“Ours are the tears, though few, sincerely shed.”
Byron, The Corsair, I.35.
The only other midshipman on board the cutter beside young Walcolm, whose
miserable death we had witnessed, twas a light delicate little fellow,
about fourteen years old, of the name of Duncan; he was the smallest boy
of his age I ever saw, and had been badly hurt in repelling the attack of
the pirate. His wound was a lacerated puncture in the left shoulder from
a boarding pike, but it appeared to be healing kindly, and for some days
we thought he was doing well. However, about five o’clock in the
afternoon on which we made Jamaica, the surgeon accosted Mr Douglas as we
were walking the deck together.
“I fear little Duncan is going to slip through my fingers after all, sir.”
“No!--I thought he had been better.”
“So he was till about noon, when a twitching of the muscles came on, which
I fear betokens lock jaw; he wavers, too, now and then, a bad sign of
itself where there is a fretting wound.”
We went below, where, notwithstanding the wind--sail that was let down
close to where his hammock was slung, the heat of the small vessel was
suffocating. The large coarse tallow candle in the purser’s lantern, that
hung beside his shoulder, around which the loathsome cockroaches fluttered
like moths in a summer evening, filled the between decks with a rancid oil
smell, and with smoke as from a torch, while it ran down and melted like
fat before a fire. It cast a dull sickly, gleam on the pale face of the
brown-hefted, girlish-looking lad, as he lay in his narrow hammock.
When we entered, an old quartermaster was rubbing his legs, which were
jerking about like the limbs of a galvanized frog, while two of the boys
held his arms, also violently convulsed. The poor little fellow was
crying and sobbing most piteously, but made a strong effort to compose
himself and “be a man” when he saw us.
“This is so good of you, Mr Cringle! you will take charge of my letter to
my sister, I know you will?--I say, Anson,” to the quartermaster, “do lift
me up a little till I try and finish it.--It will be a sore heart to poor
Sarah; she has no mother now, nor father, and aunt is not over kind,”--and
again he wept bitterly. “Confound this jumping hand, it won’t keep
steady, all I can do.--I say, Doctor, I shan’t die this time, shall I?”
“I hope not, my fine little fellow.”
“I don’t think I shall; I shall live to be a man yet, in spite of that
bloody buccaneer’s pike, I know I shall.” God help me, the death rattle
was already in his throat, and the flame was flickering in the socket;
even as he spoke, the muscles of his neck stiffened to such a degree that
I thought he was choked, but the violence of the convulsion quickly
subsided. “I am done for, Doctor!” he could no longer open his mouth, but
spoke through his clenched teeth--“I feel it now!--God Almighty receive my
soul, and protect my poor sister!” The arch-enemy was indeed advancing to
the final struggle, for he now gave a sudden and sharp cry, and stretched
out his legs and arms, which instantly became as rigid as marble, and in
his agony he turned his face to the side I stood on, but he was no longer
sensible. “Sister,” he said with difficulty--“Don’t let them throw me
overboard; there are sharks here.”
“Land on the lee bow,”--sung out the man at the masthead.
The common life sound would not have moved any of us in the routine of
duty, but bursting in, under such circumstances, it made us all start, as
if it had been something unusual; the dying midshipman heard it, and said
calmly--“Land,--I will never see it.--But how blue all your lips look.--It
is cold, piercing cold, and dark, dark.” Something seemed to rise in his
throat, his features sharpened still more, and he tried to gasp, but his
clenched teeth prevented him--he was gone.
I went on deck with a heavy heart, and, on looking in the direction
indicated, I beheld the towering Blue Mountain peak rising high above the
horizon, even at the distance of fifty miles, with its outline clear and
distinct against the splendid western sky, now gloriously illumined by the
light of the set sun. We stood on under easy sail for the night, and next
morning when the day broke, we were off the east end of the magnificent
Island of Jamaica. The stupendous peak now appeared to rise close aboard
of us, with a large solitary star sparkling on his forehead, and reared
his forest-crowned summit high into the cold blue sky, impending over us
in frowning magnificence, while the long dark range of the Blue Mountains,
with their outlines hard and clear in the grey light, sloped away on each
side of him as if they had been the Giant’s shoulders. Great masses of
white mist hung on their sides about half-way down, but all the valleys
and coast as yet slept in the darkness. We could see that the land-wind
was blowing strong in shore, from the darker colour of the water, and the
speed with which the coasters, only distinguishable by their white sails,
slid along; while astern of us, out at sea, yet within a cable’s length,
for we had scarcely shot beyond its influence, the prevailing trade-wind
blew a smart breeze, coming up strong to a defined line, beyond which and
between it and the influence of the land-wind, there was a belt of dull
lead-coloured sea, about half a mile broad, with a long heavy
ground-swell rolling, but smooth as glass, and without even a ripple on
the surface, in the midst of which we presently lay dead becalmed.
