Shewing, amongst other pleasant matters well worthy of being
recorded, how Thomas communed with his two Consciences.
“Oh, who can tell, save he whose heart hath tried,
And danced in triumph o’er the waters wide,
The exulting sense, the pulse’s maddening play,
That thrills the wanderer of that trackless way?”
Byron, The Corsair, 1.9--16.
We had to beat up for three days before we could weather the east end of
Jamaica, and tearing work we had of it. I had seen bad weather and
heavy seas in several quarters of the globe--I had tumbled about under a
close-reefed main-topsail and reefed foresail, on the long seas in the
Bay of Biscay--I had been kicked about in a seventy-four, off the
Cape of Good Hope, as if she had been a cork--I had been hove hither and
thither, by the short jumble of the North Sea, about Heligoland, and the
shoals lying off the mouth of the Elbe, when every thing over head was
black as thunder, and all beneath as white as snow--I had enjoyed the
luxury of being tom in pieces by a northwester, which compelled us to
lie-to for ten days at a stretch, under storm stay-sails, off the
coast of Yankeeland, with a clear, deep, cold, blue sky above us,
without a cloud, where the sun shone brightly the whole time by day, and
a glorious harvest moon by night, as if they were smiling in derision
upon our riven and strained ship, as she reeled to and fro like a
wounded Titan; at one time buried in the trough of the sea, at another
cast upwards towards the heavens by the throes of the tormented waters,
from the troubled bosom of the bounding and roaring ocean, amidst
hundreds of miniature rainbows, (ay, rainbows by night as well as by
day,) in a hissing storm of white, foaming, seething spray, torn from
the curling and rolling bright green crests of the mountainous billows.
And I have had more than one narrow squeak for it in the neighbourhood
of the “still vexed Bermoothes,” besides various other small affairs,
written in this Boke; but the devil such another tumblefication had I
ever experienced-not as to danger, for there was none except to our
spars and rigging, but as to discomfort as I did in that short, cross,
splashing, and boiling sea, off Morant Point. By noon, however, on the
second day, having had a slant from the land wind in the night previous,
we got well to windward of the long sandy spit that forms the east end
of the island, and were in the act of getting a small pull of the weather
braces, before edging away for St Jago, when the wind fell suddenly, and
in half an hour it was stark calm--‘una furiosa calma,’ as the Spanish
sailors quaintly enough call it.
We got rolling tackles up, and the topgallant-masts down, and studding
sails out of the tops, and lessened the lumber and weight aloft in
every way we could think of, but, nevertheless, we continued to roll
gunwale under, dipping the main-yardarm into the water every now and
then, and setting every thing adrift, below and on deck, that was not
bolted down, or otherwise well secured.
When I went down to dinner, the scene was extremely good. Old Yerk, the
first lieutenant, was in the chair--one of the boys was jammed at his
side, with his claws fastened round the foot of the table, holding a
tureen of boiling pease-soup, with lumps of pork swimming in it, which
the aforesaid Yerk was baling forth with great assiduity to his
messmates. Hydrostatics were much in vogue--the tendency of fluids to
regain their equilibrium (confound them, they have often in the shape of
claret destroyed mine) was beautifully illustrated, as the contents of
each carefully balanced soup-plate kept swaying about on the principle
of the spirit level. The Doctor was croupier, and as it was a return to
dinner to the captain, all hands were regularly figged out, the
lieutenants, with their epaulets and best coats, and the master, purser,
and doctor, all fittingly attired. When I first entered, as I made my
obeisance to the captain, I thought I saw an empty seat next him, but
the matter of the soup was rather an engrossing concern, and took up my
attention, so that I paid no particular regard to the circumstance;
however, when we had all discussed the same, and were drinking our first
glass of Tenerife, I raised my eyes to hob and nob with the master, when
ye gods and little fishes--who should they light on, but the merry phiz
merry, also! no more--of Aaron Bang, Esquire, who, during the soup
interlude, had slid into the vacant chair unperceived by me.
“Why, Mr Bang, where, in the name of all that is comical, where have you
dropped from?” Alas! poor Aaron--Aaron in a rolling sea was of no
kindred to Aaron ashore. His rosy gills were no longer rosy, his round
plump face seemed to be covered with parchment from an old bass drum,
cut out from the centre where most bronzed by the drumstruck--there was
no speculation in his eyes that he did glare withal--and his lips, which
were usually firm and open, disclosing his nice teeth, in frequent grin,
were held together, as if he had been in grievous pain. At length he
did venture to open them--and, like the ghost of Hamlet’s father, “it
lifted up its head and did address itself to motion, as it would speak.”
But they began to quiver, and he once more screwed them together, as if
he feared the very exertion of uttering a word or two might unsettle his
moniplies.
The master was an odd garrulous small man, who had a certain number of
stated jokes, which, so long as they were endured, he unmercifully
inflicted on his messmates. I had come in for my share, as a new comer,
as well as the rest; but even with me, although I had been but recently
appointed, they had already began to pall, and wax wearisome; and blind
as the beetle of a body was, he could not help seeing this. So poor
Bang, unable to return a shot, sea-sick and crestfallen, offered a
target that he could not resist taking aim at. Dinner was half over,
and Bang had not eaten any thing, when, unseasonable as the hour was,
the little pot--valiant master, primed with two tumblers of grog, in
defiance of the captain’s presence, fairly fastened on him, like a
remora, and pinned him down with one of his longwinded stories about
Captain David Jones, in the Phantome, during a cruise off Cape Flyaway,
having run foul of a whale, and thereby nearly foundered; and that at
length having got the monster harpooned and speared, and the devil knows
what, but it ended in getting her alongside, when they scuttled the
leviathan, and then, wonderful to relate, they found a Greenlandman,
with royal yards crossed, in her maw, and the captain and mate in the
cabin quarrelling about the reckoning.
“What do you think of that, Mr Bang--as well they might be, Mr Bang--as
well they might be?” Bang said nothing, but at the moment--whether the
said Aaron lent wings to the bird or no I cannot tell--a goose, swimming
in apple sauce, which he was, with a most stern countenance, endeavouring
to carve, fetched away right over the gunwale of the dish; and taking a
whole boat of melted butter with it, splashed across the table during a
tremendous roll, that made every thing creak and groan again, right into
the small master’s lap who was his vis-a-vis. I could hear Aaron
grumble out something about--“Strange affinity-birds of a feather.” But
his time was up, his minutes were numbered, and like a shot he bolted
from the table, skulling or rather clawing away towards the door, by the
backs of the chairs, like a green parrot, until he reached the marine at
the bottom of the ladder, at the door of the captain’s cabin, round
whose neck he immediately fetterlocked his fins.
