' ' Why, pull foot, captain,' promptly replied Paul ; ' the breeze has lulled, and in light winds she will have no chance with the tidy little Wave? I could now perceive that the smugglers made all sail, and I heard the frequent swish-swish of the water, as they threw bucketsful on the sails, to thicken them and make them hold more wind, while we edged away, keeping as close to the wind, however, as we could, without stopping her way. 'Starboard,' quoth Obed — c rap full, Jem — let her walk through it, my boy — there, main and foresail, flat as boards ; why, she will stand the main-gaff-topsail yet — set it, Paul, set it ; ' and his heart warmed as he gained confidence in the qualifications of his vessel. 'Come, weather me now, see how she trips it along — pooh, I was an ass to quail, wan't I, Paul ? ' c No chance now,' thought I, as I descended once more ; ' I may as well go and be suffocated at once.' I knocked my foot against something, in stepping off the ladder, which, on putting down my hand, I found to be a tinder-box, with steel and flint. I had formerly ascertained there was a candle in the cabin, on the small table, stuck into a bottle ; so I immediately struck a light, and as I knew that meekness and solicitation, having been tried in vain, would not serve me, I determined to go on the other tack, and to see how far an assumption of coolness and self-possession, or, it might be, a dash of bravado, whether true or feigned, might not at least ensure me some con- sideration and better treatment from the lawless gang into whose hands I had fallen. 2 33 TOM CRINGLE'S LOG So I set to and ransacked the lockers, where, amongst a vast variety of miscellaneous matters, I was not long in finding a bottle of very tolerable rum, some salt junk, some biscuit, and a goglet or porous earthen jar of water, with some capital cigars. By this time I was like to faint with the heat and smell ; so I filled a tumbler with good half-and-half, and swigged it off*. The effect was speedy ; I thought I could eat a bit, so I attacked the salt junk and made a hearty meal, after which I replenished my tumbler, lighted a cigar, pulled off my coat and waistcoat, and, with a sort of desper- ate glee, struck up, at the top of my pipe, ' Ye Mariners of England.' My joviality was soon noticed on deck. ' Eh, what be that ? 'quoth Obed, — ' that be none of our ditties, I guess ? who is singing below there ? ' ' We be all on deck, sir,' responded Paul. ' It can't be the spy, eh ? — sure enough it must be he, and no one else ; the heat and choke must have made him mad.' 'We shall soon see,' said Paul, as he removed the skylight, and looked down into the cabin. Obed looked over his shoulder, peering at me with his little short-sighted pig's eyes, into which, in my pot-valiancy, I immediately chucked half a tumbler of very strong grog, and under cover of it attempted to bolt through the scuttle, and thereby gain the deck ; but Paul, with his shouluer-of- mutton fist, gave me a very unceremonious rebuff, and down I dropped again. 'You makes yourself at home, I sees, and be hanged to you,' said Obed, laying the emphasis on the last word, pronouncing it ' yoo — oo' in two syllables. 234 THE CHASE OF THE SMUGGLER ' I do, indeed, and be d d to yoo — oo,' I re- plied ; c and why should I not ? the visit was not volunteered, you know ; so come down you long- legged Yankee smuggling scoundrel, or I '11 blow your bloody buccaneering craft out of the water like the peel of an onion. You see I have got the magazine scuttle up, and there are the barrels of powder, and here is the candle, so ' Obed laughed like the beginning of the bray of the jackass before he swings off into his ' heehaw, heehaw.' — 'Smash my eyes, man, but them barrels be full of pimento, all but that one with the red mark, and that be crackers fresh and sharp from the Brandywine mills.' 'Well, well, gunpowder or pimento, I '11 set fire to it if you don't be civil.' ' Why, I will be civil ; you are a curious chap, a brave slip, to carry it so, with no friend near ; so, civil I will be.' He unlocked the companion hatch, and came down to the cabin, doubling his long limbs up like foot-rules, to suit the low roof. 'Free and easy, my man,' continued the captain, as he entered. ' Well, I forgive you — we are quits now — and if we were not beyond the Island Craft, I would put you ashore, but I can't stand back now.' ' Why, may I ask ? ' ' Simply, because one of your men-of-war schooners ain't more than hull down astarn of me at this moment ; she is working up in shore, and has not chased me as yet ; indeed, she may save herself the trouble, for ne'er a schooner in your blasted service has any chance with the tidy little Wave? I was by no means sure of this. 235 TOM CRINGLE'S LOG c Well, Master Obediah, it may turn up as you say — and in a light wind, I know you will either sail or sweep away from any one of them j but, to be on the square with you, if it comes on to blow, that same hooker, which I take to be his Britannic Majesty's schooner Gleam, will, from his greater beam and superior length, outcarry and forereach on you — ay, and weather on you too, hand over hand ; so this is my compact — if he nails you, you will require a friend at court, and I will stand that friend; if you escape — and I will not interfere either by advice or otherwise, either to get you taken or to get you clear — will you promise to put me on board of the first English merchant vessel we fall in with, or, at the longest, to land me at St. Jago de Cuba, and I will promise you, on my honour, notwithstanding all that has been said or done, that I will never hereafter inform against you, or in any way get you into trouble if I can help it. Is it done? Will you give me your hand upon it?' Obed did not hesitate a moment ; he clenched my hand, and squeezed it till the blood nearly spouted from my finger-ends ; one might conceive of Norwegian bears greeting each other after this fashion, but I trust no Christian will ever, in time coming, subject my digits to a similar species of torture. ' Agreed, my boy ; I have promised, and you may depend on me, smuggler though I be, and somewhat worse on occasion mayhap, I never breaks my word.' There was an earnestness about the poor fellow, in which I thought there could be no deception, and from that moment we were on what I may call a very friendly footing for a prisoner and his jailer. 236 THE CHASE OF THE SMUGGLER c Well, now, I believe you, so let us have a glass of grog, and ' Here the mate sang out, ' Captain, come on deck, if you please ; quickly, sir, quickly.' Bv this time it had begun to breeze up again, and as the wind rose, I could see the spirits of the crew fell, as if conscious they had no chance if it freshened. When we went on deck, Paul was still peering through the telescope. ' The schooner has tacked, sir.' A dead silence ; then giving the glass a swing, and driving the joints into each other with such vehemence as if he would have broken them in pieces, he ex- claimed, ' She is after us, so sure as I ben't a niger.' c No ! is she, though ? ' eagerly inquired the Captain, as he at length seized the spy-glass, twisting and turning it about and about, as he tried to hit his own very peculiar focus. At length he took a long, breathless look, while the eyes of the whole crew, some fifteen hands or so, were riveted upon him with the most intense anxiety. 4 What a gaff-topsail she has got--my eye ! — and a ringtail with more cloths in it than our squaresail — and the breeze comes down stronger and stronger ! ' All this while I looked out equally excited, but with a very different interest. 'Come, this will do,' thought I, ' she is after us ; and if old Dick Gasket brings that fiery sea-breeze he has now along with him, we shall puzzle the smuggler, for all his long start.' ' There 's a gun, sir,' cried Paul, trembling from head to foot. 'Sure enough,' said the skipper; 'and it must be a signal. And there go three flags at the fore. 237 TOM CRINGLE S LOG She must, I '11 bet a hundred dollars, have taken our tidy little Wave for the admiral's tender that was lying in Morant Bay.' ' Blarney,' thought I ; * tidy as your little Wave is, she won't deceive old Dick — he is not the man to take a herring for a horse ; she must be making signals to some man-of-war in sight.' i A strange sail right ahead,' sung out three men from forward all at once. c Didn't I say so ? ' — I had only thought so. * Come, Master Obediah, it thickens now ; you 're in for it,' said I. But he was not in the least shaken ; as the matter grew serious, he seemed to brace up to meet it. He had been flurried at the first, but he was collected and cool as a cucumber now, when he saw everything depending on his seamanship and judgment. Not so Paul, who seemed to have made up his mind that they must be taken. 1 Jezebel Brandywine, you are but a widowed old lady, I calculate. I shall never see the broad, smooth Chesapeake again, — no more peach-brandy for Paul;' and, folding his arms, he sat himself doggedly down on the low taffrail. Little did I think at the time how fearfully the poor fellow's foreboding was so soon to be fulfilled. 'There again,' said I, c a second puff to wind- ward.' This was another signal-gun I knew ; and I went forward to where the Captain was recon- noitring the sail ahead through the glass. ' Let me see,' said I, l and I will be honest with you, and tell you if I know her.' He handed me the glass at once, and the instant I saw the top of her courses above the water, I was sure, from the red cross in her foresail, that she 238 THE CHASE OF THE SMUGGLER was the Firebrand, the very corvette to which I was appointed. She was so well to windward, that I considered it next to impossible that we should weather her ; but Obediah seemed determined to try it. After seeing his little vessel snug under mainsail, foresail, and jib, which was as much as she could stagger under, and everything right and tight, and all clear to make more sail should the breeze lull, he ordered the men below, and took the helm himself. What queer animals sailors are ! We were rising the corvette fast ; and on going aft again from the bows, where I had been looking at her, I cast my eye down the hatchway into the men's berth, and there were the whole crew at breakfast, laughing and joking, and enjoying them- selves as heartily, apparently, nay, I verily believe in reality, as if they had been in a yacht on a cruise of pleasure, in place of having one enemy nearly within gunshot astern, and another trying to cut them off ahead. At this moment the schooner in chase luffed up in the wind, and I noticed the foot of the foresail lift. 4 You '11 have it now, friend Obed ; there 's at you in earnest.' While I spoke, a column of thick white smoke spouted over the bows of the Gleam, about twenty yards dead to windward, and then blew back again amongst the sails and rigging, as if a g;auze veil had for an instant been, thrown over the little vessel, rolling off down the wind in whirling eddies, growing thinner and thinner, until it disappeared altogether. I heard the report this time, and the shot fell close alongside of us. ' A good mark with that apple,' coolly observed the Captain ; ' the Long Tom must be a tearer, to pitch its mouthful of iron this length.' 239 TOM CRINGLE'S LOG Another succeeded ; and if I had been still pinned up in the companion, there would have been no log now, for it went crash through into the hold. ' Go it, my boys,' shouted I ; ' a few more as well aimed, and heigh for the Firebrand's gun-room ! ' At the mention of the Firebrand I thought Obed started, but he soon recovered himself, and looking at me with all the apparent composure in the world, he smiled as he said, ' Not so fast, lieutenant ; you and I have not drunk our last glass of swizzle yet, I guess. If I can but weather that chap ahead, I don't fear the schooner.' The corvette had by this time answered the signal from the Gleam, and had hauled his wind also, so that I did not conceive it possible that the Wave could scrape clear, without coming under his broadside. ' You won't try it, Obed, surely ? ' 1 Answer me this, and I '11 tell you,' rejoined he. c Does that corvette now carry long eighteens or thirty-two pound carronades ? ' ' She carries thirty-two pound carronades.' 'Then you'll not sling your cot in her gun-room this cruise.' All this time the little Wave was carrying to it gallantly, her jib-boom bending like whalebone, and her long slender topmasts whipping about like a couple of fishing-rods, as she thrashed at it, sending the spray flashing over her mastheads at every pitch ; but notwithstanding her weatherly qualities, the heavy cross sea, as she drove into it, headed her off bodily, and she could not prevent the Gleam from creeping up on her weather-quarter, where she peppered away from her long twenty- four pounder, throwing the shot over and over us. 240 THE CHASE OF THE SMUGGLER To tack, therefore, would have been to run into the lion's mouth, and to bear up was equally hopeless, as the corvette, going free, would have chased her under water ; the only chance remain- ing was to stand on, and trust to the breeze talcing off, and try to weather the ship, now about three miles distant on our lee bow, braced sharp up on the opposite tack, and evidently quite aware of our game. As the corvette and the Wave neared each other, he threw a shot at us from the boat-gun on his topgallant forecastle, as if to ascertain beyond all doubt the extent of our insanity, and whether we were serious in our attempt to weather him and escape. Obed held right on his course, like grim death. Another bullet whistled over our mast-heads, and, with the aid of the glass, I could see, by the twinkling of feet, and here and there a busy peer- ing face through the ports, that the crew were at quarters fore and aft, while fourteen marines or so were all ready rigged on the poop, and the nettings were bristling, through the whole length of the ship, with fifty or sixty small-armed men. All this I took care to communicate to Obediah. ' I say, my good friend, I see little to laugh at in all this. If you do go to windward of him at all, which I greatly doubt, you will have to cross his fore-foot within pistol-shot at the farthest, and then you will have to rasp along his whole broadside of great and small, and they are right well prepared and ready for you, that I can tell you ; the skipper of that ship has had some hedication, I guess, in the war on your coast, for he seems up to your tricks, and I don't doubt but he will tip you the stem, vol. i. 241 Q TOM CRINGLE'S LOG if need be, with as little compunction as 1 would kill a cockroach, devil confound the whole breed ! There — I see his marines and small-arm men handling their firelocks, as thick as sparrows under the lee of a hedge in a snow-storm, and the people are training the bull-dogs fore and aft. Why, this is downright stark staring lunacy, Obed ; we shall be smashed like an egg-shell, and all hands of us whipped off to Davy, from your cursed fool- hardiness.' I had made several pauses in my address, ex- pecting an answer, but Obed was mute as a stone. At length I took the glass from my eye, and turned round to look at him, startled by his silence. I might have heard of such things, but I had never before seen the working of the spirit so forcibly and fearfully demonstrated by the aspect of the outward man. With the exception of myself, he was the only man on deck, as before- mentioned, and by this time he was squatted down on it, with his long legs and thighs thrust down into the cabin, through the open skylight. The little vessel happened to carry a weather helm, so that his long sinewy arms, with their large veins and leaders strained to cracking, covered but a small way below the elbow by his jacket, were stretched as far as they could clutch the tiller to windward, and his enormous head, supported on his very short trunk, that seemed to be countersunk into the deck, gave him a most extraordinary appear- ance. But this was not all ; his complexion, usually sallow and sunburnt, was now ghastly and blue, like that of the corpse of a drowned man ; the muscles of the neck, and the flesh of the cheeks 242 THE CHASE OF THE SMUGGLER and chin, were rigid and fixed, and shrunk into one half of their usual compass; the lips were so com- pressed that they had almost entirely disappeared, and all that marked his mouth was a black line ; the nostrils were distended, and thin and trans- parent, while the forehead was shrivelled into the most minute and immovable wrinkles, as if done with a crimping instrument ; while over his eyes, or rather his eye, for he kept one closed as if it had been hermetically sealed, he had lashed with half-a- dozen turns of spun-yarn a wooden socket, like the butt-end of an opera glass, fitted with some sort of magnifier, through which he peered out a-head most intensely, stooping down, and stretching his long bare neck to its utmost reach, that he might see under the foot of the foresail. I had scarcely time to observe all this, when a round shot came through the head of the main- sail, grazing the mast, and the very next instant a bushel of grape, from one of the bow guns, a thirty-two pound carronade, was crashed in on us amidships. I flung down the glass, and dived through the companion into the cabin — I am not ashamed to own it ; and any man who would undervalue my courage in consequence can never, taking into consideration the peculiarities of my situation, have known the appalling sound or infernal effect of a discharge of grape. Round shot in broad-sides is a joke to it ; musketry is a joke to it ; but only conjure up in your imagination a shower of iron bullets, of the size of well-grown plums, to the number of from sixty to one hundred and twenty, taking effect within a circle not above ten feet in diameter, and that all this time there was neither honour nor glory in the case, for I 243 TOM CRINGLE'S LOG was a miserable captive, and I fancy I may save myself the trouble of farther enlargement. I found that the crew had by this time started and taken up the planks of the cabin floor, and had stowed themselves well down into the run, so as to be as much out of harm's way as they could manage ; but there was neither fear nor flinching amongst them ; and although totally devoid of all gasconade — on the contrary, they had taken all the precautions men could do in their situation, to keep out of harm's way, or at least to lessen the danger — there they sat, silent, and cool, and de- termined. c I shall never undervalue an American as an enemy again,' thought I. I lay down on the side of the little vessel, now nearly level as she lay over, alongside of Paul Brandywine, in a position that commanded a view of Obed's face through the small scuttle. Ten minutes might have elapsed — a tearing crash — and a rattle on the deck overhead, as if a shower of stones had been thrown from aloft on it. 1 That 's through the mainmast, I expect,' quoth Paul. I looked from him to the captain ; a black thick stream of blood was trickling down behind his ear. Paul had noticed it also. ' You are hurt by one of them splinters, I see ; give me the helm now, captain ' ; and, crushed down as the poor fellow appeared to be under some fearful and mysterious consciousness of impending danger, he nevertheless addressed himself to take his captain's place. 'Hold your blasted tongue' — was the polite rejoinder. ' I say, captain,' shouted your humble servant, 244 THE CHASE OF THE SMUGGLER 4 you may as well eat pease with a pitchfork as try to weather him. You are hooked, man, flounder as you will. Old Nick can't shake you clear — so I won't stand this any longer ' ; and, making a spring, I jammed myself through the skylight, until I sat on the deck, looking aft, and confronting him, and there we were, stuck up like the two kings of Brent- ford, or a couple of smiling cherries on one stalk. I have often laughed at the figure we must have cut, but at the time there was that going on that would have made Comus himself look grave. I had at length fairly aroused the sleeping devil within him. 'Look out there, lieutenant — look out there,' — and he pointed with his sinister claw down to lee- ward. I did so — whew ! — what a sight for poor Master Thomas Cringle ! c You are booked for an outside place, Master Tommy,' thought I to myself — for there was the corvette in very truth — she had just tacked, and was close aboard of us on our lee quarter, within musket-shot at the farthest, bowling along upon a wind, with the green, hissing, multitudinous sea surging along her sides, and washing up in foam, like snow-flakes, through the midship ports, far aft on the quarterdeck, to the glorification of Jack, who never minds a wet jacket so long as he witnesses the discomfiture of his ally, Peter Pipeclay. The press of canvas she was carrying laid her over, until her copper sheathing, clear as glass, and glancing like gold, was seen high above the water, through her whole length, above which rose her glossy jet-black bends, sur- mounted by a milk-white streak, broken at regular intervals into eleven goodly ports, from which the British cannon, ugly customers at the best, were 245 TOM CRINGLE'S LOG grinning, tompion out, open-mouthed at us ; and above all, the clean, well-stowed white hammocks filled the nettings, from taffrail to cat-head — oh ! that I had been in one of them, snug on the berth deck ! Aloft, a cloud of white sail swelled to the breeze, till the cloth seemed inclined to say good-bye to the bolt ropes, bending the masts like willow- wands (as if the devil, determined to beat Paganini himself, was preparing fiddlesticks to play a spring with on the cracking and straining weather shrouds and backstays), and tearing her sharp wedge-like bows out of the bowels of the long swell, until the cutwater, and ten yards of the keel next to it, were hove clean out of the sea, into which she would descend again with a roaring plunge, burying everything up to the hause-holes, and driving the brine into mist, over the fore-top, like vapour from a waterfall, through which, as she rose again, the bright red copper on her bows flashed back the sunbeams in momentary rainbows. We were so near, that I could with the naked eye distinctly see the faces of the men. There were at least 150 determined fellows at quarters, and clustered with muskets in their hands, wherever they could be posted to most advantage. There they were in groups about the ports (I could even see the captains of the guns examining the locks), in their clean white frocks and trousers, the officers of the ship, and the marines, clearly distinguishable by their blue or red jackets. I could discern the very sparkle of the epaulets. High overhead the red cross, that for a thousand years ' has braved the battle and the breeze,' blew out strong from the peak, like a sheet of flickering white flame, or a thing instinct with life, strug- 246 THE CHASE OF THE SMUGGLER gling to tear away the ensign halyards, and to escape high into the clouds ; while from the main- royal masthead, the long white pennant streamed upwards into the azure heavens, like a ray of silver light. Oh ! it was a sight ' most beautiful to see,' as the old song hath it, — but I confess I would have preferred that pleasure from t'other side of the hedge. There was no hailing nor trumpeting, although, as we crossed on opposite tacks when we first weathered her, just before she hove in stays, I had heard a shrill voice sing out, 'Take good aim, men — Fire ! ' but now each cannon in thunder shot forth its glance of flame, without a word being uttered, as she kept away to bring them to bear in succession, while the long feathery cloud of whirl- ing white smoke that shrouded her sides from stem to stern was sparkling brilliantly throughout with crackling musketry, for all the world like fire-flies in a bank of night fog from the hills, until the breeze blew it back again through the rigging, and once more unveiled the lovely craft in all her pride and glory. 1 You see all that,' said Obed. 'To be sure I do, and I feel something too ' ; for a sharp rasping jar was repeated in rapid succession three or four times, as so many shot struck our hull, and made the splinters glance about merrily ; and the musket-balls were mottling our top sides and spars, plumping into the timber, whit, whit ! as thick as ever you saw schoolboys plaster- ing a church door with clay-pellets. There was a heavy groan, and a stir amongst the seamen in the run. ' And, pray, do you see and hear all that yourself, 247 TOM CRINGLE S LOG Master Obed ? The iron has clenched some of your chaps down there. Stay a bit, you shall have a better dose presently, you obstinate old ' He waved his hand, and interrupted me with great energy — ' I dare not give in, I cannot give in ; all I have in the world swims in the little hooker, and strike I will not so long as two planks stick together.' 'Then,' quoth I, 'you are simply a damned, cold-blooded, calculating scoundrel — brave 1 will never call you.' I saw he was now stung to the quick. 1 Lieutenant, smuggler as I am, don't goad me to what worse I may have been ; there are some deeds done in my time which, at a moment like this, I don't much like to think upon. I am a desperate man, Master Cringle ; don't, for your own sake as well as mine, try me too far.' ' Well, but ' persisted I. He would hear nothing. 'Enough said, sir, enough said; there was not an honester trader nor a happier man in all the Union, until your infernal pillaging and burning squadron in the Chesapeake captured and ruined me ; but I paid it off" on the prize-master, although we were driven on the rocks after all. I paid it off, and, God help me, I have never thriven since, enemy although he was. I see the poor fellow's face yet, as I ' He checked himself suddenly, as if aware that he might say more than could be conveniently retracted. ' But I dare not be taken ; let that satisfy you, Master Cringle ; so go below — below with you, sir' — I saw he had succeeded in lashing himself into a fury — ' or, by the Almighty God who hears me, I shall be tempted to do 248 THE CHASE OF THE SMUGGLER another deed, the remembrance of which will haunt me till my dying day ! ' All this passed in no time, as we say — much quicker than one can read it ; and I now saw that the corvette had braced up sharp to the wind again, on the same tack that we were on ; so I slipped down like an eel, and once more stretched myself beside Paul, on the lee side of the cabin. We soon found that she was indeed after us in earnest, by the renewal of the cannonade and the breezing up of the small arms again. Two round shot now tore right through the deck, just beneath the lar- board coamings of the main hatchway ; the little vessel's deck, as she lay over, being altogether ex- posed to the enemy's fire, they made her whole frame tremble again, smashing everything in their way to shivers, and going right out through her bottom on the opposite side, within a dozen streaks of her keel, while the rattling of the clustered grape-shot every now and then made us start, the musketry all the while peppering away like a hail shower. Still the skipper, whom I expected every moment to see puffed away from the tiller like smoke, held upon deck as if he had been bullet-proof, and seemed to escape the hellish tornado of missiles of all sorts and sizes by a miracle. ' He is in league with the old one, Paul,' said I ; ' howsoever, you must be nabbed, for you see the ship is fore-reaching on you, and you can't go on t'other tack, surely, with these pretty eyelet-holes between wind and water on the weather side there ? Your captain is mad — why will you, then, and all these poor fellows, go down, because he dare not surrender, for some good deed of his own, eh ? The roar of the cannon and noise of the musketry 249 TOM CRINGLE'S LOG made it necessary for me to raise my voice here, which the small scuttle, like Dionysius's ear, con- veyed unexpectedly to my friend, the captain, on deck. ' Hand me up my pistols, Paul.' It had struck me before, and I was now certain, that from the time he had become so intensely excited as he was now, he spoke with a pure Eng- lish accent, without the smallest dash of Yankee- ism. ' So so ; I see — no wonder you won't strike, you renegade,' cried I. 4 You have tampered with my crew, sir, and abused me,' he announced, in a stern, slow tone, much more alarming than his former fierceness, 4 so take that to quiet you ' ; and deuce take me if he did not, the moment he received the pistols from his mate, fire slap at me, the ball piercing the large muscle of my neck on the right side, missing the artery by the merest accident. Thinking I was done for, I covered my face with my hands, and commended myself to God, with all the resig- nation that could be expected from a poor young fellow in my grievous circumstances, expecting to be cut off" in the primavera of his days, and to part for ever more from . Pooh ! that there line is not my forte. However, finding the haemorrhage by no means great, and that the wound was in fact slight, I took the captain's rather strong hint to be still, and lay quiet, until a 32-pound shot struck us bang on the quarter. The subdued force with which it came showed that we were widening our distance, for it did not drive through and through with a crash, but lodged in a timber ; nevertheless it started one of the planks across which Paul and I 250 THE CHASE OF THE SMUGGLER lay, and pitched us both with extreme violence bodily into the run amongst the men, three of them lying amongst the ballast, which was covered with blood, two badly wounded and one dead. I came off with some slight bruises, however ; not so the poor mate. He had been nearest the end or butt that was started, which thereby struck him so forcibly that it fractured his spine, and dashed him amongst his shipmates, shrieking piercingly in his great agony, and clutching whatever he could grasp with his hands, and tearing whatever he could reach with his teeth, while his limbs below his waist were dead and paralysed. ' Water, water,' he cried, ' water, for the love of God, water ! ' The crew did all they could ; but his torments increased — the blood began to flow from his mouth — his hands became clay-cold and pulseless — his features sharp, blue, and death- like — his respiration difficult ; the choking death- rattle succeeded, and in ten minutes he was dead. This was the last shot that told — every report became more and more faint, and the musketry soon ceased altogether. The breeze had taken off, and the Wave, resum- ing her superiority in light winds, had escaped. 