OF MY ESCAPE FROM THE FRENCH SHIP, AND MY LANDING IN HISPANIOLA.
And now, being fairly within the grasp of the trade wind, we sped
swiftly on towards those western islands whither we were bound,
experiencing, however, as we approached the Indies, some of the
squally weather common in these latitudes. Such gusts soon blow
over, but are troublesome and fatiguing to mariners, and wearing to
ship and rigging. First comes a black cloud on the horizon, then the
waves to windward become tipped with whitish foam. Presently the
gust strikes with great force, the firmament being very dark and
threatening: at the time of its greatest strength there will be a
flash of lightning and a thunderclap or two, after which a pelt of
rain and a sudden clearing of the sky, the squall being for that time
over.
Meanwhile, I often discussed with Wright the question of my
deliverance. He said that there was now so much jealousy between the
French and the English, in the West Indies, that I could possibly
look for no other fate than being sold to serve my time as a slave
in Tortugas; where I would be employed in field labour, such as
the cultivation of tobacco, great crops of which are grown in that
island. Wright’s opinion was, that I ought, in some way or other,
to attempt an escape before being landed at Tortugas; but this was
easier talked of than done. While all was still unsettled between us,
‘Land’ was one day proclaimed from the mast-head. This announcement
surprised us all, for we had not expected to see any land until we
came in sight of the mountains of Hispaniola, which still lay well to
the westward. However, we soon found that, either through currents
or errors in the reckoning, we were further to the south than we had
calculated, and that the island we saw was one of the Virgin Isles,
forming a cluster just where the long line of windward islands which
stretch northward from the mainland, trend away to the west. This
discovery necessitated a change in our steering—we hauling up two or
three points more to the northward. The next day we saw, at a very
great distance to leeward, a long faint blue ridge rising out of
the water, which was the mountain line of the high ground of Porto
Rico. Towards evening, the trade wind abated, being influenced, as
we conjectured, by the distant land-breeze, which blows at night off
the shore, in and near these islands; and before the setting of the
sun the weather grew wellnigh calm. It was then that one of the crew
discovered a bottle floating not far from the felucca, and pointed
it out to the Captain, who straightway commanded it to be brought
aboard; inasmuch as mariners in distress often fling such into the
sea, with letters and papers relating their sad condition. Now, on
board the felucca were two boats—the pinnace, in which I had been
rescued, and a little skiff, not bigger than a canoe, which, being
hoisted out and manned by two hands, brought in the bottle. It turned
out to be empty and of no account. Still the finding of it was a
lucky accident for me, inasmuch as the skiff was not again hoisted on
board, but—the weather being exceedingly fine, and we soon expecting
to use her to help in mooring ship—left towing astern.
That same night, Wright came to me and pointed her out as a means of
escape.
‘Look you,’ says he, ‘your business is to get ashore on some island
where you will find Englishmen, and which is not entirely under
French or Spanish influence. Now, on the coast of Hispaniola are not
a few of your countrymen and mine, sometimes cruizing, sometimes
hunting and slaughtering cattle. By the course we are now lying,
we shall have to run all along the northern coast of Hispaniola,
which we will probably approach close to, for the benefit of the
land-breeze at night, and because the shore is bold and the sea deep.
Provided the skiff be left towing astern, it will not be difficult
for you to smuggle yourself into it in the night-time, and so escape
ashore.’
This advice appeared to me admirable, and threw me quite into a fever
of eagerness and anxiety. I was in the middle watch that night,
and how often I gazed upon the little boat—the expected ark of my
deliverance—as she tossed upon the smooth ridges of swell, which
glanced like silver in the bright moonlight! About nine o’clock
in the morning the trade wind resumed its powers, and we soon saw
rising out of the ocean, upon our lee bow, the blue-peaked mountains
of Hispaniola. All day, you may be sure, I very eagerly watched the
weather, fearing lest the approach of a squall would cause Montbars
to order the skiff to be taken on deck, but the sky continued quite
cloudless, the sun was burning hot, and the sea breeze—for such
amid the Western Indies they call the regular daily trade wind—blew
most refreshingly upon our starboard quarter, urging the felucca
gloriously along. We were now fast closing in with the coast, which
stretched in a long high range under the lee; and as we approached
an exceeding bold promontory, called Le Vieux Cap François, I saw
how delicious was the land, with its bright green forests—its rocks,
rising from thick bushes and brushwood—and the great blue mountain
peaks in the distance. Besides ourselves the ocean was solitary. No
sail scudded before the breeze—no fishing-boat rode head to sea,
surrounded by the buoys of her nets and lines. All above was a sky
of dazzling and lustrous brightness—beneath was a limpid and foaming
sea, from which arose the groves and rocks, the deep ravines and the
green savannahs of an isle which seemed Paradise. I stood in the
bows of the felucca, and stretched forth my arms, and prayed for the
moment when I should set foot on shore.