He had only time to exclaim to his new ally, “My dear fellow, get me
some brandy and water, for the love of mercy”--when he blew up, with an
explosion like the bursting of a steam-boiler--“Oh dear, oh dear,” we
could hear him murmuring in the lulls of his agony then another loud
report--“there goes my yesterday’s supper-hot grog and toasted cheese”
another roar, as if the spirit was leaving its earthly tabernacle
“dinner-claret--Madeira--all cruel bad in a second edition-cheese,
teal, and ringtail pigeon--black crabs calapi and turtle soup”--as his
fleshly indulgences of the previous day rose up in judgment against him,
like a man’s evil deeds on his death-bed. At length-the various
strata of his interior were entirely excavated--“Ah!--I have got to my
breakfast-to the simple tea and toast at last.--Brandy and water, my
dear Transom, brandy and water, my darling, hot, without sugar”--and
“Brandy and water” died in echoes in the distance as he was stowed away
into his cot in the captain’s cabin. It seems that it had been all
arranged between him and Transom, that he was to set off for St Thomas
in the East, the morning on which we sailed, and to get a shove out in
the pilot-boat schooner, from Morant Bay, to join us for the cruise;
and accordingly he had come on board the night previous when I was
below, and being somewhat qualmish he had wisely kept his cot; the fun
of the thing depending, as it seemed, on all hands carefully keeping it
from me that he was on board.
I apprehend most people indulge in the fancy that they have Consciences,
such as they are. I myself now--even I, Thomas Cringle, Esquire,
amongst sundry vain imaginings, conceive that I have a Conscience
somewhat of the caoutchouc order I will confess stretching a little upon
occasion, when the gale of my passions blows high, nevertheless a highly
respectable Conscience, as things go a stalwart unchancy customer, who
will not be gainsaid or contradicted; but he may be disobeyed, although
never with impunity. It is all true that a young, well-fledged
gentlewoman, for she is furnished with a most swift pair of wings,
called Prosperity, sometimes gets the better of Master Conscience, and
smothers the Grim Feature for a time, under the bed of eider down,
whereon you and her ladyship are reposing. But she is a sad jilt in
many instances, this same Prosperity; for some fine morning, with the
sun glancing in through the crevices of the window-shutters, just at
the nick when, after turning yourself, and rubbing your eyes, you
courageously thrust forth one leg, with a determination to don your
gramashes without more delay. “Tom,” says she “Tom Cringle, I have got
tired of you, Thomas; besides, I hear my next door neighbour, Madame
Adversity, tirling at the door pin; so give me my down bed, Tom, and
I’m off.” With that she bangs open the window, and before I recover from
my surprise, launches forth, with a loud whir, mattrass and all, leaving
me, Pilgarlic, lying on the paillasse. Well, her nest is scarcely cold,
when in comes me Mistress Adversity, a wee outspoken sour crabbit
gizzened anatomy of an old woman--“You ne’erdoweel, Tam,” quoth she, “is
it no enough that you consort with that scarlet limmer, who has just
yescaped thorough the winday, but ye maun smoors my firstborn, puir
Conscience, atween ye? Whare hae ye stowed him, mantell me that?” And
the ancient damosel gives me a shrewd clip on the skull with the poker.
“That’s right, mother,” quoth Conscience, from beneath the straw
mattrass--“Give it to him--he’ll no hear me another devel, mother.” And
I found that my own weight, deserted as I was by that--ahem--Prosperity,
was no longer sufficient to keep him down. So up he rose, with a loud
pech; and while the old woman keelhauled me with a poker on one side, he
yerked at me on the other, until at length he gave me a regular cross
buttock, and then between them they diddled me outright. When I was
fairly floored, “Now, my man,” said Adversity, “I bear no spite; if you
will but listen to my boy there, we shall be good friends still. He is
never unreasonable. He has no objections to your consorting even with
Madame Prosperity, in a decent way; but he will not consent to your
letting her get the better of you, nor to your doting on her, even to
the giving her a share of your bed, when she should never be allowed to
get farther than the servants hall, for she should be kept in
subjection, or she’ll ruin you for ever, Thomas.--Conscience is a rough
lad, I grant you, and I am keen and snell also; but never mind, take his
advice, and you’ll be some credit to your freens yet, ye scoonrel.” I did
so, and the old lady’s visits became shorter and shorter, and more and
more distant, until at length they ceased altogether; and once more
Prosperity, like a dove with its heaven-borrowed hues all glowing in
the morning sun, pitched one morning on my windowsill. It was in June.
“Tom, I am come back again.” I glowered at her with all my bir. She made
a step or two towards me, and the lesson of Adversity was fast
evaporating into thin air, when, lo! the sleeping lion himself awoke.
“Thomas,” said Conscience, in a voice that made my flesh creep, “not
into your bed, neither into your bosom, Thomas. Be civil to the young
woman, but remember what your best friend Adversity told you, and never
let her be more than your handmaiden again; free to come, free to go,
but never more to be your mistress.” I screw myself about, and twist,
and turn in great perplexity--Hard enough all this, and I am half
inclined to try to throttle Conscience outright.
But to make a long story short--I was resolute--“Step into the parlour,
my dearest I hope we shall never part any more; but you must not get the
upper hand, you know. So step into the other room, and whenever I get
my inexpressibles on, I will come to you there.”
But this Conscience, about which I am now hovering, seldom acts the
monitor in this way, unless against respectable crimes, such as murder,
debauching your friend’s wife, or stealing. But the chield I have to do
with for the present, and who has led to this rigmarole, is a sort of
deputy Conscience, a looker--out after small affairs--peccadilloes. The
grewsome carle, Conscience Senior, you can grapple with, for he only
steps forth on great occasions, when he says sternly--and the mischief
is, that what he says, we know to be true--says he, “Thomas Cringle”--he
never calls me Tom, or Mister, or Lieutenant--“Thomas Cringle,” says he,
“if you do that thing, you shall be damned.” “Lud-a mercy,” quoth I,
Thomas, “I will perpend, Master Conscience” and I set myself to eschew
the evil deed, with all my might. But Conscience the Younger--whom I
will take leave to call by Quashie’s appellative hereafter, Conshy--is a
funny little fellow, and another guess sort oft a chap altogether. An
instance--“I say, Tom, my boy--Tom Cringle--why the deuce now”--he
won’t say “the Devil” for the world--“Why the deuce, Tom, don’t you
confine yourself to a pint of wine at dinner, eh?” quoth Conshy. “Why
will you not give up your toddy after it? You are ruining your
interior, Thomas, my fine fellow--the gout is on the look out for you,
your legs are spindling, and your paunch is increasing. Read Hamlet’s
speech to Polonius, Tom, and if you don’t find all the marks of
premature old age creeping on you, then am I, Conshy, a Dutchman, that’s
all.” Now Conshy always lectures you in the watches of the night; I
generally think his advice is good at breakfast time, and during the
forenoon, egad, I think it excellent and most reasonable, and I determine
to stick by it and if Conshy and I dine alone, I do adhere to his maxims
most rigidly; but if any of my old allies should topple in to dinner,
Conshy, who is a solitary mechanic, bolts instanter. Still I remember
him for a time--we sit down--the dinner is good. “I say, Jack, a glass
of wine, Peter what shall we have?” and until the pint a-piece is
discussed, all is right between Conshy and I. But then comes some
grouse. Hook, in his double-refined nonsense, palavers about the
blasphemy of white wine after brown game--and he is not far wrong
either;--at least I never thought he was, so long as my Hermitage
lasted; but at the time I speak of, it was still to the fore--so the
moment the pint a-piece was out, “Hold hard, Tom, now,” cheeps little
Conshy. “Why, only one glass of Hermitage, Conshy.” Conshy shakes his
head. Cheese--after the manner of the ancients--Hook again--“Only one
glass of port, Conshy.” He shakes his head, and at length the cloth is
drawn, and a confounded old steward of mine, who is now installed as
butler, brings in the crystal decanters, sparkling to the wax lights
poor as I am, I consider mutton fat still damnable--and every thing as
it should be, down to a finger-glass. “Now, Mary, where are the
children?” I am resolute. “Jack, I can’t drink--out of sorts, my boy
so mind yourself, you and Peter.--Now, Conshy,” says I, “where are you
now, my boy?” But just at this instant, jack strikes out, with “Cringle,
order me a tumbler--something hot--I don’t care what it is.”--“Ditto,”
quoth Peter; and down crumbles all my fine fabric of resolutions, only
to be rebuilt tomorrow, before breakfast again, or at any odd moment,
when one’s flesh is somewhat fishified. Another instance. “I say, Tom,”
says Conshy, “do give over looking at that smart girl tripping it along
t’other side of the street.”--“Presently, my dear little man,” says I.