The heavy dew was shaken in large drops out of the wet flapping sails,
against which the reef points pattered like hail as the vessel rolled.
The decks were wet and slippery, and our jackets saturated with moisture;
but we enjoyed the luxury of cold to a degree that made the sea water when
dashed about the decks, as they were being holystoned, appear absolutely
warm. Presently all nature awoke in its freshness so suddenly, that it
looked like a change of scene in a theatre. The sun, as yet set to us,
rose to the huge peak, and glanced like lightning on his summit, making it
gleam like a ruby; presently the clouds on his shaggy ribs rolled upwards,
enveloping his head and shoulders, and were replaced by the thin blue
mists which ascended from the valleys, forming a fleecy canopy, beneath
which appeared hill and dale, woods and cultivated lands, where all had
been undistinguishable a minute before, and gushing streams burst from the
mountain sides like gouts of froth, marking their course in the level
grounds by the vapours they sent up. Then breeze--mill towers burst into
light, and cattle--mills, with their cone--shaped roofs, and overseers
houses, and water-mills, with the white spray falling from the wheels,
and sugar-works, with long pennants of white smoke streaming from the
boiling-house chimneys seaward in the morning wind. Immediately after,
gangs of negroes were seen at work; loaded waggons, with enormous teams of
fourteen to twenty oxen dragging them, rolled along the roads; long
strings of mules loaded with canes were threading the fields; drogging
vessels were seen to shove out from every cove; the morning song of the
black fishermen was heard, while their tiny canoes, like black specks,
started up suddenly on all sides of us, as if they had floated from the
bottom of the sea; and the smiling scene burst at once, and as if by
magic, on us, in all its coolness and beauty, under the cheering influence
of the rapidly rising sun. We fired a gun, and made the signal for a
pilot; upon which a canoe, with three negroes in it, shoved off from a
small schooner lying to about a mile to leeward. They were soon
alongside, when one of the three jumped on board. This was the pilot, a
slave, as I knew; and I remember the time, when, in my innocence, I would
have expected to see something very squalid and miserable, but there was
nothing of the kind; for I never in my life saw a more spruce saltwater
dandy, in a small way. He was well dressed, according to a seaman’s
notion--clean white trowsers, check shirt, with white lapels, neatly
fastened at the throat with a black ribbon, smart straw hat; and
altogether he carried an appearance of comfort--I was going to write
independence--about him, that I was by no means prepared for. He moved
about with a swaggering roll, grinning and laughing with the seamen.
“I say, blackie,” said Mr Douglas.
“John Lodge, massa, if you please, massa; blackie is not politeful, sir;”
whereupon he showed his white teeth again.
“Well, well, John Lodge, you are running us in too close surely;” and the
remark seemed seasonable enough to a stranger, for the rocks on the bold
shore were now within half pistol shot.
“Mind your eye,” shouted old Anson. “You will have us ashore, you black
rascal!”
“You, sir, what water have you here?” sung out Mr Splinter.
“Salt water, massa,” rapped out Lodge, fairly dumfounded by such a volley
of questions--“You hab six fadom good here, massa;” but suspecting he had
gone too far--“I take de Tonnant, big ship as him is, close to dat reef,
sir, you might have jump ashore, so you need not frighten for your leetle
dish of a hooker; beside, massa, my character is at stake, you know”--then
another grin and bow.
There was no use in being angry with the poor fellow, so he was allowed to
have his own way until we anchored in the evening at Port Royal.
The morning after we arrived, I went ashore with a boat’s crew to perform
the magnanimous operation of cutting brooms; we pulled ashore for Green
Bay, under the guns of the Twelve Apostles--a heavy battery of twelve
cannon, where there is a tombstone with an inscription, setting forth that
the party over whom it was erected, had been actually swallowed up in the
great earthquake that destroyed the opposite town, but subsequently
disgorged again; being, perchance, an unseemly morsel.
We approached the beach--“Oars”--the men laid them in.
“What sort of nuts be them, Peter Coamings?” said the coxswain to a new
hand who had been lately impressed, and was now standing at the bow ready
to fend off.
Peter broke off one of the branches from the bush nearest him.
“Smite my timbers, do the trees here bear shellfish?”
The tide in the Gulf of Mexico does not ebb and flow above two feet,
except at the springs, and the ends of the drooping branches of the
mangrove-trees, that here cover the shore, are clustered, within the wash
of the water, with a small well-flavoured oyster. The first thing the
seamen did when they got ashore, was to fasten an oakum tail to the rump
of one of the most lubberly of the cutter’s crew; they then gave him ten
yards’ law, when they started in chase, shouting amongst the bushes, and
switching each other like the veriest schoolboys. I had walked some
distance along the beach, pelting the amphibious little creatures, half
crab, half lobster, called soldiers, which kept shouldering their large
claws, and running out and in their little burrows, as the small ripple
twinkled on the sand in the rising sun, when two men-of-wars boats,
each with three officers in the stern, suddenly pulled round a little
promontory that intercepted my view ahead. Being somewhat out of the line
of my duty, so far from my boat, I squatted amongst the brushwood,
thinking they would pass by; but, as the devil would have it, they pulled
directly for the place where I was ensconced, beached their boats, and
jumped on shore. “Here’s a mess,” thought I.