When I was in this kind of rapture, Wright came to me privately,
and asked whether I was determined to make the attempt. I replied,
I only longed for night to come. Then at his request I went below
with him to his berth, when he showed me, all else being on deck,
a short-barrelled musket, hid in the bedding, with a flask of fine
glazed powder and a small bag of balls. There was also a leathern
bottle, called a broc, well stoppered and full of water, and some
biscuits. ‘These things,’ says he, ‘will be necessary for you, so
that you may not want, until you pick up some comrade along shore.
Should you not succeed at first, you must trust to your gun for food,
and you will soon find water, of which there is abundance, fresh and
clear.’
I thanked him heartily for his goodness and foresight, for I had
thought of nothing but how I should get ashore, not even how I should
satisfy my hunger and thirst when I landed. But Wright was my good
genius, and, taking advantage of our being now alone, for the deck
was so much the more pleasant that all were there, he made me put
on a couple of stout linen shirts which he gave me, as also a good
jacket, such as sailors wear, and a pair of strong yet light shoes,
like pumps. I was quite overpowered with such goodness, and could
scarce refrain from weeping. What a poor forlorn miserable creature
I should have been had Wright not been on board! and although I was
nothing to him, yet had I been his son, the old man could not have
used me with more grave and simple kindness. I told him that when he
first spoke to me I was in great desolation and despair of spirit,
but that now my heart was cheery and buoyant, and that I well trusted
to see my own land again. At this his face darkened, and he heaved
a great sigh. I went on, and said that he, too, I hoped, would end
his days, not in these burning climes, but in the green valley of
Hertfordshire, where he told me he was born.
‘No, no,’ says he, ‘never—never! I shall see England no more. I am
but a wanderer and an outcast, even like Cain of old, and the place
that once knew me, shall know me no more for ever.’
With this he sat himself down on a great sea-chest, and putting his
hands to his face, sobbed aloud, so that all his great frame was
shaken. I was much moved, and strove to take his hand. Then he looked
at me with his large grey eyes, all dry, and, as I thought, somewhat
bloodshot, for he could not weep, and said, ‘In a churchyard there,
lie my fathers and my kindred, also the wife of my bosom and the
two children of my loins, but my dust must not mingle with theirs.
I shall sleep my last sleep in some desert wilderness, or amid the
weeds under the sea.’
Observing me much astonished, and, perhaps, somewhat frightened, for
I thought he must have committed some great and horrible crime, he
grasped my hand in his, till I thought the blood came, and said, in a
low voice—
‘Young man, I know not your soul, whether it loveth the gauds and the
pomps of the world which are but vanity, or whether it would walk in
the paths which are narrow and thorny, but which lead upwards. Yet
I do believe you to be in spirit true and leal; and wherefore then
should I dissemble, that if I am an outcast, it is in a holy and a
just cause—ay, and a cause which will triumph, when the blood of the
saints which crieth aloud is justified and avenged! Leonard Lindsay,
I am one of those who by voice and hand did to death the man Charles
Stuart.’
This, then, was one of the regicides whom I had often heard were
wandering about the world, being driven from their land by this
great and justifiable deed, for so my parents taught me to esteem
it, of the putting to death of the king. I would have told my friend
somewhat to this effect, but he stopped me, saying, applause or
disapprobation were alike to him; that he would help and comfort all
his fellow-men, but that he cared not for their opinion on what he
had done, always looking for judgment inwards to his own soul, and
thence upwards to his God.
Shortly after this we went on deck, and my first glance was astern,
where the skiff was still towing, although the waves raised by the
sea-breeze ran so gaily, that sometimes as they chased us, the boat,
rising on the crest of the following sea, would seem as though she
would be hove bodily on deck. The land was now quite close, not more
than a mile under the lee, so that we could see a great succession of
bays and little headlands with bushes of many sorts, and rich tangled
underwood, creeping among and clothing the knolls and banks even to
the water’s edge. Over these, high palms bended and waved in the
sea-breeze, these seeming to issue from every crevice in the rocks;
and sometimes, where a rivulet came down into the sea, the banks
thereof being flat and soft, grew great thickets of the mangrove
bush, a shrub which rises on bare grey stems out of the water,
supporting whole beds of tangled and intertwisting foliage above,
thus raising, as it were, a sort of canopy above the water. Between
such places and the rocky headlands were often little bays, with
narrow strips of white glittering beach, running like crescents from
cliff to cliff, the sea breaking in flashing surf upon the shingle,
and often sending its spray pelting among the bushes. Never, indeed,
had I seen a more glorious coast, one so teeming with beauty and the
riches of an overflowing nature. Involuntarily after every long and
ardent gaze I turned my eyes upon my skiff, praying within my heart
that nought might come to make my adventure miscarry.
