these same little bungalows near the head of the valley, 'twas
no use to think of a bed, and as little to expect getting off to
the ship, which none could do after gunfire. For that matter, I
daresay there might be twenty such parties, full of young reefers
and homeward-bound old East Indians, keeping it up as long as might
be, because they had nowhere to sleep. The young lady of the house
we were in was one of the St Helena beauties, called "the Rosebud,"
from her colour. A lovely creature she was, certainly, as it was
plain our Hebe's first lieutenant thought, with several more to boot:
every sight of her figure gliding about through the rest, the white
muslin floating round her like haze, different as her face was, made
one think of the Seringapatam's deck at sea, with the men walking
the forecastle in the middle watch, and the poop quiet over the
Judge's cabins. Two or three times I had fancied for a moment that,
if one had somewhat stirring to busy himself with, why, he might so
far forget what was no doubt likely to interfere pretty much with a
profession like my own; and so it might have been, perhaps, had I
only seen her ashore: whereas now, whether it was ashore or afloat,
by Jove! everything called her somehow to mind. The truth is, I defy
you to get rid very easily of the thought about one you've sailed
in the same ship with, be it girl or woman--the same bottom betwixt
you and the water, the same breeze blowing your pilot-coat in the
watch on deck, that ripples past her ear below, and the self-same
dangers to strive against! At a break in the dance I went out of the
dancing-room into the verandah, where the cool of the air among the
honeysuckle flowers and creepers was delightful to feel; though it
was quite dark in the valley, and you couldn't make out anything but
the solemn black-blue of the sky full of stars above you, between the
two cliffs; or right out, where the stretch of sea widening to the
horizon, looked almost white through the mouth of the valley, over
the house-roofs below: one heard the small surf plashing low and slow
into the little bay, with the boats dipping at their moorings, but I
never saw sea look so lonely. Then tip at the head of the gulley one
could mark the steep black crag that shut it up, glooming quiet and
large against a gleam from one of the clusters of stars: the sight of
it was awful, I didn't know well why, unless by comparison with the
lively scene inside, not to say with one's own whole life afloat, as
well as the wishes one had at heart. 'Twas pretty late, but I heard
the music strike up again in the room, and was going back again, when
all of a sudden I thought the strangest sound that ever came to one's
ears went sweeping round and round far above the island, more like
the flutter of a sail miles wide than aught else I can fancy; then a
rush of something like those same blasts of wind I was pretty well
used to by this time--but wind it was not--growing in half a minute
to a rumbling clatter, and then to a smothered roar, as if something
more than mortal shot from inland down through the valley, and passed
out by its mouth into the open sea at once. I scarce felt the ground
heave under me, though I thought I saw the black head of the ravine
lift against the stars--one terrible plunge of the sea down at the
quays and batteries, then everything was still again; but the whole
dancing party came rushing out in confusion at my back, the ladies
shrieking, the men looking up into the sky, or at the cliffs on both
sides; the British flag, over the fort on Ladder Hill, blowing out
steadily to a stiff breeze aloft. It wasn't for some time, in fact,
that they picked up courage again, to say it had been an earthquake.
However, the ball was over, and, as soon as matters could be set
to rights, it was nothing but questions whether it had aught to do
with _him_ up at Longwood, or hadn't been an attempt to blow up the
island--some of the officers being so much taken aback at first,
that they fancied the French had come. At last, however, we who had
nothing else for it got stowed away on sofas or otherwise about the
dancing-room: for my part, I woke up just early enough to see the
high head of the valley coming out as clearly as before against the
morning light, and the water glancing blue out miles away beyond
the knot of ships in the opening. The news was only that Napoleon
was safe, having been in his bed at the time, where he lay thinking
one of the frigates had blown up, they said. Not a word of his that
got wind but the people in James Town made it their day's text--in
the want of which they'd even gossip about the coat he wore that
morning--till you'd have said the whole nest of them, soldiers and
all, lay under his shadow as the town did at the foot of the cliffs,
just ready to vanish as soon as he went down. The Longwood doctor had
told some one in the Jew Solomon's toy-shop, by the forenoon, that
Buonaparte couldn't sleep that night for making some calculations
about a great battle he had fought, when he counted three separate
shocks of the thing, and noticed it was luckily right up and down, or
else James Town would have been buried under tons of rock. The doctor
had mentioned besides that there was twice an earthquake before in
the island, in former times; but it didn't need some of the town's
people's looks to tell you they'd be afraid many a night after, lest
the French Emperor should wake up thinking of his battles; while, as
for myself, I must say the notion stuck to me some time, along with
my own ideas at that exact moment--at any rate, not for worlds would
I have lived long ashore in St Helena.