I soon made out that one of the officers was Captain Pinkem of the Flash,
and that the parties saluted each other with that stern courtesy which
augured no good.
“So, so, my masters, not enough of fighting on the coast of America, but
you must have a little private defacing of God’s image amongst
yourselves?”
Pinkem spoke first. “Mr Clinch,” (I now knew he addressed the first
lieutenant of the flagship)--“Mr Clinch, it is not too late to prevent
unpleasant consequences; I ask you again, at the eleventh hour, will you
make an apology?”
He seemed hurried and fidgety in his manner; which rather surprised me, as
I knew he was a seasoned hand in these matters, and it contrasted
unfavourably with the calm bearing of his antagonist, who by this time had
thrown his hat on the ground, and stood with one foot on the handkerchief
that marked his position, the distance, twelve paces, having already been
measured. By the by, his position was deucedly near in a line with the
grey stone behind which I lay perdu; nevertheless, the risk I ran did not
prevent me noticing that he was very pale, and had much the air of a brave
man come to die in a bad cause. He looked upwards for a second for two,
and then answered, slowly and distinctly, “Captain Pinkem, I now repeat
what I said before; this rencontre is none of my seeking. You accuse me
of having spoken slightingly of you seven years ago, when I was a mere
boy. You have the evidence of a gallant officer that I did so; therefore
I may not gainsay it; but of uttering the words imputed to me, I declare,
upon my honour, I have no recollection.” He paused.
“That won’t do, my fine fellow,” said Pinkem.
“You are unreasonable,” rejoined Clinch, in the same measured tone, “to
expect farther amende for uttering words which I have no conviction of
having spoken; yet to any other officer in the service I would not
hesitate to make a more direct apology, but you know your credit as a
pistol-shot renders this impossible.”
“Sorry for it, Mr Clinch, sorry for it.”
Here the pistols were handed to the principals by their respective
seconds. In their attitudes, the proficient and the novice were
strikingly contrasted; (by this time I had crept round so as to have a
view of both parties, or rather, if the truth must be told, to be out of
the line of fire.) Pinkem stood with his side accurately turned towards
his antagonist, so as to present the smallest possible surface; his head
was, as it struck me, painfully slewed round, with his eye looking
steadily at Clinch, over his right shoulder, whilst his arm was brought
down close to his thigh, with the cock of the pistol turned outwards, so
that his weapon must have covered his opponent by the simple raising of
his arm below the elbow. Clinch, on the other hand, stood fronting him,
with the whole breadth of his chest; holding his weapon awkwardly across
his body, with both hands. Pinkem appeared unwilling to take him at such
advantage, for, although violent and headstrong, and but too frequently
the slave of his passions, he had some noble traits in his character.
“Turn your feather edge to me, Mr Clinch; take a fair chance, man.”
The lieutenant bowed, and I thought would have spoken, but he was checked
by the dread of being thought to fear; however, took the advice, and in an
instant the word was given--“Are you both ready?”
“Yes.”
“Then fire!”
Clinch fired without deliberation. I saw him, for my eyes were fixed on
him, expecting to see him fall. He stood firm, however, which was more
than I did, as at the instant, a piece of the bullion of an epaulet, at
first taken for a pellet of baser metal, struck me sharply on the nose,
and shook my equanimity confoundedly; at length I turned to look at
Pinkem, and there he stood with his arm raised, and pistol levelled, but
he had not fired. He stood thus whilst I might have counted ten, like a
finger-post, then dropping his hand, his weapon went off, but without
aim, the bullet striking the sand near his feet, and down he came headlong
to the ground. He fell with his face 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 griped and dug into the sand.
Before the sun set, he was a dead man.
“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 returned 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 quarterdeck, 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 softheartedness, he threw as much gruffness as he could
into his voice as he sung out--“Beat to quarters there!--knock off, men!”
The roll of the drum stayed the confusion and noise of the people at work
in an instant, who immediately ranged themselves, in their clean frocks
and trowsers, on each side of the quarterdeck. 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 slight 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 ships 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 battle 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 I, Bill Anson, such a swab as to be ashamed of being sorry for
him.”
We were now turned over into the receiving ship the old Spark, 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 boat-men, 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.”
“Dam lie dat, as I am a gentleman!” roared a ragged black vagabond.
“Come in de Monkey, massa; no flying fish can beat she.”
“Don’t boder de gentleman,” yelled a fourth,--“massa love de stamp 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.”
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 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 accordingly 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.
“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 no see we all did get out?”
“And did you not see that I got out too?” rejoined 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.”
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.