PORT WELCOME
It was a refreshing sight to behold Slap-Jack, “rigged,” as he was
pleased to term it, “to the nines,” in the extreme of sea-dandyism,
enacting the favourite part of a “liberty-man” ashore.
Nothing had been left undone for the brilliancy of his exterior that
could be achieved by scrubbing, white linen, and robust health. The smart
young captain of the foretop seemed to glow and sparkle in the vertical
sun, as he stood on the quay of Port Welcome, and cast a final glance of
professional approval on the yards he had lately squared to a nicety and
the trim of such gear and tackle aloft as seemed his own especial pride
and care.
‘The Bashful Maid,’ after all the buffetings she had sustained,
particularly from the late squall, having made her port in one of the
smallest and most beautiful of the West India islands, now lay at anchor,
fair and motionless, like a living thing sleeping on the glistening sea.
It yet wanted some hours of noon, nevertheless the sun had attained a
power that seemed to bake the very stones on the quay, and warmed the
clear limpid water fathom deep. Even Slap-Jack protested against the
heat, as he lounged and rolled into the town, to find it swarming with
negroes of both sexes, sparingly clothed, but with such garments as they
did wear glowing in the gaudiest colours, and carrying on their hard,
woolly heads baskets containing eggs, kids, poultry, fruit, vegetables,
and every kind of market produce in the island. That island was indeed
one of those jewels of the Caribbean Sea to which no description can do
justice.
For the men left on board ‘The Bashful Maid,’ now heaving drowsily
at her anchor, it realised, with its vivid and varied hues, its
fantastic outlines, its massive brakes, its feathery palms, its
luxuriant redundancy of vegetation, trailing and drooping to the
sparkling water’s-edge, a sailor’s idea of Paradise; while for the
three Jacks rolling into the little town of Port Welcome, with its
white houses, straggling streets, frequent drinking-shops, and swarming
population—black, white, and coloured, it represented the desirable haven
of Fiddler’s Green, where they felt, no doubt, they had arrived before
their time. Slap-Jack made a remark to that effect, which was cordially
endorsed by his comrades as they turned into the main thoroughfare of the
town, and agreed that, in order to enjoy their holiday to the utmost, it
was essential to commence with something to drink all round.
Now, ‘The Bashful Maid’ having been already a few days in port, had in
that time disposed of a considerable portion of her cargo, and such an
event as the arrival of a saucy brigantine, combining the attractions of
a man-of-war with the advantages of a free-trader, not being an every-day
occurrence among the population of Port Welcome, much stir, excitement,
and increase of business was the result. The French storekeepers bid
eagerly for wares of European manufacture, the French planters sent their
slaves down in dozens to purchase luxuries only attainable from beyond
sea, while the negroes, grinning from ear to ear, jostled and scolded
each other in their desire to barter yams, plantains, fruit, poultry, and
even, on occasion, pieces of actual money, for scarfs, gloves, perfumes,
and ornaments—the tawdrier the better, which they thought might add to
the gloss of their black skins, and set off their quaint, honest, ugly,
black faces to advantage.
Here and there, too, a Carib, one of the aboriginal lords of the island,
distinguished by his bronze colour, his grave demeanour—so unlike the
African, and his disfigured nose, artificially flattened from infancy,
would stalk solemnly away, rich in the possession of a few glass beads
or a bit of tinsel, for which he had bartered all his worldly wealth,
and which, like more civilised people, he valued, not at its intrinsic
worth, but at its cost price. The three Jacks observed the novelties
which surrounded them from different points of view according to
their different characters, yet with a cool imperturbable demeanour
essentially professional. To men of their calling, nothing ever appears
extraordinary. They see so many strange sights in different countries,
and have so little time to become acquainted with the wonders they
behold, that they soon acquire a profound and philosophical indifference
to everything beyond their ordinary range of experience, persuaded
that the astonishment of to-day is pretty sure to be exceeded by the
astonishment of to-morrow. Neither can they easily discover anything
perfectly and entirely new, having usually witnessed something of the
same kind before, or heard it circumstantially described at considerable
length by a messmate; so that a seaman is but little impressed with the
sight of a foreign town, of which, indeed, he acquires in an hour or two
a knowledge not much more superficial than he has of his native village.