251 TOM CRINGLE'S LOG CHAPTER IX CUBA FISHERMEN ' El Pescador de Puerto Escondido Pesca mas que Pescado Quando la Luna redonda Reflexado en la mar profunda. Pero cuidado, El pobre sera el nino perdido Si esta por Anglhman cojido. Ay de mi.' It was now five in the afternoon, and the breeze continued to fall, and the sea to go down, until sunset, by which time we had run the corvette hull down, and the schooner nearly out of sight. Right ahead of us rose the high land of Cuba, to the westward of Cape Maize, clear and well-defined against the northern sky ; and as we neither hauled our wind to weather the east end of the island, nor edged away for St. Jago, it was evident, beyond all doubt, that we were running right in for some one of the piratical haunts on the Cuba coast. The crew now set to work, and removed the remains of their late messmate, and the two wounded men, from where they lay upon the ballast in the run to their own berth forward in the bows of the little vessel ; they then replaced the planks whhch they had started, and arranged the dead body of the mate along the cabin floor, close to where I lay, faint and bleeding, and more heavily bruised than I had at first thought. The captain was still at the helm ; he had never spoken a word eitfier to me or any of the crew 252 CUBA FISHERMEN since he had taken the triHing liberty of shooting me through the neck, and no thanks to him that the wound was not mortal ; but he now resumed his American accent, and began to drawl out the necessary orders for repairing damages. When I went on deck shortly afterwards, I was surprised beyond measure to perceive the injury the little vessel had sustained, and the uncommon speed, handiness, and skill with which it had been repaired. However lazily the command might appear to have been given, the execution of it was quick as light- ning. The crew, now reduced to ten working hands, had, with an almost miraculous promptitude, knotted and spliced the rigging, mended and shifted sails, fished the sprung and wounded spars, and plugged and nailed lead over the shot-holes, and all within half an hour. I don't like Americans ; I never did, and never shall, like them. I have seldom met with an American gentleman, in the large and complete sense of the term. I have no wish to eat with them, drink with them, deal with, or consort with them in any way ; but let me tell the whole truth, nor fight with them, were it not for the laurels to* be acquired by overcoming an enemy so brave, determined, and alert, and every way so worthy of one's steel, as they have always proved. One used to fight with a Frenchman as a matter of course, and for the fun of the thing as it were, never dreaming of the possibility of Johnny Crapaud beating us, where there was anything approaching to an equality of force ; but, say as much as we please about larger ships and more men, and a variety of excuses which proud John Bull, with some truth very often, I will admit, has pertina- 253 TOM CRINGLE'S LOG ciouslv thrust forward to palliate his losses during the short war, a regard for truth and fair dealing, which I hope are no scarce qualities amongst British seamen, compels me to admit that, although I would of course peril my life and credit more readily with an English crew, yet I believe a feather would turn the scale between the two countries, so far as courage and seamanship goes ; and let it not be forgotten, although we have now regained our superiority in this respect, yet, in gunnery and small-arm practice, we were as thoroughly weathered on by the Americans during the war, as we overtopped them in the bull-dog courage with which our boarders handled those genuine English weapons, the cutlass and pike. After the captain had given his orders, and seen the men fairly at work, he came down to the cabin, still ghastly and pale, but with none of that ferocity stamped on his grim features, from the outpouring of which I had suffered so severely. He never once looked my way, no more than if I had been a bundle of old junk ; but, folding his hands on his knee, he sat down on a small locker, against which the feet of the dead mate rested, and gazed earnestly on his face, which was immediately under the open skylight, through which, by this time, the clear cold rays of the moon streamed full on it, the short twi- light having already fled, chained as it is in these climates to the chariot-wheels of the burning sun. My eye naturally followed his, but I speedily with- drew it. I had often bent over comrades who had beenkilled bygunshot wounds, and always remarked, what is well known, that the features wore a benign expression, bland and gentle, and contented as the 254 CUBA FISHERMEN face of a sleeping infant, while their limbs were composed decently, often gracefully, like one resting after great fatigue, as if nature, like an affectionate nurse, had arranged the deathbed of her departing child with more than usual care, preparatory to his last long sleep; whereas those who had died from the thrust of a pike or the blow of a cutlass, or any violent fracture, however mild the living expression of their countenance might have been, were always fearfully contorted both in body and face. In the present instance, the eyes were wide open, white, prominent, and glazed like those of a dead fish ; the hair, which was remarkably fine, and had been worn in long ringlets, amongst which a large gold ear-ring glittered, the poor fellow having been a nautical dandy of the first water, was drenched and clotted into heavy masses with the death-sweat, and had fallen back on the deck from his forehead, which was well formed, high, broad, and massive. His nose was transparent, thin, and sharp, the tense skin on the bridge of it glancing in the silver light as if it had been glass. His mouth was puckered on one side into angular wrinkles, like a curtain drawn up awry, while a clotted stream of black gore crept from it sluggishly down his right cheek, and coagulated in a heap on the deck. His lower jaw had fallen, and there he lay agape with his mouth full of blood. His legs — indeed his whole body below his loins, where the fracture of the spine had taken place — rested precisely as they had been arranged after he died ; but the excessive swelling and puffing out of his broad chest contrasted shockingly with the shrinking of the body at the pit of the stomach, by which the arch of the ribs was left as well defined 255 TOM CRINGLE'S LOG as if the skin had been drawn over a skeleton, and the distortion of the muscles of the cheeks and throat evinced the fearful strength of the convul- sions which had preceded his dissolution. It was evident, indeed, that throughout his whole person above the waist the nervous system had been utterly shattered : the arms, especially, appeared to have been awfully distorted, for when crossed on his breast they had to be forcibly fastened down at the wrists by a band of spun-yarn to the buttons of his jacket. His right hand was shut, with the exception of the forefinger, which was extended, pointing upwards ; but the whole arm, from the shoulder down, had the horrible appearance of struggling to get free from the cord which con- fined it. Obed, by the time I had noticed all this, had knelt beside the shoulder of the corpse, and I could see by the moonlight that flickered across his face as the vessel rolled in the declining breeze, that he had pushed ofF his eye the uncouth spyglass which he had fastened over it during the chase, so that it now stood out from the middle of his forehead like a stunted horn ; but, in truth, ' it was not exalted,' for he appeared crushed down to the very earth by the sadness of the scene before him, and I noticed the frequent sparkle of a heavy tear as it fell from his iron visage on the face of the dead man. At length he untied the string that fastened the eye- glass round his head, and taking a coarse towel from a locker, he spunged poor Paul's face and neck with rum, and then fastened up his lower jaw with the lanyard. Having performed this melancholy office, the poor fellow's feelings could no longer be restrained by my presence. 256 CUBA FISHERMEN * c God help me, I have not now one friend in the wide world. When I had neither home, nor food, nor clothing, he sheltered me, and fed me, and clothed me, when a single word would have gained him five hundred dollars, and run me up to the foreyard-arm in a wreath of white smoke ; but he was true as steel ; and oh that he was now doing for me what I have done for him ! who would have moaned over me — me, who am now without wife or child, and have disgraced all my kin ! alack-a-day, alack-a-day ! , — and he sobbed and wept aloud, as if his very heart would have burst in twain. ' But I will soon follow you, Paul ; I have had my warning already ; I know it, and I believe it.' At this instant the dead hand of the mate burst the ligature that kept it down across his body, and slowly rose up and remained in a beckoning attitude. I was seized with a cold shivering from head to foot, and would have shrieked aloud, had it not been for very shame, but Obed was unmoved. I know it, Paul. I know it. I am ready, and I shall not be long behind you.' He fastened the arm down once more, and having called a couple of hands to assist him, they lashed up the remains of their shipmate in his hammock, with a piece of iron ballast at his feet, and then, without more ado, handed the body up through the skylight ; and I heard the heavy splash as they cast it into the sea. When this was done, the captain returned to the cabin, bringing a light with him, filled and drank off" a glass of strong grog. Yet he did not even now deign to notice me, which was by no means soothing ; and I found that, since he wouldn't speak, / must, at all hazards. vol. i. 257 R TOM CRINTGLE'S LOG ' I say, Obed, do you ever read your Bible r ' He looked steadily at me with his lack-lustre eyes. ' Because, if you do, you may perhaps have fallen in with some such passages as the following : — " Behold I am in your hand ; but know ye for certain, that if ye put me to death, ye shall surely bring innocent blood upon yourselves." : 4 It is true, Mr. Cringle, I feel the truth of it here,' and he laid his large bony hand on his heart. ' Yet I do not ask you to forgive me ; I don't expect that you can or will ; but unless the devil gets possession of me again — which, so sure as ever there was a demoniac in the world, he had this afternoon when you so tempted me — I hope soon to place you in safety, either in a friendly port, or on board of a British vessel ; and then what becomes of me is of little consequence now, since the only living soul who cared a dollar for me is at rest amongst the coral branches at the bottom of the deep green sea. 'Why, man,' rejoined I, 'leave off this stuff; something has turned your brain, surely ; people must die in their beds, you know, if they be not shot, or put out of the way somehow or other ; and as for my small affair, why, I forgive you, man — from my heart I forgive you j were it only for the oddity of your scantling, mental and corporeal, I would do so ; and you see I am not much hurt — so lend me a hand, like a good fellow, to wash the wound with a little spirits — it will stop the bleeding, and the stiffness will soon go off — so ' 'Lieutenant Cringle, 1 m-ed not tell what I know you have found out, that I am not the vulgar Yankee smuggler, fit only to be made a butt of by you and your friends, that vow no doubt at first 258 ' CUBA FISHERMEN took me for ; but who or what I am, or what I may have been, you shall never know — but I will tell vou this much ' ' Devil confound the fellow ! — why, this is too much upon the brogue, Obed. Will you help me to dress my wound, man, and leave off your cursed sentimental speeches, which you must have gleaned from some old novel or another ? I'll hear it all bv and by.' At this period I was a reckless young chap, with strong nerves, and my own share of that animal courage which generally oozes out at one's finger ends when one gets married and turned of thirty ; nevertheless I did watch with some anxiety the effect which my unceremonious interruption was to have upon him. I was agreeably surprised to find that he took it all in good part, and set him- self, with great alacrity, and kindness even, to put me to rights, and so successfully that, when I was washed and cleansed, and fairly coopered up, I found myself quite able to take my place at the table ; and having no fear of the College of Surgeons before my eyes, I helped myself to a little of the needful, and in the plenitude of my heart, I asked Obed's pardon for my ill-bred interruption. c It was not quite the thing to cut you short in the middle of your Newgate Calendar, Obed — beg pardon, your story, I mean ; no offence now, none in the world — eh ? But where the deuce, man, got you this fine linen of Egypt ? ' — looking at the sleeves of the shirt Obed had obliged me with, as I sat without my coat. I had not dreamt you had anything so luxurious in your kit.' I saw his brow begin to lower again, so the 259 TOM CRINGLES LOG devil prompted me to advert, by way of changing the subject, to a file of newspapers, which, as it turned out, might have proved to be by far the most dangerous topic I could have hit upon. He had laid them aside, having taken them out of the locker where he was rummaging for the linen. c What have we here ? — Kingston Chronicle, Montego Bay Gazette, Falmouth Advertiser. A great newsmonger you must be. What arrivals ? — let me see ; — you know I am a week from head- quarters. Let me see.' At first he made a motion as if he would have snatched them out of my hands, but speedily appeared to give up the idea, merely murmuring, 1 What can it signify now f ' I continued to read — ' Chanticleer from a cruise — Tonnant from Barbadoes — Pique from Port-au- Prince. Oh, the next interests me — the Fire- brand is daily expected from Havanna j she is to come through the Gulf, round Cape Antonio, and beat up the haunts of the pirates all along the Cuba shore.' I was certain now that at the mention of this corvette mine host winced in earnest. This made me anxious to probe him further. ' Why, what means this pencil mark — " Firebrand 's number off the Chesapeake was 1022 ? " How the deuce, my fine fellow, do you know that ? ' He shook his head, but said nothing, and I went on reading the pencil memoranda — ' " But this is most probably changed ; she now carries a red cross in the head of her foresail, and has very short lower masts, like the Hornet.'" ' Still he made me no answer. I proceeded — c Stop, let me see what merchant ships are about sailing. "Loading for Liverpool, the "John Gladstone, Peter Pondeorus, 260 CUBA FISHERMEN master " ' ; and after it, again in pencil — ' " Only sugar: goes through the Gulf." — Only sugar,' said I, still fishing ; ( too bulky, I suppose. — " Ariel ) Jenkin's, Whitehaven " ' ; remark — c " sugar, coffee, and logwood." " Nuestra Senora de los Dolores, to sail for Chagres on 7th proximo " ' ; remark — c "Rich cargo of bale goods, but no chance of overtaking her." — " El Rayo to sail for St. Jago de Cuba on the 10th proximo" ' j remark — ' u sails fast ; armed with a long gun and musketry ; thirty hands ; about ten Spanish passengers ; valuable cargo of dry goods ; main- mast rakes well aft ; — new cloth in the foresail about halfway up ; will be off the Moro about the 13th." — And what is this written in ink under the above ? — " The San Pedro from Chagres, and Marianita from Santa Martha, although rich, have both got convoy." — Ah, too strong for your friends, Obed — I see, I see. — " Francis Baring, Loan French, master," — an odd name, rather, for a skipper': remark — '"forty seroons of cochineal and some specie ; is to sail from Morant Bay on 5th proximo, to go through the windward passage ; may be expected off Cape St Nicholas on the 12th, or thereby." I laid down the paper and looked him full in the face. ' Nicholas is an ominous name. I fear the good ship Francis Baring will find it so. Some of the worthy saint's clerks to be fallen in with off the Mole, eh ? Don't you think as I do, Obed ? ' Still silent. c Why, you seem to take great delight in noting the intended departures and expected arrivals, my friend — merely to satisfy your curiosity, of course ; but, to come to close quarters with you, captain, I now know pretty well the object of your visiting 261 TOM CRINGLE'S LOG Jamaica now and then ; you are indeed no vulgar smuggler? ' It is well for you and good for myself, Mr. Cringle, that something weighs heavy at my heart at this moment, and that there is that about you which, notwithstanding your ill-timed jesting, commands my respect and engages my good-will — had it not been so, you would have been along- side of poor Paul at this moment.' He leant his arms upon the table, and gazed intensely on my face as he continued in a solemn, tremulous tone — ' Do you believe in auguries, Mr. Cringle ? Do you believe that "coming events cast their shadows before ? " '— O that little Wiggy Campbell had been beside me to have seen the figure and face of the man who now quoted him ! c Yes, I do j it is part of the creed of every sailor to do so; I do believe that people have had fore- warnings of peril to themselves or to their friends.' 1 Then what do you think of the mate beckoning me with his dead hand to follow him ? ' 1 Why, you are raving, Obed ; you saw that he had been much convulsed, and that the limb, from the contraction of the sinews, was forcibly kept down in the position it broke loose from — the spun- yarn gave way, and of course it started up — nothing wonderful in all this, although it did at the time somewhat startle me, I confess.' 4 It may be so, it may be so ; I don't know,' rejoined he, l but taken along with what I saw before ' Here his voice sank into so hollow and sepulchral a tone as to be almost unintelligible. 'But there is no use in arguing on the subject. Answer me this, Lieutenant Cringle, and truly, so help you God at your utmost need — did the mate 262 CUBA FISHERMEN leave the cabin at any moment after I was wounded by the splinter ? ' And he seized one of my hands convulsively with his iron paw, while he pointed up through the open scuttle towards heaven with the other, which trembled like a reed. The moon shone strong on the upper part of his countenance, while the yellow smoky glare of the candle over which he bent, blending harshly and unhar- moniously with the pale silver light, fell full on his uncouth figure, and on his long scraggy bare neck and chin and cheeks, giving altogether a most unearthly expression to his savage features, from the conflicting- tints and changino- shadows cast by the flickering moonbeams streaming fitfully through the skylight on the one hand, as the vessel rolled to and fro, and by the large torchlight candle on the other, as it wavered in the night wind. The Prince of the Powers of the Air might have sat for his picture by proxy. It was just such a face as one has dreamed of after a hot supper and cold ale, when the whisky had been forgotten — horrible, changing, vague, glimmering, and undefined ; and as if something was still wanting to complete the utter Rightfulness of his aspect, the splinter- wound in his head burst afresh from his violent agitation, and streamed down in heavy drops from his forehead, falling warm on my hand. I was much shaken at being adjured in this tremendous way, with the hot blood glueing our hands together, but I returned his grasp as steadily as I could, while I replied, with all the composure he had left me, and that would not have quite filled a Win- chester bushel — ' He never left my side from the time he offered to take your place after you had been wounded? 263 TOM CRINGLE'S LOG He fell back against the locker as if he had been shot through the heart ; his grasp relaxed, he drew his breath very hard, and I thought he had fainted. c Then it was not him that stood by me ; I thought it might have been him, but I was a fool, it was impossible.' He made a desperate effort to recover his com- posure, and succeeded. 4 And pray, Master Obediah,' quoth I, c what did you see ? ' He answered me sharply — 4 Never mind, never mind — here, Potomac, lend us a hand to sling a cot for this gentleman ; there now, see the lanyard is sound, and the lacing all tight and snug ; now, put that mattress into it, and there is linen in the chest.' In a trice my couch was rigged, all comfortable, snow-white linen, nice pillow, soft mattress, etc., and Obed, filling me another tumbler, helped him- self also; he then drank to my health, wished me a sound sleep, promised to call me at daylight, and, as he left the cabin, he said, c Mr. Cringle, had it been my object to have injured you, I would not have waited until now. You are quite safe so far as depends on me, so take your rest — good night, once more.' I tumbled into bed, and never once opened my eyes until Obed called me at daylight, that is, at five in the morning, according to his promise. By this time we were well in with the Cuba shore ; the land might be two miles from us, as we could see the white surf. Out at sea, although all around was clear as crystal, there was nothing to be seen of the Gleam or Firebrand^ but there were 264 CUBA FISHERMEN ten or twelve fishing canoes, each manned with from four to six hands, close aboard of us ; — we seemed to have got becalmed in the middle of a small fleet of them. The nearest to us hailed in Spanish, in a very friendly way. ' Como estamos, capitan, que hay de nuevo ; hay algo de bueno, para los pobres Pescadores ? ' and the fellow who had spoken laughed loudly. The captain desired him to come on board, and then drew him aside, conversing earnestly with him. The Spanish fisherman was a very powerful man ; he was equipped in a blue cotton shirt, Osnaburg trousers, sandals of untanned bullock's hide, a straw hat, and wore the eternal greasy red sash and long knife. He was a bold, daring-look- ing fellow, and frequently looked frowningly on me, and shook his head impatiently, while the captain, as it seemed, was explaining to him who I was. Just in this nick of time my friend Potomac handed up my uniform coat (I had previously been performing my ablutions on deck in my shirt and trousers), which I put on, swab and all, thinking no harm. But there must have been mighty great offence, nevertheless ; for the fisherman, in a twinkling, casting a fierce look at me, jumped overboard like a feather, clearing the rail like a flying fish, and swam to his canoe, that had shoved off a few paces. When he got on board he stood up and shook his clenched fist at Obed, shouting, ' Picaro, traidor, Ingleses hay abordo, quieres enganarnos ! ' He then held up the blade of his paddle, a signal which all the canoes answered in a moment in the same manner, and then pulled towards the land, from whence a felucca, invisible until that moment, now 265 TOM CRINGLE'S LOG swept out as if she had floated up to the surface by magic, for I could see neither creek nor indenta- tion on the shore, nor the smallest symptom of any entrance to a port or cove. For a few minutes the canoes clustered round this necromantic craft, and I could notice that two or three hands from each of them jumped on board ; they then paddled off in a string, and vanished one by one amongst the mangrove bushes as suddenly as the felucca had appeared. All this puzzled me exceedingly — I looked at Obed — he was evidently sorely per- plexed. ' I had thought to have put you on board a British vessel before this, or, failing that, to have run down and landed you at St. Jago, Mr. Cringle, as I promised ; but you see I am prevented by these honest men there. Get below, and as you value your life, and, I may say, mine, keep your temper, and be civil.' I did as he suggested, but peeped out of the cabin skylight to see what was going on, notwith- standing. The felucca was armed with a heavy carronade on a pivot, and as full of men as she could hold — fierce, half-naked, savage-looking fel- lows ; she swept rapidly up to us, and, closing on our larboard quarter, threw about five-and-twenty of her genteel young people on board, who immedi- ately secured the crew, and seized Obed. How- ever, they, that is the common sailors, seemed to have no great stomach for the job, and had it not been for the fellow I had frightened overboard, I don't think one of them would have touched him. Obed bore all this with great equanimity. c Why, Francisco,' he said to this personage, in good Spanish, c why, what madness is this ? Your 266 CUBA FISHERMEN suspicions arc groundless ; it is as I tell you, he is my prisoner, and, whatever he may have been to me, he can be no spy on you.' ' Cuchillo entonces,' was the savage reply. 'No, no,' persisted Obediah, 'get cool, man, get cool ; I am pledged that no harm shall come to him ; and further, I have promised to put him ashore at St. Jago, and I will be as good as my word.' ' You can't, if you would,' rejoined Francisco ; ' the Snake is at anchor under the Moro.' ' Then he must go with us.' ' We shall see as to that,' said the other ; then raising his voice, he shouted to his ragamuffins, ' Comrades, we are betrayed ; there is an English officer on board, who can be nothing but a spy ; follow me ! ' i\nd he dashed down the companion ladder, knife in hand, while I sprang through the small scuttle, like a rat out of one hole when a ferret is put in at the other, and crept as close to Obed as I could. Francisco, when he missed me, came on deck again. The captain had now seized a cutlass in one hand, and held a cocked pistol in the other. It appeared he had greater control, the nature of which I now began to comprehend, over the felucca's people than Francisco bargained for, for at the moment the latter went below they released him, and went forward in a body. My persecutor again advanced close up to me, seized me by the collar with one hand, and tried to drag me forward, brandishing his naked knife aloft in the other. Obed stuck his pistol in his belt, and promptly caught his sword-arm; 'Francisco,' he exclaimed, still in Spanish, 'fool, madman, let go your hold ! 267 TOM CRINGLE'S LOG let go, or by the heaven above us, and the hell we are both hastening to, I will strike you dead ! ' The man paused, and looked round to his own people, and seeing one or two encouraging glances and gestures amongst them, he again attempted to drag me away from my hold on the taffrail. Something flashed in the sun, and the man fell ! His left arm, the hand of which still clutched my throat, while mine grasped its wrist, had been shred from his body by Obed's cutlass, like a twig ; and, O God, my blood curdles to my heart even now when I think of it ! the dead fingers kept the grasp sufficiently long to allow the arm to fall heavily against my side, where it hung for a second, until the muscles relaxed and it dropped on the deck. The instant that Obed struck the blow, he caught hold of my hand, threw away his cutlass, and advanced towards the group of the felucca's men, pistol in hand. 1 Am I not your captain, ye cowards — have I ever deceived you yet — have I ever flinched from heading you where the danger was greatest — have you not all that I am worth in your hands, and will you murder me now ? ' 'Viva, el noble capitan, viva ! ' And the tide turned as rapidly in our favour as it had lately ebbed against us. ' As for that scoundrel, he has got no more than he deserves,' said he, turning to where Francisco lay, bleeding like a carcass in the shambles ; 'but tie up his arm, some of ye ; I would be sorry he bled to death.' It was unavailing ; the large arteries had emptied his whole life-blood — he had already gone to his account. 268 CUBA FISHERMEN This most miserable transaction, with all its concomitant horrors, to my astonishment, did not seem to make much impression on Obed, who now, turning to me, said with perfect composure — i You have there another melancholy voucher for my sincerity,' pointing to the body ; ' but time presses, and you must now submit to be blindfolded, and that without further explanation at present.' I did so with the best grace I could, and was led below, where two beauties, with loaded pistols and a drawn knife each, obliged me with their society, one seated on each side of me on the small locker, like two deputy butchers ready to operate on an unfortunate veal. It had now fallen dead calm, and, from what I heard, I conjectured that the felucca was sweeping in towards the land with us in tow, for the sound of the surf grew louder and louder. By and by we seemed to slide beyond the long smooth swell into broken water, for the little vessel pitched sharp and suddenly, and again all was still, and we seemed to have sailed into some land-locked cove. From the loud echo of the voices on deck, I judged that we were in a narrow canal, the banks of which were reflecting the sound ; presently this ceased, and, although we skimmed along as motionless as before, I no longer heard the splash of the felucca's sweeps ; the roar of the sea gradually died away, until it sounded like distant thunder, and I thought we touched the ground now and then, although slightly. All at once the Spanish part of the crew — for we still had a number of the felucca's people with us, sang out 1 Palanka,' and we began to pole along a narrow marshy lagooon, coming so near the shore occa- 269 TOM CRINGLE'S LOG sionallv that our sides were brushed by the branches of the mangrove bushes. Again the channel seemed to widen, and I could hear the felucca once more ply her sweeps. In about ten minutes after this the anchor was let go, and for a quarter of an hour nothing was heard on deck but the bustle of the people furling sails, coiling down the ropes, and getting everything in order, as is usual in coming into port. It was evident that several boats had boarded us soon after we anchored, as I could make out part of the greetings between the strangers and Obed, in which my own name recurred more than once. In a little while all was still again, and Obed called down the companion to my guards that I might come on deck — a boon I was not long in availing myself of. We were anchored nearly in the centre of a shallow swampy lagoon, about a mile across, as near as I could judge ; two very large schooners, heavily armed, were moored ahead of us — one on each bow — and another, rather smaller, lay close under our stern ; they all had sails bent, and every- thing apparently in high order, and were full of men. The shore, to the distance of a bow-shot from the water all around us, was low, marshy, and covered with an impervious jungle of thick strong reeds and wild canes, with here and there a thicket of mangroves ; a little farther off the land swelled into lofty hills, covered to the very summit with heavy timber; but everything had a moist, green, steamy appearance, as if it had been the region of perpetual rain. 'Lots of yellow fever here,' thought I, as the heavy rank smell of decayed vegetable matter came off on the faint sickly breeze, and the sluggish fog-banks crept 270 CUBA FISHERMEN along the dull clay-coloured motionless surface of the tepid water. The sea view was quite shut out; I looked all round and could discern no vestige of the entrance. Right ahead there was about a furlong of land cleared at the only spot which one could call a beach — that is, a hard shore of sand and pebbles. Had you tried to get ashore at any other point, your fate would have been that of the Master of Ravenswood — as fatal, that is, without the gentility ; for you would have been suffocated in black mud in place of clean sea-sand. There was a long shed in the centre of this cleared spot, covered in with boards, and thatched with palm leaves ; it was open below, a sort of capstan-house, where a vast quantity of sails, anchors, cordage, and most kinds of sea-stores were stowed, carefully covered over with tarpauling. Overhead there was a flooring laid along the couples of the roof, the whole length of the shed, forming a loft of nearly sixty feet long, divided by bulkheads into a variety o/ apartments, lit by small rude windows in the thatch, where the crews of the vessels, I concluded, were occasionally lodged during the time they might be under repair. The boat was manned, and Obed took me ashore with him. We landed near the shed I have described, beneath which we encountered about forty of the most uncouth and ferocious-looking rascals that my eyes had ever been blessed withal ; they were of every shade, from the woolly Negro and long- haired Indian to the sallow American and fair Biscayan ; and as they intermitted their various occupations of mending sails, fitting and stretching rigging, splicing ropes, making spun-yarn, cooper- ing gun-carriages, grinding pikes and cutlasses, and 271 TOM CRINGLE'S LOG filling cartridges, to look at me, they grinned and nodded to each other, and made sundry signs and gestures which made me regret many a past peccadillo that in more prosperous times I little thought on or repented of, and I internally prayed that I might be prepared to die as became a man, for my fate appeared to be sealed. The only ray of hope that shot into my mind, through all this gloom, came from the respect the thieves, one and all, paid the captain ; and, as I had reaped the benefit of assuming an outward recklessness and daring which I really did not at heart possess, I screwed myself up to maintain the same port still, and swaggered along, jabbering in my broken Spanish, right and left, and jesting even with the most infamous-looking scoundrels of the whole lot, while, God knows, my heart was palpitating like a girl's when she is asked to be married. Obed led the way up a ladder into the loft, where we found several messes at dinner ; and passing through various rooms, in which a number of hammocks were slung, we at length arrived at the eastern end, which was boarded off into an apartment eighteen or twenty feet square, lighted by a small port-hole in the end, about ten feet from the ground. I could see several huts from this window, built just on the edge of the high wood, where some of the country people seemed to be moving about, and round which a large flock of pigs and from twenty to thirty bullocks were grazing. All beyond, as far as the eye could reach, was one continuous forest, without any vestige of a living thing ; not even a thin wreath of blue smoke evinced the presence of a fellow- creature ; I seemed to be hopelessly cut off from 272 CUBA FISHERMEN all succour, and my heart again died within me. c I am sorry to say you must consider yourself a prisoner here for a few days,' said Obed. I could only groan. ' But the moment the coast is clear, I will be as good as my word, and land you at St. Jago.' I groaned again. The man was moved. 