LAND!
After this affair we all got on pleasantly enough; to the great
satisfaction of the crew, the choleric captain was confined to his
cabin, and the ship was commanded by Mr. Percival, the
first-lieutenant. Few other incidents of interest occurred during
the outward voyage, which by various delays, lasted about three
months; for until we felt the influence of the trade wind, which
seldom varies throughout the year--the same wind which, by its
steadiness, excited the terror of the seamen of Columbus--we
encountered very foul weather.
After a time, the wonders of the deep--the showers of flying-fish,
the brown droves of shining porpoises surging through the
sea--leaping as it were, from one watery slope to another--the huge
whale rising up suddenly like an inverted ship, with the water
pouring in a torrent from its slippery sides, spouting foam, or
tossing its mighty tail in the air; the blue shark gliding stealthily
along under the glossy surface of the calm sea, all ceased to excite
interest, and the intense monotony of the voyage, together with the
dull routine of duty, wearied me: thus, I can well recal the joy I
felt, when one morning, about the end of April, Tom Telfer, who had
been on the morning watch, pointed out to me, a number of strange
birds, that were hovering among the far scattered ships of the fleet,
while pieces of sugar-cane, melon and other tropical indications of
the shore, floated past from time to time--a joy, only equalled by
the disappointment I endured, when after a sudden cry of "land in
sight," from the look-out man in the main-crosstrees, a low dark
stripe was declared to be "only Cape Flyaway," which was slowly
exhaled into the meredian sky, and melted without leaving a trace
behind.
We were driven to the 40th degree of north latitude, and saw the
volcanic hills of the Azores. I remember when at Guadaloupe, finding
in a house when on a foraging party a curious history of the
discovery of these isles, by Gonsalvo Velio, in 1449, in which there
was a quaint and Gothic story of this adventurous voyager, perceiving
the figure of a warrior on horseback on the summit of a rock
overlooking the sea. "His left hand was on his horse's mane, and his
right hand pointed to the west."
Startled on beholding such an apparition in a desolate island,
Gonsalvo landed, and the figure was found to have turned into stone,
and certain cabalistic characters were graven on the face of the rock
before it.
We ran pretty close to St. Michael, the isle of oranges and most
eastern of the group; and then, with all the fleet that were in
sight, bore up for the island of Barbadoes, our point of rendezvous.
Ere this, I had already reaped a portion of the fruit of my
steadiness, and attention to duty since my enlistment, and also of
the good education bestowed upon me, by my kind mother, from whom I
was now so far, far away.
"Once in the ranks--always in the ranks is the maxim of the British
army," says a writer in 1857, who knows little about the matter; "a
man who accepts the shilling from the recruiting sergeant, and
fulfils an engagement made over his ale in a pot-house, bids adieu to
all hope of raising in the military profession; he must give up all
ambition, and seek what pleasure he can find in transient
indulgences."
Even in the old times of which I write, we did not find ourselves
thus degraded in the Scots Fusiliers; at least I--Oliver Ellis--found
it otherwise, for old Captain Glendonwyn, after discovering my few
qualifications, made me useful in keeping the books of his company;
and the reader must remember that in those days of practical
soldiering, very few non-commissioned officers could read or write.
I could do both, and had also a smattering of French and Latin.
Thus, I was considered a species of military prodigy; and when a
fever, which broke out in the fleet on its reaching warmer latitudes,
swept off several of our sergeants, I was promoted to one of the
vacant halberts, and my heart expanded with hope, joy, and ambition,
when Lord Kildonan, who, of course, remembered how I had saved him
from Cranky's pistol, told me earnestly to continue to conduct myself
with care, "and I might yet wear a pair of epaulettes as my father
had done before me."
The deaths were so frequent, as to cast a permanent gloom over all on
board; and I still recall the emotions of awe and repugnance, with
which I saw each poor corse corded up in blankets and, with a cold
shot at its heels, consigned to a grave in the brine, through which
the sharks followed us with voracious obstinacy.
On the 3rd of March we saw land in earnest, and with three hearty
cheers that rang from ship to ship, we hailed the fertile shores of
Barbadoes.
As the fleet drew near, the undulating line of the island rose
gradually from the deep resplendent blue of the Carribean sea,
presenting an aspect of that surpassing verdure and fertility to be
found in the tropics alone. The tall sugar-canes were swaying in the
soft breeze that came from the ocean, and the groves of the
plaintains, guavas, pineapples, orange, lime, and citron trees, all
in their varied tints of green foliage and golden fruit, bounding
flat green lawns or shading little villages, above which the
sugar-mills were tossing their fanlike arms, made Barbadoes a
charming scene to eyes that had gazed so long upon the changeless
waste of sea and sky.