Mr Newland the first lieutenant, and I, set out early in the day,
accordingly, with a couple of the Hebe's midshipmen, mounted on as
many of the little island ponies, to go up inland for a cruise about
the hills. You take Side Path along the crags, with a wall betwixt
the hard track and the gulf below, till you lose sight of James Town
like a cluster of children's toy-houses under you, and turn up above
a sloping hollow full of green trees and tropical-like flowering
shrubs, round a pretty cottage called the Briars--where one begins
to have a notion, however, of the bare blocks, the red bluffs, and
the sharp peaks standing up higher and higher round the shell of
the island. Then you had another rise of it to climb, on which you
caught sight of James Town and the harbour again, even smaller than
before, and saw nothing before your beast's head but a desert of
stony ground, running hither and thither into wild staring clefts,
grim ravines, and rocks of every size tumbled over each other like
figures of ogres and giants in hard fight. After two or three miles
of all this, we came in view of Longwood hill, lying green on a
level to north and east, and clipping to windward against the sea
beyond; all round it elsewhere was the thick red crust of the island,
rising in ragged points and sharp spires:--the greenish sugar-loaf of
Diana's Peak shooting in the middle over the high ridge that hid the
Plantation House side of St Helena to leeward. Between the spot where
we were and Longwood is a huge fearful-looking black hollow, called
the Devil's Punch-Bowl, as round and deep as a pitch-pot for caulking
all the ships in the world--except on a slope into one corner of it,
where you saw a couple of yellow cottages with gardens about them;
while every here and there a patch of grass began to appear, a clump
of wild weeds and flowers hanging off the fronts of the rocks, or
the head of some valley widening away out of sight, with the glimpse
of a house amongst trees, where some stream of water came leaping
down off the heights and vanished in the boggy piece of green below.
From here over the brow of the track it was all like seeing into an
immense stone basin half hewn out, with all the lumps and wrinkles
left rising in it and twisting every way about--the black Devil's
Punch-Bowl for a hole in the middle, where some infernal liquor or
other had run through: the soft bottoms of the valleys just bringing
the whole of it up distincter to the green over Longwood hill; while
the ragged heights ran round on every side like a rim with notches
in it, and Diana's Peak for a sort of a handle that the clouds could
take hold of. All this time we had strained ourselves to get as fast
up as possible, except once near the Alarm House, where there was a
telegraph signal-post, with a little guard-hut for the soldiers; but
_there_ each turned round in his saddle, letting out a long breath
the next thing to a cry, and heaving-to directly, at sight of the
prospect behind. The Atlantic lay wide away round to the horizon from
the roads, glittering faint over the ragged edge of the crags we
had mounted near at hand; only the high back of the island shut out
the other side--save here and there through a deep-notched gully or
two--and accordingly you saw the sea blotched out in that quarter to
the two sharp bright ends, clasping the dark-coloured lump between
them, like a mighty pair of arms lifting it high to carry it off.
Soon after, however, the two mids took it into their wise heads
the best thing was to go and climb Diana's Peak, where they meant
to cut their names at the very top; on which the first lieutenant,
who was a careful middle-aged man, thought needful to go with them,
lest they got into mischief: for my part I preferred the chance of
coming across the mysterious Yankee and his comrade, as I fancied not
unlikely, or what was less to be looked for, a sight of Buonaparte
himself.