“Tight little woman that, Conshy; handsome bows; good bearings forward;
tumbles home sweetly about the waist, and tumbles out well above the
hips; what a beautiful run! and spars clean and tight; back-stays well
set up.”--“Now, Tom, you vagabond, give over. Have you not a wife of
your own?”--“To be sure I have, Conshy, my darling; but toujours per”
“Have done, now, you are going too far,” says Conshy.--“Oh, you be--“.
“Thomas,” cries a still stern voice, from the very inmost recesses of
my heart. Wee Conshy holds up his finger, and pricks his ear. “Do you
hear him?” says he.--“I hear,” says I, “I hear and tremble.” Now, to
apply. Conshy has been nudging me for this half hour to hold my tongue
regarding Aaron Bang’s sea-sickness.--“It is absolutely indecent,”
quoth he. “Can’t help it, Conshy; no more than the extra tumbler; those
who are delicate need not read it; those who are indelicate won’t be the
worse of it.”--“But,” persists Conshy--“I have other hairs in your neck,
Master Tommy--you are growing a bit of a buffoon on us, and sorry am I
to say it, sometimes not altogether, as a man with a rank imagination
may construe you, a very decent one. Now, my good boy, I would have you
to remember that what you write is condemned in the pages of Old
Christopher to an amber immortalization,” (Ohon for the Provost!) “nay,
don’t perk and smile, I mean no compliment, for you are but the straw in
the amber, Tom, and the only wonder is, how the deuce you got there.”
“But, my dear Conshy”
“Hold your tongue, Tom--let me say out my say, and finish my advice--and
how will you answer to my father, in your old age, when youth, and
health, and wealth, may have flown, if you find any thing in this your
Log calculated to bring a blush on an innocent cheek, Tom, when the time
shall have for ever passed away wherein you could have remedied the
injury? For Conscience will speak to you then, not as I do now, in
friendly confidence, and impelled by a sincere regard for you, you right
hearted, but thoughtless, slapdash vagabond.”
There must have been a great deal of absurd perplexity in my visage, as
I sat receiving my rebuke, for I noticed Conshy smile, which gave me
courage.
“I will reform, Conshy, and that immediately; but my moral is good,
man.”
“Well, well, Tom, I will take you at your word, so set about it, set
about it.”
“But, Conshy--a word in your starboard lug--why don’t you go to the
fountain-head--why don’t you try your hand in a curtain lecture on Old
Kit North himself, the hoary sinner who seduced me?”
Conshy could no longer contain himself; the very idea of Old Kit having
a conscience of any kind or description whatever, so tickled him, that
he burst into a most uproarious fit of laughter, which I was in great
hopes would have choked him, and thus made me well quit of him for ever.
For some time I listened in great amazement, but there was something so
infectious in his fun, that presently I began to laugh too, which only
increased his cachinnation, so there were Conshy and I roaring, and
shouting, with the tears running down our cheeks.
“Kit listen to me!--Oh, Lord”
“You are swearing, Conshy,” said I, rubbing my hands at having caught
him tripping.
“And enough to make a Quaker swear,” quoth he, still laughing. “No, no,
Kit never listens to me--why, he would never listen even to my father,
until the gout and the Catholic Relief Bill, and last of all, the Reform
Bill, broke him down, and softened his heart.”
So there is an allegory for you, worthy of John Bunyan.
Next morning we got the breeze again, when we bore away for Santiago de
Cuba, and arrived off the Moro Castle on the fifth evening at sunset,
after leaving Port Royal harbour. The Spaniards, in their better days,
were a kind of coral worms; wherever they planted their colonies, they
immediately set to covering themselves in with stone and mortar;
applying their own entire energies, and the whole strength of their
Indian captives, first to the erection of a fort; their second object
(postponed to the other only through absolute necessity) being then to
build a temple to their God. Gradually vast fabrics appeared, where
before there was nothing but one eternal forest, or a howling
wilderness; and although it does come over one, when looking at the
splendid moles, and firm-built bastions, and stupendous churches of the
New World--the latter surpassing, or at the lest equalling in
magnificence and grandeur those of Old Spain herself--that they are all
cemented by the blood and sweat of millions of gentle Indians, of whose
harmless existence in many quarters, they remain the only monuments,
still it is a melancholy reflection to look back and picture to one’s
self what Spain was, and to compare her, in her high and palmy state,
with what she is now--to compare her present condition even with what
she was when, as a young midshipman, I first visited her glorious
Transatlantic colonies.
Until the Peninsula was overrun by the French, Buenos Ayres, La Guayra,
Porto Cavello, Maracaibo, Santa Martha, and that stronghold of the west,
the key of the Isthmus of Darien, Cartagena de las Indias, with Porto
Bello, and Vera Cruz, on the Atlantic shores of South America, were all
prosperous and happy--“Llenas de plata;” and on the Western coast,
Valparaiso, Lima, Panama, and San Bias, were thriving and increasing in
population and wealth. England, through her colonies, was at that time
driving a lucrative trade with all of them; but the demon of change was
abroad, blown thither by the pestilent breath of European liberalism.
What a vineyard for Abbe Sieyes to have laboured in! Every Capitania
would have become a purchaser of one of his cut and dried constitutions.
Indeed he could not have turned them out of hand fast enough. The
enlightened few, in these countries, were as a drop in the bucket to the
unenlightened many; and although no doubt there were numbers of the
former who were well-meaning men, yet they were one and all guilty of
that prime political blunder, in common with our Whig friends at home,
of expecting a set of semi-barbarians to see the beauty of, and to
conform to, their newfangled codes of free institutions, for which they
were as ready as I am to die at this present moment. Bolivar, in his
early fever of patriotism, made the same mistake, although his shrewd
mind, in his later career, saw that a despotism, pure or impure--I will
not qualify it--was your only government for the savages he had at one
time dignified with the name of fellow-patriots. But he came to this
wholesome conclusion too late; he tried backs it is true, but it would
not do; the fiend had been unchained, and at length hunted him broken
hearted into his grave.