'I would I could do so sooner,' he continued ; 4 but you see by how precarious a tenure I hold my control over these people ; therefore I must be cautious, for your sake as well as my own, or they would make little of murdering both of us, especially as the fellow who would have cut vour throat this J morning has many friends amongst them ; above all, I dare not leave them for any purpose for some days. I must recover my seat, in which, by the necessary severity you witnessed, I have been somewhat shaken. So good-bye ; there is cold meat in that locker, and some claret to wash it down with. Don't, I again warn you, venture out during the afternoon or night. I will be with you betimes in the morning. So good-bye so long. Your cot, you see, is ready slung.' He turned to depart, when, as if recollecting himself, he stooped down, and taking hold of a ring, he lifted up a trap-door, from which there was a ladder leading down to the capstan-house. c I had forgotten this entrance ; it will be more convenient for me in my visits.' In my heart I believe he intended this as a hint that I should escape through the hole at some quiet opportunity ; and he was descending the ladder, when he stopped and looked round, greatly mortified, as it struck me. vol. i. 273 s TOM CRINGLE'S LOG C I forgot to mention that a sentry has been placed, I don't know by whose orders, at the foot of the ladder, to whom I must give orders to fire at vou, if you venture to descend. You see how the land lies : I can't help it.' This was spoken in a low tone, then aloud — c There are books on that shelf behind the canvas screen ; if you can settle to them, they may amuse you.' He left me, and I sat down disconsolate enough. I found some Spanish books, and a volume of Lord Byron's poetry containing the first canto of Cbilde Harold^ two numbers of Blackwood, and several other English books and magazines, the names of the owners on all of them being carefully erased. But there was nothing else that indicated the marauding life of friend Obediah, whose apartment I conjectured was now my prison, if I except a pretty extensive assortment of arms, pistols, and cutlasses, and a range of massive cases, with iron clamps, which were ranged along one side of the room. I paid my respects to the provender and claret ; the hashed chicken was particularly good ; bones rather large or so, but flesh white and delicate. Had I known that I was dining upon a guana, or large wood lizard, I scarcely think I would have made so hearty a meal. Long cork, No. 2, followed ditto, No. I ; and as the shades of evening, as poets say, began to fall by the time I had finished it, I toppled quietly into my cot, said my prayers, such as they were, and fell asleep. It must have been towards morning, from the damp freshness of the air that came through the 274 CUBA FISHERMEN open window, when I was roused by the howling of a dog, a sound which always moves me. I shook myself; but before I was thoroughly awake it ceased ; it appeared to have been close under my window. I was turning to go to sleep again, when a female, in a small suppressed voice, sung the follow- ing snatch of a vulgar Port Royal ditty, which I scarcely forgive myself for introducing here to polite society : — ' Young hofficer come home at night, Him give me ring and kisses; Nine months, one picaniny white, Him white almost like missis. But missis fum 1 my back wid switch, Him say de shild for massa ; But massa say him ' The singer broke off suddenly, as if disturbed by the approach of some one. ' Hush, hush, you old foolish ' said a man's voice, in the same low whispering tone; 'you will waken de dronken sentry dere, when we shall all be put in iron. Hush, he will know my voice more better.' It was now clear that some one wished to attract my attention ; besides, I had a dreamy recollection of having heard both the male and female voices before. I listened, therefore, all alive. The man began to sing in the same low tone : — ' Newfoundland dog love him master de morest Of all de dog ever I see ; Let him starve him, and kick him, and cuff him de sorest, Difference none never makee to he.' There was a pause for a minute or two. 1 Fum — flog. 275 TOM CRINGLE'S LOG 1 It no use,' the same voice continued; 'him either no dere, or he won't hear us.' 'Stop,' said the female, 'stop; woman head good for someting. I know who he shall hear. — Here, good dog, sing psalm ; good dog, sing psalm,' and thereupon a long loud melancholy howl rose wailing through the night air. ' If that be not my dear old dog Sneezer, it is a deuced good imitation of him,' thought I. The woman again spoke — ' Yowl leetle piece more, good dog,' and the howl was repeated. I was now certain. By this time I had risen, and stood at the open window ; but it was too dark to see anything distinctly below. I could barely distinguish two dark figures, and what I concluded was the dog sitting on end between them. ' Who are you ? what do you want with me ? ' ' Speak softly, massa, speak softly, or the sentry may hear us, for all the rum I give him.' Here the dog recognised me, and nearly spoiled sport altogether ; indeed, it might have cost us our lives, for he began to bark and frisk about, and to leap violently against the end of the capstan- house, in vain endeavours to reach the window. ' Down, Sneezer, down, sir ; you used to be a dog of some sense ; down.' But Sneezer's joy had capsized his discretion, and the sound of my voice pronouncing his name drove him mad altogether, and he bounded against the end of the shed like a battering-ram. ' Stop, man, stop,' and I held down the bight of my neck-cloth, with an end in each hand. He retired, took a noble run, and in a trice hooked his forepaws in the handkerchief, and I hauled him in 276 CUBA FISHERMEN at the window. ' Now, Sneezer, down with you, sir, or your rampaging will get all our throats cut.' He cowered at my feet, and was still as a lamb from that moment. I stepped to the window. ' Now, who are you, and what do you want ? ' said I. ' Ah, massa, you no know me ? ' c How the devil should I ? Don't you see it is as dark as pitch ? ' I Well, massa, I will tell you ; it is me, massa.' I I make no great doubt of that ; but who may you be ? ' 1 Lord, you are de foolis person now : make me talk to him,' said the female. 'Massa, never mind he, dat stupid fellow is my husband, and surely massa know me ? ' ' Now, my very worthy friends, I think you want to make yourselves known to me ; and if so, pray have the goodness to tell me your names, that is, if I can in any way serve you.' • c To be sure you can, massa ; for that purpose I come here.' The woman hooked the word out of his mouth. ' Yes, massa, you must know me as Nancy, and dat old stupid is my husband, Peter Mangrove, him who ' Here Peter chimed in — c Yes, massa, Peter Mangrove is de person you have de honour to ad- dress, and ' here he lowered his voice still more, although the whole dialogue from the commence- ment had been conducted in no higher tone than a loud whisper — ' we have secured one big large canoe, near the mout' of dis dam hole, which, wid your help, I tink we shall be able to launch troo de surf; and once in smoot water, den no fear but 277 TOM CRINGLE'S LOG we shall run down de coast safely before dc wind till we reach St. Jago.' My heart jumped against my ribs. Here's ail unexpected chance, thought I. ' But, Peter, how, in the name of Mumbo Jumbo, came you here?' ' Why, massa, you do forget a leetle, dat I am a Creole negro, and not a naked tattooed African, whose exploits, dat is de wonderful ting him never do in him's own country, him get embroidered and pinked in gunpowder on him breech : beside, I am Christian gentleman like youshef : so d n Mumbo Jumbo, Massa Cringle.' I saw where I had erred. ' So say I, Peter, d n Mumbo Jumbo particularly ; but how came you here, man ? tell me that.' c Why, massa, I was out in de pilot-boat schooner, wid my wife here, and five more hands, waiting for de outward bound, tinking no harm, when dem piratical rascal catch we and carry us off. Yankee privateer bad enough j but who ever hear of pilot being carry off ? — blasphemy dat — carry off pilot ! Who ever dream of such a ting ? every shivilised peoples respect pilot ! — oh Lord !' — and he groaned in spirit for several seconds. ' And the dog ? ' inquired I. ' Oh, massa, I could not leave him at home ; and since you was good enough to board him wid us, he has messed wid us, ay, and slept wid us ; and when we started last, although he showed some dislike at going on board, I had only to say, Sneezer, we go look for you massa ; and he made such a bound dat he capsize my old woman dere, heel over head ; oh dear, what display, Nancy, you was exhibit ! ' 278 CUBA FISHERMEN ' Hold your tongue, Peter ; you hab no decency, you old willain.' ' Well, but, Peter, speak out ; when are we to make the attempt? where are the rest of your crew ? ' ' Oh dear ! oh dear ! dat is de worstest ; oh dear ! ' and he began to sob and cry like the veriest child. ' Oh, massa ': — after he had somewhat re- covered himself — c Oh, massa, dese people debils. Why dey make all de oder on board walk de plank, wid two ten-pound shot, one at each foot. Oh, if you had seen de clear shining blue skin, as dey became leetle and leetle, and more leetler, down far in de clear green sea ! Oh dear ! oh dear ! Only to tink dat each wavering black spot was fellow- creature like oneshef, wid de heart's blood warm in his bosom at de very instant of time we lost sight of him for ever ! ' ' God bless me,' said I ; ' and how did you escape, and the black dog, and the black — ahem — • beg pardon — your wife, I mean; how were you spared ? ' 1 Ah, massa ! I can't say ; but bad as dey were, dey seemed to have a liking for brute beasts, so dem save Sneezer, and my wife, and myshef ; we were the only quadrupeds saved out of de whole crew — oh dear ! oh dear ! ' c Well, well, I know enough now. I will spare you the pain of any further recital, Peter ; so tell me what I am to do.' ' Stop, massa, till I see if de sentry be still sound. I know de fellow, he was one on dem ; let me see ' — and I heard him through the loose flooring boards walk to the foot of the trap ladder leading up to my berth. The soliloquy that followed was very curi- 279 TOM CRINGLE'S LOG ous of its kind. The negro had excited himself by a recapitulation of the cruelties exercised on his unfortunate shipmates, and the unwarrantable cap- tion of himself and rib — a deed that in the nautical calendar would rank in atrocity with the murder of a herald or the bearer of a flag of truce. He kept murmuring to himself, as he groped about in the dark for the sentry — 'Catch pilot! who ever hear of such a ting ! I suppose dem would have pull down lighthouse if dere had been any for pull. — Where is dis sentry rascal ? — him surely no sober yet ?' The sentry had fallen asleep as he leant back on the ladder, and had gradually slid down into a sitting position, with his head leaning against one of the steps, as he reclined with his back toward it, thus exposing his throat and neck to the groping paw of the black pilot. ' Ah — here him is, snoring heavy as my Nancy — well, dronk still ; no fear of him overhearing we — nice position him lie in — quite convenient — could cut his throat now — slice him like a pumpkin — de debil is surely busy wid me, Peter. I find de wery clasp-knife in my starboard pocket beginning to open of himshef.' I tapped on the floor with my foot. c Ah, tank you, Massa Tom — de debil nearly get we all in a scrape just now. However, I see him is quite sound — de sentry dat is, for de oder never sleep, you know.' He had again come under the window. c Now, lieutenant, in two word, to- morrow night at two bells, in de middle watch, I will be here, and we shall make a start of it ; will you venture, sir ? ' ' Will I ? — to be sure I will ; but why not now, Peter ? why not now ? ' 280 CUBA FISHERMEN ' Ah, massa, you no smell de daylight ; near day- break already, sir. Can't make try dis night, but to-morrow night I shall be here punctual.' c Very well, but the dog, man ? If he be found in my quarters, we shall be blown, and I scarcely think he will leave me.' ' Garamighty ! true enough, massa ! what is to be done ? De people know de dog was catch wid me, and if he be found wid you, den dey will sospect we communication togidder. What is to be done ? ' I was myself not a little perplexed, when Nancy whispered, ' De dog have more sense den many Christian person. Tell him he must go wid us dis one night, no tell him dis night, else him won't ; say dis one night, and dat if him don't, we shall all be deaded ; try him, massa.' I had benefited by more extraordinary hints be- fore now, although, well as I knew the sagacity of the poor brute, I could not venture to hope it would fome up to the expectations of Mrs. Mangrove. But I '11 try. — c Here, Sneezer, here, my boy ; you must go home with Peter to-night, or we shall all get' into a deuced mess; so here, my boy, here is the bight of the handkerchief again, and through the window you must go ; come, Sneezer, come.' To my great joy and surprise, the poor dumb beast rose from where he had coiled himself at my feet, and after having actually embraced me, by putting his forepaws on my shoulders, as he stood on his hind legs, and licked my face from ear to ear, uttering a low, fondling, nuzzling sort of whine, like a nurse caressing a child, he at once leapt on the window sill, put his forepaws through the handkerchief, and was dropped to the 281 TOM CRINGLE'S LOG ground again. I could immediately perceive the two dark figures of the pilot and his wife, followed by the dog, glide away as noiselessly as if they had been spirits of the night, until they were lost under the shade of the thick jungle. I turned in, and — what will not youth and fatigue do ? — I fell once more fast asleep, and never opened my eyes until Obed shook me in my cot about eight o'clock in the morning. c Good morning, lieutenant. I have sent up your breakfast, but you don't seem inclined to eat it.' i Don't you believe it, my dear Obed. I have been sound asleep till this moment ; only stop till I have slipped on my — those shoes, if you please — thank you — waistcoat — that will do. Now — coffee, fish, yams, and plantains, and biscuit, white as snow and short as — and eggs — and — zounds ! claret to finish with ? — Why, Obed, you surely don't desire that I should enjoy all these delicacies in solitary blessedness ? ' 'Why, I intend to breakfast with you, if my society be not disagreeable ? ' 1 Disagreeable ! Not in the least, quite the contrary. That black grouper looks remarkably beautiful. Another piece of yam, if you please. — Shall I fill you a cup of coffee, Obed ? For my own part, I always stow the ground tier of my cargo dry, and then take a topdressing. Write this down as an approved axiom with all thorough breakfast- eaters. Why, man, you are off" your feed; what are you turning up your ear for, in that incompre- hensible fashion, like a duck in thunder ? A little of the claret — thank you. The very best butter I have ever eaten out of Ireland — now, some of that 282 CUBA FISHERMEN avocado pear — and as for biscuit, Leman never came up to it. I say, man, — hillo, where are you ? — rouse ye out of your brown study, man.' c Did you hear that, Mr. Cringle ? ' 'Hear what? — I heard nothing,' rejoined I; c but hand me over that land-crab. — Thank you, and you may send the spawl of that creeping thing along with it ; that guana. I had a dislike to eat- ing a lizard at first, but I have got over it some- how ; — and a thin slice of ham, a small taste of the unclean beast, Obed — peach-fed, I '11 warrant.' ) There was a pause. The report of a great gun came booming along, reverberated from side to side of the lagoon, the echoes growing shorter and shorter, and weaker and weaker, until they growled them- selves asleep in a hollow rumble like distant thunder. ' Ha, ha ! Dick Gasket for a thousand ! Old Blowhard has stuck in your skirts, Master Obed — but Lord help me, man ! let us finish our break- fast ; he won't be here this half-hour.' • I expected to see mine host's forehead lowering like a thunder-cloud from my ill-timed funning ; but, to my surprise, his countenance exhibited more amenity than I thought had been in the nature of the beast, as he replied — ' Why, lieutenant, the felucca put to sea last night, to keep a bright look-out at the mouth of our cove here. I suppose that is him overhauling some vessel.' ' It may be so ;— hush ! there's another gun — Two ! ' Obed changed countenance at the double report. c I say, Obed, the felucca did not carry more than one gun when I saw her, and she has had no time to load and fire again.' ^283 TOM CRINGLE'S LOG He did not answer a word, but continued with a piece of guana on the end of his fork in one hand, and a cup of coffee in the other, as if he had been touched by the wand of a magician. Presently we heard one or two dropping shots, quickly thicken- ing into a rattle of musketry. He threw down his food, picked up his hat, and trundled downstairs, as if the devil had kicked him. c Pedro, que hay ? ' I could hear him say to some one below, who ap- peared to have arrived in great haste, for he gasped for breath — 1 Aqui viene la felucha,' answered Pedro ; ' perseguido por dos lanchas canoneras llenas de gente.' ' Abordo entonces, abordo todo el mundo ; arma, arma, aqui vienen los Engleses ; arma, arma ! ' And all from that instant was a regular hillo- baloo. The drums on board the schooners beat to quarters ; a great bell, formerly the ornament of some goodly ship, no doubt, which had been slung in the fork of a tree, clanged away at a furious rate, the crews were hurrying to and fro, shouting to each other in Creole Spanish and Yankee Eng- lish, while every cannon-shot from the felucca or the boat-guns came louder and louder, and the small arms peppered away sharper and sharper. The shouts of the men engaged, both friends and foes, were now heard, and I could hear Obed's voice on board» the largest schooner, which lay full in view from my window, giving orders, not only to his own crew, but to those of the others. I heard him distinctly sing out, after ordering them to haul upon the spring on his cable, ' Now, men, I need not tell you to fight bravely, for if you are taken every devil of you will be hanged, so hoist 284 CUBA FISHERMEN away the signal,' and a small black ball flew up through the rigging, until it reached the maintop- gallant-masthead of the schooner, where it hung a moment, and in the next blew out in a large black swallow-tailed flag, like a commodore's broad pennant. 'Now,' shrieked he, 'let me see who dares give in with this voucher for his honesty flying aloft ! ' I twisted and craned myself out of the window, to get a view of what was going on elsewhere ; however, I could see nothing but Obed's large schooner from it ; all the other craft were out of the range of my eye, being hid by the projecting roof of the shed. The noise continued — the shouting rose higher than ever — the other schooners opened their fire, both cannon and musketry ; and from the increasing vehemence of the Spanish exclamations, and the cheering on board Obed's vessels, I concluded the attacking party were having the worst of it. My dog Sneezer now came jumping and scrambling up the trap-stair, his paws slipping between the bars at every step, his mouth wide open, and his tongue hanging out, while he barked, and yelled, and gasped to get at me, as if his life depended on it. After him I could see the round woolly pate of Peter Mangrove, Esquire, as excited apparently as the dog, and as anxious to get up ; but they got jammed together in a small hatch, and stuck there, man and beast. At length Peter spoke — ' Now, sir, now ! Nancy has run on before to the beach wid two paddles ; now for it, now for it.' Down trundled master, and dog, and pilot. By this time there was no one in the lower part of the shed, which was full of smoke, while the infernal 285 TOM CRINGLE'S LOG tumult on the water still raged as furiously as ever, the shot of all sorts and sizes hissing and splashing, and ricochetting along the smooth surface of the harbour, as if there had been a sleet of musket and cannon-balls and grape. Peter struck out at the top of his speed, Sneezer and I followed. We soon reached the jungle, dashed through a path that had been recently cleared with a cutlass or bill-hook, for the twigs were freshly shred, and in about ten minutes reached the high wood. However, no rest for the wicked, although the row seemed lessening now. 'Some one has got the worst of it,' said I. ' Never mind, massa,' quoth Peter, ' or we shan't get de betterest ourshef.' And away we galloped again, until I had scarcely a rag an inch square on my back, or anywhere else, and my skin was torn in pieces by the prickly bushes and spear-grass. The sound of firing now ceased entirely, although there was still loud shout- ing now and then. ' Push on, massa — dem will soon miss we.' c True enough, Peter — but what is that ? ' as we came to a bundle of clouts walloping about in the morass. ' De dcbil it must be, I tink,' said the pilot. ' No, my Nancy it is, sticking in the mud up to her waist ; what shall us do ? you tink, massa, we hab time for can stop to pick she out ? ' 'Heaven have mercy, Peter — yes, unquestionably.' 'Well, massa, you know best.' So we tugged at the sable heroine, and first one leg came home out of the tenacious clay, with a plop^ then the other was drawn out of the quagmire. We then relieved her of the paddles, 286 CUBA FISHERMEN and each taking hold of one of the poor half-dead creature's hands, we succeeded in getting down to the beach, about half a mile to leeward of the entrance to the cove. We found the canoe there, plumped Nancy stern foremost into the bottom of it for ballast, gathered all our remaining energies for a grand shove, and ran her like lightning into the surf, till the water flashed over and over us, reaching to our necks. Next moment we were both swimming, and the canoe, although full of water, beyond" the surf, rising and falling on the swell. We scrambled on board, set Nancy to bale with Peter's hat, seized our paddles, and sculled away like fury for ten minutes right out to sea, without looking once about us, until a musket- shot whistled over our heads, then another, and a third ; and I had just time to hold up a white handkerchief, to prevent a whole platoon being let drive at us from the deck of his Britannic Majesty's schooner Gleam, lying-to about a cable's length to windward of us, with the Firebrand a mile astern of her out at sea. In five minutes we got on board of the former. 1 Mercy on me, Tom Cringle, and is this the way we are to meet again ? ' said old Dick Gasket, as he held out his large, bony, sunburnt hand to me. 'You have led me a nice dance, in a vain attempt to redeem you from bondage, Tom ; but I am delighted to see you, although I have not had the credit of being your deliverer — very glad to see you, Tom ; but come along, man, come down with me, and let me rig you, not quite a Stultze's fit, you know, but a jury rig you shall have, as good as Dick Gasket's kit can furnish forth, for really you are in a miserable plight, man.' 287 TOM CRINGLE'S LOG 1 Bad enough indeed, Mr. Gasket — many thanks though — bad enough, as you say; but I would that your boat's crew were in so good a plight.' Mr. Gasket looked earnestly at me — ' Why, I have my own misgivings, Cringle ; this morning at daybreak, the Firebrand in company, we fell in with an armed felucca. It was dead calm, and she was out of gunshot, close in with the land. The Firebrand immediately sent the cutter on board, fully armed, with instructions to me to man the launch, and arm her with the boat-gun, and then to send both boats to overhaul the felucca. I did so, standing in as quickly as the light air would take me, to support them, the felucca all this while sweeping inshore as fast as she could pull. But the boats were too nimble for her, and our launch had already saluted her twice from the six-pounder in the bow, when the sea-breeze came thundering down in a white squall, that reefed our gaff-topsail in a trice, and blew away a whole lot of light sails, like so many paper-kites. When it cleared away, the devil a felucca, boat, or anything else was to be seen. Capsized they could not have been, for all three were not likely to have gone that way ; and as to any creek they could have run into, why, we could see none. That they had pulled in shore, however, was our conclusion ; but here have we been, the whole morning, firing signal guns every five minutes without success.' c Did you hear no firing after the squall ? ' said I. ' Why, some of my people thought they did, but it was that hollow, tremulous, reverberating kind of sound, that it might have been thunder ; and the breeze blew too strong to have allowed us to hear musketry a mile and a half to windward. I 288 CUBA FISHERMEN did think I saw some smoke rise, and blow off now and then, but ' 'But me no buts, Master Richard Gasket; Peter Mangrove here, as well as myself, saw your people pursue the felucca into the lion's den, and I fear they have been crushed in his jaws.' I briefly re- lated what we had seen — Gasket was in great distress. 'They must have been taken, Cringle. The fools ! to allow themselves to be trepanned in this way. We must stand out and speak the corvette. All hands make sail ! ' I could not help smiling at the grandeur of Dick's emphasis on the all, when twenty hands, one-third of them boys, and the rest landsmen, scrambled up from below, and began to pull and haul in no very seamanlike fashion. He noticed it. * Ah, Tom, I know what you are grinning at, but I fear it has been no laughing matter to my poor boat's crew — all my best hands gone, God help me ! ' Presently, being under the Firebrand's lee quarter, we lowered down the boat and went on bogrd, where, for the first time, the extreme ludicrousness of my appearance and following flashed on me. There we were, all in a bunch — the dog, Mr. and Mrs. Mangrove, and Thomas Cringle, gent. — such in appearance as I shall shortly describe them. Old Richard Gasket, Esq., first clambered up the side and made his bow to the Hon. Captain Transom, who was standing near the gangway, on the snow-white deck, amidst a group of officers, where everything was in the most apple-pie order, himself, both in mind and apparel, the most polished concern in the ship ; while the whole vol. i. 289 t TOM CRINGLE'S LOG crew, with the exception of the unfortunate absentees in the cutter, were scrambling to get a good view of us. I have already said that my uniform was torn to pieces ; trousers ditto ; my shoes had parted company in the quagmire ; and as for hat, it was left in my cot. I had a dirty bandage tied round my neck, performing the twofold office of a cravat and a dressing to my wound ; while the blood from the scratches had dried in black streaks adown and across my face and paws, and I was altogether so begrimed with mud that my mother would not have known me. Dick made his salaam, and then took up a position beside the sallyport, with an important face, like a showman exhibiting wild beastesses, a regular 'stir-him-up- with-a-long-pole ' sort of look. I followed him — ' This is Lieutenant Cringle, Captain Transom.' 'The devil it is ! ' said Transom, trying in vain to keep his gravity. ' Why, I see it is — How do you do, Mr. Cringle ? glad to see you.' 'This is Peter Mangrove, branch pilot,' con- tinued Gasket, as Peter, bowing, tried to slide past out of sight. Till this instant I had not time to look at him — he was even a much queerer-looking figure than myself. He had been encumbered with no garment besides his trousers when we started, and these had been reduced, in the scramble through the brake, to a waistband and two kneebands, from which a few shreds fluttered in the breeze — the rest of his canvas having been entirely torn out of the bolt-ropes. For an upper dress he had borrowed a waistcoat without sleeves from the purser of the schooner, which hung loose and unbuttoned before ; 290 CUBA FISHERMEN while behind, being somewhat of the shortest, some very prominent parts of his stern frame were disclosed, as even an apology for a shirt he had none. Being a decent man, however, he had tied his large straw hat round his waist, by strings fastened to the broad brims, which nearly met behind, so that the crown covered his loins before, like a petard, while the sameness of his black naked body was relieved by being laced with blood from numberless lacerations. Next came the female — 'This is the pilot's wife, Captain Transom,' again sung out old Dick ; but decency won't let me venture on a description of poor Nancy's equipment, beyond mentioning, that one of the Gleam's crew had given her a pair of old trousers, which, as a sailor has no bottom, and Nancy was not a sailor, were most ludicrously scanty at top, and devil another rag of any kind had the poor creature on, but a handkerchief across her bosom. There was no standing all this ; the crew forward and in the waist were all on the broad grin, while the officers, after struggling to maintain their gravity until they were nearly suffocated, fairly gave in, and the whole ship echoed with the most uproarious laughter ; a young villain, whether a mid or no I could not tell, yelling out in the throng, ' Hurra for Tom Cringle's Tail ! ' I was fairly beginning to lose countenance, when up jumped Sneezer to my relief out of the boat, with an old cocked hat lashed on his head, a marine's jacket buttoned round his body, and his coal-black muzzle bedaubed with pipe-clay, regularly monkeyfied, the momentary handiwork of some wicked little reefers, while a small pipe 291 TOM CRINGLE'S LOG sang out quietly, as if not intended to reach the quarter-deck, although it did do so, c And here conies the last joint of Mr. Cringle's Tail.' The dog began floundering and jumping about, and walloping amongst the people, most of whom knew him, and immediately drew their attention from me and my party to himself j for away they all bundled forward, dog and men tumbling and scrambling about like so many children, leaving the coast clear to me and my attendants. The absurdity of the whole exhibition had, for an instant, even under the very nose of a proverbially taut hand, led to freedoms which I believed im- possible in a man-of-war. However, there was too much serious matter in hand, independently of any other consideration, to allow the merriment created by our appearance to last long. Captain Transom, immediately on being in- formed how matters stood, with seaman-like promptitude determined to lighten the Gleam, and send her in with the boats, for the purpose of de- stroying the haunt of the pirates, and recovering the men, if they were still alive ; but before anything could be done it came on to blow, and for a week we had great difficulty in maintaining our position off the coast against the strength of the gale and lee current. It was on the Sunday morning after I had escaped that it moderated sufficiently for our pur- pose, when both vessels stood close in, and Peter and I were sent to reconnoitre the entrance of the port in the gig. Having sounded and taken the bearings of the land, we returned on board, when the Gleams provisions were taken out and her water started. The ballast was then shifted, so as 292 CUBA FISHERMEN to bring her by the head, that she might thus draw less water by being on an even keel, all sharp vessels of her class requiring much deeper water aft than forward ; the corvette's launch, with a twelve-pound carronade fitted, was then manned and armed with thirty seaman and marines, under the command of the second lieutenant ; the jolly- boat and the two quarter boats, each with twelve men, followed in a string, under the third lieu- tenant, the master, and the senior midshipman ; thirty picked hands were added to the schooner's crew ; and I was desired to take the gig with six smart hands and Peter Mangrove, and to accom- pany the whole as pilot, but to pull out of danger so soon as the action commenced, so as to be ready to help any disabled boat, or to carry orders from the commanding officer. At nine in the morning we gave three cheers, and, leaving the corvette with barely forty hands on board, the Gleam made sail towards the harbour's mouth, with the boats in tow ; but when we got within musket-shot of the entrance, the breeze failed us, when the order of sailing was reversed, the boats now taking the schooner in tow, preceded by your humble servant in the gig. We dashed safely through the small canal of blue water, which divided the surf at the harbour's mouth, having hit it to a nicety ; but when about a pistol-shot from the entrance, the channel nar- rowed to a muddy creek, not more than twenty yards wide, with high trees and thick underwood close to the water's edge. All was silent ; the sun shone down upon us like the concentrated rays of a burning-glass, and there was no breeze to dissipate the heavy dank mist that hovered over 293 TOM CRINGLE'S LOG the surface of the unwholesome canal, nor was there any appearance of a living thing, save and except a few startled water-fowl, and some guanas on the trees, and now and then an alligator, like a black log of charred wood, would roll off a slimy bank of brown mud, with a splash, into the water. We rowed on, the schooner every now and then taking the ground, but she was always quickly warped off again by a kedge ; at length, after we had in all proceeded, it might be, about a mile from the beach, we came to a boom of strong timber clamped with iron, stretching across the creek. We were not unprepared for this ; one of two old thirty-two pound carronades, which, in anticipation of some obstruction of the sort, had been got on deck from amongst the G learn s ballast, and properly slung, was now made fast to the middle timber of the boom, and let go, when the weight of it sank it to the bottom, and we passed on. We pulled on for about half a mile further, when we noticed, high up on a sunny cliff that shot boldly out into the clear blue heavens, a small red flag suddenly run up to the top of a tall, scathed, branchless palm tree, where it flared for a moment in the breeze like the flame of a torch, and then as suddenly disappeared. ' Come, they are on the look-out for us, I see.' The hills continued to close on us as we ad- vanced, and that so precipitously, that we might have been crushed to pieces had half a dozen active fellows, without any risk to themselves — for the trees would have screened them — simply loosened some of the fragments of rock that impended over us so threateningly ; it seemed as if a little finger could have sent them bounding and thundering 294 CUBA FISHERMEN down the mountain side ; but this either was not the game of the people we were in search of, or Obed's spirit and energy had been crushed out of him by the heart-depressing belief that his hours were numbered, for no active obstruction was offered. We now suddenly rounded an abrupt corner of the creek, and there we were, full in front of the schooners, who, with the felucca in advance, were lying in line of battle, with springs on their cables. The horrible black pennant was, in the present instance, nowhere to be seen ; indeed, why such an impolitic step as ever to have shown it at all was taken in the first attack, I never could under- stand ; for the force was too small to have created any serious fear of being captured (unless indeed it had been taken for an advance guard, supported by a stronger), while it must have appeared pro- bable to Obediah that the loss of the two boats would in all likelihood lead to a more powerful attempt, when, if it were successful, the damning fact* of having fought under such an infernal emblem must have ensured a pirate's death on the gibbet to every soul who was taken, unless he had intended to have murdered all the witnesses of it. But, since proof in my person and the pilot's existed, riow, if ever, was the time for mortal resistance, and to have hoisted it, for they knew that they all fought with halters about their necks. They had all the Spanish flag flying except the IVove^ which showed American colours, and the felucca, which had a white flag hoisted, from which last, whenever our gig appeared, a canoe shoved off, and pulled towards us. The officer, if such he might be called, also carried a white flag in his 295 TOM CRINGLE'S LOG hand. He was a daring-looking fellow, and dashed up alongside of me. The incomprehensible folly of trying at this time of day to cloak the real character of the vessels puzzled me, and does so to this hour. I have never got a clue to it, unless it was that Obed's strong mind had given way before his superstitious fears, and others had now assumed the right of both judging and acting for him in this his closing scene. The pirate officer at once recognised me, but seemed neither surprised nor disconcerted at the strength of the force which accompanied me. He asked me in Spanish if I commanded it ; I told him I did not, that the captain of the schooner was the senior officer. c Then, will you be good enough to go on board with me, to interpret for me ? ' 'Certainly.' In half a minute we were both on the Gleam's deck, the crews of the boats that had her in tow lying on their oars. ' You are the commander of this force?' said the Spaniard. ' I am,' said old Gasket, who had figged himself out in full puff, after the manner of the ancients, as if he had been going to church, instead of to fight ; ' and who the hell are you ? ' ' I command one of these Spanish schooners, sir, which your boats so unwarrantably attacked a week ago, although you are at peace with Spain. But even had they been enemies, they were in a friendly port, which should have protected them.' 