Bottle-Jack was in the habit of giving his opinion, as he expressed it,
“free.” That it was complimentary to Port Welcome, his comrades gathered
from the following sentiment:—
“I’m a gettin’ strained and weatherworn,” observed the old seaman,
impressively, “and uncommon dry besides. Tell ye what it is, mates—one
more cruise, and blowed if I won’t just drop my anchor here, and ride out
the rest of my time all snug at my moorings.”
Smoke-Jack turned his quid with an expression of intense disgust.
“And get spliced to a nigger, old man!” said he, argumentatively. “Never
go for to say it! I’m not a-goin’ to dispute as this here’s a tidy bit of
a island enough, and safe anchorage. Likewise, as I’ve been told by them
as tried it, plenty to drink, and good. Nor I won’t say but what a craft
might put in here for a spell to refit, do a bit of caulking, and what
not. But for dry-dock, mate, never go for to say it. Why you couldn’t get
anything like a decent missis, man, hereaway; an’ think o’ the price o’
beer!”
“Regardin’ a missis,” returned the other, reflectively, “’tain’t the
craft wot crowds the most canvas as makes the best weather, mate, and at
my years a man looks less to raking masts an’ a gay figur’-head than to
good tonnage and wholesome breadth of beam. Now, look ye here, mates—wot
say ye to this here craft?—her with the red ensign at the main, as is
layin’ to, like, with her fore-sheet to windward and her helm one turn
down?”
While he spoke, he pointed to our old acquaintance, Célandine, who was
cheapening fancy articles at a store that spread its goods out under an
awning far into the middle of the modest street. The Quadroon was, as
usual, gorgeously dressed, wearing the scarlet turban that covered her
still black hair majestically, as a queen carries her diadem. Like the
coloured race in general, she seemed to have renewed her youth under
a tropical sun, and at a short distance, particularly in the eyes of
Bottle-Jack, appeared a fine-looking woman, with pretensions to the
remains of beauty still.
The three seamen, of course, ranged up alongside for careful criticism,
but Célandine’s attention was by no means to be distracted from the
delightful business of shopping she had on hand. Shawls, scarfs, fans,
gloves, tawdry jewels, and perfumery, lay heaped in dazzling profusion
on a shelf before her, and the African blood danced in her veins with
childish glee at the tempting sight. The storekeeper, a French Creole,
with sharp features, sallow complexion, and restless, down-looking black
eyes, taking advantage of her eagerness, asked three times its value
for every article he pointed out; but Célandine, though profuse, was
not inexperienced, and dearly loved, moreover, the feminine amusement
of driving a bargain. Much expostulation therefore, contradiction,
wrangling, and confusion of tongues was the result.
The encounter seemed at the warmest, and the French Creole,
notwithstanding his villainous countenance and unscrupulous assertions,
was decidedly getting the worst of it, when Slap-Jack’s quick eye
detected amongst the wares exposed for sale certain silks and other
stuffs which had formed part of ‘The Bashful Maid’s’ cargo, and had,
indeed, been wrested by the strong hand from a Portuguese trader, after
a brisk chase and a running fight, which cost the brigantine a portion
of her boltsprit and two of her smartest hands. The chest containing
these articles had been started in unloading, so that its contents had
sustained much damage from sea-water. It was a breadth of stained satin
out of this very consignment that the Creole storekeeper now endeavoured
to persuade Célandine she would do well to purchase at an exorbitant
valuation.
Slap-Jack, like many of his calling, had picked up a smattering of
negro-French, and could understand the subject of dispute sufficiently
to interfere, a course from which he was not to be dissuaded by his less
impressionable companions.