But the men of mind tell us, that those countries are now going through
the political fermentation, which by and by will clear, when the
sediment will be deposited, and the different ranks will each take their
acknowledged and undisputed stations in society; and the United States
are once and again quoted against we of the adverse faction, as If there
were the most remote analogy between their population, originally
composed of all the cleverest scoundrels of Europe, and the barbarians
of Spanish America, where a few master spirits, all old Spaniards, did
indeed for a season stick fiery off from the dark mass of savages
amongst whom their lot was cast, like stars in a moonless night, but
only to suffer a speedy eclipse from the clouds and storm which they
themselves had set in motion. We shall see. The scum as yet is
uppermost, and does not seem likely to subside, but it may boil over.
In Cuba, however, all was at the time quiet, and still is, I believe,
prosperous, and that too without having come through this said blessed
political fermentation.
During the night we stood off and on under easy sail, and next morning,
when the day broke, with a strong breeze and a fresh shower, we were
about two miles off the Moro Castle, at the entrance of Santiago de
Cuba.
I went aloft to look round me. The sea-breeze blew strong, until it
reached within half a mile of the shore, where it stopped short,
shooting in cat’s-paws occasionally into the smooth belt of water
beyond, where the long unbroken swell rolled like molten silver in the
rising sun, without a ripple on its surface, until it dashed its
gigantic undulations against the face of the precipitous cliffs on the
shore, and flew up in smoke. The entrance to the harbour is very
narrow, and looked from my perch like a zig-zag chasm in the rock,
inlaid at the bottom with polished blue steel; so clear, and cahn, and
pellucid was the still water, wherein the frowning rocks, and
magnificent trees on the banks, and the white Moro, rising with its
grinning tiers of cannon, battery above battery, were reflected veluti
in speculum, as if it had been in a mirror.
We had shortened sail, and fired a gun, and the signal for a pilot was
flying, when the Captain hailed me. “Does the sea breeze blow into the
harbour yet, Mr Cringle?”
“Not yet, sir; but it is creeping in fast.”
“Very well. Let me know when we can run in. Mr Yerk, back the main
topsail, and heave the ship to.”
Presently the pilot canoe, with the Spanish flag flying in the stem,
came alongside; and the pilot, a tall brown man, a Moreno, as the
Spaniards say, came on board. He wore a glazed cocked hat, rather an
out-of-the-way finish to his figure, which was rigged in a simple
Osnaburg shirt, and pair of trowsers. He came on the quarterdeck, and
made his bow to the captain with all the ease in the world, wished him a
good morning, and taking his place by the quartermaster at the conn, he
took charge of the ship. “Senor,” quoth he to me, “is de harbour blow
up yet? I mean, you see de viento walking into him?--de terral--dat is
land-wind--has he cease?”
“No,” I answered; “the belt of smooth water is growing narrower fast;
but the sea breeze does not blow into the channel yet. Now it has
reached the entrance.”
“Ah, den make sail, Senior Capitan; fill de main-topsail.” We stood in,
the scene becoming more and more magnificent as we approached the land.
The fresh green shores of this glorious island lay before us, fringed
with white surf, as the everlasting ocean in its approach to it
gradually changed its dark blue colour, as the water shoaled, into a
bright joyous green under the blazing sun, as if in sympathy with the
genius of the fair land, before it tumbled at his feet its gently
swelling billows, in shaking thunders on the reefs and rocky face of the
coast, against which they were driven up in clouds, the incense of their
sacrifice. The undulating hills in the vicinity were all, either
cleared, and covered with the greenest verdure that imagination can
picture, over which strayed large herds of cattle, or with forests of
gigantic trees, from amongst which, every now and then, peeped out some
palm thatched mountain settlement, with its small thread of blue smoke
floating up into the calm clear morning air, while the blue hills in the
distance rose higher and higher, and more and more blue, and dreamy, and
indistinct, until their rugged summits could not be distinguished from
the clouds through the glimmering hot haze of the tropics.
“By the mark seven,” sung out the leadsman in the starboard chains.
“Quarter less three,” responded he in the larboard, showing that the
inequalities of the surface at the bottom of the sea, even in the
breadth of the ship, were at least as abrupt as those presented above
water by the sides of the natural canal into which we were now running.
By this time, on our right hand, we were within pistol shot of the Moro,
where the channel is not above fifty yards across; indeed there is a
chain, made fast to a rock on the opposite side, that can be hove up by
a capstan until it is level with the water, so as to constitute an
insurmountable obstacle to any attempt to force an entrance in time of
war. As we stood in, the golden flag of Spain rose slowly on the staff
at the Water Battery, and Cast its large sleepy folds abroad in the
breeze; but, instead of floating over mailclad men, or Spanish soldiers
in warlike array, three poor devils of half naked mulattoes stuck their
heads out of an embrasure under its shadow. “Senor Capitan,” they
shouted, ‘una Botella de Roma, por el honor del pais.’ We were mighty
close upon leaving the bones of the old ship here, by the by; for at the
very instant of entering the harbour’s mouth, the land wind checked us
off, and very nearly hove us broadside on upon the rocks below the
castle, against which the swell was breaking in thunder.
“Let go the anchor,” sung out the captain.
“All gone, sir,” promptly responded the boatswain from the forecastle.
And as he spoke, we struck once, twice, and very heavily the third time.
But the breeze coming in strong, we fetched away again; and as the cable
was promptly cut, we got safely off. However, on weighing the anchor
afterwards, we found the water had been so shoal under the bows, that
the ship, when she stranded, had struck it, and broken the stock short
off by the ring. The only laughable part of the story consisted in the
old cook, an Irishman, with one leg and half an eye, scrambling out of
the galley nearly naked, in his trowsers, shirt, and greasy nightcap,
and sprawling on all fours after two tubsful of yams, which the third
thump had capsized all over the deck. “Oh you scurvy-looking tief,”
said he, eying the pilot; “if it was running us ashore you were set on,
why the blazes couldn’t ye wait until the yams, were in the copper, bad
luck to ye--and them all scraped too! I do believe, if they even had
been taties, it would have been all the same to you.” We stood on, the
channel narrowing still more the rocks rising to a height of at least
five hundred feet from the water’s edge, as sharply and precipitously as
if they had only yesterday been split asunder; the splintered
projections and pinnacles on one side, having each their corresponding
fissures and indentations on the other, as if the hand of a giant could
have closed them together again.
Noble trees shot out in all directions wherever they could find a little
earth and a crevice to hold on by, almost meeting overhead in several
places, and alive with all kinds of birds and beasts incidental to the
climate; parrots of all sorts, great and small, clomb, and hung, and
fluttered amongst the branches; and pigeons of numberless varieties; and
the glancing woodpecker, with his small hammer like tap, tap, tap; and
the West India nightingale, and humming birds of all hues; while cranes,
black, white, and grey, frightened from their fishing-stations, stalked
and peeped about, as awkwardly as a warrant-officer in his long
skirted coat on a Sunday; while whole flocks of ducks flew across the
mastheads and through the rigging; and the dragon-like guanas, and
lizards of many kinds, disported themselves amongst the branches, not
lazily or loathsomely, as we, who have only seen a lizard in our cold
climate, are apt to picture, but alert, and quick as lightning, their
colours changing with the changing light or the hues of the objects to
which they clung, becoming literally in one respect portions of the
landscape.