'All very good oysters,' quoth old Dick; 'and pray was it an honest trick of you to cabbage my young friend, Lieutenant Cringle there, as if you had been slavers kidnapping the Bungoes in the 296 r >//y// •//. CUTTING OUT THE P1RATEC CUBA FISHKRMEN Bight of Biafra, and then to fire on and murder my people when sent in to claim him? ' ' As to carrying off that young gentleman, it was no affair of ours ; he was brought away by the master of that American schooner ; but so far as regards firing on your boats, I believe they fired first. But the crews are not murdered ; on the contrary, they have been well used, and are now on board that felucca. I am come to surrender the whole fifteen to you.' c The whole fifteen ! and what have you made of the other twelve P ' c Gastados,' said the fellow, with all the sang-froid in the world, — 'gastados [spent or expended], by their own folly.' * Oh, they are expended, are they ? then give us the fifteen? ' Certainly ; but you will in this case withdraw your force, of course.' 'We shall see about that — go and send us the men.' He" jumped down into the canoe, and shoved off. Whenever he reached the felucca he struck the white flag, and hoisted the Spanish in its stead, and by hauling on a spring, he brought her to cover the largest schooner so effectually that we could not fire a shot at her without going through the felucca. We could see all the men leave this latter vessel in two canoes, and go on board one of the other craft. There was now no time to be lost, so I dashed at the felucca in the gig, and broke open the hatches, where we found the captured seamen and their gallant leader, Lieutenant , in a sorry plight, expecting nothing but to be blown up, or instant death by shot or the knife. 297 TOM CRINGLE'S LOG We released them, and, sending to the Gleam for ammunition and small-arms, led the way in the felucca, by Mr. Gasket's orders, to the attack, the corvette's launch supporting us; while the schooner, with the other craft, were scraping up as fast as they could. We made straight for the largest schooner, which, with her consorts, now opened a heavy fire of grape and musketry, which we returned with interest. I can tell little of what took place till I found myself on the pirate's quarterdeck after a desperate tussle, and having driven the crew overboard, with dead and wounded men thickly strewn about, and our fellows busy firing at their surviving antagonists, as they were trying to gain the shore by swimming. Although the schooner we carried was the Com- modore, and commanded by Obediah in person, yet the pirates — that is, the Spanish part of them — by no means showed the fight I expected. While we were approaching, no fire could be hotter, and their yells and cheers were tremendous ; but the instant we laid her alongside with the felucca, and swept her decks with a discharge of grape from the carronade, under cover of which we boarded on the quarter, while the launch's people scrambled up at the bows, their hearts failed, a regular panic over- took them, and they jumped overboard, without waiting for a taste either of cutlass or boarding- pike. The captain himself, however, with about ten Americans, stood at bay round the long gun, which, notwithstanding their great inferiority in point of numbers to our party, they manfully fired three several times at us, after we had carried her aft ; but we were so close that the grape came past us like a round shot, and only killed one hand at 298 CUBA FISHERMEN each discharge ; whereas at thirty yards farther oft, by having had room to spread, it might have made a pretty tableau of the whole party. I hailed Obed twice to surrender, while our people, staggered by the extreme hardihood of the small group, hung back for an instant ; but he either did not hear me, or would not, for the only reply he seemed inclined to make was by slewing round the gun so as to bring me on with it, and the next moment a general rush was made, when the whole party was cut down, with three exceptions, one of whom was Obed himself, who, getting on the gun, made a desperate bound over the men's heads, and jumped overboard. He struck out gallantly, the shot pattering round him like the first of a thunder shower, but he dived apparently unhurt, and I lost sight of him. The other vessels having also been carried, the firing was all on our side by this time, and I, along with the other officers, was exerting myself to stop the butchery. ' Cease firing, men ; for shame, you see they no longer resist.' And my voice was obeyed by all except the fifteen we had released, who were absolutely mad with fury — perfect fiends ; such uncontrollable fierceness I had never witnessed, — indeed, I had nearly cut one of them down before I could make them knock off" firing. ' Don't fire, sir,' cried I to one. c Ay, ay, sir ; but that scoundrel made me wash his shirts,' and he let drive at a poor devil, who was squattering and swimming away towards the shore, and shot him through the head. 4 By heavens ! I will run you through, if you fire at that man ! ' shouted I to another — a marine — 299 TOM CRINGLE'S LOG who was taking aim at no less a personage than friend Obed, who had risen to breathe, and was swimming after the others, but the very last man of all. ' No, by G ! he made me wash his trousers^ sir.' He fired ; the pirate stretched out his arms, turned slowly on his back, with his face towards me ; I thought he gave me a sort of c Et tu, Brute ! ' look, but I daresay it was fancy — his feet began to sink, and he gradually disappeared — a few bubbles of froth and blood marking the spot where he went down. He had been shot dead. I will not attempt to describe my feelings at this moment — they burned themselves in on my heart at the time, and the impression is indelible. Whether I had or had not acted, in one sense, unjustly, by thrusting myself so conspicuously forward in the attempt to capture him, after what had passed between us, forced itself upon my judgment. I had certainly promised that I would, in no way that I could help, be instrumental in his destruction or seizure, pro- vided he landed me at St. Jago, or put me on board a friendly vessel. He did neither, so his part of the compact might be considered broken ; but then it was out of his power to have fulfilled it ; besides, he not only threatened my life subsequently, but actually wounded me ; still, however, on great provocation. But what 'is writ, is writ.' He has gone to his account, pirate as he was, murderer if you will ; yet I had, and still have, a tear for his memory, — and many a time have I prayed on my bare knees that his blue agonized dying look might be erased from my brain — but this can never be. What he had been I never learned ; but it is my deliberate opinion, that, with a clear stage and 300 CUBA FISHERMEN opportunity, he would have forced himself out from the surface of society for good or for evil. The unfortunates who survived him, but to expiate their crimes on the gibbet at Port Royal, said he had joined them from a New York privateer, but they knew nothing farther of him beyond the fact that, by his skill lind desperate courage, within a month he had, by common acclaim, been elected captain of the whole band. There was a story current on board the corvette, of a small trading craft, with a person answering his description, having been captured in the Chesapeake by one of the squadron, and sent to Halifax for adjudication (the master, as in most cases of the kind, being left on board), which from that hour had never been heard of, neither vessel, nor prize crew, nor captain, until two Americans were taken out of a slaver, off the Cape de Verd, by the Firebrand^ about a year afterwards, after a most brave and determined attempt to escape, both of whom were, however, allowed to enter, but subsequently deserted off Sandy Hook by swimming ashore, in consequence of a pressed hand hinting that one of them, surmised to be Obed, had been the master of the vessel above mentioned. All resistance having ceased, the few of the pirates who escaped having scampered into the woods, where it would have been vain to follow them, we secured our prisoners, and at the close of a bloody day — for fatal had it been to friend and foe — the prizes were got under weigh, and before nightfall we were all at sea, sailing in a fleet, under convoy of the corvette and Gleam. 301 TOM CRINGLE'S LOG CHAPTER X VOMITO PRIETO ' This disease is beyond my practice.' The Doctor, in Macbeth. The second and third acting lieutenants were on board the prizes — the purser busy in his vocation the doctor ditto. Indeed, he and his mates had more on their hands than they could well manage. The first lieutenant was engaged on deck, and the master was in his cot, suffering from a severe con- tusion ; so when I got on board the corvette, and dived into the gunroom in search of some crumbs of comfort, the deuce a living soul was there to welcome me, except the gunroom steward, who speedily produced some cold meat, and asked me if I would take a glass of swizzle. The food I had no great fancy to, although I had not tasted a morsel since six o'clock in the morning, and it was now eight in the evening ; but the offer of the grog sounded gratefully in mine ear, and I was about tackling to a stout rummer of the same, when a smart dandified shaver, with gay mother-of- pearl buttons on his jacket, as thick set as peas, presented his tallow chops at the door. 'Captain Transom desires me to say that he will be glad of your company in the cabin, Mr. Cringle.' 1 My compliments — I will wait on him so soon as I have had a snack. We have had no dinner in the gunroom to-day yet, you know, Mafame. 302 VOMITO PRIETO 'Why, it was in the knowledge of that the captain sent me, sir. He has not had any dinner either ; but it is now on the table, and he waits for you.' I was but little in spirits, and, to say sooth, was fitter for my bed than society ; but the captain's advances had been made with so much kindliness, that I got up and made a strong endeavour to rouse myself; and, having made my toilet as well as my slender means admitted, I followed the captain's steward into the cabin. I started — why, I could not well tell — as the sentry at the door stood to his arms when I passed in ; and, as if I had been actually possessed by some wandering spirit, who had taken the small liberty of using my faculties and tongue without my con- currence, I hastily asked the man if he was an American ? He stared in great astonishment for a short space — turned his quid — and then rapped out, as angrily as respect for a commissioned officer would let him, — ' No, by , sir ! ' This startled me as much as the question I had almost unconsciously — and, I may say, involun- tarily — put to the marine had surprised him, and I made a full stop, and leant back against the door- post. The captain, who was walking up and down the cabin, had heard me speak, but without comprehending the nature of my question, and now recalled me in some measure to myself, by inquir- ing if I wanted anything. I replied, hurriedly, that I did not. 'Well, Mr. Cringle, dinner is ready — so take that chair at the foot of the table, will you ? ' I sat down, mechanically, as it appeared to me ■ — for a strange, swimming, dizzy sort of sensation 3°3 TOM CRINGLE'S LOG had suddenly overtaken me, accompanied by a whoreson tingling, as Shakespeare hath it, in my ears. I was unable to eat a morsel ; but I could have drunk the ocean, had it been claret or vin-de- Grave — to both of which I helped myself as largely as good manners would allow, or a little beyond, mayhap. All this while the captain was stowing his cargo with great zeal, and tifting away at the fluids as became an honest sailor after so long a fast, interlarding his operations with a civil word to me now and then, without any especial regard as to the answer I made him, or, indeed, caring greatly whether I answered him or not. 1 Sharp work you must have had, Mr. Cringle ; should have liked to have been with you myself. Help yourself, before passing that bottle — zounds, man, never take a bottle by the bilge — grasp the neck, man, at least in this fervent climate — thank you. Pity you had not caught the captain though. What you told me of that man very much interested me, coupled with the prevailing reports regarding him in the ship — daring dog he must have been — can't forget how gallantly he weathered us when we chased him.' I broke silence for the first time. Indeed, I could scarcely have done so sooner, even had I chosen it, for the gallant officer was rather con- tinuous in his yarn-spinning. However,- he had nearly dined, and was leaning back, allowing the champagne to trickle leisurely from a glass half a yard long, which he had applied to his lips, when I said — 'Well, the imagination does sometimes play one strange tricks ; I verily believe in second sight now, captain, for at this very instant I am regu- 3°4 VOMITO PRIETO larly the fool of my own senses — but, pray, don't laugh at me ; ' and I lay back on my chair, and pressed my hands over my shut eyes and hot burn- ing temples, which were now throbbing as if the arteries would have burst. The captain, who was evidently much surprised at my abruptness, said something hurriedly and rather sharply in answer, but I could not for the life of me mark what it was. I opened my eyes again, and looked towards the object that had before riveted my attention. It was neither more nor less than the captain's cloak — a plain, unpre- tending, substantial blue garment, lined with white, which, on coming below, he had cast carelessly down on the locker that ran across the after part of the cabin behind him. It was about eighteen feet from me, and as there was no light nearer it than the swinging lamp over the table at whjch we were seated, the whole of the cabin thereabouts was thrown considerably into shade. The cape of the cloak was turned over, showing the white lining, and was rather bundled, as it were, into a round heap, about the size of a man's head. When first I looked at it, there was a dreamy, glimmering indistinctness about it that I could not well understand, and I would have said, had it been possible, that the wrinkles and folds in it were beginning to be instinct with motion, to creep and crawl, as it were ; at all events, the false impression was so strong as to jar my nerves, and make me shudder with horror. I knew there was no such thing, as well as Mac- beth, but nevertheless it was with an indescrib- able feeling of curiosity, dashed with awe, that I stared intently at it, as if fascinated, while vol. i. 305 u TOM CRINGLE'S LOG almost unwittingly I made the remark already mentioned. I had expected that the unaccountable appear- ance which had excited my attention so strongly would have vanished with the closing of my eyes ; but it did not, for when I looked at it again, the working and shifting of the folds of the cloth still continued, and even more distinctly than before. 4 Very extraordinary all this,' I murmured to myself. 'Pray, Mr. Cringle, be sociable, man,' said the Captain j ' what the deuce do you see, that you stare over my shoulder in that way ? Were I a woman, now, I should tremble to look behind me, while you were glaring aft in that wild, moon- struck sort of fashion.' c By all that is astonishing,' I exclaimed in great agitation, ' if the folds of the cape have not arranged themselves into the very likeness of his dying face ! — Why, it is his face, and no fanciful grouping of my heated brain. Look there, sir — look there — I know it can't be — but there be lies — the very features and upper part of the body, lith and limb, as when he disappeared beneath the water when he was shot dead.' I felt the boiling blood, that had been rushing through my system like streams of molten lead, suddenly freeze and coagulate about my heart, impeding my respiration to such an degree that I thought I should have been suffocated. I had the feeling as if my soul was going to take wing. It was not fear, nor could I say I was in pain, but it was so utterly unlike anything I had ever ex- perienced before, and so indescribable, that I thought to myself — ' This may be death.' 306 VOMITO PRIETO ' Why, what a changeable rose you are, Master Cringle ! ' said Captain Transom, good- naturedly ; ' your face was like the north-west moon in a fog but a minute ago, and now it is as pale as a lily — blue-white, I declare. Why, my man, you must be ill, and seriously, too.' His voice dissipated the hideous chimera — the folds fell, and relapsed into their own shape, and the cloak: was once more a cloak, and nothing more. I drew a long breath. 'Ah, it is gone at last, thank God ! ' — and then, aware of the strange effect my unaccountable incoherence must have had on the skipper, I thought to brazen it out by trying the free and easy line, which was neither more nor less than arrant impertinence in our relative positions. 'Why, I have been heated a little, and amusing myself with sundry vain imaginings, but allow me to take wine with you, Captain,' filling the tumbler with vin-de-Grave to the brim, as I spoke. 'Success to you, sir — here's to your speedy promotion — may you soon get a crack frigate ; as for me, I intend to be Archbishop of Canterbury, or maid of honour to the Queen of Sheba, or something in the heathen mythology.' I drank off the wine, although I had the greatest difficulty in steadying my trembling hand, and carrying it to my lips ; but notwithstanding my increasing giddiness, and the buzzing in my ears, and swimming of mine eyes, I noticed the Captain's face of amazement as he exclaimed — ' The boy is either mad or drunk, by Jupiter ! ' I could not stand his searching and angry look, and in turning my eye, it again fell on the cloak, which now seemed to be stretched out at greater 3°7 TOM CRINGLE'S LOG length, and to be altogether more voluminous than it was before. I was forcibly struck with this, for I was certain no one had touched it. 'By heavens! it heaves,' I exclaimed, much moved, — 'how is this? I never thought to have believed such things — it stirs again — it takes the figure of a man — as if it were a pall covering his body. Pray, Captain Transom, what trick is this ? — Is there anything below that cloak there ? ' ' What cloak do you mean ? ' ' Why, that blue one lying on the locker there. Is there any cat or dog in the cabin ? ' — and I started on my legs. ' Captain Transom,' I con- tinued, with great vehemence, ' for the love of God tell me what is there below that cloak ? ' He looked surprised beyond all measure. ' Why, Mr. Cringle, I cannot for the soul of me comprehend you ; indeed I cannot ; but, Mafame, indulge him. See if there be anything below my cloak.' The servant walked to the locker, and lifted up the cape of it, and was in the act of taking it from the locker, when I impetuously desired the man to leave it alone. ' I can't look on him again,' said I j while the faintishness increased, so that I could hardly speak. ' Don't move the covering from his face, for God's sake — don't remove it,' and I lay back in my chair, screening my eyes from the lamp with my hands, and shuddering with an icy chill from head to foot. The Captain, who had hitherto maintained the well-bred, patronising, although somewhat distant, air of a superior officer to an inferior who was his guest, addressed me now in an altered tone, and with a brotherly kindness. 308 VOMITO PRIETO 'Mr. Cringle, I have some knowledge of you, and I know many of your friends ; so I must take the liberty of an old acquaintance with you. This day's work has been a severe one, and your share in it, especially after your past fatigues, has been very trying, and as I will report it, I hope it may clap a good spoke in your wheel ; but you are over-heated, and have been over-excited ; fatigue has broken you down, and I must really request you will take something warm, and turn in. — Here, Mafame, get the carpenter's mate to secure that cleat on the weather-side there, and sling my spare cot for Mr. Cringle. — You will be cooler here than in the gunroom.' I heard his words without comprehending their meaning. I sat and stared at him, quite conscious, all the time, of the extreme impropriety, not to say indecency, of my conduct ; but there was a spell on me ; I tried to speak, but could not ; and, believing that I was either possessed by some dumb devil, or struck with palsy, I rose up, bowed to Captain Transom, and straightway hied me on deck. I could hear him say to his servant, as I was going up the ladder, 'Look after that young gentle- man, Mafame, and send Isaac to the doctor, and bid him come here now;' and then, in a commise- rating tone — ' Poor young fellow, what a pity ! ' When I got on deck all was quiet. The cool fresh air had an instantaneous effect on my shattered nerves, the violent throbbing in my head ceased, and I begun to hug myself with the notion that my distemper, whatever it might have been, had beaten a retreat. Suddenly I felt so collected and comfortable as to be quite alive to the loveliness of the scene. It 3°9 TOM CRINGLE'S LOG was a beautiful moonlight night ; such a night as is nowhere to be seen without the Tropics, and not often within them. There was just breeze enough to set the sails to sleep, although not so strong as to prevent their giving a low murmuring flap now and then, when the corvette rolled a little heavier than usual on the long swell. There was not a cloud to be seen in the sky, not even a stray shred of thin fleecy gauze-like vapour, to mark the direction of the upper current of the air, by its course across the moon's disc, which was now at the full, and about half-way up her track in the liquid heavens. The small twinkling light from millions of lesser stars, in that part of the firmament where she hung, round as a silver pot-lid — shield, I mean — was swamped in the flood of greenish-white radiance shed by her, and it was only a few of the first magnitude, with a planet here and there, that were visible to the naked eye, in the neighbourhood of her crystal bright globe ; but the clear depth, and dark translucent purity of the profound, when the eye tried to pierce into it at the zenith, where the stars once more shone and sparkled thick and brightly, beyond the merging influence of the pale cold orb, no man can describe now — one could, once — but, rest his soul, he is dead — and then to look forth far into the night, across the dark ridge of many a heaving swell of living water — but, ' Thomas Cringle, ahoy — where the devil are you cruising to ? ' So, to come back to my story. I went aft and mounted the small poop, and looked towards the aforesaid moon — a glorious, resplendent, tropical moon, and not the paper lantern affair, hanging in an atmosphere of fog and smoke, about 310 VOMITO PRIETO which your blear-eyed poets haver so much. By the bye, these gentry are fond of singing of the blessed sun — were they sailors they would bless the moon also, and be to them, in place of writ- ing much wearisome poetry regarding her blighting propensities. But I have lost the end of my yarn once more, in the strands of these parentheses. — Lord, what a word to pronounce in the plural ! — I can no more get out now, than a girl's silk-worm from the innermost of a nest of pill boxes, where, to ride the simile to death at once, I have warped the thread of my story so round and round me, that I can't for the life of me unravel it. Very odd all this. Since I have recovered of this fever, everything is slack about me ; I can't set up the shrouds and backstays of my mind, not to speak of bobstays, if I should die for it. The running rigging is all right enough, and the canvas is there; but I either can't see it, or when I do, I find I have too little ballast, or I get involved amongst shoals, and white water, and breakers, — don't you hear them roar ? — which I cannot weather, and crooked channels, under some lee-shore, through which I cannot scrape clear. So down must go the anchor, as at present, and there — there goes the chain-cable, rushing and rumbling through the hawse-hole. But I suppose it will be all right by and by, as I get stronger. 'But rouse thee, Thomas ! Where is the end of this yarn, that you are blarneying about ? ' ' Avast heaving, you swab you — avast ; if you had as much calomel in your corpus as I have at this present speaking — why, you would be a lad of more metal than I take you for, that is all. You would have about as much quicksilver in your 3 11 TOM CRINGLE'S LOG stomach as I have in my purse, and all my silver has been quick, ever since I remember, like the jests of the gravedigger in Ha?nlet — but, as you say, where the devil is the end of this yarn ? ' Ah, here it is ! so off we go again — and looked forward towards the rising moon, whose shining wake of glow-worm-coloured light, sparkling in the small waves, that danced in the gentle wind on the heaving bosom of the dark-blue sea, was right ahead of us, like a river of quicksilver, with its course diminished in the distance to a point, flow- ing towards us, from the extreme verge of the horizon, through a rolling sea of ink, with the waters of which, for a time, it disdained to blend. Concentrated, and shining like polished silver afar off — intense and sparkling as it streamed down nearer, but becoming less and less brilliant as it widened in its approach to us, until, like the stream of the great Estuary of the Magdalena, losing itself in the salt waste of waters, it gradually melted beneath us and around us into the darkness. I looked aloft — every object appeared sharply cut out against the dark firmament, and the swaying of the mastheads to and fro, as the vessel rolled, was so steady and slow, that they seemed stationary, while it was the moon and stars which appeared to vibrate and swing from side to side, high overhead, like the vacillation of the clouds in a theatre, when the scene is first let down. The masts, and yards, and standing and running- rigging, looked like black pillars, and bars, and wires of iron, reared against the sky, by some mighty spirit of the night ; and the sails, as the moon shone dimly through them, were as dark as if they had been tarpaulings. But when I walked 312 VOMITO PRIETO forward and looked aft, what a beauteous change ! Now each mast, with its gently swelling canvas, the higher sails decreasing in size, until they tapered away nearly to a point, through topsail, top- gallant sail, royal and skysails, showed like towers of snow, and the cordage like silver threads, while each dark spar seemed to be of ebony, fished with ivory, as a flood of cold, pale, mild light streamed from the beauteous planet over the whole stupen- dous machine, lighting up the sand-white decks, on which the shadows of the men, and of every object that intercepted the moonbeams, were cast as strongly as if the planks had been inlaid with jet. There was nothing moving about the decks. The look-outs, aft and at the gangways, sat or stood like statues half bronze, half alabaster. The old»quartermaster, who was cunning the ship, and had perched himself on a carronade, with his arm leaning on the weather nettings, was equally motionless. The watch had all disappeared for- ward, or were stowed out of sight under the lee of the boats ; the first-lieutenant, as if captivated by the serenity of the scene, was leaning with folded arms on the weather-gangway, looking abroad upon the ocean, and whistling now and then, either for a wind, or for want of thought. The only being who showed sign of life was the man at the wheel, and he scarcely moved, except now and then to give her a spoke or two, when the cheep of the tiller-rope, running through the well-greased leading blocks, would grate on the ear as a sound of some importance ; while in daylight, in the ordinary bustle of the ship, no one could say he ever heard it. 313 TOM CRINGLE'S LOG Three bells ! — ' Keep a bright look-out there,' sung out the lieutenant. 1 Ay, ay, sir,' from the four look-out men, in a volley. Then from the weather-gangway, ' All's well ' rose shrill into the night air. The watchword was echoed by the man on the forecastle, re-echoed by the lee-gangway look-out, and ending with the response of the man on the poop. My dream was dissipated — and so was the first-lieutenant's, who had but little poetry in his composition, honest man. 4 Fine night, Mr. Cringle. Look aloft, how beautifully set the sails are ; that mizen-topsail is well cut, eh ? Sits well, don't it ? But — con- found the lubbers ! Boatswain's mate, call the watch.' Whi-whew, whi-whew, chirrup, chip, chip — the deck was alive in an instant, ' as bees bizz out wi' angry fyke.' ' Where is the captain of the mizen-top ? ' growled the man in authority. 