As the evening approached, I was so impatient that I disposed of
the biscuits, the powder, and the ball about my person, and was for
ever going below to the berth to see that the musket was safe. The
mariners, however, being excited and joyful, that the end of the
voyage was nigh, gave little heed to me, otherwise my continued
movements and feverish demeanour could not have but raised suspicion.
In those low latitudes there is but little twilight, and half an
hour after the sun went down into the sea ahead of us, the stars
were shining out through the night. Meantime the sea-breeze had
died away, and for an hour or longer we were left heaving upon the
glassy swell, the land showing in vast dusky masses which, as it
were, cut great spaces out of the firmament twinkling with stars, and
the roar of the surf coming heavy and loud over the sea. Presently,
after divers faint puffs, which caused the canvas to flap, shaking
down on the deck great showers of dew, the land-wind, or _terral_,
arose in its turn, balmy and sweet with the smell of the forests,
and our lateen sails being dipped, we glided along, leaning over to
seaward. The mid-watch came at last, and it had not been set for
more than half an hour, ere the men dropped to sleep, under the lee
of the bulwarks, excepting the steersman, and he leaned heavily and
drowsily over the tiller. Then I brought on deck the musket and the
broc, depositing them in safe places. But the question was how to
get on board the skiff so as to elude the notice of the sailor who
steered. Having soon devised a plan, I communicated it to Wright, who
did not hesitate to put it into execution. Going aft, he stood beside
the helmsman, and after some time, looking astern, remarked how the
land-wind broke the usual heave of the sea into wild disorderly
waves, and then observing that the skiff might be injured by being
flung under our counter by the jumble of the water, he took the rope
and hauled the boat ahead—the steersman thinking no harm—until he
made it fast alongside, and screened from sight by the mainsail. In
five minutes after, with a strong gripe of the hand, and a fervent
‘God speed you,’ I swung myself noiselessly aboard, and placed the
gun and the broc in the bottom of the boat. Wright, so I must still
call him, then undid the rope. My hand was at that moment upon the
smooth side of the felucca, which I suddenly felt slip by me; I was
adrift! Holding my breath, and my hand still against the planking
of the vessel, she glided fast and faster by me, eluding as it were
my clutch, when her shape melted away into the run. A minute after
and I saw the small dusky hull and white stretching canvas becoming
indistinct in the darkness ahead. I was alone, but I was free. For
near an hour I remained almost motionless, fearing every moment to
hear an alarum-gun fire; but the night continued silent, and then
with a good heart I took up my oars, and using two as sculls, rowed
towards the coast. The land-breeze blew steadily, so I had to tug
long and hard. At last, seeing the dusky bank close ahead, I paused
to look for a landing-place, but none could I see. The nature of the
coast seemed to have changed, the land hereabout being a long smooth
wall of perpendicular rock, sinking sheerly into the sea, which
rose and fell at the base, with a loud hissing, pouring, gurgling
sound—not like the deep thunder of surf. I therefore set myself to
pull eastwardly, in search of a creek or bay. I knew that the moon
would presently rise over the land, and in sooth, in about an hour,
I noticed the glow of her broad disc peeping over the edge of the
cliff ahead of me, and showing it, fringed, as it were, with a line
of bushes and brushwood, which curled over the precipice, surmounted
now and then by one of the tall, bending palmetto trees. In about an
hour I had moonlight sufficient to see pretty distinctly the great
limestone ledges along which I was cautiously coasting—pausing on my
oars, now and then, to hear the great buzz of insects and the forlorn
cries of night-birds which floated from the land. It must have been
near three o’clock, when I saw a black-like opening in the wall of
cliff, and very cautiously I pulled my boat inwards. For some time I
was in great doubt as to whether I had found a creek, but presently
I beheld the two portals of rock between which I was, fairly astern
of the boat, and saw and heard the white gleam of the surf breaking
on the beach. But the former was too high for me to risk a landing,
and I would have pulled out to sea again, but seeing another dark
shadowy space upon the left, I made for it, hoping it might turn out
an oblique channel leading from the main cove. I was not deceived,
and presently the boat glided along a sort of dusky canal, with great
rocks on either hand, clothed with rich creeping herbage; trees
hanging over either ledge, and, as the channel narrowed, meeting, and
by their intertwining boughs shutting out the blue sky. Below me the
water showed as black as tar, yet sparkling, when the undulations
from the outer creek caused it to rise and sink upon the bushy banks.
Now and then a flutter of wings would echo in the narrow passage,
and the loud shriek of a night-bird would drown the noise. Anon a
scrambling, walloping sound, followed by a splash, as of a great
animal scuttling from a ledge into the water, would ensue, and again,
for a time, there would be deep silence. In about a quarter of an
hour, the heave of the sea was no longer felt, owing, as I concluded,
to the shallowing of the creek; and then, making fast the skiff to
a great protruding branch, which I struck my head against, I rolled
myself in a blanket which I found Wright had flung into the boat, and
was soon asleep, being thus, as it were, safely anchored to the New
World!