And then the dark, transparent crystal depth of the pure waters under
foot, reflecting all nature so steadily and distinctly, that in the
hollows, where the overhanging foliage of the laurel-like bushes
darkened the scene, you could not for your life tell where the elements
met, so blended were earth and sea.
“Starboard,” said I. I had now come on deck. “Starboard, or the main
topgallant-masthead will befoul of the limb of that tree. Foretop,
there--lie out on the larboard fore-yardarm, and be ready to shove her
off, if she sheers too close.”
“Let go the anchor,” struck in the first lieutenant.
Splash--the cable rumbled through the hause-hole.
“Now here are we brought up in paradise,” quoth the doctor.
“Curukity coo-curukity coo,” sung out a great bushy-whiskered sailor
from the crows nest, who turned out to be no other than our old friend
Timothy Tailtackle, quite juvenilffied by the laughing scene. “Here am
I, Jack, a booby amongst the singing-birds,” crowed he to one of his
messmates in the maintop, as he clutched a branch of a tree in his hand,
and swung himself up into it. But the ship, as Old Nick would have it,
at the very instant dropped astern a yew yards in swinging to her
anchor, and that so suddenly, that she left him on his perch in the
tree, converting his jest, poor fellow, into melancholy earnest. “Oh
Lord, sir!” sung out Timotheus, in a great quandary. “Captain, do heave
ahead a bit--Murder--I shall never get down again! Do, Mr Yerk, if you
please, sir!” And there he sat twisting and craning himself about, and
screwing his features into combinations evincing the most comical
perplexity.
The captain, by the way of a bit of fun, pretended not to hear him.
“Maintop, there,” quoth he.
The midshipman in the top answered him, “Ay, ay, sir.”
“Not you, Mr Reefpoint; the captain of the top I want.”
“He is not in the top, sir,” responded little Reefpoint, chuckling like
to choke himself.
“Where the devil is he, sir?”
“Here, sir,” squealed Timothy, his usual gruff voice spindling into a
small cheep through his great perplexity. “Here, sir.”
“What are you doing there, sir? Come down this moment, sir. Rig out
the main-topmast-studding-sail-boom, Mr Reefpoint, and tell him to
slew himself down by that long water-withe.”
To hear was to obey. Poor Timothy clambered down to the fork of the
tree, from which the withe depended, and immediately began to warp
himself down, until he reached within three or four yards of the
starboard fore-topsail-yardarm; but the corvette still dropped astern,
so that, after a vain attempt to hook on by his feet, he swung off into
mid air, hanging by his hands.
It was no longer a joke. “Here, you black fellows in the pilot canoe,”
shouted the captain, as he threw them a rope himself. “Pass the end of
that line round the stump yonder--that one below the cliff, there--now
pull like devils, pull.”
They did not understand a word he said; but, comprehending his
gestures, did what he wished.
“Now haul on the line, men--gently, that will do. Missed it again,”
continued the skipper, as the poor fellow once more made a fruitless
attempt to swing himself on to the yard.
“Pay out the warp again,” sung out Tailtackle--“quick, quick, let the
ship swing from under, and leave me scope to dive, or I shall be obliged
to let go, and be killed on the deck.”
“God bless me, yes,” said Transom, “stick out the warp, let her swing to
her anchor.”
In an instant all eyes were again fastened with intense anxiety on the
poor fellow, whose strength was fast failing, and his grasp plainly
relaxing.
“See all clear to pick me up, messmates.”
Tailtackle slipped down to the extreme end of the black withe, that
looked like a scorched snake, pressed his legs close together, pointing
his toes downwards, and then steadying himself for a moment, with his
hands right above his head, and his arms at the full stretch, he
dropped, struck the water fairly, entering its dark blue depths without
a splash, and instantly disappeared, leaving a white frothy mark on the
surface.
“Did you ever see any thing better done?” said Yerk. “Why he clipped
into the water with the speed of light, as clean and clear as if he had
been a marlinspike.”
“Thank heaven!” gasped the captain; for if he had struck the water
horizontally, or fallen headlong, he would have been shattered in pieces
every bone would have been broken--he would have been as completely
smashed as if he had dropped upon one of the limestone rocks on the
ironbound shore.
“Ship, ahoy!” We were all breathlessly looking over the side where he
fell, expecting to see him rise again; but the hail came from the water
on t’other side. “Ship, ahoy--throw me a rope, good people--a rope, if
you please. Do you mean to careen the ship, that you have all run to
the starboard side, leaving me to be drowned to port here?”
“Ah, Tailtackle! well done, old boy,” sung out a volley of voices, men
and officers, rejoiced to see the honest fellow alive. He clambered on
board, in the bight of one of twenty ropes that were hove to him.
When he came on deck the captain slyly said, “I don’t think you’ll go a
bird nesting in a hurry again, Tailtackle.”
Tim looked with a most quizzical expression at his captain, all blue and
breathless and dripping as he was; and then sticking his tongue slightly
in his cheek, he turned away, without addressing him directly, but
murmuring as he went, “A glass of grog now.”
The Captain, with whom he was a favourite, took the hint. “Go below
now, and turn in till eight bells, Tailtackle. Mafame,” to his steward,
“send him a glass of hot brandy grog.”
“A northwester,” whispered Tim aside to the functionary; “half and half,
tallow chops--eh!”
About an hour after this a very melancholy accident happened to a poor
boy on board, of about fifteen years of age, who had already become a
great favourite of mine from his modest, quiet deportment, as well as of
all the gunroom-officers, although he had not been above a fortnight in
the ship. He had let himself down over the bows by the cable to bathe.
There were several of his comrades standing on the forecastle looking at
him, and he asked one of them to go out on the spritsail-yard, and look
round to see if there were any sharks in the neighbourhood; but all
around was deep, clear, green water. He kept hold of the cable,
however, and seemed determined not to put himself in harm’s way, until a
little wicked urchin, who used to wait on the warrant-officers mess, a
small meddling snipe of a creature, who got flogged in well-behaved
weeks only once, began to taunt my little mild favourite.
“Why, you chicken-heart, I’ll wager a thimbleful of grog, that such a
tailor as you are in the water can’t for the life of you swim out to the
buoy there.”
“Never you mind, Pepperbottom,” said the boy, giving the imp the name he
had richly earned by repeated flagellations. “Never you mind. I am not
ashamed to show my naked hide, you know. But it is against orders in
these seas to go overboard, unless with a sail underfoot; so I sha’n’t
run the risk of being tattooed by the boatswain’s mate, like some one I
could tell of.”