1 Here, sir.' ' Here, sir ! — look at the weather-clew of the mizen-topsail, sir, — look at that sail, sir, — how many turns can you count in that clew, sir ? Spring it, you no-sailor you — spring it, and set the sail again.' How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable all this appeared to me at the time, I well remember ; but the obnoxious turns were shaken out, and the sail set again so as to please even the fastidious eye of the lieutenant, who, seeing nothing more to find fault with, addressed me once more. 1 Have had no grub since morning, Mr. Cringle ; 3 J 4 VOMITO PR IE TO all the others are away in the prizes ; you are as good as one of us now, only want the order to join, you know — so, will you oblige me, and take charge of the deck until I go below and change my clothes, and gobble a bit ? ' 4 Unquestionably — with much pleasure.' He forthwith dived, and I walked aft a few steps towards where the old quartermaster was standing on the gun. ' How is her head, quartermaster ? ' ' South-east and by south, sir. If the wind holds, we shall weather Morant Point, I think, sir.' 4 Very like, very like. — What is that glancing backwards and forwards across the port-hole there, quartermaster ? ' • ' I told you so, Mafame,' said the man ; ' what are you skylarking about the mizen-chains for, man ? — Come in, will you, come in.' The captain's caution to his servant flashed on me. ' Come in, my man, and give my respects to the captain, and tell him that I am quite well now ; the fresh air has perfectly restored me.' c I will, sir,' said Mafame, half ashamed at being detected in his office of inspector-general of my actions ; but the doctor, to whom he had been sent, having now got a leisure moment from his labour in the shambles, came up and made in- quiries as to how I felt. ' Why, Doctor, I thought I was in for a fever half an hour ago, but it is quite gone off", or nearly so — there, feel my pulse.' — It was regular, and there was no particular heat of skin. 'Why, I don't think there is much the matter 3 J 5 TOM CRINGLE'S LOG with you. Mafame, tell the captain so ; but turn in and take some rest as soon as you can, and I will see you in the morning — and here,' feeling in his waistcoat pocket, ' here are a couple of capers for you ; take them now, will you ? ' — (And he handed me two blue pills, which I the next moment chucked overboard, to cure some bilious dolphin of the liver complaint.) I promised to do so whenever the lieutenant relieved the deck, which would, I made no question, be within half-an-hour. 1 Very well, that will do — good-night.' I am regularly done up myself,' quoth the medico, as he descended to the gunroom. At this time of night, the prizes were all in a cluster under our lee quarter, like small icebergs covered with snow, and carrying every rag they could set. The Gleam was a good way astern, as if to whip them in, and to take care that no stray piccaroon should make a dash at any of them. They slid noiselessly along like phantoms of the deep, everything in the air and in the water was so still. I crossed to the lee side of the deck to look at them. The Wave, seeing some one on the hammock-nettings, sheered close to, under the Firebrand's lee quarter, and some one asked, ' Do you want to speak us ? ' The man's voice, reflected from the concave surface of the schooner's main- sail, had a hollow, echoing sound, that startled me. ' I should know that voice,' said I to myself, 'and the figure steering the schooner.' The throbbing in my head and the dizzy feel which had capsized my judgment in the cabin . again returned with increased violence — c It was no deception after all,' thought I, c no cheat of the senses — I now believe such things are.' 316 VOMITO PRIETO The same voice now called out, c Come away, Tom ; come away,' no doubt to some other seaman on board the little vessel, but my heated fancy did not so construe it. The cold breathless fit again overtook me, and I ejaculated, ' God have mercy upon me a sinner ! ' ' Why don't you come, Tom ? ' said the voice once more. It was Obed's. At this very instant of time, the Wave forged ahead into the Firebrand's shadow, so that her sails, but a moment before white as wool in the bright moonbeams, suffered a sudden eclipse, and became black as ink. 'His dark spirit is there,' said I, audibly, 'and calls me — go I will, whatever may befall.' I hailed the schooner, or rather I had only to speak, and that in a low tone, for she was now close under the counter — ' Send your boat, for since you call, I know I must come. A small canoe slid off her deck ; two shipboys got into it, and pulled under the starboard mizen- chains, which entirely concealed them, as they held on for a moment with a boat-hook in the dark shadow of the ship. This was done so silently that neither the look-out on the poop, who was rather on the weather-side at the moment, nor the man at the lee gangway, who happened to be look- ing out forward, heard them, or saw me, as I slipped down unperceived. 4 Pull back again, my lads ; quick now, quick.' In a moment I was alongside, the next I was on deck, and in this short space a change had come over the spirit of my dream, for I now was again conscious that I was on board the Wave with a prize crew. My imagination had taken another direction. 3 1 ? TOM CRINGLE'S LOG ' Now Mr. , I beg pardon, I forget your name,' — I had never heard it — 'make more sail, and haul out from the fleet for Mancheoneal Bay ; I have despatches for the admiral — So crack on.' The midshipman who was in charge of her never for an instant doubted but that all was right ; sail was made, and as the light breeze was the very thing for the little Wave, she began to snore through it like smoke. When she had shot a cable's length ahead of the Firebrand, we kept away a point or two, so as to stand more in for the land, and, like most maniacs, I was inwardly exulting at the success of my manoeuvre, when we heard the corvette's bell struck rapidly. Her main-topsail was suddenly laid to the mast, whilst a loud voice echoed amongst the sails — ' Any one see him in the waist — anybody see him forward there ? ' c No, sir, no.' c Afterguard, fire, and let go the life-buoy — lower away the quarter-boats — jolly-boat also.' We saw the flash, and presently, the small blue light of the buoy, blazing and disappearing, as it rose and fell on the waves in the corvette's wake, sailed away astern, sparkling fitfully, like an ignis fatuus. The cordage rattled through the davit- blocks, as the boats dashed into the water — the splash of the oars was heard, and presently the twinkle of the life-buoy was lost in the lurid glare of the blue-lights, held aloft in each boat, where the crews were standing up, looking like spectres by the ghastly blaze, and anxiously peer- ing about for some sign of the drowning man. c A man overboard,' was repeated from one to another of the prize crew. 3*8 VOMITO PRIETO 'Sure enough,' said I. ' Shall we stand back, sir ? ' said the midship- man. ' To what purpose ? — there are enough there without us — no, no ; crack on ; we can do no good — carry on, carry on ! ' We did so, and I now found severe shooting pains, more racking than the sharpest rheumatism I had ever suffered, pervading my whole body. They increased until I suffered the most excruciat- ing agony, as if my bones had been converted into red-hot tubes of iron, and the marrow in them had been dried up with fervent heat, and I was obliged to beg that a hammock might be spread on deck, on which I lay down, pleading great fatigue and want of sleep as my excuse. My thirst was unquenchable ; the more I drank the hotter it became. My tongue, and mouth, and throat were burning, as if molten lead had been poured down into my stomach, while the most violent retching came on every ten minutes. The prize crew, poor fellows, did all they could — once or twice they seemed about standing back to the ship, but 'Make sail, make sail,' was my only cry. They did so, and there I lay without any- thing between me and the wet planks but a thin sailor's blanket and the canvas of the hammock, through the livelong night, and with no covering but a damp boat-cloak, raving at times during the hot fits, at others having my power of utterance frozen up during the cold ones. The men, once or twice, offered to carry me below, but the idea was horrible to me. ' No, no — not there — for heaven's sake not there ! If you do take me down, I am sure I shall see 3 X 9 TOM CRINGLE'S LOG him, and the dead mate. No, no — overboard rather — throw me overboard rather.' Oh, what would I not have given for the luxury of a flood of tears ! But the fountains of mine eyes were dried up, and seared as with red-hot iron — my skin was parched, and hot, hot, as if every pore had been hermetically sealed ; there was a hell within me and about me, as if the deck on which I lay had been steel at a white heat, and the gushing blood, as under the action of a force- pump, throbbed through my head, like as it would have burst on my brain — and such a racking, split- ting headache — no language can describe it, and yet ever and anon, in the midst of this raging fire, this furnace at my heart, seven times heated, a sudden icy shivering chill would shake me, and pierce through and through me, even when the roasting fever was at the hottest. At length the day broke on the long, long, moist, steamy night, and once more the sun rose to bless everything but me. As the morning wore on, my torments increased with the heat, and I lay sweltering on deck, in a furious delirium, held down forcibly by two men, who were relieved by others every now and then, while I raved about Obed, and Paul, and the scenes I had witnessed on board during the chase and in the attack. None of my rough but kind nurses expected I could have held on till nightfall ; but shortly after sunset I became more collected, and, as I was afterwards told, whenever any little office was performed for me, whenever some drink was held to my lips, I would say to the gruff", sun-burnt, black-whiskered, square-shouldered top-man who might be my Ganymede for the occasion, ' Thank you, Mary ; 320 VOMITO PR IE TO Heaven bless your pale face, Mary ; bless you, bless you ! ' It seemed my fancy had shaken itself clear of the fearful objects that had so pertinaciously haunted me before, and, occupying itself with pleasing recollections, had produced a corresponding calm in the animal ; but the poor fellow to whom I had expressed myself so endearingly was, I learned, most awfully put out and dismayed. He twisted and turned his iron features into all manner of ludicrous combinations under the laughter of his mates, — c Now, Peter, may I be but I would rather be shot at than hear the poor young gentle- man so quiz me in his madness.' Then again, as I praised his lovely taper fin- gers — they were more like bunches of frosted carrots, dipped in a tar-bucket, with the tails snapt short off, where about an inch thick, only — c My taper fingers — Oh, Lord ! Now, Peter, I can't stomach this any longer — I '11 give you my grog for the next two days, if you will take my spell here — my taper fingers — murder ! ' As the evening closed in we saw the high land of Jamaica, but it was the following afternoon before we were off the entrance of Mancheoneal Bay. All this period, although it must have been one of great physical suffering, has ever, to my ethereal part, remained a dead blank. The first thing I remember afterwards, was being carried ashore in the dark in a hammock slung on two oars, so as to form a sort of rude palanquin, and laid down at a short distance from the overseer's house where my troubles had originally com- menced. I soon became perfectly sensible and collected, but I was so weak I could not speak : vol. i. 321 x TOM CRINGLE'S LOG after resting a little, the men again lifted me and proceeded. The door of the dining-hall, which was the back entrance into the overseer's house, opened flush into the little garden through which we had come in — there were lights, and sounds of music, singing, and joviality within. The farther end of the room, at the door of which I now rested, opened into the piazza, or open verandah, which crossed it at right angles, and constituted the front of the house, forming, with this apart- ment, a fio-ure somewhat like the letter T. I stood at the foot of the letter, as it were, and as I looked towards the piazza, which was gaily lit up, I could see it was crowded with male and female negroes in their holiday apparel, with their whole- some, clear, brown-black skins — not blue-b\ack as they appear in our cold country — and beautiful white teeth and sparkling black eyes, amongst whom were several gumbie-men and flute-players, and John Canoes, as the negro Jack Pudding is called ; the latter distinguishable by wearing white false-faces, and enormous shocks of horse-hair, fastened on to their woolly pates. Their character hovers somewhere between that of a harlequin and a clown, as they dance about, and thread through the negro groups, quizzing the women and slapping the men ; and at Christmas-time, the grand negro- carnival, they don't confine their practical jokes to their own colour, but take all manner of comical liberties with the whites equally with their fellow bondsmen. The blackamoor visitors had suddenly, to all appearance, broken off" their dancing, and were now clustered behind a rather remarkable group, who were seated at supper in the dining-room, 322 VOMITO PRIETO near to where I stood, forming, as it were, the foreground in the scene. Mr. Fyall himself was there, and a rosy-gilled, happy-looking man, whom I thought I had seen before ; this much I could discern, for the light fell strong on them, especially on the face of the latter, which shone like a star of the first magnitude, or a lighthouse in the red gleam. The usual family of the overseer — the bookkeepers, that is, and the worthy who had been the proximate cause of all my sufferings, the overseer himself — were there too, as if they had been sitting still at table where I saw them now, ever since I left them three weeks before — at least my fancy did me the favour to anni- hilate, for the nonce, all intermediate time be- tween the point of my departure on the night of the cooper's funeral, and the moment when I now revisited them. I was lifted out of the hammock, and supported to the door between two seamen. The fresh, nice-looking man before mentioned, Aaron Bang, Esquire, by name, an incipient planting attorney in the neighbourhood, of great promise, was in the act of singing a song, for it was during some holiday-time, which had broken down the stiff" observances of a Jamaica planter's life. There he sat, lolling back on his chair, with his feet upon the table, and a cigar, half-consumed, in his hand. He had twisted up his mouth and mirth- provoking face, and, slewing his head on one side, he was warbling, ore rotundo, some melo- dious ditty, with infinite complacency, and, to all appearance, to the great delight of his auditory, when his eyes lighted on me : he was petrified in a moment — I seemed to have blasted him ; his 3 2 3 TOM CRINGLE S LOG warbling ceased instantaneously, — the colour faded from his cheeks — but there he sat, with open mouth, and in the same attitude, as if he still sung, and I had suddenly become deaf, or as if he and his immediate compotators, and the group of blackies beyond, had all been on the instant turned to stone by a slap from one of their own John Canoes. I must have been in truth a terrible spectacle ; my skin was yellow, not as saffron, but as the skin of a ripe lime ; the white of my eyes, to use an Irishism, ditto ; my mouth and lips had festered and broke out^ as we say in Scotland ; my head was bound round with a napkin — none of the cleanest, you may swear ; my dress was a pair of dirty duck trousers, and my shirt, with the boat-cloak that had been my only counter- pane on board of the little vessel, hanging from my shoulders. Lazarus himself could scarcely have been a more appalling object, when the voice of Him who spoke as never man spake, said, 'Lazarus, come forth.' I made an unavailing attempt to cross the threshold, but could not. I was spellbound, or there was an invisible barrier erected against me which I could not overleap. The buzzing in my ears, the pain and throbbing in my head, and rack- ing aches, once more bent me to the eari:h — ill and reduced as I was, a relapse, thought I ; and I felt my judgment once more giving way before the sweltering fiend, who had retreated but for a moment to renew his attacks with still greater fierceness. The moment he once more entered into me — the instant that I was possessed — I cannot call it by any other name — an un- 3 2 4 VOMITO PRIETO natural strength pervaded my shrunken muscles and emaciated frame, and I stepped boldly into the hall. While I had stood at the door, listless and feeble as a child, hanging on the arms of the two topmen, after they had raised me from the hammock, the whole party had sat silently gazing at me, with their faculties paralysed with terror. But now, when I stumped into the room like the marble statue in Don Juan, and glared on them, my eyes sparkling with unearthly brilliancy under the fierce distemper which had anew thrust its red- hot fingers into my maw, and was at the moment seething my brain in its hellish cauldron, the negroes in the piazza, one and all, men, women, and children, evanished into the night, and the whole party in the foreground started to their legs, as if they had been suddenly galvanised ; the table and chairs were overset, and whites and blacks trundled, and scrambled, and bundled over and over each other, neck and crop, as if the very devil had come to invite them to dinner in pro- pria persona , horns, tail, and all. ' Duppy come ! Duppy come ! Massa Tom Cringle ghost stand at for we door ; we all shall dead, oh — we all shall go dead, oh ! ' bellowed the father of gods, my old ally, Jupiter. ' Guid guide us, that 's an awfu' sicht ! ' quoth the Scotch bookkeeper. ' By the hockey, speak if you be a ghost, or I '11 exercise ' [exorcise] c ye with this butt of a musket,' quoth the cowboy — an Irishman, to be sure, whose round bullet-head was discernible in the human mass, by his black, twinkling, half-drunken-looking eyes. 1 Well-a-day,' groaned another of them, a 3 2 5 TOM CRINGLE'S LOG Welshman, I believe, with a face as long as my arm, and a drawl worthy of a Methodist parson ; ' and what can it be — flesh and blood it is not — can these dry bones live ? ' 111 as I was, however, I could perceive that all this row had now more of a tipsy frolic in it — whatever it might have had at first — than absolute fear ; for the red-faced visitor, and Mr. Fyall, as if half- ashamed, speedily extricated themselves from the chaos of chairs and living creatures, righted the table, replaced the candles, and having sat down, looking as grave as judges on the bench, Aaron Bang exclaimed — c I'll bet a dozen, it is the poor fellow himself returned on our hands, half-dead from the rascally treatment he has met with at the hands of these smuggling thieves ! ' ' Smugglers or no,' said Fyall, ' you are right for once, my peony rose, I do believe.' But Aaron was a leetle staggered, notwith- standing, when I stumped towards him, as already described, and he shifted back and back as I advanced, with a most laughable cast of counte- nance, between jest and earnest, while Fyall kept shouting to him — ' If it be his ghost, try him in Latin, Mr. Bang; speak Latin to him, Aaron Bang — nothing for a ghost like Latin; it is their mother tongue.' Bang, who, it seemed, plumed himself on his erudition, forthwith began — ' Ouae mdribus solum tribuuntur.' — Aaron's conceit of exorcising a spirit with the fag-end of an old grammar rule would have tickled me under most circumstances, but I was far past laughing. I had more need, God help me, to pray. I made another step. He hitched his chair back. c Bam, Bo, Rem ! ' shouted the 326 VOMITO PRIETO incipient planting attorney. Another hitch, which carried him clean out of the supper-room, and across the narrow piazza ; but in this last move- ment he made a regular false step, the two back- feet of his chair dropping over the first step of the front stairs, whereupon he lost his balance, and toppling over, vanished in a twinkling, and rolled down half-a-dozen steps, heels over head, until he lay sprawling on the manger or mule-trough before the door, where the beastesses are fed under Busha's own eye on all estates — for this excellent and most cogent reason, that otherwise the maize or guinea- corn, belonging of right to poor mulo, would gene- rally go towards improving the condition, not of the quadruped, but of the biped quashie who had charge of him — and there he lay in a convulsion of laughter. The two seamen, who supported me between them, were at first so completely dumbfoundered by all this, that they could not speak. At length, however, Timothy Tailtackle lost his patience, and found his tongue. c This may be a Jamaica frolic, good gentle- men, and all very comical in its way ; but, d n me, if it be either gentleman-like or Christian- like, to be after funning and fuddling, while a fellow-creature, and his Majesty's commissioned officer to boot, stands before you, all but dead of one of your blasted fevers.' The honest fellow's straightforward appeal, far from giving offence to the kind-hearted people to whom it was made, was not only taken in good part, but Mr. Fyall himself took the lead in setting the whole household immediately to work, to have me properly cared for. The best room in the 3 2 7 TOM CRINGLE'S LOG house was given up to me. I was carefully shifted and put to bed ; but during all that night and the following day I was raving in a furious fever, so that I had to be forcibly held down in my bed, sometimes for half an hour at a time. '■> I say, messmate, have you ever had the yellow fever, the vomito pr'ieto^ black vomit, as the Spaniards call it ? — No ? — Have you ever had a bad bilious fever, then ? — No bad bilious fever either ? Why, then, you are are a most unfortu- nate creature ; for you have never known what it is to be in Heaven, nor eke the other place. Oh, the delight, the blessedness of the languor of recovery, when one finds himself in a large airy room, with a dreamy, indistinct recollection of great past suffering, endured in a small miserable vessel within the tropics, where you have been roasted one moment by the vertical rays of the sun, and the next annealed, hissing hot, by the salt sea- spray ; — in a broad luxurious bed, some cool sunny morning, with the fresh sea-breeze whistling through the open windows that look into the piazza, and rustling the folds of the clean wire- gauze musquito net that serves you for bed-cur- tains ; while beyond you look forth into the sequestered court-yard, overshadowed by one vast umbrageous kennip-tree, that makes every- thing look green and cool and fresh beneath, and whose branches the rushing wind is rasping cheerily on the shingles of the roof — and oh, how passing sweet is the lullaby from the humming of numberless glancing bright-hued flies, of all sorts and sizes, sparkling among the green leaves like chips of a prism, and the fitful whirring of the 328 VOMITO PRIETO fairy-flitting humming-bird, now here, now there, like winged gems, or living 'atoms of the rain- bow,' round which their tiny wings, moving too quickly to be visible, form little halos — and the palm-tree at the house-corner is shaking its long hard leaves, making a sound for all the world like the pattering of rain ; and the orange-tree top, with ripe fruit, and green fruit, and white blossoms, is waving to and fro flush with the window-sill, dashing the fragrant odour into your room at every whish ; and the double jessamine is twining up the papaw (whose fruit, if rubbed on a bull's hide, immediately converts it into a tender beef-steak) and absolutely stifling you with sweet perfume ; and then the sangaree — old madeira, two parts of water, no more, and nutmeg — and not a taste out of a thimble, but a rummerful of it, my boy, that would drown your first-born at his chris- tening, if he slipped into it. And no stinting in the use of this ocean ; on the contrary, the tidy old brown nurse, or mayhap a buxom young one, at your bedside, with ever and anon a ' leetle more panada ' (d — n panada, I had forgotten that ! ) ' and den some more sangaree ; it will do massa good, trenthen him tomack ' — and — but I am out of breath, and must lie-to for a brief space. I opened my eyes late in the morning of the second day after landing, and saw Mr. Fyall and the excellent Aaron Bang sitting one on each side of my bed. Although weak as a sucking infant, I had a strong persuasion on my mind that all danger Was over, and that I was convalescent. I had no feverish symptoms whatsoever, but felt cool and comfortable, with a fine balmy moisture on my skin ; as yet, however, I spoke with great difficulty. 3 2 9 TOM CRINGLE'S LOG Aaron noticed this. ' Don't exert yourself too much, Tom ; take it coolly, man, and thank God that you are now fairly round the corner. Is your head painful ? ' ' No — why should it ? ' Mr. Fyall smiled, and I put up my hand — it was all I could do, for my limbs appeared loaded with lead at the extremities, and when I touched any part of my frame, with my hand for instance, there was no concurring sensation conveyed by the nerves of the two parts ; sometimes I felt as if touched by the hand of another ; at others, as if I had touched the person of some one else. When I raised my hand to my forehead, my fingers in- stinctively moved to take hold of my hair, for I was in no small degree proud of some luxuriant brown curls, which the women used to praise. Alas, and alack-a-day ! in place of ringlets, glossy with Macassar oil, I found a cool young tender plantain leaf bound round my temples. 1 What is all this ? ' said I. ' A kale-blade, where my hair used to be ! ' ' How came this kale-blade here, And how came it here?' sung friend Bang laughing, for he had great powers of laughter, and I saw he kept his quizzical face turned towards some object at the head of the bed, which I could not see. ' You may say that, Aaron — where 's my wig, you rogue, eh ? ' ' Never mind, Tom,' said Fyall, l your hair will soon grow again, won't it, miss ? ' c Miss ! miss !' and I screwed my neck round, and lo ! — ' Ah, Mary, and are you the Delilah who 33° VOMITO PRIETO have shorn my locks — you wicked young female lady, you ! ' She smiled and nodded to Aaron, who was a deuced favourite with the ladies, blacky brown, and white (I give the pas to the staple of the country — hope no offence), as well as with every one else who ever knew him. ' How dare you, friend Bang, shave and blister my head, you dog?' said I. c You cannibal Indian, you have scalped me ; you are a regular Mohawk.' ' Never mind, Tom — never mind, my boy,' said he. c Ay, you may blush, Mary Palma. Cringle there will fight, but he will have '•Palmam qui meruit ferat ' for his motto yet, take my word for it. The sight of my cousin's lovely face, and the heavenly music of her tongue, made me so for- giving that I could be angry with no one. At this moment a nice-looking elderly man slid into the room as noiselessly as a cat. 1 How are you, Lieutenant ? Why, you are positively gay this morning ! Preserve me ! — why have you taken ofF the dressing from your head?' c Preserve me — you may say that, Doctor : why, you seem to have preserved me, and pickled me after a very remarkable fashion, certainly ! Why, man, do you intend to make a mummy of me, with all your swathings ? Now, what is that crackling on my chest ? More plantain- leaves, as I live ! ' ' Only another blister, sir.' ' Only another blister — and my feet — Zounds ! what have you been doing with my feet ? The soles are as tender as if I had been bastinadoed.' 33 1 TOM CRINGLE'S LOG ' Only cataplasms, sir ; mustard and bird-pepper poultices — nothing more.' 1 Mustard and bird-pepper poultices ! — and pray, what is that long fiddle-case supported on two chairs in the piazza ? ' ' What case ? ' said the good doctor, and his eye followed mine. c Oh, my gun-case. I am a great sportsman, you must know — but draw down that blind, Mr. Bang, if you please ; the breeze is too strong.' c Gun- case ! I would rather have taken it for your game-box^ doctor. However, thanks be to Heaven, you have not bagged me this bout.' At this moment I heard a violent scratching and jumping on the roof of the house, and pre- sently a loud croak, and a strong rushing noise, as of a large bird taking flight — c What is that, doctor ? ' 4 The devil,' said he, laughing ; c at least your evil genius, Lieutenant ; it is the carrion crows — the large John-Crows as they are called, flying away. They have been holding a council of war upon you since early dawn, expecting (I may tell you, now you are so well) that it might likely soon turn into a coroner's inquest.' 