Accordingly, we had parted company, and I was holding single-handed
round one side of the Devil's Punch-Bowl, when I heard a clatter
of horse-hoofs on the road, and saw the Admiral and Lord Frederick
riding quickly past on the opposite side, on their way to
Longwood--which, curiously enough, was half-covered with mist at
the time, driving down from the higher hills, apparently before a
regular gale, or rather some kind of a whirlwind. In fact, I learned
after that such was often the case, the climate up there being quite
different from below, where they never feel a gale from one year's
end to the other. In the next hollow I got into it was as hot and
still as it would have been in India, the blackberry trailers and
wild aloes growing quite thick, mixed with prickly pear-bushes,
willows, gum-wood, and an African palm or two; though, from the look
of the sea, I could notice the south-east trade had freshened below,
promising to blow a good deal stronger that night than ordinary,
and to shift a little round. Suddenly the fog began to clear by
degrees from over Longwood, till it was fairly before me, nearer
than I thought; and just as I rode up a rising ground, out came the
roof of a house on the slope amongst some trees, glittering wet as
if the sun laid a finger on it; with a low bluish-coloured stretch
of wood farther off, bringing out the white tents of the soldiers'
camp pitched about the edge of it. Nearly to windward there was one
sail in sight on the horizon, over an opening in the rocks beyond
Longwood House, that seemingly let down toward the coast; however, I
just glanced back to notice the telegraph on the signal-post at work,
signalling to the Podargus in the offing, and next minute Hut's Gate
was right a-head of me, not a quarter of a mile off--a long-shaped
bungalow of a cottage, inside of a wall with a gate in it, where I
knew I needn't try farther, unless I wanted the sentries to take me
under arrest. Betwixt me and it, however, in the low ground, was a
party of man-o'-war's-men under charge of a midshipman, carrying some
timber and house-furniture for Longwood, as I remembered, from seeing
them come ashore from the Podargus that morning; so I stood over, to
give my late shipmates a hail. But the moment I got up with them,
it struck me not a little, as things stood, to find three of the
four Blacks we had taken aboard from that said burnt barque of the
American mate's, trudging patiently enough under the heaviest loads
of the gang. Jetty-black, savage-looking fellows they were, as strong
as horses, and reminded me more of our wild friends in the Nouries
River, than of 'States niggers; still, what caught my notice most
wasn't so much their being there at all, as the want of the fourth
one, and where _he_ might be. I don't know yet how this trifling
bit of a puzzle got hold on me, but it was the sole thing that kept
me from what might have turned a scrape to myself--namely, passing
myself in as officer of the party; which was easy enough at the time,
and the tars would have entered into the frolic as soon as I started
it. On second thoughts, nevertheless, I bade them good-day, steering
my animal away round the slant of the ground, to see after a good
perch as near as possible; and, I daresay, I was getting within the
bounds before I knew it, when another sentry sung out to me off the
heights to keep lower down, first bringing his musket to salute for
my uniform's sake, then letting it fall level with a ringing slap of
his palm, as much as to say it was all the distinction I'd get over
plain clothes.
At this, of course, I gave it up, with a blessing to all
lobster-backs, and made sail down to leeward again as far as the
next rise, from which there was a full view of the sea at any rate,
though the face of a rough crag over behind me shut out Longwood
House altogether. Here I had to get fairly off the saddle--rather
sore, I must say, with riding up St Helena roads after so many weeks
at sea--and flung myself down on the grass, with little enough fear
of the hungry little beast getting far adrift. This said crag, by the
way, drew my eye to it by the queer colours it showed, white, blue,
gray, and bright red in the hot sunlight; and being too far off to
make out clearly, I slung off the ship's glass I had across my back,
just to overhaul it better. The hue of it was to be seen running all
down the deep rift between, that seemingly wound away into some glen
toward the coast; while the lot of plants and trailers half-covering
the steep front of it, would no doubt, I thought, have delighted
my old friend the Yankee, if he _was_ the botanising gentleman in
question. By this time it was a lovely afternoon far and wide to
Diana's Peak, the sky glowing clearer deep-blue at that height than
you'd have thought sky could do, even in the tropics--the very peaks
of bare red rock being softened into a purple tint, far off round
you. One saw into the rough bottom of the huge Devil's Punch-Bowl,
and far through without a shadow down the green patches in the little
valleys, and over Deadwood Camp,--there was _nothing_, as it were,
between the grass, the ground, the stones and leaves, and the empty
hollow of the air; while the sea spread far round underneath, of a
softer blue than the sky over you. You'd have thought all the world
was shrunk into St Helena, with the Atlantic lying three-quarters
round it in one's sight, like the horns of the bright new moon
round the dim old one; which St Helena pretty much resembled, if
what the star-gazers say of its surface be true, all peaks and dry
hollows--if, indeed, you weren't lifting up out of the world, so to
speak, when one looked through his fingers right into the keen blue
overhead!