“Coward,” muttered the little wasp, “you are afraid, sir;” and the other
boys abetting the mischief-maker, the lad was goaded to leave his hold
of the cable, and strike out for the buoy. He reached it, and then
turned, and pulled towards the ship again, when he caught
my eye.
“Who is that overboard? How dare you, sir, disobey the standing order
of the ship? Come in, boy; come in.”
My hailing the little fellow shoved him off his balance, and he lost his
presence of mind for a moment or two, during which he, if any thing,
widened his distance from the ship.
At this instant the lad on the spritsail-yard sung out quick and
suddenly, “A shark, a shark!”
And the monster, like a silver pillar, suddenly shot up perpendicularly
from out the dark green depths of the sleeping pool, with the waters
sparkling and hissing around him, as if he had been a sea demon rushing
on his prey.
“Pull for the cable, Louis,” shouted fifty voices at once--“pull for
the cable.”
The boy did so--we all ran forward. He reached the cable grasped it
with both hands, and hung on, but before he could swing himself out of
the water, the fierce fish had turned. His whitish green belly glanced
in the sun--the poor little fellow gave a heart splitting yell, which
was shattered amongst the impending rocks into piercing echoes, and
these again were reverberated from cavern, to cavern, until they died
away amongst the hollows in the distance, as if they had been the faint
shrieks of the damned--yet he held fast for a second or two--the
ravenous tyrant of the sea tug, tugging at him, till the stiff, taught
cable shook again. At length he was torn from his hold, but did not
disappear; the animal continuing on the surface crunching his prey with
his teeth, and digging at him with his jaws, as if trying to gorge a
morsel too large to be swallowed, and making the water flash up in foam
over the boats in pursuit, by the powerful strokes of his tail, but
without ever letting go his hold. The poor lad only cried once more
but such a cry--oh God, I never shall forget it!--and, could it be
possible, in his last shriek, his piercing expiring cry, his young voice
seemed to pronounce my name--at least so I thought at the time, and
others thought so too. The next moment he appeared quite dead. No less
than three boats had been in the water alongside when the accident
happened, and they were all on the spot by this time. And there was the
bleeding and mangled boy, torn along the surface of the water by the
shark, with the boats in pursuit, leaving a long stream of blood,
mottled with white specks of fat and marrow in his wake. At length the
man in the bow of the gig laid hold of him by the arm, another sailor
caught the other arm, boat-hooks and oars were dug into and launched at
the monster, who relinquished his prey at last, stripping off the flesh,
however, from the upper part of the right thigh, until his teeth reached
the knee, where he nipped the shank clean off, and made sail with the
leg in his jaws.
Poor little Louis never once moved after we took him in.--I thought I
heard a small still stem voice thrill along my nerves, as if an echo of
the beating of my heart had become articulate. “Thomas, a fortnight ago
you impressed that poor boy--who was, and now is not--out of a Bristol
ship.” Alas conscience spoke no more than the truth.
Our instructions were to be at St Jago, until three British ships, then
loading, were ready for sea, and then to convey them through the Caicos,
or windward passage. As our stay was therefore likely to be ten days or
a fortnight at the shortest, the boats were hoisted out, and we made our
little arrangements and preparations for taking all the recreation in
our power; and our worthy skipper, taught and stiff as he was at sea,
always encouraged all kinds of fun and larking, both amongst the men and
the officers, on occasions like the present. Amongst his other pleasant
qualities, he was a great boat racer, constantly building and altering
gigs and pulling boats, at his own expense, and matching the men against
each other for small prizes.
He had just finished what the old carpenter considered his chef
d’oeuvre, and a curious affair this same masterpiece was. In the first
place it was forty-two feet long over all, and only three and a half
feet beam--the planking was not much above an eighth of an inch in
thickness, so that if one of the crew had slipped his foot off the
stretcher, it must have gone through the bottom. There was a standing
order that no man was to go into it with shoes on. She was to pull six
oars, and her crew were the captains of the tops, the primest seamen in
the ship, and the steersman, no less a character than the skipper
himself.
Her name, for I love to be particular, was the Dragonfly; she was
painted out and in of a bright red, amounting to a flame colour, oars red
the men wearing trowsers and shirts of red flannel, and red net
nightcaps--which common uniform the captain himself wore. I think I
have said before, that he was a very handsome man, but if I have not I
say so now, and when he had taken his seat, and the gigs, all fine men,
were seated each with his oar held upright upon his knees ready to be
dropped into the water at the same instant, the craft and her crew
formed to my eye as pretty a plaything for grown children as ever was
seen. “Give way, men,” the oars dipped as clean as so many knives,
without a sparkle, the gallant fellows stretched out, and away shot the
Dragonfly, like an arrow, the green water foaming into white smoke at
the bows, and hissing away in her wake.
She disappeared in a twinkling round a reach of the canal where we were
anchored, and we, the officers, for we must needs have our boat also,
were making ready to be off, to have a shot at some beautiful cranes
that, floating on their large pinions, slowly passed us with their long
legs stuck straight out astern, and their longer necks gathered into
their crops, when we heard a loud shouting in the direction where the
Captain’s boat had vanished. Presently the Devil’s Darning Needle, as
the Scotch part of the crew loved to call the Dragonfly, stuck her long
snout round the headland, and came spinning along with a Spanish canoe
manned by four negroes, and steered by an elderly gentleman, a sharp
acute-looking little man, in a gingham coat, in her wake, also pulling
very fast; however, the Don seemed dead beat, and the captain was in
great glee. By this time, both boats were alongside, and the old
Spaniard, Don Ricardo Campana, addressed the captain, judging that he
was one of the seamen. “Is the Captain on board?” said he in Spanish.
The Captain, who understood the language, but did not speak it, answered
him in French, which Don Ricardo seemed to speak fluently, “No, sir, the
Captain is not on board; but there is Mr Yerk, the first lieutenant, at
the gangway.” He had come for the letter-bag he said, and if we had any
newspapers, and could spare them, it would be conferring a great favour
on him.
He got his letters and newspapers handed down, and very civilly gave the
Captain a dollar, who touched his cap, tipped the money to the men, and
winking slightly to old Yerk and the rest of us, addressed himself to
shove off. The old Don, drawing up his eyebrows a little, (I guess he
rather saw who was who, for all his make-believe innocence,) bowed to
the officers at the gangway, sat down, and desiring his people to use
their broad-bladed, clumsy looking oars, or paddles, began to move
awkwardly away. We, that is the gunroom officers, all except the
second Lieutenant, who had the watch, and the master, now got into our
own gig also, rowed by ourselves, and away we all went in a covey; the
purser and doctor, and three of the middies forward, Thomas Cringle,
gentleman, pulling the stroke oar, with old Moses Yerk as coxswain; and as
the Dragonflies were all red, so we were all seagreen, boat, oars,
trowsers, shirts, and nightcaps. We soon distanced the cumbrous looking
Don, and the strain was between the Devil’s Darning Needle and our boat
the Watersprite, which was making capital play, for although we had not
the bottom of the topmen, yet we had more blood, so to speak, and we had
already beaten them, in their last gig, all to sticks. But Dragonfly
was a new boat, and now in the water for the first time.