'John Crow ! — Coroner's inquest ! — Cool shavers those West India chaps, after all ! ' mut- tered 1 ; and again I lay back and offered up my heart-warm thanks to the Almighty, for His great mercy to me a sinner. My aunt and cousin had been on a visit in the neighbourhood, and overnight Mr. Fyall had kindly sent for them to receive my last sigh, for to all appearance I was fast going. Oh, the gratitude of my heart, the tears of joy I wept in my weak 332 ' VOMITO PRIETO blessedness, and the overflowing of heart that I experienced towards that almighty and ever-merci- ful Being who had spared me, and brought me out of my great sickness, to look round on dear friends, and on the idol of my heart, once more, after all my grievous sufferings ! I took Mary's hand — I could not raise it for lack of strength, or I would have kissed it ; but, as she leant over me, Fyall came behind her and gently pressed her sweet lips to mine, while the dear girl blushed as red as Aaron Bang's face. By this my aunt herself had come into the room, and added her warm congratulations ; and last, although not least, Timothy Tailtackle made his appearance in the piazza at the window, with a clean, joyful, well-shaven countenance. He grinned, turned his quid, pulled up his trousers, smoothed down his hair with his hand, and gave a sort of half-tipsy shamble, meant for a bow, as he entered the bed-room. c You have forereached on Davy this time, sir. Heaven be praised for it ! He was close aboard of you, howsomdever, sir, once or twice.' Then he bowed round the room again, with a sort of swing or caper, whichever you choose to call it, as if he had been the party obliged. — c Kind folk these, sir,' he continued, in what was meant for sotto voce^ and for my ear alone, but it was more like the growling of a mastiff puppy than anything else — ' Kind folk, sir — bad as their mountebanking looked the first night, sir — why, Lord bless your honour, may they make a marine of me, if they han't set a Bungo to wait on us, Bill and I, that is — and we has grog more than does us good — and grub, my eye ! — only think, sir — Bill and Timothy Tailtackle waited on by a black Bungo ! ' and he doubled himself 333 TOM CRINGLE'S LOG up, chuckling and hugging himself, with infinite glee. ' All went now merry as a marriage-bell.' I was carefully conveyed to Kingston, where I rallied under my aunt's hospitable roof, as rapidly almost as I had sickened, and within a fortnight, all bypast strangeness explained to my superiors, I at length occupied my berth in the Firebrand's gun-room, as third lieutenant of the ship. CHAPTER XI MORE SCENES IN JAMAICA ' There be land-rats and water-rats — water-thieves and land- thieves — I mean pirates.' — Merchant of Venice. The malady from whose fangs I had just escaped was at this time making fearful ravages amongst the troops and white inhabitants of Jamaica gene- rally ; nor was the squadron exempted from the afflicting visitation, although it suffered in a smaller degree. I had occasion at this time to visit Up-park camp, a military post about a mile and a half from Kingston, where two regiments of infantry and a detachment of artillery were stationed. In the forenoon I walked out in company with an officer, a relation of my own, whom I had gone to visit — enjoying the fresh sea-breeze that whistled past us in half a gale of wind, although the sun was vertical, and shining into the bottom of a pint pot, as the sailors have it. 334 MORE SCENES IN JAMAICA The barracks were built on what appeared to me a very dry situation (although I have since heard it alleged that there was a swamp to the windward of it, over which the sea-breeze blew, but this I did not see), considerately elevated above the hot sandy plain on which Kingston stands, and sloping gently towards the sea. They were splendid, large, airy, two-storey buildings, well raised off the ground on brick pillars, so that there was a perfectly free ventilation of air between the surface of the earth and the floor of the first storey, as well as through the whole of the upper rooms. A large balcony, or piazza, ran along the whole of the south front, both above and below, which shaded the brick shell of the house from the sun, and afforded a cool and convenient lounge for the men. The outhouses of all kinds were well thrown back into the rear, so that in front there was nothing to intercept the sea-breeze. The officers' quarters stood in advance of the men's barracks, and were, as might be expected, still more comfortable ; and in front of all were the field-officers' houses, the whole of substantial brick and mortar. This superb establishment stood in an extensive lawn, not surpassed in beauty by any nobleman's park that I had ever seen. It was immediately after the rains when I visited it ; the grass was luxuriant and newly cut, and the trees, which grew in detached clumps, were most magnificent. We clambered up into one of them, a large umbrageous wild cotton-tree, which cast a shadow on the ground — the sun being, as already mentioned, right overhead — of thirty paces in diameter ; but still it was but a dwarfish plant of its kind, for I have measured others whose gigantic shadows, at the 335 TOM CRINGLE'S LOG same hour, were upwards of one hundred and fifty feet in diameter, and their trunks, one in particular that overhangs the Spanish Town road, twenty feet through of solid timber ; that is, not including the enormous spars that shoot out like buttresses, and end in strong twisted roots, that strike deep into the earth, and form stays, as it were, to the tree in all directions. Our object, however — publish it not in Askalon — was not so much to admire the charms of nature as to enjoy the luxury of a real Havanna cigar in solitary comfort ; and a glorious perch we had selected. The shade was grateful beyond measure. The fresh breeze was rushing, almost roaring, through the leaves and groaning branches, and everything around was green, and fragrant, and cool, and delicious — by comparison that is, for the thermometer would, I daresay, have still vouched for eighty degrees. The branches over- head were alive with a variety of beautiful lizards, and birds of the gayest plumage — amongst others, a score of small chattering green paroquets were hopping close to us, and playing at bo-peep from the lower surfaces of the leaves of the wild pine (a sort of Brobdingnag parasite, that grows, like the mistletoe, in the clefts of the larger trees), to which they clung, as green and shining as the leaves themselves, and ever and anon popping their little heads and shoulders over to peer at us ; while the red-breasted woodpecker kept drumming on every hollow part of the bark, for all the world like old Kelson, the carpenter of the Torch, tapping along the top-sides for the dry-rot. All around us the men were lounging about in the shade, and sprawling on the grass in their foraging 336 MORE SCENES IN JAMAICA caps and light jackets, with an officer here and there lying reading, or sauntering about, bearding Phoebus himself, to watch for a shot at a swallow as it skimmed past ; while goats and horses, sheep and cattle, were browsing the fresh grass, or sheltering themselves from the heat beneath the trees. All nature seemed alive and happy — a little drowsy from the heat or so, but that did not much signify — when two carts, each drawn by a mule, and driven by a negro, approached the tree whereon we were perched. A solitary sergeant accompanied them, and they appeared, when a bowshot distant, to be loaded with white deal boxes. I paid little attention to them until they drove under the tree. I I say, Snowdrop,' said the non-commissioned officer, ' where be them black rascals, them pioneers — where is the fateague party, my Lily- white, who ought to have the trench dug by this time ? ' ' Dere now,' grumbled the negro, ' dere now — easy ting to deal wid white gentleman, but debil cannot satisfy dem worsted sash.' Then aloud — 'Me no know, sir — me can't tell; no for me business to dig hole — I only carry what you fill him up wid ; ' and the vampire, looking over his shoulder, cast his eye towards his load, and grinned until his white teeth glanced from ear to ear. c Now,' said the Irish sergeant, c I could brain you, but it is not worth while ! ' — I question if he could, however, knowing, as I did, the thickness of their skulls. — c Ah, here they come!' and a dozen half-drunken, more than half- naked, bloated, vol. i. 337 y TOM CRINGLE'S LOG villainous-looking blackamoors, with shovels and pickaxes on their shoulders, came along the road, laughing and singing most lustily. They passed beneath where we sat, and, when about a stone- cast beyond, they all jumped into a trench or pit, which I had not noticed before, about twenty feet long by eight wide. It was already nearly six feet deep, but it seemed they had instructions to sink it further, for they first plied their pick- axes, and then began to shovel out the earth. When they had completed their labour, the ser- geant, who had been superintending their opera- tions, returned to where the carts were still standing beneath the tree. One of them had six coffins in it, with the name of the tenant of each, and number of his company, marked in red chalk on the smallest end ! ' I say, Snowdrop,' said the sergeant, ' how do you come to have only five bodies, when Cucumbershin there has six ? ' 'To be sure I hab no more as five, and weight enough too. You no see Corporal Bumblechops dere ? You knows how big he was.' 1 Well, but where is Sergeant Heavystern ? Why did you not fetch him away with the others ? ' The negro answered doggedly, 'Massa Ser- geant, you should remember dem no die of con- sumption — cough you call him — nor fever and ague, nor any ting dat waste dem ; for tree day gone — no more — all were mount guard — tout and fat — so, as for Sergeant Heavystern, him left in de dead-house at de hospital.' ' I guessed as much, you dingy thief,' said the sergeant, 'but I will break your bones if you don't give me a sufficing rason why you left him.' And 33 8 MORE SCENES IN JAMAICA he approached Snowdrop with his cane raised in act to strike. 'Top, massa,' shouted the negro; 'me will tell you — Dr. Plaget desire dat Heavystern should be leave.' ' Confound Dr. Plaget ! ' and he smote the pioneer across the pate, whereby he broke his stick, although, as I anticipated, without much hurting his man ; but the sergeant instantly saw his error, and with the piece of the baton he gave Snowdrop a tap on the shin-bone that set him pirouetting on one leg, with the other in his hand, like a teetotum. c Why, sir, did you not bring as many as Cucumbershin, sir ? ' ' Because ' — screamed Snowdrop in great wrath, now all alive and kicking from the smart — ' Be- cause Cucumbershin is loaded wid light infantry, sir, and all of mine are grenadier, Massa Sergeant — dat dem good reason surely ! ' 1 No, it is not, sir ; go back and fetch Heavy- stern immediately, or by the powers but I will ' ' Massa Sergeant, you must be mad — Dr. Plaget — you won't yeerie — but him say, five grenadier — especially wid Corporal Bumblechop for one — is good load — ay, wery tif load — equal to seven tallion company [battalion, I presume], and more better load, great deal, den six light infantry ; be- side him say, tell Sergeant Pivot to send you back at five in de afternoon wid four more coffin, by which time he would have anoder load, and in trute de load was ready prepare in de dead-house before I come away, only dem were not well cold just yet.'' 339 TOM CRINGLE S LOG I was mightily shocked at all this, but my chum took it very coolly. — He slightly raised one side of his mouth, and, giving a knowing wink with his eye, lighted a fresh cigar, and continued to puff away with all the composure in the world. At length the forenoon wore away, and the bugles sounded for dinner, when we adjourned to the mess-room. It was a very large and handsome saloon, standing alone in the lawn, and quite detached from all the other buildings, but the curtailed dimensions of the table in the middle of it, and the ominous crowding together of the regimental plate, like a show-table in Rundell and Bridge's back shop, gave startling proofs of the ravages of the c pestilence that walketh in darkness, and the destruction that wasteth at noonday ; ' for, although the whole regiment was in barracks, there were only nine covers laid, one of which was for me. The lieutenant-colonel, the major, and, I believe, fifteen other officers, had already been gathered to their fathers within four months from the day on which the regiment landed from the transports. Their warfare was o'er, and they slept well. At the first, when the insidious disease began to creep on apace, and to evince its deadly virulence, all was dismay and anxiety — downright, slavish, unmanly fear, even amongst case-hardened veterans, who had weathered the whole Peninsular war, and finished off with Waterloo. The next week passed over, the mor- tality increasing, but the dismay decreasing ; and so it wore on, until it reached its horrible climax, at the time I speak of, by which period there was absolutely no dread at all. A reckless gaiety had succeeded — not the screwing-up of one's courage 340 MORE SCENES IN JAMAICA for the nonce, to mount a breach, or to lay an enemy's frigate aboard, where the substratum of fear is present, although cased over by an energetic exertion of the will ; but an unnatural light- headedness, for which account, ye philosophers, for I cannot — and this, too, amongst men who, although as steel in the field, yet whenever a common cold overtook them in quarters, or a small twinge of rheumatic pain, would, under other cir- cumstances, have caudled and beflannelled them- selves, and bored you for your sympathy, at no allow- ance, as they say. The major elect — that is, the senior captain — was in the chair ; as for the lieutenant-colonel's vacancy, that was too high an aspiration for any man in the regiment. A stranger of rank and interest and money would of course get that step, for the two deaths in the regimental staff made but one captain a major, as my neighbour on the left hand feelingly remarked. All was fun and joviality; we had a capital dinner, and no allusion whatever, direct or indirect, was made to the prevailing mortal epidemic, until the surgeon came in, about eight o'clock in the evening. 4 Sit down, doctor,' said the president, ' take some wine ; can recommend the madeira, — claret but so-so — your health.' The doctor bowed, and soon became as happy and merry as the rest ; so we carried on until about ten o'clock, when the lights began to waltz a little, and propagate also, and I found I had got enough, or, peradventure, a little more than enough, when the senior captain rose, and walked very composedly out of the room — but I noticed him pinch the doctor's shoulder as he passed. 34i TOM CRINGLE'S LOG The medico thereupon stole quietly after him ; but we did not seem to miss either — a young sub had usurped the deserted throne, and there we were all once more in full career, singing and boozing, and cracking bad jokes to our heart's content. By and by in comes the doctor once more. ' Doctor,' quoth young sub, c take some wine ; can't recommend the madeira this time,' mimicking his predecessor very successfully ; c the claret, you know, has been condemned, but a little hot brandy and water, eh ? ' The doctor once more bowed his pate, made his hot stuff, and volunteered a song. After he had finished, and we had all hammered on the table to his honour and glory until everything danced again, as if it had been a matter of very trivial concern, he said, ' Sorry I was away so long ; but old Spatterdash has got a deuced thick skin, I can tell you — could scarcely get the lancet into him : I thought I should have to send for a spring phleme — to tip him the veterinary, you know — and he won't take physic ; so I fear he will have but a poor chance.' Spatterdash was no other than mine host who had just vacated. * What ! do you really think he is in for it ? ' said the second oldest captain, who sat next to me ; and as he spoke he drew his leg from beneath the table, and, turning out his dexter heel, seemed to contemplate the site of the prospective fixed spur. c I do, indeed,' quoth Dr. Plaget. He died within three days ! But, as I do not intend to write an essay on yellow fever, I will make an end, and get on ship- 342 MORE SCENES IN JAMAICA board as fast as I can, after stating one strong fact, authenticated to me by many unimpeachable wit- nesses. It is this ; that this dreadful epidemic, or contagious fever — call it which you will — has never appeared or been propagated at or beyond an alti- tude of 3000 feet above the level of the sea, al- though people seized with it on the hot sultry plains, and removed thither, have unquestionably died. In a country like Jamaica, with a range of lofty mountains, far exceeding this height, inter- secting the island through nearly its whole length, might not Government, after satisfying themselves of the truth of the fact, improve on the hint ? Might not a main-guard suffice in Kingston, for instance, while the regiments were in quarters half-way up the Liguanea Mountains, within twelve miles' actual distance from the town, and within view of it, so that during the day, by a semaphore on the mountain, and another at the barrack of the outpost, a constant and instantaneous communication could be kept up, and, if need were, by lights in the night ? The admiral, for instance, had a semaphore in the stationary flag-ship at Port Royal, which communicated with another at his Pen, or resi- dence, near Kingston ; and this, again, rattled ofF the information to the mountain retreat, where he occasionally retired to careen ; and it is fitting to state also, that in all the mountain districts of Jamaica which I visited there is abundance of excellent water and plenty of fuel. These matters are worth consideration, one would think ; however, allons — it is no business of Tom Cringle's. Speaking of telegraphing, I will relate an anec- 343 TOM CRINGLE'S LOG dote here, if you will wait until I mend my pen. I had landed at Greenwich wharf on duty — this was the nearest point of communication between Port Royal and the Admiral's Pen — where, finding the flag-lieutenant, he drove me up in his ketureen to lunch. While we were regaling ourselves, the old signalman came into the piazza, and, with several most remarkable obeisances, gave us to know that there were flags hoisted on the signal- mast at the mountain settlement, of which he could make nothing — the uppermost was neither the interrogative, the affirmative, nor the negative, nor, in fact, anything that with the book he could make sense of. c Odd enough,' said the lieutenant ; ' hand me the glass,' and he peered away for half a minute. 'Confound me if I can make heads or tails of it either ; there, Cringle, what do you think ? How do you construe it ? ' I took the telescope. Uppermost there was hoisted on the signal-mast a large table-cloth, not altogether immaculate, and under it a towel, as I guessed, for it was too opaque for bunting, and too white, although I could not affirm that it was fresh out of the fold either. ' I am puzzled,' said I, as I spied away again. Meanwhile, there was no acknowledgment made at our semaphore. ' There, down they go,' I con- tinued — 'Why it must be a mistake — Stop, here's a new batch going up above the green trees — there goes the table-cloth once more, and the towel, and — deuce take me if I can compare the lowermost to anything but a dishclout — why, it must be a dishclout ! ' The flags, or substitutes for them, streamed 344 MORE SCENES IN JAMAICA another minute in the breeze, but as there was still no answer made from our end of the string, they were once more hauled down. We waited another minute — c Why, here goes the same signal up again — table-cloth, towel, dishclout, and all — What the diable have we got here ? A red ball, two pennants under — what can that mean ? — ball — it is the bonnet-rouge, or I am a Dutchman, with two short streamers.' Another look — c A red night-cap and a pair of stockings, by all that is portentous ! ' exclaimed I. ' Ah, I see, I see ! ' said the lieutenant, laughing — ' signal-man, acknowledge it.' It was done, and down came all the flags in a trice. It appeared on inquiry that the washing- cart, which ought to have been sent up that morn- ing, had been forgotten ; and the Admiral and his secretary having ridden out, there was no one who could make the proper signal for it. So the old housekeeper took this singular method of having the cart despatched, and it was sent off accord- ingly. For the first week after I entered on my new office I was busily engaged on board ; during which time my mind was quite made up, that the most rising man in his Majesty's service, beyond all compare, was Lieutenant Thomas Cringle, third of the Firebrand. During this eventful period I never addressed a note to any friend on shore, or to a brother officer, without writing in the left-hand lower corner of the envelope, ' Lieutenant Cringle,' and clapping three dashing &c. &c. &c. 1 s below the party's name for whom it was intended. 4 Must let 'em know that an officer of my rank 345 TOM CRINGLE'S LOG in the service knows somewhat of the courtesies of life, eh ? ' In about ten days, however, we had gotten the ship into high order and ready for sea, and now the glory and honour of command, like my only epaulet, that had been soaked while on duty in one or two showers, and afterwards regularly bronzed in the sun, began to tarnish, and lose the new gloss, like everything else in this weary world. It was about this time, while sitting at breakfast in the gun-room one fine morning with the other officers of our mess, gossiping about I hardly remember what, that we heard the Captain's voice on deck. 'Call the first lieutenant.' c He is at breakfast, sir/ said the man, whoever he might have been, to whom the order was addressed. 'Never mind, then — Here, boatswain's mate — Pipe away the men who were captured in the boats ; tell them to clean themselves, and send Mr. to me ' (this was the officer who had been taken prisoner along with them in the first attack) ; 'they are wanted at Kingston at the trial to-day — Stop— tell Mr. Cringle also to get ready to go in the gig.' The pirates, to the amount of forty-five, had been transferred to Kingston Jail some days pre- viously, preparatory to their trial, which, as above mentioned, was fixed for this day. We pulled cheerily up to Kingston, and landing at the Wherry wharf, marched along the hot dusty streets under a broiling sun, Captain Transom, the other lieutenant, and myself, in full pufF, leading the van, followed by about fourteen seamen in white straw hats, with broad black ribbons, and 34" MORE SCENES IN JAMAICA clean white frocks and trousers, headed. by a boat- swain's mate, with his silver whistle hung round his neck — as respectable a tail as any Christian could desire to swing behind him ; and, man for man, I would willingly have perilled my promotion upon their walloping, with no offensive weapons but their stretchers, the following^ claymores and all, of any proud, disagreeable, would-be-mighty mountaineer, that ever turned up his supercilious, whisky-blossomed snout at Bailie Jarvie. On they came, square - shouldered, narrow - flanked, tall, strapping fellows, tumbling and rolling about the piazzas in knots of three and four, until at the corner of King Street they came bolt up upon a well-known, large, fat, brown lady, famous for her manufacture of spruce beer. c Avast, avast a bit,' sung out one of the top- men, 'let the nobs heave ahead, will ye, and let's have a pull.' c Here, old mother Slush,' sung out another of the cutter's crew — ' hand us up a dozen bottles of spruce — do you hear ? ' c Dozen battle of 'pruce ! ' groaned the old woman — ' Who sail pay me ? ' 4 Why, do you think the Firebrands are thieves, you old canary, you ? ' ' How much, eh ? ' said the boatswain's mate. 1 Twelve feepennies,' quoth the matron. 4 Oh, ah ! ' said one of the men — ' Twelve times five is half a crown — there's a dollar for you, old mother Popandchokem — now give me back five shillings.' ' Eigh, oh ! ' whined out the spruce merchant ; * you dem rascal, who tell you dat your dollar more wort den any one else money — eh r How can 347 TOM CRINGLE'S LOG give you back five shilling and keep back twelve feepenny — eh ? ' The culprit, who had stood the Cocker of the company, had by this time gained his end, which was to draw the fat damsel a step or two from the large tub half-full of water where the bottles were packed, and to engage her attention by stirring up her bile, or corruption^ as they call it in Scotland, while his messmates instantly seized the oppor- tunity and a bottle apiece also ; and as I turned round to look for them, there they all were in a circle taking the meridian altitude of the sun, or as if they had been taking aim at the pigeons on the eaves of the houses above them with Indian mouth- tubes. They then replaced the bottles in the tub, paid the woman more than she asked ; but by way of taking out the change, they chucked her stern fore- most into the water amongst her merchandise, and then shouldered the vessel, old woman and all, and away they staggered with her, the empty bottles clattering together in the water, and the old lady swearing, and bouncing, and squattering amongst them ; while Jack shouted to her to hold her tongue, or they would let her go by the run bodily. Thus they stumped in the wake of their captain, until he arrived at the door of the court-house, to the great entertainment of the bystanders, cutting the strings that confined the corks of the stone bottles as they bowled along, popping the spruce into each other's faces, and the faces of the negroes, as they ran out of the stores to look at Jack in his frolic, and now and then taking a shot at the old woman's cockernony itself, as she was held kicking and spurring high above their heads. 348 MORE SCENES IN JAMAICA At length the captain, who was no great way ahead, saw what was going on, which was the signal for dousing the whole affair, spruce-woman, tub, and bottles ; and the party, gathering them- selves up, mustered close aboard of us, as grave as members of the General Assembly. The regular court-house of the city being under repair, the Admiralty Sessions were held in a large room occupied temporarily for the purpose. At one end, raised two steps above the level of the floor, was the bench, on which were seated the Judge of the Admiralty Court, supported by two post-captains in full uniform, who are ex-officio judges of this court in the colonies, one on each side. On the right, the jury, composed of merchants of the place and respectable planters of the neighbourhood, were enclosed in a sort of box, with a common white pine railing separating it from the rest of the court. There was a long table in front of the bench, at which a lot of black- robed devil's limbs of lawyers were ranged — but both amongst them and on the bench, the want of the cauliflower wigs was sorely felt by me, as well as by the seamen, who considered it little less than murder, that men in crops — black, shock-pated fellows — should sit in judgment on their fellow- creatures, where life and death were in the scales. On the left hand of the bench the motley public — white, black, and of every intermediate shade — were grouped ; as also in front of the dock, which was large. It might have been made with a view to the possibility of fifteen unfortunates or so being arraigned at one time ; but now there were no fewer than forty-three jammed and pegged together into it, like sheep in a Smithfield pen the evening 349 TOM CRINGLE'S LOG before market-day. These were the forty thieves — the pirates. They were all, without exception, clean, well-shaven, and decently rigged in white trousers, linen or check shirts, and held their broad Panama sombreros in their hands. Most of them wore the red silk sash round the waist. They had generally large bushy whiskers, and not a few had earrings of massive gold (why call wearing earrings puppyism ? — Shakspeare wore earrings, or the Chandos portrait lies), and chains of the same metal round their necks, supporting, as I concluded, a crucifix, hid in the bosom of the shirt. — A Spaniard can't murder a man comfortably if he has not his crucifix about him. They were, collectively, the most daring, intrepid Salvator Rosa-looking men I had ever seen. Most of them were above the middle size, and the spread of their shoulders, the grace with which their arms were hung, and finely-developed muscles of the chest and neck, the latter exposed completely by the folding back of their shirt-collars, cut large and square, after the Spanish fashion, beat the finest boat's crew we could muster all to nothing. Some of them were of mixed blood, that is, the cross between the European Spaniard and the aboriginal Indian of Cuba — the latter a race long since sacrificed on the altar of Mammon, the white man's god. Their hair, generally speaking, was long, and curled over the forehead black and glossy, or hung down to their shoulders in ringlets, that a dandy of the Second Charles's time would have given his little finger for. The forehead in most was high and broad, and of a clear olive, the nose straight, springing boldly from the brow, the cheeks oval, and the mouth — every Spaniard has a beautiful 350 MORE SCENES IN JAMAICA moutli, until he spoils it with the beastly cigar, as far as his well-formed firm lips can be spoiled ; but his teeth he generally does destroy early in life. Take the whole, however, and deduct for the teeth, I had never seen so handsome a set of men ; and I am sure no woman, had she been there, would have gainsaid me. They stood up, and looked forth upon their judges and the jury like brave men, desperadoes though they were. They were, with- out exception, calm and collected, as if aware that they had small chance of escape, but still deter- mined not to give that chance away. One young man especially attracted my attention, from the bold, cool self-possession of his bearing, He was in the very front of the dock, and dressed in no way different from the rest, so far as his under garments were concerned, unless it were that they were of a finer quality. He wore a short green velvet jacket, profusely studded with knobs and chains, like small chain-shot, of solid gold, similar to the shifting button lately introduced by our dandies in their waiscoats. It was not put on, but hung on one shoulder, being fastened across his breast by the two empty sleeves tied together in a knot. He also wore the red silk sash, through which a broad gold cord ran twining like the strand of a rope. He had no earrings, but his hair was the most beautiful I had ever seen in a male — long and black, jet-black and glossy. It was turned up and fastened in a club on the crown of his head with a large pin, I should rather say skewer, of silver ; but the outlandishness of the fashion was not offensive, when I came to take into the account the beauty of the plaiting, and of the long raven lovelocks that hung down behind each of his small 35i TOM CRINGLE'S LOG transparent ears, and the short Hyperion-like curls that clustered thick and richly on his high, pale, broad forehead. His eyes were large, black, and swimming — like a woman's ; his nose straight and thin ; and such a mouth, such an under-lip, full and melting; and teeth regular and white, and utterly free from the pollution of tobacco ; and a beautifully-moulded small chin, rounding off and merging in his round, massive, muscular neck. I had never seen so fine a face, such perfection of features, and such a clear, dark, smooth skin. It was a finer face than Lord Byron's, whom I had seen more than once, and wanted that hellish curl of the lip ; and, as to figure, he could, to look at him, at any time have eaten up his lordship stoop and roop to his breakfast. It was the countenance, in a word, of a most beautiful youth, melancholy, indeed, and anxious — evidently anxious ; for the large pearls that coursed each other down his forehead and cheek, and the slight quivering of the under-lip every now and then, evinced the powerful struggle that was going on within. His figure was, if possible, superior to his face. It was not quite filled up, set^ as we call it, but the arch of his chest was magnificent, his shoulders square, arms well put on j but his neck — ' Have you seen the Apollo, neighbour ? ' — 'No, but the cast of it at Somerset House.' — ' Well, that will do — so you know the sort of neck he had.' His waist was fine, hips beautifully moulded ; and although his under limbs were shrouded in his wide trousers, they were evidently of a piece with what was seen and developed ; and this was vouched for by the turn of his ankle and well-shaped foot, on which he wore a small Spanish 352 MORE SCENES IN JAMAICA grass slipper, fitted with great nicety. He was at least six feet two in height, and, such as I have described him, there he stood, with his hands grasping the rail before him, and looking intently at a wigless lawyer who was opening the accusation, while he had one ear turned a little towards the sworn inter- preter of the court, whose province it was, at every pause, to explain to the prisoners what the learned gentleman was stating. From time to time he said a word or two to a square-built, dark, ferocious-look- ing man, standing next him, apparently about forty years of age, who, as well as his fellow-prisoners, appeared to pay him great respect; and I could notice the expression of their countenances change as his rose and fell. The indictment had been read before I came in, and, as already mentioned, the lawyer was proceed- ing with his accusatory speech, and as it appeared to me, the young Spaniard had some difficulty in understanding the interpreter's explanation. When- ever he saw me, he exclaimed, c Ah ! aqui viene, el Senior Teniente — ahora sabremos — ahora, ahora ; ' and he beckoned to me to draw near. I did so. c I beg pardon, Mr. Cringle,' he said in Spanish, with the ease and grace of a nobleman — ' but I believe the interpreter to be incapable, and I am certain that what I say is not fittingly explained to the judges ; neither do I believe he can give me a sound notion of what the advocate [avocado) is alleging against us. May I entreat you to solicit the bench for permission to take his place ? I know you will expect no apology for the trouble from a man in my situation.' This unexpected address in open court took me fairly aback, and I stopped short while in the act vol. i. 353 z TOM CRINGLE'S LOG of passing the open space in front of the dock, which was kept clear by six marines in white jackets, whose muskets, fixed bayonets, and uniform caps, seemed out of place to my mind in a criminal court. The lawyer suddenly suspended his ha- rangue, while the judges fixed their eyes on me, and so did the audience, confound them ! To be the focus of so many eyes was trying to my modesty ; for, although I had mixed a little in the world, and was not altogether unacquainted with bettermost society, still, below any little manner that I had acquired, there was, and always will be, an under- stratum of bash fulness, or sheepishness, of mau- vaise honte, call it which you will ; and the torture, the breaking on the wheel, with which a man of that temperament perceives the eyes of a whole court-house, for instance, attracted to him, none but a bashful man can understand. At length I summoned courage to speak. ' May it please your honours, this poor fellow, on his own behalf, and on the part of his fellow- prisoners, complains of the incapacity of the sworn interpreter, and requests that I may be made the channel of communication in his stead.' This was a tremendous effort, and once more the whole blood of my body rushed to my cheeks and forehead, and I 'sweat extremely.' The judges, he of the black robe and those of the epaulet, communed together. ' Have you any objection to be sworn, Mr. Cringle ? ' ' None in the least, provided the court considers me competent and the accused are willing to trust „ > me. 'Si, si!' exclaimed the young Spaniard, as if 354 ' MORE SCENES IN JAMAICA comprehending what was going on — ' Somos con- tentos — todos, todos ! ' and he looked round, like a prince on his fellow-culprits. A low mumuring, Si, si — contento, contento ! ' passed amongst the group. 