“Let her be!” growled Smoke-Jack. “Wot call have _you_ now to come
athwart-hawse of that there jabbering mounseer, as a man might say,
dredging in his own fishing-ground? It’s no use hailing her, I tell ye,
mate, I knows the trim on ’em; maybe she’ll lay her foresail aback, and
stand off-and-on till sundown, then just when a man least expects it,
she’ll up stick, shake out every rag of canvas, and run for port. Bless
ye, young _and_ old, fair _and_ foul, black, white, _and_ coloured,
nigger, quadroon, _and_ mustee—I knows ’em all, and not one on ’em but
carries a weather-helm in a fresh breeze, and steers wild and wilful in a
sea-way.”
But Slap-Jack was not to be diverted from his purpose. With considerable
impudence, and an impressive sea-bow, he walked up to Célandine under
the eyes of his admiring shipmates, and, mustering the best negro-French
at his command, warned her in somewhat incomprehensible jargon of the
imposition intended to be practised. Now it happened that Port Welcome,
and the island in which it was situated, had been occupied in its
varying fortunes by French, Spaniards, and English so equally, that
these languages, much corrupted by negro pronunciation, were spoken
indiscriminately, and often altogether. It was a great relief, therefore,
to Slap-Jack that Célandine thanked him politely for his interposition in
his native tongue, and when she looked into the young foretopman’s comely
brown face, she found herself so fascinated with something she detected
there as to continue the conversation in tolerably correct English, for
the purpose of improving their acquaintance. The seaman congratulated
himself on having made so happy a discovery, while his friends looked
on in mute admiration of the celerity with which he had completed his
conquest.
“He’s a smart chap, mate,” enunciated Bottle-Jack, with a glance of
intense approval at the two figures receding up the sunny street, as
Célandine marched their companion off, avowedly for the purpose of
refreshing him with cooling drinks in return for his good-nature—“a smart
young chap, and can hold his own with the best of ’em as ever hoisted a
petticoat, silk or dowlas. See now, that’s the way to do it in these here
latitudes! First he hails ’em, speaking up like a man, then he ranges
alongside, and gets the grapplers out, and so tows his prize into port
in a pig’s whisper. He’s a smart young chap, I tell ye, and a match for
the sauciest craft as ever sailed under false colours, and hoisted a red
pennant at the main.”
But Smoke-Jack shook his head, and led his shipmate, nothing loth, into
a tempting store-house, redolent with the fragrance of limes, tobacco,
decaying melons, and Jamaica rum. He said nothing, however, until he
had quenched his thirst; then after a vigorous pull at a tall beaker,
filled with a fragrant compound in which neither ice nor alcohol had been
forgotten, observed, as if the subject still occupied his thoughts—
“I knows the trim on ’em, I tell ye; I knows the trim on ’em. As I says
to the young chap now, I never found one yet as would steer kind in a
sea-way.”
Meanwhile, Célandine, moved by an impulse for which she could not
account, or perhaps dreading to analyse a sentiment that might after
all be founded on a fallacy, led the young seaman into a cool, quiet
room in a wooden house, on the shady side of the street, of which
the apparent mistress was a large bustling negress, with a numerous
family of jet-black children, swarming and crawling about the floor
like garden-snails after a shower. This proprietress seemed to hold
the Quadroon in considerable awe, and was delighted to bring the best
her house afforded for the entertainment of such visitors. Slap-jack,
accommodated with a deep measure of iced rum-and-water, lit his pipe,
played with the children, stared at his black hostess in unmitigated
astonishment, and prepared himself to answer the questions it was obvious
the Quadroon was burning to put.
Célandine hovered restlessly about the room, fixing her bright black
eyes upon the seaman with an eager, inquiring glance, that she withdrew
hastily when she thought herself observed, and thereby driving into
a state of abject terror the large sable hostess, whose pity for the
victim, as she believed him, at last overcame her fear of the Quadroon,
and impelled her to whisper in Slap-Jack’s ear—
“Obi-woman! _bruxa_,[4] buckra-massa, _bruxa_!