If I lived a thousand years, I couldn't tell half what I felt lying
there; but, as you may imagine, it had somewhat in it of the late
European war by land and sea. Not that I could have said so at
the time, but rather a sort of half-doze, such as I've known one
have when a schoolboy, lying on the green grass the same way, with
one's face turned up into the hot summer heavens: half of it flying
glimpses, as it were, of the French Revolution, the battles we used
to hear of when we were children--then the fears about the invasion,
with the Channel full of British fleets, and Dover Cliffs--Trafalgar
and Nelson's death, and the battle of Waterloo, just after we heard
_he_ had got out of Elba. In the terrible flash of the thing all
together, one almost fancied them all gone like smoke; and for a
moment I thought I was falling away off, _down_ into the wide sky,
so up I started to sit. From that, suddenly I took to guessing and
puzzling closely again how I should go to work myself, if I were the
strange Frenchman I saw in the brig at sea, and wanted to manage
Napoleon's escape out of St Helena. And first, there was how to get
into the island and put _him_ up to the scheme--why, sure enough, I
couldn't have laid it down better than they seemed to have done all
along: what could one do but just dodge about that latitude under all
sorts of false rig, then catch hold of somebody fit to cover one's
landing. No Englishman _would_ do it, and no foreigner but would set
Sir Hudson Lowe on his guard in a moment. Next we should have to get
put on the island,--and really a neat enough plan it was to dog one
of the very cruisers themselves, knock up a mess of planks and spars
in the night-time, set them all a-blaze with tar, and pretend we were
fresh from a craft on fire; when even Captain Wallis of the Podargus,
as it happened, was too much of a British seaman not to carry us
straight to St Helena! Again, I must say it was a touch beyond
me--but to hit the Governor's notions of a hobby, and go picking up
plants round Longwood, was a likely enough way to get speech of the
prisoner, or at least let him see one was there!
How should I set about carrying him off to the coast, though? That
was the prime matter. Seeing that even if the schooner--which was
no doubt hovering out of sight--were to make a bold dash for the
land with the trade-wind, in a night eleven hours long--there were
sentries close round Longwood from sunset, the starlight shining
mostly always in the want of a moon; and at any rate there was rock
and gully enough, betwixt here and the coast, to try the surest foot
aboard the Hebe, let alone an emperor. With plenty of woods for a
cover, one might steal up close to Longwood, but the bare rocks
showed you off to be made a mark of. Whew! but why were those same
Blacks on the island, I thought: just strip them stark-naked, and let
them lie in the Devil's Punch-bowl, or somewhere, beyond military
hours, when I warrant me they might slip up, gully by gully, to the
very sentries' backs! Their colour wouldn't show them, and savages as
they seemed, couldn't they settle as many sentries as they needed,
creep into the very bedchamber where Buonaparte slept, and manhandle
him bodily away down through some of the nearest hollows, before any
one was the wiser? The point that still bothered me was, why the
fourth of the Blacks was wanting at present, unless he had his part
to play elsewhere. If it was chance, then the _whole_ might be a
notion of mine, which I knew I was apt to have sometimes. If I could
only make out the fourth Black, so as to tally with the scheme, on
the other hand, then I thought it was all sure: but of course this
quite pauled me, and I gave it up, to work out my fancy case by
providing signals betwixt us plotters inside, and the schooner out
of sight from the telegraphs. There was no use for her to run in and
take the risk, without good luck having turned up on the island; yet
any sign she could profit by must be both sufficient to reach sixty
miles or so, and hidden enough not to alarm the telegraphs or the
cruisers. Here was a worse puzzle than all, and I only guessed at it
for my own satisfaction--as a fellow can't help doing when he hears a
question he can't answer--till my eye lighted on Diana's Peak, near
three thousand feet above the sea. There it was, by Jove! 'Twas quite
clear at the time; but by nightfall there was always more or less
cloud near the top; and if you set a fire on the very peak, 'twould
only be seen leagues off: a notion that brought to mind a similar
thing which I told you saved the Indiaman from a lee-shore one night
on the African coast,--and again, by George! I saw _that_ must have
been meant at first by the Negroes as a smoke to help the French brig
easier in! Putting that and that together, why it struck me at once
what the fourth Black's errand might be--namely, to watch for the
schooner, and kindle his signal as soon as he couldn't see the island
for mist. I was sure of it; and as for a dark night coming on at sea,
the freshening of the breeze there promised nothing more likely; a
bright white haze was softening out the horizon already, and here
and there the egg of a cloud could be seen to break off the sky to
windward, all of which would be better known afloat than here.
