LOVE AND MURDER.
I was once sent from Rio to Demerara, an English colony on the coast of
Brazil, with a cargo of blacks that we had freed. Then it was that I had
a good opportunity of studying the character of these people certainly
in their primitive state, and if ever men and women resembled wild
animals it was my swarthy charges. When I arrived at Demerara I handed
them over to their new masters, to whom they were apprenticed for seven
years, and from all I can understand they were, during their
apprenticeship, treated pretty much as slaves in every respect.
During the time I visited Demerara (and I fancy it is very slightly
changed now) it was one of the vilest holes in creation. It is built on
a low sandy point of land at the entrance of a great river, and is
almost the hottest place on the earth. Mosquitos in thousands of
millions; nothing for the natives to do but to cultivate sugar-canes
and to perspire. There were two crack regiments quartered at Demerara,
who, having to withstand the dreadful monotony of doing nothing, took I
fear to living rather too well; the consequence was that many a fine
fellow had been carried off by yellow fever. For my part, I took a
rather high flight in the way of pastime by falling (as I imagined)
desperately in love with the governor's daughter. The governor, I must
tell my readers, was a very great swell, a general, a K.C.B., &c., and
his daughter was a mighty pretty girl, much run after by the garrison;
so it was thought great impertinence on my part, as a humble
sub-lieutenant, to presume to make love to the reigning, if not the
only, beauty in the place.
However, audacity carried me on, and I soon became No. 1 in the young
lady's estimation. I used to ride with her, spent the evenings in the
balcony of Government House with her, sent her flowers every morning,
and so on, till at last people began to talk, and steps were taken by
her numerous admirers to stop my wild career. This was done in a
somewhat startling way (premeditated, as I found out afterwards). One
evening I was playing at whist, one of my opponents being a momentarily
discarded lover of my young lady; I thought he was looking very
distrait; however, things went off quietly enough for some time, till on
some trifling question arising concerning the rules of the game, the
young man suddenly and quite gratuitously insulted me most grossly,
ending his insolent conduct by throwing his cards in my face. This was
more than I could put up with, so I called him out, and the next morning
put a ball into his ankle, which prevented him dancing for a long time
to come. He, being the best dancer in the colony, was rather severely
punished; it seems that he had undertaken to bell the cat, hardly
expecting such unpleasant results.
On returning home after the hostile meeting I found a much more
formidable adversary in the shape of the governor himself, who was
stamping furiously up and down the verandah of my apartment. He received
me with, 'What the d--- l do you mean, young sir, by making love to my
daughter? you are a mere boy.' (I was twenty and did not relish his
remark.) 'What means have you got?'
After the old gentleman's steam had gone down a little I replied,
'Really, general, I hardly know how to answer you. Your daughter and I
are very good friends, the place is most detestably dull, there is
nothing to do, and if we amuse ourselves with a little love-making,
surely there can be no great harm.' This rejoinder of mine made things
worse; I thought the old boy would have had a fit. At last he said, 'The
mail steamer leaves for England to-morrow; you shall go home by her, I
order you to do so!' I replied that I should please myself, and that I
was not under his orders. The general went away uttering threats. After
he was gone I thought seriously over the matter. I calculated that my
income of 120_l._ a year would scarcely suffice to keep a wife, and I
decided to renounce my dream of love. I went to pay a farewell visit to
my young lady, but found that she was locked up, so away I went and soon
forgot all about it. Shortly afterwards I heard that the governor's
daughter married the man whose leg I had lamed for his impertinence to
me.
My last adventure while employed in the suppression of the slave trade
is perhaps worth describing.
By international law it was ruled that a vessel on her way to Africa, if
fitted out in a certain manner, whereby it was evident that she was
employed in the nefarious traffic of slavery, was liable to capture and
condemnation by the mixed tribunals, or in other words became the lawful
prize of her captors.
While cruising off Pernambuco we boarded a Portuguese vessel bound to
Africa, so evidently fitted out for the purpose of slave trade that my
captain took possession of her, and sent me to convey her to the Cape
of Good Hope for adjudication. It was the usual thing to send the
captain of a vessel so captured as a prisoner on board his ship, so that
he might be interrogated at the trial. In this case the master and three
of his crew were sent. The prize crew consisted of myself and six men.