'The accused, please your honours, are willing to trust to my correctness.' c Pray, Mr. Cringle, don't make yourself the advocate of these men — mind that,' said the lawyer, sans wig. ' I don't intend, sir,' I said, slightly stung ; 'but if you had suffered what I have done at their hands, per adventure such a caution to you would have been unnecessary.' The sarcasm told, I was glad to see : but remem- bering where I was, I hauled out of action with the man of words, simply giving the last shot — ' I am sure no English gentleman would willingly throw any difficulty in the way of the poor fellows being made aware of what is given in evidence against them, bad as they may be.' He was about rejoining, for a lawyer would as soon let you have the last word as a sweep or a baker the wall, when the officer of court approached and swore me in, and the trial proceeded. The whole party were proved by fifty witnesses to have been taken in arms on board of the schooners in the cove ; and farther, it was proved that no commission or authority to cruise whatsoever was found on board any of them, a strong proof that they were pirates. ' Que dice, que dice ? ' inquired the young Spainard, already mentioned. I said that the court seemed to infer, and were pressing it on the jury, that the absence of any 355 TOM CRINGLE'S LOG commission or lettcr-of-marque from a superior officer, or from any of the Spanish authorities, was strong evidence that they were marauders — in fact, pirates. ' Ah ! ' he exclaimed, ' gracias, gracias ! ' Then, with an agitated hand, he drew from his bosom a parchment, folded like the manifest of a merchant- ship, and at the same moment the grufF,fierce-looking elderly man did the same, with another similar instrument from his own breast. c Here, here are the commissions — here are authorities from the Captain-General of Cuba. Read them.' I looked over them ; they were regular, to all appearance ; at least, as there were no autographs in court of the Spanish Viceroy, or any of his officers, whose signatures, either real or forged, were affixed to the instruments, with which to compare them, there was a great chance, I con- jectured, so far as I saw, that they would be acquitted : and in this case we, his Majesty's officers, would have been converted into the transgressing party ; for if it were established that the vessels taken were bona-fide guarda-costas, we should be placed in an awkward predicament, in having captured them by force of arms, not to take into account the having violated the sanctity of a friendly port. But I could see that this unexpected production of regular papers by their officers had surprised the pirates themselves, as much as it had done me, — whether it was a heinous offence of mine or not to conceal this impression from the court (there is some dispute about the matter to this hour between me and my conscience), I cannot tell ; but I was 356 MORE SCENES IN JAMAICA determined to stick scrupulously to the temporary duties of my office, without stating what I sus- pected, or even translating some sudden expressions overheard by me, that would have shaken the credibility of the documents. 1 Commissiones, commissiones ! ' for instance, was murmured by a weatherbeaten Spaniard, with a fine bald head, from which two small tufts of grey hair stood out above his ears, and with a superb Moorish face — 'Commissiones es decir patentes — Si hay commissiones, el Diablo mismo, les ha hecho ! ' The court was apparently nonplussed — not so the wigless man of law. His pea-green visage assumed a more ghastly hue, and the expression of his eyes became absolutely blasting. He looked altogether like a cat sure of her mouse, but willing to let it play in fancied joy of escaping, as he said softly to the Jew crier, who was perched in a high chair above. the heads of the people, like an ugly corbie in its dirty nest — 'Crier, call Job Rumbleti- thump, mate of the Porpoise.'* 'Job Rumbletithump, come into court !' ' Here,' quoth Job, as a stout, bluff", honest- looking sailor rolled into the witness-box. ' Now, clerk of the crown, please to swear in the mate of the Porpoise.'' It was done. ' Now, my man, you were taken going through the Caicos Passage in the Porpoise by pirates in August last — were you not ? ' ' Yes, sir.' £ Turn your face to the jury, and speak up, sir. Do you see any of the honest men who made free with you in that dock, sir ? Look at them, sir.' 357 TOM CRINGLE'S LOG The mate walked up to the dock, stopped, and fixed his eyes intently on the young Spaniard. I stared breathlessly at him also. He grows pale as death — his lip quivers — the large drops of sweat once more burst from his brow. I grew sick, sick. ' Yes, your honour,' said the mate. ' Yes — ah ! ' said the devil's limb, chuckling — ' we are getting on the trail at last. Can you swear to more than one ? ' ' Yes, your honour.' * Yes ! ' again responded the sans wig. ' How many ? ' The man counted them off. 'Fifteen, sir. That young fellow there is the man who cut Captain Spurtei's throat, after violating his wife before his eyes.' 'God forgive me, is it possible?' gasped Thomas Cringle. 'There's a monster in human form for you, gentlemen,' continued the devil's limb. ' Go on, Mr. Rumbletithump.' 'That other man next him hung me up by the heels, and seared me on the bare ' Here honest Job had just time to divert the current of his speech into a loud 'whew.' ' Seared you on the whew ! ' quoth the facetious lawyer, determined to have his jest, even in the face of forty-three of his fellow-creatures trembling on the brink of eternity. 'Explain, sir ; tell the court where you were seared, and how you were seared, and all about your being seared.' Job twisted and lolloped about ; as if he was looking out for some opening to bolt through ; but all egress was shut up. 35» MORE SCENES IN JAMAICA ' Why, please your honour,' the eloquent blood mantling in his honest sunburnt cheeks ; while from my heart I pitied the poor fellow, for he was absolutely broiling in his bashfulness — c he seared me on — on — why, please your honour, he seared me on — with a red-hot iron ! ' ' Why, I guessed as much, if he seared you at all ; but where did he sear you ? Come now,' coax- ingly, c tell the court where and how he applied the actual cautery.' Job, being thus driven to his wit's end, turned and stood at bay. c Now I will tell you, your honour, if you will but sit down for a moment, and answer me one question.' c To be sure, sir ; why, Job, you brighten on us. There, I am down — now for your question.' 'Now, sir,' quoth Rumbletithump, imitating his tormentor's manner much more cleverly than I expected, 'what part of your honour's body touches your chair ? ' ' How, sir ! ' said the man of words — ' how dare you, sir, take such a liberty, sir?' while a murmur- ing laugh hummed through the court. ' Now, sir, since you won't answer me, sir,' said Job, elevated by his victory, while his hoarse voice roughened into a loud growl, ' I will answer my- self. I was seared, sir, where ' ' Silence ! ' quoth the crier, at this instant drowning the mate's voice, so that I could not catch the words he used. ' And there you have it, sir. — Put me in jail if you like, sir.' The murmur was bursting out into a guffaw, when the judge interfered. But there was no 359 TOM CRINGLE'S LOG longer any attempt at ill-timed jesting on the part of the bar, which was but bad taste at the best on so solemn an occasion. Job continued : ' I was burnt into the very muscle, until I told where the gold was stowed away.' 4 Aha ! ' screamed the lawyer, forgetting his recent discomfiture in the gladness of his success. 4 And all the rest were abetting, eh ? ' 'The rest of the fifteen were, sir.' But the prosecutor, a glutton in his way, had thought he had bagged the whole forty-three. And so he ultimately did before the evening closed in, as most of the others were identified by other witnesses ; and when they could not actually be sworn to, the piracies were brought home to them by circumstantial evidence ; such, for instance, as having been captured on board of the craft we had taken, which again were identified as the very vessels which had plundered the merchantmen and murdered several of their crews, so that by six o'clock the jury had returned a verdict of Guilty — and I believe there never was a juster — against the whole of them. The finding, and sentence of death following thereupon, seemed not to create any strong effect upon the prisoners. They had all seen how the trial was going ; and, long before this, the bitterness of death seemed to be past. I could hear one of our boat's crew, who was standing behind me, say to his neighbour, * Why, Jem, surely he is in joke. Why, he don't mean to condemn them to be hanged seriously, without his wig, eh ? ' Immediately after the judgment was pronounced, 360 MORE SCENES IN JAMAICA which, both as to import and literally, I had trans- lated to them, Captain Transom, who was sitting on the bench beside his brother officers, nodded to me, 1 1 say, Mr. Cringle, tell the coxswain to call Pearl, if you please.' I passed the word to one of the Firebrand's marines, who was on duty, who again repeated the order to a seaman who was standing at the door. £ I say, Moses, call the clergyman.' Now this Pearl was no other than the seaman who pulled the stroke-oar in the gig ; a very hand- some negro, and the man who afterwards forked Whiffle out of the water — tall, powerful, and muscular, and altogether one of the best men in the ship. The rest of the boat's crew, from his complexion, had fastened the sobriquet of ' the clergyman ' on him. 'Call the clergyman.' The superseded interpreter, who was standing near, seeing I took no notice, immediately traduced this literally to the unhappy men. A murmur rose amongst them. c Que — el padre ya ! Somos en Capilla entonces — poco tiempo, poco tiempo ! ' They had thought that, the clergyman having been sent for, the sentence was immediately to be executed, but I undeceived them ; and in ten minutes after they were condemned, they were marched off under a strong escort of foot to the jail. I must make a long story short. Two days afterwards I was ordered with the launch to Kingston, early in the morning, to receive twenty- five of the pirates who had been ordered for execu- tion that morning at Gallows Point. It was little 361 TOM CRINGLE'S LOG past four in the morning when we arrived at the Wherry wharf, where they were already clustered, with their hands pinioned behind their backs, silent and sad, but all of them calm, and evincing no unmanly fear of death. I don't know if other people have noticed it, but this was one of several instances where I have seen foreigners — Frenchmen, Italians, and Spaniards, for instance — meet death, inevitable death, with greater firmness than British soldiers or sailors. Let me explain. In the field, or grappling in mortal combat on the blood-slippery quarterdeck of an enemy's vessel, a British soldier or sailor is the bravest of the brave. No soldier or sailor of any other country, saving and excepting those damned Yankees, can stand against them — they would be utterly overpowered — their hearts would fail them; they would either be cut down, thrust through, or they would turn and flee. Yet those same men who have turned and fled will meet death — but it must be, as I said, inevitable, unavoidable death — not only more firmly than their conquerors would do in their circumstances, but with an intrepidity — oh, do not call it indifference ! — altogether astonishing. Be it their religion, or their physical conformation, or what it may, all I have to do with is the fact, which I record as undeniable. Out of five and twenty individuals, in the present instance, not a sigh was heard, nor a moan, nor a querulous word. They stepped lightly into the boats, and seated themselves in silence. When told by the seamen to make room, or to shift, so as not to be in the way of the oars, they did so with alacrity, and almost with an air of civility, although they knew 362 MORE SCENES IN JAMAICA that within half an hour their earthly career must close for ever. The young Spaniard who had stood forward so conspicuously on the trial was in my boat ; in stepping in, he accidentally trod on my foot in passing forward ; he turned and apologised, with much natural politeness — ' he hoped he had not hurt me ? ' I answered kindly, I presume ; who could have done so harshly ? This emboldened him appa- rently, for he stopped, and asked leave to sit by me. I consented, while an incomprehensible feeling crept over me ; and when once I had time to recollect myself, I shrunk from him, as a blood- stained brute, with whom even in his extremity it was unfitting for me to hold any intercourse. When he noticed my repugnance to remain near him, he addressed me hastily, as if afraid that I would destroy the opportunity he seemed to desire. ' God did not always leave me the slave of my passions,' he said, in a low, deep, most musical voice. ' The day has been when I would have shrunk as you do — but time presses. Ton have a mother 7" said he. I assented. ' And an only sister ? ' As it happened, he was right here too. ' And — and ' — here he hesitated, and his voice shook and trembled with the most intense and heart-crushing emotion — 'v una mas cara que ambasV — Mary, you can tell whether in this he did not also speak truth. I acknowledged there was another being more dear to me than either. 'Then,' said he, 'take this chain from my neck, and the crucifix, and a small miniature from my bosom ; but not yet — not till I leave the boat. 3 6 3 TOM CRINGLE'S LOG You will find an address affixed to the string of the latter. Your course of service may lead you to St. Jago — if not, a brother officer may.' His voice became inaudible ; his hot scalding tears dropped fast on my hand, and the ravisher, the murderer, the pirate^ wept as an innocent and helpless infant. c You will deliver it. Promise a dying man — promise a great sinner.' But it was momentary — he quelled the passion with a fierce and savage energy, as he said sternly, c Promise, promise ! ' I did so, and I fulfilled it. The day broke. I took the jewels and miniature from his neck, as he led the way, with the firm step of a hero, in ascending the long gibbet. The halters were adjusted, when he stepped towards the side I was on, as far as the rope would let him. 'Dexa me verla — dexa me verla, una vez mas!' I held up the miniature. He looked — he glared intensely at it. ' Adios, Maria, seas feliz mi querida — feliz — feliz — Maria — adios — adios — Maria— Mar ' The rope severed thy name from his lips, sweet girl ; but not until it also severed his soul from his body, and sent him to his tremendous account — young in years, but old in wickedness — to answer at that tribunal where we must all appear, to the God who made him, and whose gifts he had so fearfully abused, for thy broken heait and early death, amongst the other scarlet atrocities of his short but ill-spent life. The signal had been given — the lumbering flap of the long drop was heard, and five and twenty human beings were wavering in the sea-breeze in the agonies of death ! The other eighteen suffered on the same spot the week following ; and for 3 6 4 MORE SCENES IN JAMAICA long after, this fearful and bloody example struck terror into the Cuba fishermen. c Strange now, that the majority — ahem — of my beauties and favourites through life have been called Mary, There is my own Mary — un peu passee, certainly — but dell mean her, for half a dozen lit ' ' Now, Tom Cringle, don't bother with your sentimentality, but get along — do.' * Well, I will get along — but have patience, you Hottentot Venus. So once more we make sail.' Next morning, soon after gun-fire, I landed at the Wherry wharf in Port Royal. It was barely daylight, but, to my surprise, I found my friend Peregrine Whiffle seated on a Spanish chair, close to the edge of the wharf, smoking a cigar. This piece of furniture is an arm-chair, strongly framed with hard wood, over which, back and bottom, a tanned hide is stretched, which, in a hot climate, forms a most luxurious seat — the back tumbling out at an angle of forty-five degrees, while the skin yields to every movement, and does not harbour a nest of biting ants, or a litter of scorpions, or any other of the customary occupants of a cushion that has been in Jamaica for a year. He did not know me as I passed, but his small glimmering red face instantly identified the worthy little old man to me. 'Good morning, Mr. Whiffle — the top of the morning to you, sir.' c Hillo ! ' responded Peregrine — ' Tom, is it you ? — how d'ye do, man — how d'ye do ? ' and he started to his feet and almost embraced me. Now, I had never met the said Peregrine 3 6 5 TOM CRINGLE'S LOG Whiffle but twice in my life ; once at Mr. FyalFs, and once during the few days I remained in Kings- ton, before I set out on my travels ; but he was a warm-hearted, kindly old fellow, and, from know- ing all my friends there very intimately, he, as a matter of course, became equally familiar with me. ' Why the diable came you not to see me, man ? Have been here for change of air — to recruit, you know, after that demon, the gout, had been so perplexing me, ever since you came to anchor — the Firebrand, I mean : as for you, you have been mad one while, and philandering with those incon- venient white ladies the other. You '11 cure of that, my boy — you '11 come to the original comforts of the country soon, no fear ! ' ' Perhaps I may, perhaps not.' 1 Oh, your cousin Mary, I forgot — fine girl, Tom — may do for you at home yonder ' (all Creoles speak of England as home, although they may never have seen it), c but she can't make pepper-pot, nor give a dish of land-crabs as land-crabs should be given, nor see to the serving up of a ringtail pigeon, nor rub a beefsteak to the rotting turn with a bruised papaw, nor compose a medicated bath, nor, nor — oh, confound it, Tom, she will be, when you marry her, a cold, comfortless, motion- less, Creole icicle ! ' I let him have his swing. 'Never mind her, then, never mind her, my dear sir ; but time presses, and I must be off — I must indeed : so good morning ; I wish you a good morning, sir.' He started to his feet and caught hold of me. 'Shan't go, Tom, impossible; come along with me to my lodgings, and breakfast with me. Here, Pilfer, Pilfer,' to his black valet, ' give me my stick 366 MORE SCENES IN JAMAICA and massu 1 the chair, and run home and order breakfast — cold calipiver — our Jamaica salmon, you know, Tom — tea and coffee — pickled mackerel, eggs, and cold tongue — anything that Mother Dingychops can give us ; so bolt, Pilfer, bolt ! ' I told him that before I came ashore I had heard the gig's crew piped away, and that I therefore expected^ as Jonathan says, that the captain would be after me immediately ; so that I wished, at all events, to get away from where we were, as I had no desire to be caught gossiping about when my superior might be expected to pass. c True, boy, true,' as he shackled himself to me, and we began to crawl along towards the wharf-gate leading into the town. Captain Tran- som by this time had landed, and came up with us. ' Ah, Transom,' said Whiffle, c glad to see you. I say, why won't you allow Mr. Cringle here to go over to Spanish Town with me for a couple of days, eh ? ' 'Why, I don't remember that Mr. Cringle has ever asked leave.' ' Indeed, sir, I neither did ask leave, nor have I thought of doing so,' said I. c But I do for you,' chimed in my friend Whiffle. 'Come, captain, give him leave, just for two days — that's a prime chap ! Why, Tom, you see you have got it, so off with you and come to me with your kit as soon as possible ; I will hobble on and make the coffee and chocolate ; and, Captain Transom, come along and breakfast with me too. — No refusal, I require society. Nearly drowned yesterday — do you know that ? Off this same cursed wharf too — just here. I was looking down 1 Massu — lift. 367 TOM CRINGLE'S LOG at the small fish playing about the piles, precisely in this position ; one of them was as bright in the scales as a gold-fish in my old grandmother's glass globe, and I had to crane over the ledge in this fashion,' suiting the action to the word, ' when away I went ' And, to our unutterable surprise, splash went Peregrine Whiffle, Esquire, for the second time, and there he was shouting, and puffing, and splash- ing in the water. We were both so convulsed with laughter that I believe he would have been drowned for us ; but the boat-keeper of the gig, the strong athletic negro before mentioned, promptly jumped on the wharf with his boat-hook, and caught the dapper little old beau by the waistband of his breeches, swaying him up, frightened enough, with his little coat skirts fluttering in the breeze, and no wonder, but not much the worse for it all. ' Diable porte l'amour,' whispered Captain Transom. * Swallowed a Scotch pint of salt water to a cer- tainty. Run, Pilfer, bring me some brandy — gout will be into my stomach, sure as fate — feel him now — run, Pilfer, run, or gout will beat you — a dead heat that will be ! ' And he heckled at his small joke very complacently. We had him carried by our people to his lodg- ings, where, after shifting and brandying to some tune, he took his place at the breakfast table, and did the honours with his usual amenity and warm- heartedness. After breakfast Peregrine remembered, what the sly rogue had never forgotten I suspect — that he- was engaged to dine with his friend Mr. Pepperpot Wagtail, in Kingston. 368 MORE SCENES IN JAMAICA £ But it don't signify ; Wagtail will be delighted to see you, Tom — hospitable fellow, Wagtail ; and, now I recollect myself, Fyall and Aaron Bang are to be there ; dang it, were it not for the gout, we should have a nicjht on't ! ' After breakfast we started in a canoe for Kings- ton, touching at the Firebrand for my kit. Moses Yerk, the unpoetical first lieutenant, was standing well forward on the quarterdeck as I passed over the side to get into the canoe, with the gunroom steward following me, carrying my kit under his arm. c I say, Tom, good for you, one lark after another.' * Don't like that fellow,' quoth Whiffle ; ' he is quarrelsome in his drink for a thousand ; I know it by the cut of his jib.' He had better have held his tongue, honest man ; for as he looked up broad in Yerk's face, who was leaning over the hammocks, the scupper imme- diately overhead — through whose instrumentality I never knew — was suddenly cleared, and a rush of dirty water, that had been lodged there since the decks had been washed down at day-dawn, splashed slapdash over his head and shoulders and into his mouth, so as to set the dear little man a-coughing so violently that I thought he would have been throttled. Before he had recovered sufficiently to find his tongue we had pulled fifty yards from the ship, and a little farther on we overtook the captain, who had preceded us in the cutter, into which we transhipped ourselves. But Whiffle never could acquit Yerk of having been, directly or in- directly, the cause of his suffering from the impure shower. vol. i. 369 2 A TOM CRINGLE'S LOG This day was the first of the Negro Carnival or Christmas holidays, and at the distance of two miles from Kingston the sound of the negro drums and horns, the barbarous music, and yelling of the different African tribes, and the more mellow sing- ing of the Set Girls, came off upon the breeze loud and strong. When we got nearer, the wharfs and different streets, as we successively opened them, were crowded with blackamoors, men, women, and children, dancing and singing and shouting, and all rigged out in their best. When we landed on the agents' wharf, we were immediately surrounded by a group of these merry-makers, which happened to be the butchers' John Canoe party, and a curious exhibition it unquestionably was. The prominent character was, as usual, the John Canoe or Jack Pudding. He was a light, active, clean-made young Creole negro, without shoes or stockings ; he wore a pair of light jean small-clothes, all too wide, but confined at the knees, below and above, by bands of red tape, after the manner that Mal- volio would have called cross-gartering. He wore a splendid blue velvet waistcoat, with old-fashioned flaps coming down over his hips, and covered with tarnished embroidery. His shirt was absent on leave, I suppose, but at the wrists of his coat he had tin or white iron frills, with loose pieces attached, which tinkled as he moved, and set oft the dingy paws that were stuck through these strange manacles, like black wax tapers in silver candlesticks. His coat was an old blue artillery- uniform one, with a small bell hung to the extreme points of the swallow-tailed skirts, and three tar- nished epaulets, one on each shoulder, and, O ye 370 MORE SCENES IN JAMAICA immortal gods ! O Mars armipotent ! the biggest of the three stuck at his rump, the point d'appui for a sheep's tail. He had an enormous cocked hat on, to which was appended in front a white false-face or mask, of a most methodistical expres- sion, while, Janus-like, there was another face behind, of the most quizzical description, a sort of living Antithesis, both being garnished and over- topped with one coarse wig, made of the hair of bullocks' tails, on which the chapeau was strapped down with a broad band of gold lace. He skipped up to us with a white wand in one hand and a dirty handkerchief in the other, and with sundry moppings and mowings, first wiping my shoes with his mouchoir, then my face (murder, what a flavour of salt fish and onions it had !), he made a smart enough pirouette, and then sprung on the back of a nondescript animal that now advanced, capering and jumping about after the most grotesque fashion that can be imagined. This was the signal for the music to begin. The performers were two gigantic men, dressed in calf- skins entire, head, four legs, and tail. The skin of the head was made to fit like a hood, the two fore-feet hung dangling down in front, one over each shoulder, while the other two legs, or hind- feet, and the tail, trailed behind on the ground ; deuce another article had they on in the shape of clothing except a handkerchief, of some flaming pattern, tied round the waist. There were also two flute-players in sheep-skins, looking still more outlandish, from the horns on the animals' heads being preserved ; and three stout fellows, who were dressed in the common white frock and trou- sers, who kept sounding on bullocks' horns. 371 TOM CRINGLE'S LOG These formed the band, as it were, and might be considered John's immediate tail or following ; but he was also accompanied by about fifty of the butcher negroes, all neatly dressed — blue jackets, white shirts, and Osnaburg trousers, with their steels and knife-cases by their sides, as bright as Turkish yataghans, and they all wore clean blue and white striped aprons. I could see and tell what they were ; but the thing John Canoe had perched himself upon I could make nothing of. At length I began to comprehend the device. The Magnus Apollo of the party, the poet and chief musician — the nondescript already mentioned — was no less than the boatswain of the butcher gang, answering to the driver in an agricultural one. He was clothed in an entire bullock's hide, horns, tail, and the other particulars, the whole of the skull being retained, and the effect of the voice growling through the jaws of the beast was most startling. His legs were enveloped in the skin of the hind-legs ; while the arms were cased in that of the fore, the hands protruding a little above the hoofs, and, as he walked, reared upon his hind-legs, he used (in order to support the load of the John Canoe who had perched on his shoulders, like a monkey on a dancing bear) a strong stick, or sprit, with a crutch top to it, which he leant his breast on every now and then. After the creature — which I will call the Device for shortness — had capered with its extra load, as if it had been a feather, for a minute or two, it came to a standstill, and, sticking the end of the sprit into the ground, and tucking the crutch of it under its chin, it motioned to one of the attendants, who thereupon handed — of all things in the world — a 372 MORE SCENES IN JAMAICA fiddle to the ox ! He then shook off the John Canoe, who began to caper about as before, while the Device set up a deuced good pipe, and sung and played — barbarously enough, I will admit — to the tune of ' Guinea Corn,' the following ditty : — ' Massa Buccra lob for see Bullock caper like monkee — Dance, and shump and poke him toe, Like one humane person — just so.' And hereupon the tail of the beast, some fifty strong, music men, John Canoe and all, began to rampauge about, as if they had been possessed by a devil whose name was Legion : — ' But Massa Buccra have white love, Soft and silken like one dove. To brown girl — him barely shivel — To black girl — oh, Lord, de Devil ! ' Then a tremendous gallopading, in the which Tail- tackle was nearly capsized over the wharf. He looked quietly over the edge of it. c Boat-keeper, hand me up that switch of a stretcher.' (Friend, if thou be'st not nautical, thou knowest what a rack-pin, something of the stout- est, is.) The boy did so, and Tailtackle, after moistening well his dexter claw with tobacco juice, seized the stick with his left by the middle, and balancing it for a second or two, he began to fasten the end of it into his right fist, as if he had been screwing a a bolt into a socket. Having satisfied himself that his grip was secure, he let go the hold with his left hand, and crossed his arms on his breast, with the weapon projecting over his left shoulder, like the drone of a bagpipe. 373 TOM CRINGLE'S LOG The Device continued his chant, giving the seaman a wide berth, however : — ' But when him once two tree year here, Him tink white lady wery great boder ; De coloured peoples, never fear, Ah, him lob him de morest nor any oder.' Then another tumblication of the whole party. ' But top — one time bad fever catch him, Coloured peoples kindly watch him — In sick-room, nurse voice like music — From him hand taste sweet de physic' Another trampoline. ' So alway come — in two tree year, And so wid you, massa — never fear — Brown girl for cook — for wife — for nurse, Buccra lady — poo — no wort a curse.' 4 Get away, you scandalous scoundrel,' cried I ; c away with you, sir ! ' Here the morrice dancers began to circle round old Tailtackle, keeping him on the move, spinning round like a weathercock in a whirlwind, while they shouted, ' Oh, massa, one macaroni l if you please.' To get quit of their importunity, Captain Transom gave them one. ' Ah, good massa, tank you, sweet massa ! ' And away danced John Canoe and his tail, careering up the street. In the same way all the other crafts and trades had their Gumbie-men, Horn-blowers, John Canoes, and Nondescript. The gardeners came nearest, of anything I had seen before, to the May-day boys in London ; with this advantage, that their Jack-in-the-Green was incomparably more beauti- ful, from the superior bloom of the larger flowers used in composing it. 1 A quarter dollar. 