The truth was, I was on the point of tripping my anchor to hurry
down and get aboard again, but, on standing up, the head of a peak
fell below the sail I had noticed in the distance, and, seeing she
loomed large on the stretch of water, I pretty soon found she must
be a ship of the line. The telegraph over the Alarm House was hard
at work again, so I e'en took down my glass and cleaned it to have
a better sight, during which I caught sight, for a minute, of some
soldier officer or other on horseback, with a mounted red-coat behind
him, riding hastily up the gully a good bit from my back, till they
were round the red piece of crag, turning at times as if to watch the
vessel. Though I couldn't have a better spy at him for want of my
glass, I had no doubt he was the Governor himself, for the sentries
in the distance took no note of him. There was nobody else visible
at the time, and the said cliff stood fair up like a look-out place,
so as to shut them out as they went higher. Once or twice after, I
fancied I made out a man's head or two lower down the gully than the
cliff was; which, it occurred to me, might possibly be the botanists,
as they called themselves, busy finding out how long St Helena had
been an island: however, I soon turned the glass before me upon the
ship, by this time right opposite the ragged opening of Prosperous
Bay, and heading well up about fourteen miles or so off the coast, as
I reckoned, to make James Town harbour. The moment I had the sight of
the glass right for her--though you'd have thought she stood still on
the smooth soft blue water--I could see her whole beam rise off the
swells before me, from the dark side and white band, checkered with a
double row of ports, to the hamper of her lofty spars, and the sails
braced slant to the breeze; the foam gleaming under her high bows,
and her wake running aft in the heave of the sea. She was evidently a
seventy-four: I fanced I could make out her men's faces peering over
the yards toward the island, as they thought of "Boneypart;" a white
rear-admiral's flag was at the mizen-royal-masthead, leaving no doubt
she was the Conqueror at last, with Admiral Plampin, and, in a day or
two at farthest, the Hebe would be bound for India.
I had just looked over my shoulder toward Longwood, letting the
Conqueror sink back again into a thing no bigger than a model on a
mantelpiece, when, all at once, I saw some one standing near the brow
of the cliff I mentioned, apparently watching the vessel, with a long
glass at his eye, like myself. 'Twas farther than I could see to make
out anything, save so much; and, ere I had screwed the glass for
such a near sight, there were seven or eight figures more appearing
half over the slope behind; while my hand shook so much with holding
the glass so long, that at first I brought it to bear full on the
cracks and blocks in the front of the crag, with the large green
leaves and trailers on it flickering idly with the sunlight against
my eyes, till I could have seen the spiders inside, I daresay. Next I
held it too high, where the Admiral and Lord Frederick were standing
by their horses, a good way back; the Governor, as I supposed,
sitting on his, and two or three others along the rise. At length,
what with kneeling down to rest it on one knee, I had the glass
steadily fixed on the brow of the rocks, where I plainly saw a tall
dark-whiskered man, in a rich French uniform, gazing to seaward--I
knew him I sought too well by pictures, however, not to be sadly
galled. Suddenly a figure came slowly down from before the rest, with
his hands behind his back, and his head a little drooped. The officer
at once lowered the telescope and held it to him, stepping upward,
as if to leave him alone--what dress he had on I scarce noticed; but
there he was standing, single in the round bright field of the glass
I had hold of like a vice--his head raised, his hands hiding his
face, as he kept the telescope fixed fair in front of me--only I saw
the smooth broad round of his chin. I knew, as if I'd seen him in the
Tuileries at Paris, or known him by sight since I was a boy--I _knew_
it was Napoleon!
During that minute the rest of them were out of sight, so far as the
glass went--you'd have supposed there was no one there but himself,
as still as a figure in iron; watching the same thing, no doubt, as
I'd done myself five minutes before, where the noble seventy-four
was beating slowly to windward. When I _did_ glance to the knot
of officers twenty yards back, 'twas as if one saw a ring of his
generals waiting respectfully while he eyed some field of battle or
other, with his army at the back of the hill; but next moment the
telescope fell in his hands, and his face, as pale as death, with
his lip firm under it, seemed near enough for me to touch it--his
eyes shot stern into me from below his wide white forehead, and I
started, dropping my glass in turn. That instant the whole wild lump
of St Helena, with its ragged brim, the clear blue sky and the sea,
swung round about the dwindled figures above the crag, till they were
nothing but so many people together against the slope beyond.