I drifted without a word or motion, and almost without breathing,
until the corvette was perfectly obliterated against the hazy horizon.
When every thing was dark around me, save the guiding stars, I put out
the oars and pulled quietly towards the east. At day-dawn I was
apparently alone on the ocean.
My appetite had improved so hugely by the night's exercise, that my
first devotion was to the basket, which I found crammed with bologna
sausages, a piece of salt junk, part of a ham, abundance of biscuit,
four bottles of water, two of brandy, a pocket compass, a jack-knife,
and a large table-cloth or sheet, which the generous doctor had no
doubt inserted to serve as a sail.
The humbled _slaver_ and the _slave_, for the first time in their
lives, broke bread from the same basket, and drank from the same
bottle! Misfortune had strangely and suddenly levelled us on the basis
of common humanity. The day before, he was the most servile of
menials; to-day he was my equal, and, probably, my superior in certain
physical powers, without which I would have perished!
As the sun ascended in the sky, my wound became irritated by exercise,
and the inflammation produced a feverish torment in which I groaned as
I lay extended in the stern-sheets. By noon a breeze sprang up from
the south-west, so that the oars and table-cloth supplied a square
sail which wafted us about three miles an hour, while my boy rigged
an awning with the blankets and boat-hooks. Thus, half reclining, I
steered landward till midnight, when I took in the sail and lay-to on
the calm ocean till morning. Next day the breeze again favored us;
and, by sundown, I came up with the coasting canoe of a friendly
Mandingo, into which I at once exchanged my quarters, and falling
asleep, never stirred till he landed me on the Islands de Loss.
My wound kept me a close and suffering prisoner in a hut on the isles
for ten days during which I despatched a native canoe some thirty five
or forty miles to the Rio Pongo with news of my disaster, and orders
for a boat with an equipment of comforts. As my clerk neglected to
send a suit of clothes, I was obliged to wear the Mandingo habiliments
till I reached my factory, so that during my transit, this dress
became the means of an odd encounter. As I entered the Rio Pongo, a
French brigantine near the bar was the first welcome of civilization
that cheered my heart for near a fortnight. Passing her closely, I
drifted alongside, and begged the commander for a bottle of claret. My
brown skin, African raiment, and savage companions satisfied the
skipper that I was a native, so that, with a sneer, he, of course,
became very solicitous to know "where I drank claret _last_?" and
pointing to the sea, desired me to quench my thirst with brine!
It was rather hard for a suffering Italian to be treated so cavalierly
by a Gaul; but I thanked the fellow for his civility in such excellent
French, that his tone instantly changed, and he asked--"_au nom de
Dieu_, where I had learned the language!" It is likely I would have
rowed off without detection, had I not just then been recognized by
one of his officers who visited my factory the year before.
In a moment the captain was in my boat with a bound, and grasping my
hands with a thousand pardons, insisted I should not ascend the river
till I had dined with him. He promised a plate of capital soup;--and
where, I should like to know, is the son of France or Italy who is
ready to withstand the seduction of such a provocative? Besides this,
he insisted on dressing me from his scanty wardrobe; but as he
declined all subsequent remuneration, I confined my bodily improvement
to a clean shirt and his wiry razors.
While the _bouillon_ was bubbling in the coppers, I got an insight
into the condition of Rio Pongo concerns since my departure. The Dane
was off after a quarrel with Ormond, who gave him but a hundred
negroes for his cargo; and a Spanish brig was waiting my arrival,--for
the boy I sent home from the Isles de Loss had reported my engagement,
capture, and escape.
_La soupe sur la table_, we attacked a smoking tureen of _bouillon
gras_, while a heaping dish of toasted bread stood in the middle. The
captain loaded my plate with two slices of this sunburnt material,
which he deluged with a couple of ladles of savory broth. A long fast
is a good sauce, and I need not assert that I began _sans facon_. My
appetite was sharp, and the vapor of the liquid inviting. For a while
there was a dead silence, save when broken by smacking and relishing
lips. Spoonful after spoonful was sucked in as rapidly as the heat
allowed; and, indeed, I hardly took time to bestow a blessing on the
cook. Being the guest of the day, my plate had been the first one
served, and of course, was the first one finished. Perhaps I rather
hurried myself, for lenten diet made me greedy and I was somewhat
anxious to anticipate the calls of my companions on the tureen.
Accordingly, I once more ballasted my plate with toast, and, with a
charming bow and a civil "_s'il vous plait_," applied, like Oliver
Twist, "for more."
As the captain was helping me to the second ladle, he politely
demanded whether I was "fond of the thick;" and as I replied in the
affirmative, he made another dive to the bottom and brought up the
instrument with a heaping mass in whose centre was a diminutive
African skull, face upwards, gaping at the guests with an infernal
grin!
My plate fell from my hand at the tureen's edge. The boiling liquid
splashed over the table. I stood fascinated by the horrible apparition
as the captain continued to hold its dreadful bones in view. Presently
my head swam; a painful oppression weighed at my heart; I was ill;
and, in a jiffy, the appalling spectre was laid beneath the calm
waters of the Rio Pongo.
Before sundown I made a speedy retreat from among the _anthropophagi_;
but all their assurances, oaths, and protestations, could not satisfy
me that the broth did not owe its substance to something more human
than an African _baboon_.