We were both of us so intent on our own match, that we lost sight of the
Spaniard altogether, and the Captain and the first Lieutenant were
bobbing in the stern sheets of their respective gigs like a couple of
souple Tams, as intent on the game as if all our lives had depended on
it, when in an instant the long black dirty prow of the canoe was thrust
in between us, the old Don singing out, “Dexa mi lugar, paysanos, dexa
mi lugar, mis hijos.” We kept away right and left, to look at the
miracle;--and there lay the canoe, rumbling and splashing, with her crew
walloping about, and grinning and yelling like incarnate fiends, and as
naked as the day they were born, and the old Don himself so staid and so
sedate and drawley as he was a minute before, now all alive, shouting
“Tira diablitos, tira!” flourishing a small paddle, with which he
steered, about his head like a wheel, and dancing and jumping about in
his seat, as if his bottom had been a haggis with quicksilver in it.
“Zounds,” roared the skipper,--“why, topmen--why, gentlemen, give way
for the honour of the ship--Gentlemen, stretch out--Men, pull like
devils; twenty pounds if you beat him.”
We pulled, and they pulled, and the water roared, and the men strained
their muscles and sinews to cracking, and all was splash, splash, and
whiz, whiz, and pech, pech, about us, but it would not do the canoe
headed us like a shot, and in passing, the cool old Don again subsided
into a calm as suddenly as he had been roused from it, and sitting once
more, stiff as a poker, turned round and touched his sombrero, “I will
tell that you are coming, gentlemen.”
It was now the evening, near nightfall, and we had been so intent on
beating our awkward-looking opponent, that we had none of us time to
look at the splendid scene that burst upon our view, on rounding a
precipitous rock, from the crevices of which some magnificent trees shot
up--their gnarled trunks and twisted branches overhanging the canal
where we were pulling, and anticipating the fast-falling darkness that
was creeping over the fair face of nature; and there we floated, in the
deep shadow of the cliff and trees Dragonflies and Water Sprites,
motionless and silent, the boats floating so lightly that they scarcely
seemed to touch the water, the men resting on their oars, and all of us
rapt with the magnificence of the scenery around us, beneath us, and
above us.
The left or western bank of the narrow entrance to the harbour, from
which we were now debauching, ran out in all its precipitousness and
beauty, (with its dark evergreen bushes overshadowing the deep blue
waters, and its gigantic trees shooting forth high into the glowing
western sky, their topmost branches gold-tipped in the flood of
radiance shed by the rapidly sinking sun, while all below where we lay
was grey cold shade,) until it joined the northern shore, when it sloped
away gradually towards the east; the higher parts of the town sparkled
in the evening sun, on this dun ridge, like golden turrets on the back
of an elephant, while the houses that were in the shade covered the
declivity with their dark masses, until it sank down to the water’s
edge. On the right hand the haven opened boldly out into a basin about
four miles broad by seven long, in which the placid waters spread out
beyond the shadow of the western bank into one vast sheet of molten
gold, with the canoe tearing along the shining surface, her side
glancing in the sun, and her paddles flashing back his rays, and leaving
a long train of living fire sparkling in her wake.
It was now about six o’clock in the evening; the sun had set to us, as
we pulled along under the frowning brow of the cliff, where the birds
were fast settling on their nightly perches, with small happy
twitterings, and the lizards and numberless other chirping things began
to send forth their evening hymn to the great Being who made them and
us, and a solitary white sailing owl would every now and then flit
spectre like from one green tuft, across the bald face of the cliff, to
another, and the small divers around us were breaking up the black
surface of the waters into little sparkling circles as they fished for
their suppers. All was becoming brown and indistinct near us; but the
level beams of the setting sun still lingered with a golden radiance
upon the lovely city, and the shipping at anchor before it, making their
sails, where loosed to dry, glance like leaves of gold, and their spars,
and masts, and rigging like wires of gold, and gilding their flags,
which were waving majestically and slow from the peaks in the evening
breeze; and the Moorish-looking steeples of the churches were yet
sparkling in the glorious blaze, which was gradually deepening into
gorgeous crimson, while the large pillars of the cathedral, then
building on the highest part of the ridge, stood out like brazen
monuments, softening even as we looked into a Stonehenge of amethysts.
One half of every object, shipping, houses, trees, and hills, was
gloriously illuminated; but even as we looked, the lower part of the
town gradually sank into darkness, and faded from our sight--the
deepening gloom cast by the high bank above us, like the dark shadow of
a bad spirit, gradually crept on, and on, and extended farther and
farther; the sailing water-fowl in regular lines, no longer made the
water flash up like flame; the russet mantle of eve was fast extending
over the entire hemisphere; the glancing minarets, and the tallest
trees, and the topgallant-yards and masts of the shipping, alone
flashed back the dying effulgence of the glorious orb, which every
moment grew fainter and fainter, and redder and redder, until it shaded
into purple, and the loud deep bell of the convent of La Merced swung
over the still waters, announcing the arrival of even-song and the
departure of day.
“Had we not better pull back to supper, sir?” quoth Moses Yerk to the
captain. We all started, the men dipped their oars, our dreams were
dispelled, the charm was broken--“Confound the matter-of-fact
blockhead,” or something very like it, grumbled the captain--“but give
way, men,” fast followed, and we returned towards the ship. We had not
pulled fifty yards, when we heard the distant rattle of the muskets of
the sentries at the gangways, as they discharged them at sundown, and
were remarking, as we were rowing leisurely along, upon the strange
effect produced by the reports, as they were frittered away amongst the
overhanging cliffs in chattering reverberations, when the captain
suddenly sung out, “Oars!” All hands lay on them. “Look there,” he
continued--“There--between the gigs--saw you ever any thing like that,
gentlemen?” We all leant over; and although the boats, from the way they
had, were skimming along nearer seven than five knots--there lay a large
shark; he must have been twelve feet long at the shortest, swimming
right in the middle, and equidistant from both, and keeping way with us
most accurately.
He was distinctly visible, from the strong and vivid phosphorescence
excited by his rapid motion through the sleeping waters of the dark
creek, which lit up his jaws, and head, and whole body; his eyes were
especially luminous, while a long wake of sparkles streamed away astern
of him from the lashing of his tail. As the boats lost their speed, the
luminousness of his appearance faded gradually as he shortened sail
also, until he disappeared altogether. He was then at rest, and
suspended motionless in the water; and the only thing that indicated his
proximity, was an occasional sparkle from the motion of a fin. We
brought the boats nearer together, after pulling a stroke or two, but he
seemed to sink as we closed, until at last we could merely perceive an
indistinct halo far down in the clear black profound. But as we
separated, and resumed our original position, he again rose near the
surface; and although the ripple and dip of the oars rendered him
invisible while we were pulling, yet the moment we again rested on them,
there was the monster, like a persecuting fiend, once more right between
us, glaring on us, and apparently watching every Motion. It was a
terrible spectacle, and rendered still more striking by the melancholy
occurrence of the forenoon.