_Mefiez-vous!—Ojo-malo._[5] No drinkee for drunkee! Look out! _Gare!_” A
warning utterly incomprehensible to its object, who winked at her calmly
over his tumbler, while he drank with exceeding relish the friendly
mother’s health, and that of her thriving black progeny.
There is nothing like a woman’s tact to wind the secrets out of a man’s
bosom, gradually, insensibly, and by much the same smooth, delicate
process as the spinning of flax off a distaff. With a few observations
rather than questions, a few allusions artfully put, Célandine drew from
Slap-Jack an account of his early years, and an explanation, offered with
a certain pride, of the manner in which he became a seaman. When he told
her how he had made his escape while a mere child from his protector,
whom he described as “the chap wot wanted to bind him ’prentice to a
sawbones,” he was startled to see the Quadroon’s shining black eyes full
of tears. He consoled her in his own rough, good-humoured way.
“What odds did it make after all,” argued Slap-Jack, helping himself
liberally to the rum-and-water, “when I was out of my bed by sunrise and
down to the waterside to get aboard-ship in the British Channel, hours
afore he was up, and so Westward-ho! and away? Don’t ye take on about it.
A sailor I _would_ be, and a sailor I _am_. You ask the skipper if I’m
not. He knows my rating I should think, and whether I’m worth _my_ salt
or no. Don’t ye take on so, mother, I say!”
But the Quadroon was weeping without concealment now.
“Call me that again!” she exclaimed, sobbing convulsively. “Call me that
again! I have not been called mother for so long. Hush!” she added,
starting up, and laying her hand forcibly on his lips. “Not another
word. Fool! Idiot that I am! Not another word. She can hear us. She can
understand;” and Célandine darted a furious glance at the busy negress,
which caused that poor woman to shake like a jelly down to her misshapen
black heels.
Slap-Jack felt considerably puzzled. His private opinion, as he
afterwards confided to his messmates, was, that the old lady not being
drunk, must be mad—a cheerful view, which was indeed confirmed by what
occurred immediately afterwards.
In struggling to keep her hand upon his mouth, she had turned back the
deep, open collar of his blue shirt till his brawny neck was exposed
nearly to the shoulder. Espying on that neck a certain white mark,
contrasting with the ruddy weather-browned skin, she gave a half-stifled
shriek, like that with which a dumb animal expresses its rapture of
recognition; and taking the man’s head in her arms, pressed it to her
bosom, rocking herself to and fro, while she wept and murmured over him
with an inexplicable tenderness, by which he was at once astonished and
alarmed.
For a few moments, and while the negress’s back was turned, she held him
tight, but released him when the other re-entered the room, exacting from
him a solemn promise that he would meet her again at an indicated place,
and adding that she would then confide to him matters in which, like
herself, he was deeply interested, but which must be kept religiously
secret so long as he remained in the island.
Slap-jack, after he had finished his rum-and-water, rejoined his
comrades, a more thoughtful man than he had left them. To their jests and
inquiries he returned vague and inconclusive answers, causing Bottle-Jack
to stare at him in solemn wonder, and affording Smoke-Jack another
illustration of his theory as to the wilfulness of feminine steerage in a
sea-way.
Célandine, on the contrary, walked through the town with the jaunty step
and bright vigilant eye of one who has discovered some treasure that
must be guarded with a care proportioned to its value. She bought no
more trinkets from the storekeepers now, she loitered no more to gossip
with sallow white, or shining negro, or dandy coloured man. At intervals
her brow indeed clouded over, and the scowl of which it was so capable
deepened ominously, while she clenched her hands and set her teeth; but
the frown soon cleared away, and she smiled bright and comely once more.
She had found her boy at last. Her first-born, the image of her first
love. Her heart warmed to him from the very moment he came near her at
the store. She was sure of it long before she recognised the mark on his
neck—the same white mark she had kissed a thousand times, when he danced
and crowed on her knees. It was joy, it was triumph. But she must be very
silent, very cautious. If it was hard that a mother might not openly
claim her son, it would be harder still that such acknowledgment should
rivet on him the yoke of a slavery to which he was born by that mother,
herself a slave.