We ran into Carlisle Bay, and on Admiral Jervis's ship firing a gun,
the whole fleet came to anchor in three lines; the courses were
handed and the yards squared, while crowds of black-skinned and
woolly-headed negroes came running out of the plantations to the
shore to gaze at us; and numbers came off from the little bights and
creeks in their piraguas or canoes, offering for sale pine-apples at
a penny each, guavas, bananas, and monkeys to suck, (_i.e._,
cocoanuts filled with rum). The _Adder_, with the head-quarters of
the Fusileers, was the leading frigate of the leeward line, so we
were less than a mile from the shore.
A boat was lowered at once to order various stores requisite for the
ship. As it splashed into the water, I envied the middy who was to
be the first that trod on terra firma.
"Now, Mr. Stanley," cried Percival the first lieutenant as he shoved
off; "look out that your boat's crew don't suck the monkey, or by
Heaven, youngster, I'll mast-head you for four-and-twenty hours."
On this day the captain appeared on deck for the first time since his
duel. Lord Kildonan hastened to offer the assistance of his arm;
which Cranky accepted with a better grace than we could have
anticipated, but now their feud was at an end.
Now, my first thought was of _home_. How I longed to write the story
of my long and tedious voyage; to ask forgiveness and a blessing from
those I had left behind; but a knowledge of the difficulty which even
officers experienced in the transmission of their letters in those
days, made me cast aside, in a species of despair, the pen I had
assumed, and I sought to forget my bitterness of heart in gazing on
the green shore, and anticipating a release from the thraldom of the
frigate.
An emotion of repugnance and alarm, thrilled through me, on seeing
the number of sharks that played about in Carlisle bay. To me, it
seemed as if all the sharks in the ocean were swarming in that small
bight of deep blue water. The sailors averred that "they nosed the
soldiers aboard," and knew well when a ship was crowded. One fact is
certain, that they were wont to follow the slave-ships hither from
the Guinea coast; and as deaths were frequent on board of such filthy
and crowded craft, a day seldom passed without a body being tossed
overboard, and we could see it rent to pieces under our eyes by those
voracious monsters of the deep--for many slave-ships had come in
under convoy and lay at anchor to leeward of the fleet; to windward,
would not be tolerated.
In a very old folio history of Barbadoes, I remember my comrade, Tom
Telfer, reading to me once, when sick in my hammock, the following
singular episode concerning a shark in Carlisle Bay.
In the reign of Queen Anne, an old brig, of quaint aspect,
high-pooped and low-waisted, named the _York Merchant_, Captain Jack
Beams, commander, a letter-of-marque, pierced for ten guns, besides
pateraroes (for, in those days, the Indian seas and the Florida Gulf
were full of buccaniers) arrived at Barbadoes from England, and
landed a cargo in Carlisle Bay. The warmth of the weather, together
with the delightful blue of the deep water, tempted one of the seamen
to leap overboard and bathe; but he was scarcely three fathoms from
the ship, when there was a cry raised on board:--
"Look out--ware shark!" and an enormous blue one was seen, slowly but
surely, with the wake of its body shining under the surface, to shoot
towards him.
A sailor, who had a great regard for the luckless swimmer, as they
were old friends and messmates, sprang into a boat alongside, and
pushed off to his assistance; but the shark was quicker than he, and
he arrived in time only to see the monster open its dreadful jaws,
and cut fairly in two the body of his friend, as he raised himself
shrieking from the bloody water. All the man below the waist was
swallowed by the shark at a mouthful. The remainder was brought on
board, to the horror and dismay of the crew. For more than an hour
after this the insatiable shark was seen slowly swimming round the
ship (against the sides of which the water rippled in bloody tints),
as if waiting for the other half of his victim.
Many a musket-shot was discharged at him, but he escaped them all.
Enraged by this tenacity and temerity, the messmate of the dead man
swore that he would have vengeance; and throwing off his clothes, ere
he could be prevented, sprang into the water, armed with a long and
sharp-pointed dagger, which he had lashed to his right hand by a
lanyard. Even before his white body had risen to the surface, the
shark was seen by the ship's crew, making slowly towards him, and
they clambered into the rigging and ran out upon the studding-sail
booms, where they gazed in breathless astonishment on a combat so
unusual and terrific.