“That’s the very identical, damnable baste himself, as murthered poor
little Louis this morning, yeer honour; I knows him from the tom flesh
of him under his larboard blinker, sir--just where Wiggens’s boathook
punished him,” quoth the Irish captain of the mizentop.
“A water-kelpie,” murmured another of the Captain’s gigs, a Scotchman.
The men were evidently alarmed. “Stretch out, men; never mind the
shark. He can’t jump into, the boat surely,” said the skipper. “What
the deuce are you afraid of?”
We arrived within pistol-shot of the ship. As we approached, the
sentry hailed, “Boat, ahoy!”
“Firebrand,” sung out the skipper, in reply.
“Man the side-gangway lanterns there,” quoth the officer on duty; and
by the time we were close to, there were two sidesmen over the side with
the manropes ready stuck out to our grasp, and two boys with lanterns
above them. We got on deck, the officers touching their hats, and
speedily the Captain dived down the ladder, saying, as he descended, “Mr
Yerk, I shall be happy to see you and your boat’s crew at supper, or
rather to a late dinner, at eight o’clock; but come down a moment as you
are. Tailtackle, bring the gigs into the cabin to get a glass of grog,
will you?”
“Ay, ay, sir,” responded Timothy. “Down with you, you flaming thieves,
and see you don’t snort and sniffle in your grog, as if you were in your
own mess, like so many pigs slushing at the same trough.’
“Lord love you, Tim,” rejoined one of the topmen, “who made you master
of the ceremonies, old Ironfist, eh? Where learnt you your breeding?
Among the cockatoos up yonder?”
Tim laughed, who, although he ought to have been in his bed, had taken
his seat in the Dragonfly when her crew were piped over the side in the
evening, and thereby subjected himself to a rap over the knuckles from
the Captain; but where the offence might be said to consist in a too
assiduous discharge of his duty, it was easily forgiven, unfortunate as
the issue of the race had been. So down we all trundled into the cabin,
masters and men. It was brilliantly lighted up, the table sparkling
with crystal and wine, and glancing with silver plate; and there on a
sofa lay Aaron Bang in all his pristine beauty, and fresh from his
toilet, for he had just got out of his cot after an eight-and-forty
hours sojourn therein--nice white neck cloth white jean waistcoat and
trowsers, and span--new blue coat He was reading when we entered; and
the Captain, in his flame-coloured costume, was close aboard of him
before he raised his eyes, and rather staggered him a bit; but when
seven sea-green spirits followed, he was exceedingly nonplussed, and
then came the six red Dragonflies, who ranged themselves three on each
side of the door, with their net-bags in their hands, smoothing down
their hair, and sidling and fidgeting about at finding themselves so far
out of their element as the cabin.
“Mafame,” said the Captain, “a glass of grog apiece to the Dragonflies”
and a tumbler of liquid amber (to borrow from my old friend Cooper)
sparkled in the large bony claw of each of them. “Now, drink Mr Bang’s
health.” They, as in duty bound, let fly at our amigo in a volley.
“Your health, Mr Bang.”
Aaron sprung from his seat, and made his salaam, and the Dragonflies
bundled out of the cabin again.
“I say, Transom, John Canoeing still--always some frolic in the wind.”
We, the Water Sprites, had shifted and rigged, and were all mustered aft
on the poop, enjoying the little air there was, as it fanned gently, and
waiting for the announcement of supper. It was a pitch-dark night,
neither moon nor stars. The murky clouds seemed to have settled down on
the mastheads, shrouding every object in the thickest gloom.
“Ready with the gun forward there, Mr Catwell?” said Yerk.
“All ready, sir.”
“Fire!”
Pent up as we were in a narrow channel, walled in on each side with
towering precipitous rocks, the explosion, multiplied by the echoes into
a whole broadside, was tremendous, and absolutely deafening.
The cold, grey, threatening rocks, and the large overhanging twisted
branches of the trees, and the clear black water, and the white Moro in
the distance, glanced for an instant, and then all was again veiled in
utter darkness, and down came a rattling shower of sand and stones from
the cliffs, and of rotten branches, and heavy dew from the trees,
sparkling in the water like a shower of diamonds; and the birds of the
air screamed, and, frightened from their nests and perches in crevices,
and on the boughs of the trees, took flight with a strong rushing noise,
that put one in mind of the rising of the fallen angels from the
infernal council in Paradise Lost; and the cattle on the mountain-side
lowed, and the fish, large and small, like darts and arrows of fire,
sparkled up from the black abyss of waters, and swam in haloes of flame
round the ship in every direction, as if they had been the ghosts of a
shipwrecked crew, haunting the scene of their destruction; and the
guanas and large lizards which had been shaken from the trees, skimmed
and struggled on the surface in glances of fire, like evil spirits
watching to seize them as their prey. At length the screaming and
shrieking of the birds, and clang of their the cattle, ceased; and the
startled fish oozy caverns at the bottom of the sea, disappeared; and
all was again black and undistinguishable, the deathlike silence being
only broken by the hoarse murmuring of the distant surf.
“Magnificent!” burst from the Captain. “Messenger, send Mr Portfire
here.” The gunpowder functionary, he of the flannel cartridge, appeared.
“Gunner, send one of your mates into the maintop, and let him bum a blue
light.”
The lurid glare blazed up balefully amongst the spars and rigging,
lighting up the decks, and blasting the crew into the likeness of the
host of Sennacherib, when the day broke on them, and they were all dead
corpses. A--stem of us, indistinct from the distance, the white Moro
Castle reappeared, and rose frowning, tier above tier, like a Tower of
Babel, with its summit veiled in the clouds, and the startled sea-fowl
wheeling above the higher batteries, like snowflakes blown about in
storm; while, near at hand, the rocks on each side of us looked as if
fresh splintered asunder, with the sulphurous flames which had split
them still burning; the trees looked no longer green, but were sicklied
o’er with a pale ashy colour, as if sheeted ghosts were holding their
midnight orgies amongst their branches-cranes, and waterfowl, and birds
of many kinds, and all the insect and reptile tribes, their gaudy
noontide colours merged into one and the same fearful deathlike
sameness, flitted and sailed and circled above us, and chattered, and
screamed, and shrieked; and the unearthly-looking guanas, and
numberless creeping things, ran out on the boughs to peer at us, and a
large snake twined itself up a scathed stump that shot out from a
shattered pinnacle of rock that overhung us, with its glossy skin,
glancing like the brazen serpent set up by Moses in the camp of the
Israelites; and the cattle on the beetling summit of the cliff craned
over the precipitous ledge to look down upon us; and while every thing
around us and above us was thus glancing in the blue and ghastly
radiance, the band struck up a low moaning air; the light burnt out, and
once more we were cast, by the contrast, into even more palpable
darkness than before. I was entranced, and stood with folded arms,
looking forth into the night, and musing intensely on the appalling
scene which had just vanished like a feverish dream--“Dinner waits,
sir,” quoth Mafame.
“Oh! I am coming;” and kicking all my romance to Old Nick, I descended,
and we had a pleasant night of it, and some wine and some fun, and there
an end--but I have often dreamed of that dark pool, and the scenes I
witnessed there that day and night.