Now the captain was an exceedingly gentlemanlike man, a good sailor, and
a first-rate navigator.
At first I treated him as a prisoner, but by degrees he insinuated
himself into my good graces to such an extent that after a while I
invited him to mess with me, in fact, made a friend of him, little
thinking of the serpent I was nourishing.
For several days all went well. I was as unsuspicious as a child of foul
play. We lived together and worked our daily navigation together, played
at cards together, in fact were quite chums. The three men who were
supposed to be prisoners were allowed considerable liberty, and as they
had, as I found out afterwards, a private stock of grog stowed away
somewhere, which they occasionally produced and gave to my men, they
managed to be pretty free to do as they wished. For all that, I ordered
that the three prisoners should be confined below during the night.
As the weather was very hot I always slept in a little place on deck
called a bunk, a thing more like a dog-kennel than aught else I can
compare it to, excepting that the hole for entrance and exit was
somewhat larger than that generally used for the canine species.
I always slept with a pistol (revolvers were unknown in those days)
under my pillow. Luckily for me that I did so, as the result will show.
I had remarked (this I thought of afterwards) that the prisoner captain
and some of his men had been whispering together a good deal lately; but
not being in the slightest degree suspicious I thought nothing of it.
One evening I retired to my sleeping place as usual, after having passed
a pleasant chatty evening with my prisoner. I was settling myself to
sleep, in fact I think I was asleep as far as it would be called so, for
I had from habit the custom of sleeping with one eye open, when I saw or
_felt_ the flash of a knife over my head. The entrance to my couch was
very limited, so that my would-be murderer had some difficulty in
striking the fatal blow. Instinct at once showed me my danger.
To draw my pistol from under my pillow was the work of a second; to fire
it into the body of the man who was trying to stab me, that of another.
A groan and a heavy fall on the deck told me what had happened, and
springing out of my sleeping berth I found my ci-devant friend the
captain lying on his face, dead as a door nail. In the meantime I heard
a row in the fore-part of the ship. On going forward I saw one of the
prisoners in the act of falling overboard, and another extended full
length on the deck, while my stalwart quarter-master was flourishing a
handspike with which he had knocked one of his assailants overboard and
floored the other. Now it will be asked what was the man at the wheel
doing? Hereby hangs a tale. He swore that he heard or saw nothing.
Considering this sufficient evidence of his guilt, I put him in irons.
Shortly afterwards he confessed the whole story. It seems that a
conspiracy had been planned among the prisoners to retake the ship--that
the man at the wheel had been bribed to let free two of the prisoners,
under promise of a large reward if the result had been the retaking of
the ship.
The only provision he made was that he was to take no murderous action
against his countrymen. The man at the helm and the quarter-master being
the only men on deck, and I being gone to roost, all seemed easy enough,
but Providence willed it otherwise.
I buried the captain in the sea without further ceremony; the man who
fell overboard I suppose was drowned (I did not try to pick him up); the
man knocked down was put in irons, and all went smoothly for the rest of
the voyage; but when I arrived at the Cape of Good Hope without the
captain, the lawyers who defended the ship wanted to make out that I had
murdered him, and I was very nearly sent to prison on the charge of
murder.
In the above pages I have endeavoured to give some notion of what used
to go on in old times when there were no steam launches, and when, I may
be forgiven for saying it, sailors were in every sense of the word
sailors.
I could recount many more adventures somewhat similar to those I have
described, but I do not wish to bore my readers or appear egotistical in
their eyes. The only comparison I would make in regard to our doings in
those days is with the work done by the blockading squadron during the
civil war in America; for if ever men required plucky endurance and
self-denial it was the poor fellows who had to keep, or endeavour to
keep, blockade-runners if not slavers from communicating with the stormy
shores of Florida and South Carolina. They are too modest now to tell us
what they went through. Perhaps forty years hence they will do as I am
doing, and recount some of their adventures, which I am convinced would
quite put into the shade anything I or my boat's crew ever did.
I do not wish to be mistaken in my remarks about the black race. I will
not venture to give an opinion as to what Providence meant to be done
with those interesting creatures. I only assert, and this I do from my
own personal experience, that a black man is a happier and wiser man in
America than he is in his own wretched country, North and South.