374 MORE SCENES IN JAMAICA The very workhouse people, whose province it is to guard the negro culprits who may be com- mitted to it, and to inflict punishment on them when required, had their John Canoe and Device ; and their prime jest seemed to be, every now and then, to throw the fellow down who enacted the latter at the corner of a street, and to administer a sound flogging to him. The John Canoe, who was the workhouse driver, was dressed up in a lawyer's cast-off gown and bands, black silk breeches, no stockings nor shoes, but with sandals of bullock's hide strapped on his great splay feet, a small cocked hat on his head, to which were appended a large cauliflower wig, and the usual white false-face, bearing a very laughable resem- blance to Chief-Justice S , with whom I happened to be personally acquainted. The whole party which accompanied these two worthies, musicians and tail, were dressed out so as to give a tolerable resemblance of the Bar broke loose, and they were all pretty considerably well drunk. As we passed along, the Device was once more laid down, and we could notice a shield of tough hide strapped over the fellow's stern-frame, so as to save the lashes of the cat, which John Canoe was administering with all his force, while the Device walloped about and yelled as if he had been receiving the ounishment on his naked flesh. Presently, as he had rolled over and over in the sand, bellowing to the life, I noticed the leather shield slip upwards to the small of his back, leaving the lower storey uncovered in reality ; but the driver and his tail were too drunk to observe this, and the former continued to lay on and laugh, while one of his people stood by in all the gravity of drunkenness, 375 TOM CRINGLE'S LOG counting, as a first lieutenant does, when a poor fellow is polishing at the gangway, — c Twenty — twenty-one — twenty-two ' — and so on, while the patient roared you, an it were anything but a night- ingale. At length he broke away from the men who held him, after receiving a most sufficient flogging, to revenge which he immediately fastened on the John Canoe, wrenched his cat from him, and employed it so scientifically on him and his followers, giving them passing taps on the shins now and then with the handle, by way of spice to the dose, that the whole crew pulled foot as if Old Nick had held them in chase. The very children, urchins of five and six years old, had their Lilliputian John Canoes and Devices. But the beautiful part of the exhibition was the Set Girls. They danced along the streets, in bands of from fifteen to thirtv. There were brown sets, and black sets, and sets of all the intermediate gradations of colour. Each set was dressed pin for pin alike, and carried umbrellas or parasols of the same colour and size, held over their nice, showy, well put on toques, or Madras handkerchiefs — all of the same pattern — tied round their heads, fresh out of the fold. They sang as they swam along the streets, in the most luxurious attitudes. I had never seen more beautiful creatures than there were amongst the brown sets — clear olive complexions, and fine faces, elegant carriages, splendid figures — full, plump, and magnificent. Most of the Sets were as much of a size as Lord 's eighteen daughters, sailing down Regent Street, like a charity school of a Sunday, led by a rum-looking old beadle ; — others, again, had large Roman matron-looking women in the leading files 376 MORE SCENES IN JAMAICA — the figurantes in their tails becoming slighter and smaller, as they tapered away, until they ended in leetle picaniny, no bigger as my tumb, but always pre- serving the uniformity of dress, and colour of the umbrella or parasol. Sometimes the breeze on opening a corner, would strike the sternmost of a set composed in this manner of small fry, and stagger the little things, getting beneath their tiny umbrellas, and fairly blowing them out of the line, and ruffling their ribbons and finery, as if they had been tulips bending and shaking their lips before it. But the colours were never blended in the same set ; no blackie ever interloped with the browns, nor did the browns in any case mix with the sables, always keeping in mind, black tuoman — brown lady. But — as if the whole city had been tom-fooling a loud burst of military music was now heard, and the north end of the street we were ascending, which leads out of the Place d 'Jrmes or parade, that occupies the centre of the town, was filled with a cloud of dust that rose as high as the house-tops, through which the head of a column of troops sparkled ; swords and bayonets and gay uniforms glancing in the sun. This was the Kingston regi- ment marching down to the Court-house, in the lower part of the town, to mount the Christmas guards, which is always carefully attended to, in case any of the John Canoes should take a small fancy to burn or pillage the town, or to rise and cut the throats of their masters, or any little inno- cent recreation of the kind, out of compliment to Dr. Lushington, or Messrs. Macaulay and Babington. First came a tolerably good band, a little too 377 TOM CRINGLE'S LOG drummy, but still not amiss — well dressed, only the performers being of all colours from white down to jet-black, had a curious hodge-podge, or piebald appearance. Then came a dozen mounted officers, at the very least — colonels-in-chief, and colonels, and lieutenant-colonels, and majors — all very fine, and very bad horsemen. Then the grenadier company, composed of white clerks of the place — very fine-looking young men indeed ; another white company followed, not quite so smart-looking ; then came a century of the chil- dren of Israel, not over military in appearance — the days of Joshua the son of Nun had passed away, the glory had long departed from their house ; a phalanx of light browns succeeded, then a company of dark browns, or mulattoes — the regular half-and-half in this, as well as in grog, is the best mixture after all ; then quashie himself, or a com- pany of free blacks, who, with the browns, seemed the best soldiers of the set, excepting the flank companies ; and after blackie the battalion again gradually whitened away, until it ended in a very fine light company of buccras, smart young fellows as need be ; all the officers were white, and all the soldiers, whatever their caste or colour, free of course. Another battalion succeeded, composed in the same way ; and really I was agreeably surprised to find the indigenous force of the colony so efficient. I had never seen anything more soldier- like amongst our volunteers at home. Presently a halt was called, and a mounted officer, evidently desirous of showing oft* galloped up to where we were standing, and began to swear at the drivers of of a waggon, with a long team of sixteen bullocks, who had placed their vehicle — whether intentionally 37« MORE SCENES IN JAMAICA or not I could not tell — directly across the street, where, being met by another waggon of the same kind coming through the opposite lane, a regular jam had taken place, as they had contrived — being redolent of new rum — to lock their wheels, and twist their lines of bullocks together, in much- admired confusion. c Out of the way, sir ; out of the way, you black rascals — don't you see the regiment coming ? ' The men spanked their long whips and shouted to the steers by name — ' Back, back — Caesar — Antony — Crab, back, sir, back;' and they whistled loud and long, but Caesar and the rest only became more and more involved. * Order arms ! ' roared another officer, fairly beaten by the bullocks and waggons — ' Stand at ease.' On this last signal, a whole cloud of spruce-beer sellers started fiercely from under the piazzas. ' An insurrection of the slave population, may- hap,' — thought I, but their object was a very peaceable one, for presently, I verily believe, every man and officer in the regiment had a tumbler of this, to me, most delicious beverage at his head ; the drawing of the corks was more like street- firing than anything else — a regular feu de joie. In the meantime, a council of war seemed to be holden by the mounted officers as to how the ohstacle in front was to be overcome ; but at this moment confusion became worse confounded, by the ap- proach of what I concluded to be the white man's John Canoe party, mounted, by way of pre-eminence. First came a trumpeter, John Canoe with a black face, which was all in rule, as his black counter- parts wore ivhite ones j but his Device^ a curious 379 TOM CRINGLE'S LOG little little old man, dressed in a sort of blue uniform, and mounted on the skeleton, or ghost, of a gig-horse, I could make nothing of. It carried a drawn sword in its hand, with which it made various flourishes, at each one of which I trembled for its Rosinante's ears. The Device was followed by about fifty other odd-looking creatures, -all on horseback ; but they had no more seat than so many pairs of tongs, which in truth they greatly resembled, and made no show and less fun. So we were wishing them out of the way, when some one whispered that the Kingston Light Horse mustered strong this morning. I found afterwards that every man who kept a good horse, or could ride, in- variably served in the foot — all free persons must join some corps or other ; so that the troops as it was called, was composed exclusively of those who could not ride, and who kept no saddle- horses. The line was now formed, and after a variety of cumbrous manoeuvres out of Dundas — sixteen at the least — the regiment was countermarched, and filed along another street, where they gave three cheers, in honour of their having had a drink of spruce, and of having circumvented the bullocks and waggons. A little further on we encountered four beautiful nine-pounder field-pieces, each lumber- ing along, drawn by half a dozen mules, and accompanied by three or four negroes, but with no escort whatsoever. ' I say, quashie, where are all the bombardiers, the artillerymen ? ' c O, massa, dem all gone to drink prucc ' c What, more spruce ! — spruce — nothing but spruce ! ' quoth I. 380 MORE SCENES IN JAMAICA 1 yes, massa ; after dem drink pruce done dem all go to him breakfast, massa — left we for take de gun to de barrack — beg one feepenny, massa ' — as the price of the information, I suppose. 4 Are the sjuns loaded ?' said I. 4 Me no sabe, massa — top, I shall see.' And the fellow to whom I addressed myself stepped for- ward, and began to squint into the muzzle of one of the field-pieces, slewing his head from side to side, with absurd gravity, like a magpie peeping into a marrow-bone. ' Him most be load — no daylight come troo de touch-hole — take care — make me try him.' And without more ado he shook out the red embers from his pipe right on the touch-hole of the gun, when the fragment of a broken tube spun up in a small jet of flame, that made me start and jump back. ' How dare you, you scoundrel r ' said the captain. 'Eigh, massa, him no hax me to see if him be load — so I was try see. Indeed, I tink him is load after all yet.' He stepped forward, and entered his rammer into the cannon, after an unavailing attempt to blow with his blubber-lips through the touch-hole. Noticing that it did not produce the ringing sound it would have done in an empty gun, but went home with a soft thud, I sang out, 'Stand clear, sir. By Jupiter, the gun is loaded.' The negro continued to bash at it with all his might. Meanwhile, the fellow who was driving the mules attached to the field-piece, turned his head, and saw what was going on. In a trice he snatched up another rammer, and, without any 38i TOM CRINGLE'S LOG warning, came crack over the fellow's cranium to whom we had been speaking, as hard as he could draw, making the instrument quiver again. ' Dem you, ye, ye Jericho ! ah, so you bash my brokefast, eh ? You no see me tick him into de gun before we yoke de mule, dem, eh ? — You tief you, eh ? ' ' No ! ' roared the other — c you Walkandnyam, you hab no brokefast, you Hard — at least I never see him.' 'Big lie dat!' replied Walkandnyam — 'look in de gun.' Jericho peered into it again. ' Dere, you son of a ' (I shan't say what) — 'dere, I see de red flannin wadding over de cartridge — Your brokefast ! — you be hang ! ' roared Jericho. And he made at him as if he would have eaten him alive. 'You be hang youshef ! ' shrieked Walkandnyam — 'and de red wadding be hang!' as he took a screw, and hooked out, not a cartridge certainlv, but his own nightcap, full of yams and salt-fish smashed into a paste by Jericho's rammer. In the frenzy of his rage he dashed this into his opponent's face, and they both stripped in a second. Separating several yards, they levelled their heads like two telescopes on stands, and ran butt at each other like ram-goats, and quite as odoriferous, making the welkin ring again as their flint-hard skulls cracked together. Finding each other invulnerable in this direction, they closed, and began scrambling and biting and kicking, and tumbling over and over in the sand ; while the skipper and I stood by cheering them on, and 382 MORE SCENES IN JAMAICA nearly suffocated with laughter. They never once struck with their closed fists, I noticed; so they were not much hurt. It was great cry and little wool ; and at length they got tired, and hauled off by mutual consent, finishing oft" as usual with an appeal to us — c Beg one feepenny, massa ! ' At six o'clock we drove to Mr. Pepperpot Wagtail's. The party was a bachelor's one, and, when we walked up the front steps, there was our host in person, standing to receive us at the door, while on each side of him there were five or six of his visitors, all sitting with their legs cocked up, their feet resting on a sort of surbase, above which the jalousies, or movable blinds of the piazza, were fixed. I was introduced to the whole party seriatim — and as each of the cock-legs dropped his trams, he started up, caught hold of my hand, and wrung it as if I had been his dearest and oldest friend. Were I to designate Jamaica as a community, I would call it a hand-shaking people. I have often laughed heartilv upon seeing two cronies meeting in the streets of Kingston after a temporary separa- tion ; when about pistol-shot asunder, both would begin to tug and rug at the right-hand glove, but it is frequently a mighty serious affair, in that hissing hot climate, to get the gauntlet off; they approach, — one, a smart urbane little man, who would not disgrace St. James's Street, being more kiln-dried and less moist in his corporeals than his country friend, has contrived to extract his paw, and holds it out in act to shake. i Ah ! how do you do, Ratoon ? ' quoth the Kingston man. 383 TOM CRINGLE'S LOG c Quite well, Shingle,' rejoins the gloved^ a stout, red-faced, sudoriferous, yam-fed planter, dressed in blue-white jean trousers and waistcoat, with long Hessian boots drawn up to his knee over the former, and a span-new square-skirted blue coatee, with lots of clear brass buttons ; a broad-brimmed black silk hat, worn white at the edge of the crown — wearing a very small neckcloth, above which shoots up an enormous shirt collar, the peaks of which might serve for winkers to a start- ing horse, and carrying a large whip in his hand — c Quite well, my dear fellow,' while he persists in dragging at it — the other homo all the while stand- ing in the absurd position of a finger-post — at length, off comes the glove — piecemeal perhaps — a finger first, for instance — then a thumb ; at length they tackle to, and shake each other like the very devil — not a sober pump-handle shake, but a regular jiggery jiggery, as if they were trying to dislocate each other's arm — and, confound them, even then they don't let go — they cling like sucker fish, and talk and wallop about, and throw them- selves back and laugh, and then another jiggery jiggery. On horseback, this custom is conspicuously ridiculous. I have nearly gone into fits at behold- ing two men careering along the road at a hand- gallop, each on a goodish horse, with his negro boy astern of him on a mule, in clean frock and trousers and smart glazed hat with broad gold band, and massa's umbrella in a leathern case slung across his shoulders, and his portmanteau behind him on a mail pillion covered with a snow- white sheep's fleece — suddenly they pull up on re- cognising each other, when, tucking their whips 384 MORE SCENES IN JAMAICA under their arms, or crossing them in their teeth, it may be — they commence the rugging and riving operation. In this case — Shingle's bit of blood swerves, we may assume — Ratoon rides at him — Shingle fairly turns tail, and starts out at full speed, Ratoon thundering in his rear, with out- stretched arms ; and it does happen, I am assured, that the hot pursuit often continues for a mile, before the desired clapperclaw is obtained. But when two lusty planters meet on horseback, then indeed Greek meets Greek. They begin the interview by shouting to each other while fifty yards ofF, pulling away at the gloves all the while — ' How are you, Canetop ? — glad to see you, Cane- top. How do you do, / hope.' — How are you, Yamfu, my dear fellow ? ' their horses fretting and jumping all the time ; and if the Jack Spaniards or gadflies be rife, they have, even when denuded for the shake, to spur at each other, more like a Knight Templar and a Saracen charging in mortal combat, than two men merely struggling to be civil ; and after all they have often to get their black servants alongside to hold their horses, for shake they must, were they to break their necks in the attempt. Why they won't shake hands with their gloves on, I 'm sure / can't tell. It would be much cooler and nicer — lots of Scotchmen in the com- munity too. This hand-shaking, however, was followed by an invitation to dinner from each individual in the company. I looked at Captain Transom, as much as to say, ' Can they mean us to take them at their word ? ' He nodded. ( We are sorry, that being under orders to go to sea on Sunday morning, neither Mr. Cringle nor vol. i. 385 2 B TOM CRINGLE'S LOG myself can have the pleasure of accepting such kind invitations.' c Well, when you come back, you know — one day you must give ?nc? ' And I won't be denied,' quoth a second. ' Liberty Hall, you know, so to me you must come, no ceremony,' said a third — and so on. At length, no less a man drove up to the door than Judge . When he drew up, his servant, who was sitting behind, on a small projection of the ketureen, came round and took a parcel out of the gig, closely wrapped in a blanket. ' Bring that carefully in, Leonidas,' said the Judge, who now stumped up-stairs with a small saw in his hand. He received the parcel, and, laying it down care- fully in a corner, he placed the saw on it, and then came up and shook hands with Wagtail, and made his bow very gracefully. ' What — can't you do without your ice and sour claret yet ? ' said Wagtail. 'Never mind, never mind,' said the judge, and here dinner being announced, we all adjourned to the dining-room, where a very splendid enter- tainment was set out, to which we set to, and in the end, as it will appear, did the utmost justice to it. The wines were most exquisite. Madeira, for instance, never can be drunk in perfection anywhere out of the Tropics. You may have the wine as good at home, although I doubt it, but then you have not the climate to drink it in — I would say the same of most of the delicate French wines — that is, those that will stand the voyage — Burgundy, of course, not included ; but never mind, let us get along. All the decanters were covered with cotton 386 MORE SCENES IN JAMAICA bags, kept wet with saltpetre and water, so that the evaporation carried on powerfully by the stream of air that flowed across the room, through the open doors and windows, made the fluids quite as cool as was desirable to worthies sitting luxuriating with the thermometer at 8o° or thereby ; yet, from the free current, I was in no way made aware of this degree of heat by any oppressive sensation ; and I found in the West Indies as well as in the East, although the wind in the latter is more dry and parching, that a current of heated air, if it be moderately dry, even with the thermometer at 95 in the shade, is really not so enervating or oppressive as I have found it in the stagnating atmosphere on the sunny side of Pall Mall, with the mercury barely at 75 . A cargo of ice had a little before this arrived at Kingston, and at first all the inhabitants who could afford it iced everything, wine, water, cold meats, fruits, and the Lord knows what all — tea, I believe, amongst other things (by the way, I have tried this, and it is a luxury of its kind); but the regular old stagers, who knew what was what, and had a regard for their interiors, soon began to eschew the ice in every way, saving and excepting to cool the water they washed their thin faces and hands in ; so we had no ice, nor did we miss it; but the judge had a plateful of chips on the table before him, one of which he every now and then popped into his long thin bell glass of claret, diluting it, I should have thought, in rather a heathenish manner ; but riimporte, he worked away, sawing off" pieces now and then from the large lump in the blanket (to save the tear and wear attending a fracture), which was handed to him by his servant, so that by eleven 387 TOM CRINGLE'S LOG o'clock at night, allowing for the water, he must have concealed his three bottles of pure claret, be- sides garnishing with a lot of white wines. In fine, we all carried on astonishingly, some good singing was given, a practical joke was tried on now and then by Fyall, and we continued mighty happy. As to the singing part of it, — the land- lord, with a bad voice and worse ear, opened the rorytory by volunteering a very extraordinary squeak ; fortunately it was not very long, but it gave him a plea to screw a song out of his right- hand neighbour, who in turn acquired the same right of compelling the person next him to make a fool of himself. At last it came to Transom, who, by the bye, sung exceedingly well, but he had got more wine than usual, and essayed the coquette a bit. c Bring the wet night-cap ! ' quoth our host. ' Oh, is it that you are at ? ' said Transom, and he sung as required ; but it was all pearls before swine, I fear. At last we stuck fast at Fyall. Music ! there was not one particle in his whole composition ; so the wet night-cap already impended over him, when I sung out, 'Let him tell a story, Mr. Wagtail. Let him tell a story.' ' Thank you, Tom,' said Fyall ; c I owe you a good turn for that, my boy.' ' FyalPs story — Mr. Fyall's story ! ' resounded on all hands. Fyall, glad to escape the song and wet nightcap, instantly began. 'Why, my friends, you all know Isaac Grimm, the Jew snuff-merchant and cigar maker, in Harbour Street. Well, Isaac had a brother, Ezekiel by name, who carried on business at 388 MORE SCENES IN JAMAICA Curacoa ; you may have heard of him too. Ezelciel was often down here for the purpose of laying in provisions and purchasing dry goods. You all know that ? ' c Certainly ! ' shouted both Captain Transom and myself in a breath, although we had never heard of him before. c Hah, I knew it ! — Well, then, Ezekiel was very rich ; he came down in August last, in the Pickle schooner, and, as bad luck would have it, he fell sick of the fever. " Isaac," quoth Ezekiel, " I am wery sheek ; I tink I shall tie." — " Hope note, dear proder ; you hab no vife, nor shilder ; pity you should tie, Ezekiel. Ave you make your vill, Ezekiel ? " " Yesh ; de vill is make. I leavish everyting to you, Isaac, on von condition, dat you send my pody to be pury in Curacoa. I love dat place ; twenty years since I lef de Minories, all dat time I cheat dere, and tell lie dere, and lif dere happily. O, you most sent my pody for its puryment to Curacoa ! " " I will do dat, mine proder." " Den I depart in peace, dear Isaac ; " and the Israelite was as good as his word for once. He did die. Isaac, according to his promise, applied to the captains of several schooners ; none of them would take the dead body. "What shall I do?" thought Isaac, "de monish mosh not be loss." So he straightway had Ezekiel (for even a Jew won't keep long in that climate) cut up and packed with pickle into two barrels, marked " Prime mess pork, Leicester, M'Call & Co., Cork." He then shipped the same in the Fan Fan, taking bills of lading in accordance with the brand, deliverable to Mordecai Levi, of Curacoa, to whom he sent the requisite instruc- 389 TOM CRINGLE'S LOG rions. The vessel sailed — off St. Domingo she carried away a mast — tried to fetch Carthagena under a jury-spar — fell to leeward, and finally brought up at Honduras. * Three months after, Isaac encountered the master of the schooner in the streets of Kingston. " Ah, mine goot Captain, how is you ? you lookish tin, ave you been sheek ? " — " No, Moses, I am well enough, thank you ; poor a bit, but sound in health, thank God. You have heard of my having carried away the mainmast, and, after kicking about fifteen days on short allowance, having been obliged to bear up for Honduras ? " — " I know noting of all dat," said Isaac ; " sorry for it, Cap- tain — very sad inteed." — " Sad ! you may say that, Moses. But I am honest although poor, and here is your bill of lading for your two barrels of pro- visions ; c Prime mess,' it says — damned tough, say I. Howsomdever," pulling out his purse, " the present value on Bogle, Jopp and Co.'s wharf is ^5, 6s. 8d. the barrel ; so there are two doubloons, Moses, and now discharge the account on the back of the bill of lading, will you ? " — " Vy should I take payment, Captain ? if de " — (pork stuck in his throat like "Amen" in Macbeth's) "if de barrel ish lost, it can't be help — de act of God, you know." — "I am an honest man, Isaac," continued the Captain, " although a poor one, and I must tell the truth : we carried on with our own as long as it lasted, at length we had to break bulk, and your two barrels being nearest the hatchway, why, we ate them first, that 's all. Lord, what has come over you ? " — Isaac grew pale as a corpse. " Oh, mine Got — mine poor broder, dat you ever was live, to tie in Jamaic — Oh tear, oh tear ! " ' 390 MORE SCENES IN JAMAICA ' Did they eat the head and hands and ' c Hold your tongue, Tom Cringle, don't inter- rupt me ; you did not eat them ; I tell it as it was told to me. So Isaac Grimm,' continued Fyall, 'was fairly overcome; the kindly feelings of his nature were at length stirred up, and as he turned away, he wept — blew his nose hard, like a Chaldean trumpet in the new moon — and while the large tears coursed each other down his care-worn cheeks, he exclaimed, wringing the captain's hand, in a voice tremulous and scarcely audible from ex- treme emotion, a Oh, Isaac Grimm, Isaac Grimm — tid not your heart mishgive you ven you vas commit de great plasphemy of invoish Ezekiel — flesh of your flesh, pone of your pone — as par — de onclean peast, I mean. If you had put invoish him ash peef surely te earthly tabernacle of him, as always sheet in de high places in te Sinacogue, would never have been allow to pass troo te powels of te pershicuting Nazareen. Ah, mine goot cap- tain — mine very tear friend, vat — vat — vat av you done wid de cask, Captain ? " ' ' O most lame and impotent conclusion ! ' sung out the judge, who by this time had become deucedly prosy, and all hands arose, as if by common consent, and agreed that we had got enough. So off we started in groups. Fyall, Captain Transom, Whiffle, Aaron Bang, and myself sallied forth in a bunch, pretty well-inclined for a lark, you may guess. There are no lamps in the streets of Kingston, and as all the decent part of the community are in their cavies by half-past nine in the evening, and as it was now c the witching time o' night,' there was not a soul in the streets that we saw, except a solitary town-guard now and 391 TOM CRINGLE'S LOG then, lurking about some dark corner under the piazzas. The same streets, which were wide and comfortable enough in the daytime, had become unaccountably narrow and intricate since six o'clock in the evening ; and although the object of the party was to convoy Captain Transom and myself to our boat at the Ordnance Wharf, it struck me that we were as frequently on a totally different tack. £ I say, Cringle, my boy,' stuttered out my superior, Lieutenant and Captain being both drowned in and equalised by the claret — 'why, Tom, Tom Cringle, you dog — don't you hear your superior officer speak, sir, eh ? ' My superior officer during this address was standing with both arms round a pillar of the piazza. ' I am here, sir,' said I. £ Why, I know that ; but why don't you speak when I Hillo — where 's Aaron and Fyall, and the rest, eh ? ' They had been attracted by sounds of revelry in a splendid mansion in the next street, which we could see was lit up with great brilliancy, and had at this time shot about fifty yards ahead of us, working to windward, tack and tack, like Com- modore Trunnion. 4 Ah, I see,' said Transom ; ' let us heave ahead, Tom — now, do ye hear ? — stand you with your white trousers against the next pillar.' The ranges supporting the piazza were at distances of about twenty feet from each other. — ' Ah, stand there now — I see it.' — So he weighed from the one he had tackled to, and, making a staggering bolt of it, ran up to the pillar against which I stood, its posi- 392 MORE SCENES IN JAMAICA tion being marked by my white vestments, where he again hooked on for a second or two, until I had taken up a new position. c There, my boy, that 's the way to lay out a warp — right in the wind's eye. Tom, we shall fairly beat those lubbers who are tacking in the stream — nothing like warping in the dead water near the shore — mark that down, Tom — never beat in a tide-way when you can warp up along shore in the dead water. Confound the judge's ice ' — (hiccup) — ' he has poisoned me with that piece he plopped in my last whitewash of madeira. He a judge ! He may be a good crim — criminal judge, but no judge of wine. Why don't you laugh, Tom, eh ? — and then his saw — the rasp of a saw I hate — wish it, and a whole nest more, had been in his legal stomach — full of old saws — Shake- speare — he, he ! Why don't you laugh, Tom ? — Poisoned by the judge, by Jupiter. Now, here we are fairly abreast of them. — Hillo ! — Fyall, what are you after ? ' c Hush, hush,' said Fyall, with drunken gravity. ' And hush, hush,' said Aaron Bang. ' Come here, Tom, come here,' said Whiffle, in a whisper. We were now directly under the piazza of the fine house, in the first floor of which some gay scene was enacting. c Here, Tom, here — now stand there — hold by that pillar there. I say, Transom, give me a lift.' 'Can't Whiffle, can't, for the soul of me, Pere- grine, my dear — but I see, I see.' With that the gallant captain got down on all fours ; Whiffle, a small light man, got on his back, and, with the aid of Bang and Fyall, managed to scramble up on my shoulders, where he stood, hold- 393 TOM CRINGLE'S LOG ing by the window sill above, with a foot on each side of my head. His little red face was thus raised flush with the window-sill, so that he could see into the dark piazza on the first floor, and right through into the magnificent and sparkling drawing-room beyond. ' Now tell us what 's to be seen,' said Aaron. ' Stop, stop,' rejoined Whiffle — ' My eye, what a lot of splendid women — no men — a regular lady- party — Hush ! a song.' A harp was struck, and a symphony of Beethoven's played with great taste. A song, low and melancholy, from two females followed. 'The music of the spheres ! ' quoth Whiffle. We were rapt — we had been inspired before — and, drunk as we were, there we sat or stood, as best suited us, exhibiting the strange sight of a cluster of silent tipsy men. At length, at one of the finest swells, I heard a curious gurgling sound overhead, as if some one was being gagged, and I fancied Peregrine became lighter on my shoulders — Another fine die-away note — I was sure of it. 'Bang, Bang — Fyall — He is evaporating with delight — no weight at all — growing more and more ethereal — lighter and lighter, as I am a gentleman — he is off" — going, going, gone — exhaled into the blue heavens, by all that is wonderful ! ' Puzzled beyond measure, I stept hurriedly back, and capsized over the captain, who was -still enacting the joint-stool on all-fours behind me, by which Whiffle had mounted to my cross-trees, and there we rolled in the sand, master and man. 'Murdered, Tom Cringle — murdered! you have hogged me like the old Ramilies — broke my 394 MORE SCENES IN JAMAICA back, Tom — spoiled my quadrilling for ever and a day ; d n the judge's ice, though, and the saw particularly.' 1 Where is he — where is Whiffle ? ' inquired all hands, in a volley. 'The devil only knows,' said I ; ' he has flown up into the clouds, catch him who can. He has left this earth anyhow, that is clear.' c Ha, ha ! ' cried Fyall, in great glee, who had seen him drawn into the window by several white figures, after they had tied a silk handkerchief over his mouth ; c follow me, my boys ; ' and we all scrambled after him to the front door of the house, to which we ascended by a handsome flight of marble steps; and when there, we began to thunder away for admittance. The door was opened by a very respectable-looking elderly gentleman, with well-powdered hair, and attended by two men- servants in handsome liveries, carrying lights. His bearing and gentleman-like deportment had an immediate effect on me, and I believe on the others too. He knew Fyall and Whiffle, it appeared. 'Mr. Fyall,' he said, with much gentleness, 'I know it is only meant as a frolic, but really I hope you will now end it. Amongst yourselves, gentle- men, this may be all very well, but considering my religion, and the slights we Hebrews are so often exposed to, myself and my family are more sensitive and pervious to insult than you can well understand.' c My dear fellow,' quoth Fyall, ' we are all very sorry : the fact is, we had some bad shad- dock after dinner, which has made us very giddy and foolish somehow. Do you know, I could almost fancy I had been drinking wine.' 395 TOM CRINGLE'S LOG 'Cool and deliciously impudent that same (hiccup),' quoth the skipper. ' But hand us back little Whiffle,' continued Fyall, ' and we shall be off.' Here Whiffle's voice was heard from the drawing- room. 'Here, Fyall ! — Tom Cringle! — Here, here, or I shall be murdered ! ' £ Ah ! I see,' said Mr. H., 'this way, gentlemen. Come, I will deliver the culprit to you ; ' and we followed him into the drawing-room, a most magnificent saloon, at least forty feet by thirty, brilliantly lit up with crystal lamps and massive silver candelabra, and filled with elegant furniture, which was reflected, along with the chandeliers that hung from the centre of the coach roof, by several large mirrors, in rich frames, as well as in the highly polished mahogany floor. There, in the middle of the room, the other end of it being occupied by a bevy of twelve or fifteen richly-dressed females — visitors, as we conjectured — sat our friend Peregrine, pinioned into a large easy-chair, with shawls and scarfs, amidst a sea of silk cushions, by four beautiful young women, black hair and eyes, clear white skins, fine figures, and little clothing. A young Jewess is a beautiful animal, although, like the unclean — confound the metaphor — which they abhor — they don't improve by age. When we entered, the blushing girls, who had been beating Whiffle over his spindle shins with their large garden fans, dashed through a side-door, unable to contain their laughter, which we heard, long after they had vanished, echoing through the lofty galleries of the house. Our captive knight being restored to us, we made our bows to the 396 MORE SCENES IN JAMAICA other ladies, who were expiring with laughter, and took our leave, with little Whiffle on our shoulders — the worthy Hebrew, whom I afterwards knew in London, sending his servant and gig with Cap- tain Transom and myself to the wharf. There we tumbled ourselves into the boat, and got on board the Firebrand about three in the morning. We were by this time pretty well sobered ; at four a gun was fired, the topsails were let fall and sheeted home, and topgallant-sails set over them, the ship having previously been hove short ; at half-past, the cable being right up and down — another gun — the drums and fifes beat merrily — spin flew the capstan, tramp went the men that manned it. We were under weigh — Eastward ho ! — for Santiago de Cuba. END OF VOL. I. Printed by T. and A. Constable, Printers to Her Majesty at the Edinburgh University Press A C/7S-77 '! HI ■p