At the moment when the shark opened his dreadful jaws, the seaman,
with a shout of triumph, dived below, and while grasping the
monster's upper fin with his left hand, gave him three stabs in the
belly with the dagger which armed his right.
Rendered furious on finding himself so skilfully combated in his own
element, the shark plunged to the bottom, leaving the water crimsoned
with blood and froth.
Once again he rose to the surface, and again the brave English
mariner attacked him in the same manner, and repeated his stabs,
until so much blood and foam covered the water, that the scared crew
of the _York Merchant_ knew not which had the victory--the man or the
giant-fish,--until they saw the dead carcass floating, like an
inverted canoe, on the surface of the bay, when they hoisted their
ensign, fired off their all pateraroes, and hailed the victor with
three hearty cheers; thereafter, adds this quaint old book, he "by
the help of an ebbing tide, drags the shark on shore, rips up his
bowels, and unites and buries the severed carcass of his friend in
one hospitable grave, on the shore of Carlisle Bay."
The evening on which we came to anchor there was beautiful; but a
succession of such evenings soon ceases to excite comment in the
tropics.
The round windsails rigged down every open hatchway, white and
swelling, were conveying the cool fresh air into the deepest recesses
of the frigate. Her ports triced up, gave, on one side, glimpses of
cool and shady lime and orange groves; on the other, the colder blue
of the Carribean Sea; yet the carronades, when one touched them, felt
hot beneath the hand, for the burning heat of the breathless day that
had passed, yet lingered about them. Alongside, the water rippled
gently under the bends; and more than every minute, the dark fin of
the blue shark--in those seas the most terrible of all its
species--rose above the surface of the clear, deep water.
The sweep of Carlisle Bay, so named from the Earl of Carlisle, who
obtained from Charles I. a grant of Barbadoes, as "absolute
proprietor and lord of the Caribee isles," with the aspect of the
capital, occupied me for some time, though the view was, perhaps,
more pleasing than striking. It is named Bridgetown, from a bridge
that once spanned a river which flowed into the bay, but which was
choked or dried up before 1715. The British flag, always a pleasant
feature in a foreign land, as it tells so much of home and safety,
was flying above the Garrison,--an extensive range of edifices, at
the southern horn of the bay; while the northern is occupied by a
battery, the guns of which, peered over a ridge of low coral reefs,
whereon the sea was breaking in white foam that sparkled in the light
of the setting sun. Beyond, lay Fontabelle, of old the seat of the
governors, embosomed among tall cocoanut-trees, the tufted heads of
which were tossing their branches on the evening wind.
Sugar-mills, with huge revolving fans, and rows of giant
cabbage-trees, broke the wavy sky-line; and from a distance, came, at
times, the cheerful but guttural chant of the slimy-skinned and
woolly-headed negroes, whose sole garments were, usually, a pair of
white or yellow cotton breeches. On the wharfs, gangs of them were
busy, under the sharp eye and sharper lash of overseers (attired in
spotless white, with broad-leaved hats) hoisting or stowing sugars
and other goods on board the shipping at the carenage and mole.
Next day most of the troops were disembarked. Some were placed under
canvas at a part of the isle which, being mountainous, is named
Scotland; a few were billeted, but the Fusileers had the good fortune
to be placed in the garrison at Needham's Point, where Fort Charles,
so named by exiled Cavaliers in honour of the first monarch of that
name, was built in the days of old.
One requires to undergo the tedium of a long voyage to feel the joy
of first stepping ashore.
"Now, here we are in the West Indies again, boys!" I heard some of
our men shout as we marched along the shore; "now for potted
missionary, pickled monkey, sangaree, brown girls, red rum, and
yellow fever!"
"The mountains all sugar--the rivers all rum."
"Hot marches, mouldy biscuits, yams, and rattlesnakes, plunder and
prize-money."
So the thoughtless fellows continued amid reckless laughter (though
those islands were literally the grave of Europeans), while they
retired to their barracks, in which they were to remain until Sir
Charles Grey made his arrangements for beating up the quarters of M.
de Rouvigny, the French _chef de bataillon_, who commanded in
Martinique.
A rabble of every hue accompanied us to the gates of the their faces
exhibiting every variety, from the sable negro of Sierra Leone, to
the blanched pallor of the sickly English Creole, whose countenance
suggested nothing but miasma, yellow fever, and the grave.