LAND AT ST VINCENT--SHOOTING EXCURSION ON THE ISLAND--STRANGE
DREAM--NARROWLY ESCAPE SHIPWRECK--ARRIVE AT SIERRA
LEONE--INTERVIEW WITH THE GOVERNOR--OFFICIAL CEREMONIES--VISIT
THE BISHOP--OFFICIAL INSIGNIA--ST HELENA--NEGLECTED STATE OF
THE HOUSE WHERE NAPOLEON DIED.
In the same ship were the newly-appointed Governor of the Cape, Mr
Darling, and a Mr Macdonald, also recently appointed to the Gambia. The
voyage was pleasant on all sides--ship, sea, and passengers--until we
put into the Isle of St Vincent for coal. Here an event occurred which
I should not relate had I been merely recording the actions of those
around me; but I write these pages that others may learn the impulses
that guide fellow-beings, who, from one cause or another, have in turn
influenced many. As the ship was being coaled I had landed alone, and
wandered about, gun in hand, to shoot, if I could, some snipe that
were supposed now and again to visit the island. I could see nothing
remarkable in this elevated spot but its geographical situation in
the volcanic chain that runs from New Granada to St Eustache. As for
the snipe, I had not the courage to fire at a poor solitary wanderer
like myself that rose at my feet; so, towards evening, I returned
to the ship, tired with my walk on this torrid, brick-kiln-looking
island, that rose in layers to the clouds like an altar of earth’s
burnt-offering reeking to the skies.
I had lain down in my berth, and had dozed off into dreamland, and
fancied I saw a woman standing, much as the Virgin in Raffaele’s
“Assumption” at Dresden, high up between the ship and the shore,
motioning me not to be afraid. At this moment down rushed the governor
of the Gambia, exclaiming, “For God’s sake get up! the ship is going
ashore!”
I was so much under the influence of the dream, and assured thereby of
Divine protection, that I told him to take my life-preserver, which
was hanging up in the cabin, and to save himself. Up he rushed again,
life-preserver in hand, while I lay quietly in my berth, listening
to all the hubbub and trampling of feet on the deck overhead, until
the roar of the breakers and the cessation of blowing off steam, made
me rather anxious as to whether I was not, after all, going down. My
anxieties soon came to an end. The governor appeared once more, saying
all danger was over, and thanked me most warmly for having lent him
the life-preserver. It appeared from his rather excited account, that
after lifting the anchor to start for Sierra Leone, our next place of
call, the rudder-chains got jammed between decks, and the steamer was
helplessly drifting ashore. The anchor was then dropped again; but,
from some untoward mismanagement, the chain had been detached from the
capstan, and slipped through the hawser-holes into the sea, going after
the anchor to the bottom.
In this awful predicament we approached the rugged shore, when, at the
last moment, the recoil of the heavy seas as they were hurled back into
the deep from the shore, jerked the rudder-chains free. The good ship
Harbinger answered her helm again, and steamed safely away on her
mission. The next morning I was congratulated by all on board for my
generous conduct in giving my life-preserver to Mr Macdonald (who was
rather an elderly personage). So, besides the nuisance of being thanked
(which is always a bore), to increase my confusion still more, I knew
perfectly well it was utterly undeserved, for I had felt so thoroughly
sure of Divine protection when I gave the life-preserver away, that it
was evidently useless to me. I never had the courage while on board to
tell my dream, through fear of the pitying smiles it would raise; so I
passed off, very unwillingly, for a far braver man than I really was.
On arriving at Sierra Leone, some of us landed to visit the garrison
and pay our respects to the governor, Colonel O’C----r. The barracks,
on the top of the hill overlooking the town, were clean and
comfortable; and the officers quite a jolly lot for men stationed in
“the white man’s grave,” as Sierra Leone was then called. The soldiers
were smart, well set up, strongly-framed negroes, equal I should say,
if well led, to a deal of hard fighting. We found the governor at
home, enjoying his pleasant quarters in a private residence, with
great equanimity and smiling composure. He was a soft, oily-looking
gentleman, considerably yellowed by the fierce glare of the town. He
lay on a couch, decked out with white muslin mosquito-curtains; and
gently turning round as we entered, looked like a lump of yellow butter
floating in a basin of iced water; and we youngsters were considerably
cooled down as we rushed rather heedlessly into the great man’s
_sanctum sanctorum_. He, however, gracefully ducked his head under the
curtains, and waved a ripple of welcome to us all from his extended
hands. He was evidently accustomed to unquestioning obedience, so we
sat down without saying a word.
The room was full of niggers. It was something wonderful to see them
clustered round the bell-shaped muslin curtains of his couch, like
busy black flies on a loaf of white crystallised sugar. One had
managed to thrust his naked arm, like an antenna, under the folds of
the transparent dome, and with a long, white, horse-tail fan, was
waving mysterious passes around the yellow, sphinx-shaped head of the
presiding deity. Other attendants, with solemn, ebony-wooded heads,
were squatting around the place, tossing up and down their lank arms
in the most bewildering manner. Now and again they would insert their
hands under the arm-pits, then sharply raise them, and with a whack,
extend their palms upon the wall. I slipped out of the room, and asked
the gallant colonel’s orderly the meaning of this mystic performance.
“You see, sir,” he said, “those niggers squatting round the room are
waiting to relieve the others on duty at the colonel’s cot; we makes
’em sit still, for when they goes about they scents mighty strong, and
if they sits quite still they gets like rancid cocoa-oil; so to make
them as sweet as possible, we orders them to keep alive, pegged down.”
Poor black wretches! they were writing their misery on the wall, in a
manner quite incomprehensible to the gallant colonel.
I next paid a visit to the bishop, who gave me the impression of
suffering from a deadly climate, and great despondency as to the
prospects of converting the heathen--in fact, he seemed on the point of
leaving his flock in this world without the prospect of meeting even
one of his black sheep in the next.
In the afternoon Colonel O’C----r returned our visit, and came on board
the Harbinger. The nimble manner in which he glided up the ladder of
the ship, and presented himself in his white toggery to our gasping
selves, was a riddle, the solving of which would have melted our brains
in that broiling sun. Had it not been for the gleam that shone now and
then from his glazed, brown eye, which was like a parched pea, one
might have taken him for an automatic mummy. The same horse-tail I
mentioned as having been waved over his head while reclining at home,
was now carried by himself; and in answer to a question put to him by
young K---- of the 74th, he explained that it was a Mandingo emblem of
authority, which had the twofold power of keeping off the flies and
keeping the niggers in awe. When, in after-life, I became a Turkish
Pasha with two tails, I often used to look up to the sort of barber’s
pole on which was appended the same horse-tail token of authority, and
think of Colonel O’C----r and the affrighted natives of Sierra Leone.
We now proceeded to St Helena, and visited the residence in which
Napoleon died. I was, as we all were, much hurt on finding the
neglected state of the building, and of the room in which that great
man breathed his last. It was filled with broken agricultural tools and
farmyard rubbish; and in the small chamber in which he had described
to Montholon how kingdoms were lost and won, cackling poultry were
brooding; and that small garden, in which he had spent so many weary
hours, trying to dig away the cankering sorrows of his troubled life,
was overrun with weeds and scarred with poultry scrabbings.
And so these small, unplastered, half-raftered rooms were the meshes of
the net which had held the man-slayer of Europe; and this little plot
of ground, scarce larger than a Cockney’s flower-bed, all that remained
to him who had given realms away! The contrast was too great. There was
something that clashed harshly somewhere, and I could not help thinking
that posterity would lay this woful wreck to England’s charge.